Emotional-behavioral problems, attachment and verbal skills in late-adopted adolescents: the role of pre-adoptive adversities and adoption variables

Background: There are few studies on late-adopted adolescents’ outcomes -e.g., emotionalbehavioral problems, attachment and cognitive status- and their possible predictive factors, none from Italy. Objective: This paper aimed to investigate emotional-behavioral problems, attachment representations, and verbal skills in late-adopted adolescents in Italy and to explore the predictive role of pre-adoption adversities and adoption variables for worse adoptees’ outcomes. Participants and setting: The study included N = 79 late-adopted (mean age at adoption = 6 years) adolescents, between 11 and 18 years, placed via both intercountry and domestic adoption. Methods: Parents provided information about pre-adoption and adoption history and filled the Children’s Behavior Checklist 6–18 for measuring participants’ emotional-behavioral problems. Attachment representations were assessed through the Friend and Family Interview administered directly to adolescents, like the verbal comprehension index of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (4th edition) for measuring participants’ verbal IQ. Results: Maltreatment and its interaction with multiple placements were the main predictors of other problems—i.e., social, thought, and identity difficulties (respectively, p = .007 and p = .029)—while intercountry adoption was the unique predictor of both externalizing and total problems (respectively, p = .047 and p = .015). However, domestic adoption was the most important predictor both for higher insecurity and disorganized attachment representations and lower verbal skills (all p < .044); even stronger if domestic adoption interacted with pre-adoptive institutionalization. Conclusions: Pre-adoption adversities as well as domestic vs. intercountry adoption, but not the age at placement, contributed to adolescent adoptees’ developmental outcomes.