The effects of children on parents: adoptee genetic dispositions and adoptive parent psychopathology

Although the traditional focus in socialization research has been on the effect of parents on their children (Finley, 1999), recently, researchers have turned their attention to the effects of children on their parents (Ambert, 1992; Demick, Bursik, & Dibiase, 1993). An important confound in the study of the effects of children on parents, however, is shared genetic or biological heritage. One method of avoiding this confound is for researchers to study adoptees and adoptive parents who have no shared genetic heritage. We, therefore, designed the present secondary analysis to examine the effects of adopted children on their adoptive parents without confounding shared biological heritage.