Do adoptive parents differ? A study of dissolution risk among biological and adoptive parents in Sweden

This study investigates whether the different circumstances of parenthood that adoptive parents and biological parents encounter lead to different divorce risks. An adoption involves a large emotional and economic investment, and the potential parents undergo an arduous investigation for approval to adopt by the social authorities. Other stressful factors might be the child’s attachment to the new parents, and the child’s development in school, which has been shown to lag behind other children of the same age. Such tensions could increase the divorce risk. However, a gender equal parenthood with involvement from both parents has the potential to decrease this risk. We will study this question in Sweden, a country with a relatively high rate of divorce, strong gender equality norms, as well as a high proportion of internationally adopted children. The study makes use of administrative register data that covers the entire Swedish population over the period 1993-2007. The divorce risk will be investigated with event history analysis. By adjusting for factors shown to correlate with divorce risks we will be able to draw conclusions about the interrelationship between the different circumstances of parenthood for these two groups of parents, gender equal parenthood, and divorce risk.