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This study seeks to extend previous research on family stress, parenting, and child adjustment to families with adopted Chinese children. In doing so, we also seek to strengthen inferences regarding the experiential underpinnings of previously obtained relationships among these variables by determining if they also occur in families where parents and children are not biologically related. Participants were families of 133 preschool-age adopted Chinese girls (M[subscript age] = 5.2 years, SD = 0.7; M[subscript age at adoption] = 12.8 months, SD = 4.1). Data on family stress, parenting styles, and children's behavioral adjustment were collected from the adoptive mothers with the Social Problem Questionnaire (SPQ), Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ), and Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) respectively. Results showed that adoptive mothers reported relatively mild family stress, frequent authoritative parenting, and few behavior problems in their children. Nonetheless, family stress, authoritarian and permissive parenting styles positively correlated with children's behavioral problems. Finally, authoritarian parenting mediated the effect of non-child-related family stress (NCR-stress) on the adopted Chinese girls' CBCL internalizing and overall problems, even after controlling for corresponding CBCL scores from 2 years earlier. Our results showed that the overall pattern of relationships found in non-adoptive families is also seen in families with adopted Chinese children. (Contains 4 tables.)

Abstract: In this study, we investigated the expressive language development of 186 18–35 months old Chinese girls adopted into American families. The adoptees were adopted between 3 and 25 months (M =11.0, S.D.=3.1) and had lived in the adoptive families for 3–27 months (M =16.2, S.D.=5.8) at the time of the study. The adoptive mothers provided information on the adoptees’ pre- and post-adoption experiences, behavioral-emotional problems, and spontaneously uttered words and phrases. Cross-sectional data indicated that the adoptees experienced a full catch up after living in the adoptive families for an average of about 16 months. After that, the adoptees’ language level surpassed the U.S. norms for the same age group. Findings also suggested that the adoptees’ current age and age at adoption were associated with vocabulary size, while only age at adoption was a significant predictor of average phrase length. Pre-adoption experiences and current family demographics were not associated with the adoptees’ vocabulary size or average phrase length. The adoptees’ externalizing problems were negatively and weakly correlated with their phrase length. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]