Adopted children

My second example is just as egregious in its own way. White (1982), in what is otherwise an exemplary and still valuable meta-analysis, discusses the use of SES both as a spurious influence (covariate or nuisance variable) and as a causal agent (p. 462). He completely fails to warn the reader, however, that it is mandatory to sort correlations into those based on relationships between biological relatives and those based on relationships between adopted parents and their adopted children. His failure to discuss such a critical issue is perplexing as he does cite two classic adoption studies (Burks, 1928a Freeman, Holzinger, Mitchell, 1928) but not that of Scarr and Weinberg published in 1978. 

There are also cross-fostering studies of children of schizophrenic parents, adopted away by nonschizophrenic foster parents, who were compared with adopted children of normal parents raised by schizophrenic foster parents ( 53, 54). Invariably, those children whose biological parents had schizophrenia developed this disorder more frequently than the offspring of nonschizophrenic parents, even when the latter were reared by schizophrenic foster families. In addition, the concordance rate for the illness in schizophrenic monozygotic twins reared apart was comparable with monozygotic twins reared together. These findings leave little doubt of a hereditary factor in schizophrenia. 

Evidence of ethnic differences and family frequency, studies concerning twins and adoptive children as well as... 

Rose RJ, Boughman JA, Corey LA, Nance WE, Christian JC, Kang KW 1980 Data from kinships of monozygotic twins indicate maternal effects on intelligence. Nature 283 375-377 Skodak M, Skeels HM 1949 A final follow-up study of one hundred adopted children. J Genet Psychol 75 85—12... 

All adoption records should/should not be open to adopted children over 18. 

Adopted children from countries in which HBV infection is endemic ... 

Jean Mayer reviews observations made in families, ethnic groups, and twins which suggested that hereditary factors may predispose an individual to obesity. The weight of natural children correlates well with that of parents, but there is no such correlation between that of adopted children and their legal parents. As in most studies of this kind, it is difficult to distinguish environmental from hereditary factors. 

Industrial pollution is not as well regulated in some other countries. As a result, a young child who spends his or her first months or years in an Asian or Latin American country may already be poisoned from lead sources such as proximity to a smelter, or the mother s occupational exposure to lead. Adopted children from these countries have been found in some cases to have high lead levels when they come to this country. ... 

Under the Fatal Accidents Act 1976 damages for loss of financial support can be claimed by or for the defendants. The definition of defendant is set out in the Act as amended by the Administration of Justice Act 1982 and includes spouse or former spouse, ascendants and descendants as well as adopted children and anyone living with the deceased as spouse, the latter subject to certain conditions. 

One cannot accept the Vita dementis as a truly historical account. Clement was indeed martyred under Diocletian, but many of the details of the vita story are anachronistic. For example, women could not formally adopt children under Roman law until Leo VI issued his Novel 27 at the end of the ninth century, although informal adoptions by Christian women occurred as early as the fourth century. Moreover, the elaborate private orphanage that Sophia and Clement organized would probably have been impossible in the third century. The details of the vita correspond more closely to the conditions of the fourth and fifth centuries when private Christian foundations were becoming common in Asia Minor, though one should not rule out completely a third-century orphan asylum. ... 

In his thorough study of these contracts, Marek Kurylowicz has suggested that their principal purpose was to ensure that the adopted children attain the position of heirs in the testaments of their adopting parents. Certainly the first two contracts emphasized the hereditary rights of the adopted children, but in the third contract the poor widow only wished to guarantee that the new family provide for her little daughter. In this case, the adoption probably substituted for abandonment. 

Leo saw the principal social benefit of his legislation not in the help it offered to children—whether orphans, foundlings, or children of families with too many mouths to feed— but rather in the assistance it offered to childless women in their old age, since the adopted children would be able to assist their elderly benefactresses. ... 

Of perhaps greater significance are the figures derived from tax surveys. The tax records from three thirteenth-century villages, located in Asia Minor and the coastal islands, demonstrate that from a total of fifty-one households two provided care for underage relatives, a nephew and a young sister, probably cases of guardianship, but that no households sheltered adopted children. ... 

From villages in the territory around Thessalonike, the tax records of 1401 reveal 167 households. Of these, seventeen households included nephews or nieces, in most cases examples of uncle guardianships, and fifteen households contained siblings. Compared to these relatively large numbers of probable guardianship cases, only two households listed adopted children among their members. These tax records thus... 

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