Parental affective states and outcomes in children: a comparison between adoptive and biological parents

Several research reported that parental psychopathology represent an important risk factor for psychological wellbeing in children and a growing literature refers to adoptive parenthood. Most previous studies, carried out in this field, focused on the perception of only one parent (Rosnati et al., 2013), mainly the mother. The current study sought to explore the association between parents’ affective states and psychological adjustment in children, by comparing, on the one hand, mothers and fathers and, on the other, adoptive and biological families. The sample included 112 parents (55 mothers and 57 fathers; mean age = 43.7 years; sd = 6.4) divided in a group of adoptive parents (AP; N= 47) and a group of biological parents (BP; N = 65). No age differences were observed between the AP and the BP groups. Parents of both groups completed: a socio-demographic questionnaire, the Short-Form 12 items Health Survey (SF-12), the Zung Depression and Anxiety Self-Rating Scales (SDS; SAS); parents also filled in the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in reference to their adoptive or biological child. Our results highlighted the distinct contribution of mothers and fathers in both BP and AP on different aspects of children’s psychological adjustment. With regard to adoptive mothers, we found that: depressive levels predicted emotional problems among children (adjusted R2 = .306); the Physical Health Scale of the SF-12 predicted children’s conducted disorders (adjusted R2 = .239), hyperactivity (adjusted R2 = .199) and peer problems (adjusted R2 = .242). With regard to adoptive fathers, the Mental Health Scale of the SF-12 predicted children’s emotional problems (adjusted R2 = .173) and conduct disorders (adjusted R2 = .277); at last, paternal depression explained 19.8% of the children’s hyperactivity variance. These findings once again underlined the importance to consider both mothers and fathers in adoption research and to further explore their differential impact.