The New York Times, Motherlode Column

By LISA BELKIN

Whenever the subject here is adoption readers point out that while the difficult cases make the news, most adoptive families are happy and most adopted children are healthy and well-adjusted.

Today is the final day of National Adoption Month, and a fitting time to take a look at the report “Adoption USA: A Chartbook Based on the 2007 National Survey of Adoptive Parents” which was released recently by the Department of Health and Human Services. Based on interviews with parents of 91,642 adopted children, its authors describe the report as “the first ever survey to provide representative information about the characteristics, adoption experiences, and well-being of adopted children and their families in the United States.”

Among its findings: the overwhelming majority of families whose children came to them through adoption are doing just fine.

Eighty-five percent of the children are described as being in “excellent or very good health”, the same as the general population. Eighty-one percent of the parents described their relationships with their child as “very warm and close,” while 42 percent say those relationships are “better than ever expected,” and only 15 percent say they are “more difficult” than they had expected.

In some categories adopted children can be considered measurably better off than the average American child.They are, for instance, more likely to be read to daily when they are younger (68 compared with 48 percent), to be sung to or told stories every day (73 compared with 59 percent), or to participate in extracurricular activities as school-age children (85 compared with 81 percent).

That does not mean that there are not bumps and difficulties on the adoption path. While only the minority of adopted children have “special health care needs” (39 percent) or “moderate to severe health difficulties” (26 percent), or a diagnosis of asthma (19 percent) these are all higher numbers than those of the general population (which are 19 percent, 10 percent and 13 percent.)

Similarly, while “only a small minority of adopted children have ever been diagnosed with disorders such as attachment disorder, depression, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or behavior or conduct disorder,” the report says, the percentage of each of these appears higher in the subset of adoptive children than in the general population. (There are no statistics on the prevalence of attachment disorder in the general population, but 12 percent of parents of adoptive children report such a diagnosis; while 4 percent of the general population of children have been diagnosed with severe to moderate A.D.H.D., 14 percent of adopted children have; the statistics for “behavior or conduct problems” is 2 percent vs. 8 percent, while reported “problems with social behaviors is 9 percent vs. 14 percent. All these problems are more prevalent in children who were adopted out of foster care than in those adopted internationally or privately.)

As so many of you have said on this subject, no one case represents the whole of adoption. On the flip side, statistics like these can paint a large scale picture, but not capture the truth of your particular family.

Do these numbers ring true to you? Do you find them reassuring or worrisome?

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