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The adoption of a child involves complex interpersonal processes as birth parents, adoptive parents, and mediators such as social service agencies each work to provide for the "best interests of the child." Both at the time of adoption and after an adoption is completed, the birth and adoptive families may or may not have contact. Over the past 40 years, adoption practices have changed in terms of the options for openness, which refers to the level of contact and communication between the adopted child's birth family and the adoptive family. Harold Grotevant, Distinguished University Teaching Professor of Family Social Science, is a co-principal investigator for the Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Project (MTARP), which examines the outcomes of adoptions with different levels of openness. Grotevant's team is now in the third phase of this longitudinal study, in which they have followed the same adoptive families, birth mothers, and adopted children for over 20 years.


First phases of the MTARP

The MTARP began in the mid 1980s, shortly after Grotevant and Ruth McRoy, then both on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, completed a small-scale study on the adoption arrangements used at three Texas social services agencies. This pilot study was the impetus to embark on a nationwide study to follow families with differing degrees of openness in their adoption arrangements. The first phase of the project involved 190 adoptive families from 23 different states, at least one child in 171 of the adoptive families who was adopted in infancy, and 169 birth mothers. When the project began, the adopted children who were studied were between the ages of 4 and 12. Toward the end of this initial phase, Grotevant returned to the University of Minnesota (where he received his doctorate), but his collaboration with McRoy continued under the Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Project (MTARP) name. With his Minnesota colleagues, Grotevant has followed the adopted children and their adoptive parents over time, while McRoy and her colleagues at the University of Texas have followed the study's birth mothers. In the second phase of the project, which was completed in 2000, data were collected from the same participants at a time when the adopted children were adolescents (ages 12-20).

In the past, adoption openness was traditionally classified as confidential or closed (no contact and no identifying information shared), mediated or semi-open (communication occurs indirectly through a third party such as an adoption agency), and fully disclosed (communication and contact occur directly between parties). Using this classification scheme, 62 of the MTARP adoptions were identified in the first phase as confidential, 69 were mediated, and 59 were fully disclosed. However, data gathered in the first two phases of the MTARP caused Grotevant and his colleagues to re-assess such discrete categorizations of openness. For example, in the MTARP families who had open adoptions, according to Grotevant, "there [was] no uniform pattern.The members.[had] contact by different means, among different people, at varying rates, and with varying degrees of interest. The management of [such] open relationships involves a complex 'dance' in which the roles and needs of the participants may change and are continually re-negotiated over time." MTARP families who were part of confidential or mediated adoptions also were found to have engaged in an unexpectedly wide variety of openness arrangements.

In the first two phases of the study, the project team found that virtually all adopted children are curious about their birth families and why they were placed for adoption. Those children who had not met their birth parents wanted to know who they were and what they looked like (although were not necessarily seeking relationships with them). Those who knew their birth parents wondered what they would do together on their next visit. Grotevant and his team also found that the level of adoption openness by itself was much less predictive of adjustment outcomes than the quality of the relationships the adopted child had with his or her parents. Successful, quality relationships in open adoptions "hinge on participants' flexibility, communications skills, and commitment to the relationship," says Grotevant. "In fully disclosed adoptions, a collaborative working relationship between adoptive and birth parents was predictive of positive emotional adjustment in the child."

The second phase of the project, which studied the adopted children during adolescence, broke new ground in its examination of adoptee searches for birth parents. "One of our surprising findings [was] in contrast to some of the literature which suggested that adoptees search for their birth parents because of poor relationships with their adoptive parents or poor mental health adjustment. We found no relationship between the intention to search and either quality of relationship with parents or adjustment," explains Grotevant. These results have been interpreted to mean that thinking about searching is part of the normal developmental process for adolescent adoptees rather than a sign of poor adjustment. In terms of identity, adopted adolescents not only have to navigate the standard "who am I?" questions associated with this time of life, they also have to address what adoption means in their lives. According to Grotevant, during the project's second phase, the MTARP adolescent adoptees varied widely in their sense of identity as an adopted person. The study indicated the adolescents ranged from those who had clear, positive views of themselves and their adoption, to those who had not considered it much, to those who had negative feelings such as anger and sadness about adoption.


The next wave

Some of the unresolved feelings about issues such as identity demonstrated in the second phase of the MTARP set the stage for its third phase, which began this year and concludes in 2008, with funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Science Foundation, and William T. Grant Foundation. With the adoptees now in emerging adulthood (ages 20-28), they are moving away from the adoptive family setting and establishing their own families and lives. "We're interested in how young adults who were adopted as infants transform relationships with their adoptive and birth families as they make the transition into adulthood," notes Grotevant. "We want to see what special attitudes and perspectives they bring to their experiences and their relationships at this time. We are also looking at several aspects of young adult life: independence (i.e., entry into careers), close relationships (i.e., development and maintenance of friendships), identity development (i.e., view of self as an adopted person), and adjustment (i.e., competence)." 

The MTARP has and continues to provide valuable information to academic adoption researchers in many disciplines (including economics, public policy, anthropology, and psychology). Of significance to the individual families involved in adoption, however, is that the results of such a comprehensive, long-term study may also well influence both state and agency policies related to contact between adoptive and birth families.


Project information

Principal investigators

Harold Grotevant, Distinguished University Teaching Professor of Family Social Science, University of Minnesota
Ruth McRoy, Professor of Social Work, University of Texas at Austin

Co-investigators

Susan Ayers-Lopez, project manager, University of Texas at Austin
Martha Rueter, Associate Professor of Family Social Science, University of Minnesota
Gretchen Wrobel, Professor of Psychology, Bethel University, St. Paul, MN

Harold Grotevant's departmental Web page:   fsos.che.umn.edu/facultystaff/grotevant.html

MTARP Web site: fsos.che.umn.edu/projects/mtarp.html