Twenty-six percent of adopted children have been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and 15 percent have been reported as having some sort of social or behavioral problem.
And roughly 11 percent of adoptive parents report high levels of parental aggravation, compared with 6 percent of all parents.
Those statistics and others are contained in Adoption USA: A Chartbook Based on the 2007 National Survey of Adoptive Parents, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The survey, conducted in 2007, shows that 2 percent (or about 1.8 million) of the nation’s children from birth to age 17 are adopted.
A free copy of the 91-page chartbook is at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/09/NSAP/chartbook/doc/chartbook.pdf.
