Purpose: For a variety of reasons, many important questions with respect to intercountry adoption have been addressed as follows: (1) Can a child develop a healthy personal identity within the framework of an adopted family of different ethnic heritage? (2) Is it crucial for adoptive parents to support their adoptee's unique journey of ethnic socialization and how it relates to ethnic pride and a healthy self-concept for their adoptee? The researcher tested the following two hypotheses: (1) Adopted Korean children who receive more parental support of ethnic socialization and have more positive relationship with adoptive parents will have greater collective self-esteem. (2) Adopted Korean children who have more positive relationship with adoptive parents and have greater collective self-esteem will have greater levels of positive well-being and lower levels of distress.

Methods: With the nationwide mail survey, the original sample consisted of 800 adoptive families, with 241 adoptive families including both adoptees and adoptive parents responding from 28 states of the US, for a response rate of 30%, which is considered satisfactory in this type of survey method. The mean age of the respondents was 14.2 years old with a range from 12 to 19 years. The Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire and the Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale were used to measure positive parent-child relationship. No existing instrument was found regarding adoptive parental support of adoptee's ethnic socialization, thus the measurement was developed by the researcher. The researcher also developed questionnaires to measure Collective Self-Esteem which is a sense of ethnic pride. To measure positive well-being, items were selected from the Affect Balance Scale and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. To measure distress, items were also selected from the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Beck's Depression Inventory.

Results: Hierarchical multiple regression analyses of 241 Korean-born adolescent adoptees provide findings that a more positive parent-child relationship and a greater collective self-esteem acquired through parental support of ethnic socialization each predicts a greater subjective well-being of adopted children, suggesting that a negative sense of ethnic identity represents a vulnerability to psychosocial well-being. The results found that adoptees raised in areas with diverse ethnic neighbors had higher levels of collective self-esteem than adoptees grown up in culturally homogeneous or non-diverse neighborhoods. This study also found that having a Korean-born adopted sibling played a significant role to lessen the level of emotional and psychological distress of adoptees. In addition, there was a strong association between parental support of ethnic background and a positive communication with adoptive parents.

Implications for practice: It is imperative that adoptive parents remain aware of the necessity to understand that the enhancement of collective self-esteem can increase their adopted children's subjective well-being and that sharing experiences of children's ethnic socialization can play a significant role in their children's unique process of self-concept development. In order to strengthen the functioning of adoptive families, social workers should provide adoptive families with unique post-adoption services and cultural awareness programs which can encourage adoptees to facilitate the process of accepting their ethnic and cultural heritage.