The Impact of Motivation for Adopting or Assuming Guardianship on Long-Term Permanence

Background/Purpose: Legal permanence through adoption and guardianship is a desirable outcome for children for whom reunification is not possible. This project interviewed 32 adoptive parents and guardians about their experiences post-adoption/guardianship, and the challenges they face in keeping their families together. Prior research found that adoptive parents most frequently (86%) said they were motivated to adopt because they wanted to provide a permanent home for a child. Another study found additional motivation, including the desire for a larger family (61%), infertility (39%), or because caregivers wanted a sibling for another child in the home (24%). For families who struggled with infertility, unresolved infertility issues affected the couple’s relationship and the adoptive process. These difficulties are associated with struggles after the adoption/guardianship has been finalized. Thus, understanding how parents/guardians arrive at the decision to adopt or assume guardianship may help support adoptive and guardianship families.

Methods: Using a grounded theory methodological approach, interviews were conducted with 32 public and private adoptive parents and guardians (caregivers) from the Midwest. This systematic approach was used to develop a broad conceptual theory that explains a phenomenon, process, action, or interaction. Grounded theories are used to construct a theory that emerges out of data to highlight participants’ experiences and generate, inform, extend, expand, and refine knowledge in various fields. Responses were reviewed, recorded, transcribed, and coded using open coding, axial coding (creating subcategories), and selective coding (refining theory) to get a sense of the interview as a whole before breaking it into parts. To develop themes that assist in answering research questions, coding is an essential connection between collecting data and developing an emergent theory that reflected the participants’ experiences.

Results: Adoptive parents and guardians identified three types of motivations for adopting or providing guardianship to children: infertility, calling, and altruism (i.e., wanting to give a child a home and become a parent although single). The parents’ motivation was connected to the extent to which they struggled to care for their adoptive or guardianship child and they seriously considered ending the relationship. The parents who entered adoption/guardianship because of infertility tended to struggle the most, have the most parenting challenges, seriously considered ending the adoption/guardianship, and often had strained systems of support to cope with parenting their adoptive/guardianship child. The parents/guardians who were motivated because it was their calling tended to struggle the least, rarely considered ending the adoption/guardianship, and drew strength from their faith when they struggled.

Conclusion/Implications: All adoptive parents and guardians want to be good parents to their children. However, the reasons they decided to adopt or provide guardianship also came with unanticipated grief and loss, unrealistic expectations of what it would be like to be a parent, and unresolved personal histories of trauma that often interfered with their ability to parent. In order to support adoptive and guardianship placements, it is important to explore families’ motivations for adopting so that a support plan that includes necessary linkage to services can be put into place.