Inuit adopted kids fare better than non-adopted peers: research

While adopted children in other parts of Northern America tend to display more behavioural problems than their non-adopted peers, a new study found Inuit customary adoption was unrelated to behavioural problems in Nunavik schools. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

While North American studies have shown adopted children display more negative behaviour than their non-adopted peers, that’s not the case among Nunavik children, a study by Quebec-based researchers has found.

Health researchers at Université Laval, Université de Montréal and Wayne State University in Detroit looked at the impacts of Inuit customary adoption on the behaviour of school-age children in Nunavik’s three largest communities.

The research, published earlier this year in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, found Inuit customary adoption was unrelated to behavioural problems in school.

Those problems include attention deficits, self-directed behavioural issues such as difficulty coping with negative emotions, and externalizing behavioural problems such as aggression, delinquency and hyperactivity.

The study followed some 270 children in Nunavik from birth until they were about 14, looking at prenatal health, family variables and teachers’ reports.

The research noted that both adopted and non-adopted Inuit children followed in the study were exposed to prenatal risk factors associated with behavioral issues.

For example, about half of those children were exposed prenatally to alcohol and roughly 80 per cent to tobacco.

But the study found the home environments of adopted and non-adopted children differed substantially, with the adoptive homes considered to be more stable overall.

“The adopted children were raised by older and less educated caregivers, who were more likely to be dependent on public assistance and to be single (separated, divorced, or widowed”), the study said.

“However, they were less likely to live in families experiencing maternal depressive mood, family violence, alcohol consumption, and household crowding.”

That finding supports research done through Nunavik’s youth protection services in the mid-1990s that followed adopted and non-adopted clients. It found adoptive parents were significantly older and more likely to abstain from using alcohol and drugs.

According to this more recent research, 17 per cent of adopted Inuit children and adopted by their grandmother; 32 per cent by an aunt and 24 per cent by another relative.

Researchers note some of the differences in Inuit custom adoption and the adoption process in other western societies that could explain why adopted Inuit children seem to fare better than their southern counterparts.

First, giving a child away for Inuit customary adoption is not based on an assumption that birth parents are unfit to care for their children.

Inuit children are generally adopted at birth and those arrangements are made with the adoptive family during the pregnancy.

Secondly, birth ties are maintained and the adopted child knows who his or her biological parents are and in many cases, has contact with them.

Finally, the study acknowledged that Inuit customary adoption is much less stigmatizing than adoption in other Western societies.

But the study calls for more research to look at how much adopted Inuit children’s contact with their biological parents could play into their well-being.

Researchers also say the study should be expanded to look at adopted children’s progress through to their late adolescence, using self-reported measures in addition to teachers’ reports.