Foster and Adoptive Families

A defining feature of both foster and adoptive families is that they include children who are not being reared by their biological parents. As with other family forms such as single-parent families or blended families, foster and adoptive families can contribute to diversity within educational settings. This entry begins with a demographic description of children in foster and adoptive families, then summarizes research on the behavioral adjustment and academic achievement of children in foster and adoptive families, and finally highlights issues in educational settings that may be of particular concern for children in foster and adoptive families.

In the last 10 years, 700,000 to 800,000 children have been served each year in public foster care in the United States. Children most often enter foster families following contact with Child Protective Services and the substantiation that their biological parents have abused or neglected them. Approximately 40% of children in foster care at a given time have been in foster care for less than a year, approximately 20% have been in foster care for one to two years, and 40% have been in foster care for longer. About half of children are reunified with their biological parents upon leaving foster care, and 20% to 30% of these reunified children subsequently reenter the foster care system.

About 2.5% of U.S. children are adopted. Some children enter adoptive families after spending time in foster care. Each year in the United States, approximately 50,000 children are adopted from the foster care system, and more than 100,000 additional children are waiting to be adopted from foster care. Another path through which adoptive families are formed is when birth mothers voluntarily place their children for adoption. In the United States, less than 1% of never-married mothers place their children for adoption, and still fewer married mothers do so, resulting in approximately 14,000 children adopted each year through their birth mothers' voluntary placement. More than 20,000 children from other countries are adopted by parents in the United States each year. The countries from which children are adopted vary over time, with changes in nations' policies regarding international adoptions. China, Russia, Guatemala, and South Korea are currently the primary countries from which parents in the United States adopt children. Nearly half of children adopted from other countries are infants at the time of the adoption, whereas less than 2% of children adopted through foster care are infants at the time of the adoption.

Because of these different developmental histories—which in the case of foster families often involve prior abuse or neglect and in the case of adoptive families sometimes involve international moves and learning a new language and customs—children in foster and adoptive families can face challenges in educational settings. As a group, children in foster families demonstrate more behavior problems and lower achievement in school than do other children. However, these problems may reflect the children's history of maltreatment and adversity rather than their placement in a foster family per se. Indeed, children who leave foster care to be reunified with their biological parents have been found in several studies to have more behavior problems and lower achievement (including worse grades and higher rates of dropping out of school) than do children who stay in foster care. Perhaps this is because when children are reunified with their biological parents they often return to environments that have not changed substantially since the children's original removal from them. Within-group comparisons of children in foster families suggest that children who are in long-term stable placements have better adjustment than do children who have disrupted placements with different foster families, even after controlling for initial levels of adjustment.

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