Mary Beth Bruder, Carl J Dunst, Cristina Mogro-Wilson and Tony Xing Tan used an analytic procedure called structural equation modelling (SEM) to evaluate the effects of adoption and post-adoption child behaviour measures on parents' self-judgements of their parenting competence, confidence and enjoyment. SEM is a statistical procedure for investigating complex relationships among multiple variables simultaneously. The study participants were 314 adults (mostly mothers) who had adopted a child from China. Parents' recall of their children's behaviour at the time of adoption was related to two outcomes: concerns about their children's development and post-adoption behavioural ratings of child functioning. The more positive the parents' ratings of their children's behaviour, the more positive they judged their parenting competence, confidence and enjoyment. Findings supported the main hypothesis that parents' judgements of their children's behaviour at and following adoption are both directly and indirectly related to their sense of parenting.
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