Advocacy Action Plan for Adopted Children Research Paper

Advocacy Challenge

During child development, there are many factors that contribute to the holistic growth of one’s physical and mental state. However, while the child tends to perceive the surroundings through the lens of various institutions, including immediate family, educators, peers, and social environment in general, it is the impact of the nuclear family that has a long-term effect on children’s cognitive development. According to the researchers, early child development depends vitally on parents, as “responsive parent-child relationships and parental support for learning during the earliest years of life are crucial for promoting early child development (ECD)” (Jeong et al., 2020, p. 1). Thus, the advocacy challenge for the present action plan is the promotion of holistic child development in children adopted by LGBTQ+ families.

Parenting among the LGBTQ+ community, although highly stigmatized and socially prejudiced, has become a widely popular phenomenon across the US and other families. According to Farr and Vâzquez (2020), “lesbian and gay (LG) adoptive parents in the United States (US) have increased in number and visibility; in fact, same-gender couples appear up to seven times more likely to have adopted children than different-gender couples” (p. 1). Hence, children adopted by LGBTQ+ partners, while having no explicit struggle within the family, are challenged by the external psychological impact of adoption and the stigma associated with the LGBTQ+ community. For this reason, in order to maximize the ECD, families, children, educational establishments, and social institutions should engage in the advocacy plan.

Strengthening Families Protective Factors

Children’s predisposition to external influence is a crucial factor in holistic development because the proper support system contributes to the vital process of social adjustment and adaptation to the environment. For this reason, when it comes to LGBTQ+ families who adopt children, the support system is important to build resilience to the stigma associated with the phenomenon. According to Farr and Vâzquez (2020), LGBTQ+ parents who experience microaggression are less likely to secure closeness with their children. On the contrary, children who are adopted struggle with attachment and identity issues and, hence, require meaningful communication and attention more than anyone.

The protective factor of social connections stands for the importance of peer support in the process of bringing up children. According to Goodliff et al. (2018), “early childhood settings could be viewed as ‘socialization agencies,’ environments in which young children negotiate and learn more about the complexities and connections that make up relations” (p. 113). As a result, young children adopted by LGBTQ+ parents can subconsciously define their identity through stigmatized and biased interactions with others while also observing microaggression expressed toward their parents. In order to handle this risk of developing severe identity issues, social connections and the narrative of family relations should be defined through close interaction between parents, children, and early childhood educators.

Advocacy Position

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory is one of the fundamental theories that address the significance of human interaction during early childhood development. According to this theory, the social environment is comprised of several aspects that have an explicit influence on the child’s development (Hupp & Jewell, 2019). When it comes to the context of young children adopted by LGBTQ+ parents, the two major ecological systems include the macro-and microsystem. The latter stands for a child’s immediate environment, which encompasses one’s nuclear family, school or educational establishment, and peers (Hupp & Jewell, 2019). The macrosystem, on the other hand, comprises social and cultural values that implicitly affect the behavioral patterns of children and their immediate environment. Thus, children adopted by LGBTQ+ parents are susceptible to the perception of their immediate environment. Meanwhile, both parents and children are affected by the common beliefs and values of the community that frequently condone homophobic behavior. In such a way, when parents do not know how to communicate with their children on the matter of their identity, they tend to distort the self-perception of a child and cause issues with their cognitive development.

Thus, the concept of family and community relationships plays a critical role in the process of social adjustment for kids and their foster parents representing the LGBTQ+ community. Indeed, children are exposed to social pressure from children or educators on the matter of their parents or, if disclosed, their adoption. The issue becomes especially serious if children do not communicate about this sensitive topic with their families and receive no support from educators. In the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct, it is indicated that mutual trust and respect are vital in terms of establishing a meaningful relationship with the child. Hence, parents need to analyze whether their decision to withhold the information crucial to the child’s perception of family and environment is in their best interest in the future.

In many cases, the motivation not to initiate the conversation about sexuality and adoption concerns the desire to keep children safe from stigma for as long as possible and the lack of knowledge about what words to use to formulate the message. Hence, as far as the ideals of NAEYC (2011) Code of Ethical Conduct are concerned, the primary ideal to address is the statement I-1.2, which claims that the qualifications of an educator should include the information on child’s social development and the means of proper communication with their parents. Using this ideal, educators can develop a framework that helps both parents and children work in psychologically safe ways to communicate with little children on such important social topics as adoption, stigma, and gender and sexual diversity.

When educators are aware of the means to communicate complex messages to children, they can assist parents and monitor the peer environment in the learning establishment. For example, when speaking of adoption, one of the recommendations is to incorporate the works on the early stages of child development to ensure that the child responds positively to the word (Rosenhaus, 2021). The number of these recommendations, when employed to help families, secure a meaningful change for the environment.

Action Team

The primary stakeholders of the proposed action plan to promote meaningful communication between LGBTQ+ parents and their adopted children include parents, children, child educators, and social organizations. The primary role of educators from learning establishments is to be the facilitator between the parent, the child, and the child’s immediate learning environment. By educating parents on the means of communication, the educator has the chance to help the child feel more confident and aware of their identity. Social organizations, for their part, will hold the role of counseling educators on various social phenomena such as sexuality, stigma, and discrimination. In this scenario, parents are responsible for receiving counseling and education in order to communicate meaningfully with their children. Moreover, they are expected to provide a support system for their kids.

Action Plan

In order for the aforementioned advocacy to be introduced, there are several steps to follow. The first step of the action plan is to create an extensive curriculum for college students specializing in early child development and education. For the creation of the plan, it is necessary to promote the collaboration between the NGOs, educators, and social initiatives that support the rhetoric of equality of eliminating stigma from the LGBTQ+ community and adopted children. The curriculum should include all the relevant data about the rhetoric that should be used to talk about sensitive topics.

The second step ensures the education of the parents in two major ways. The first way is to ensure collaboration between the NGOs and social activists, and parents. This initiative can be done by creating workshops for LGBTQ+ parents and parents adopting a child. During these workshops, the parents are encouraged to learn more about themselves and the ways to discuss the children’s identity without feeling like these children are “special” or “left on their own.” Another way is to establish a proper roadmap of professional collaboration between educators and parents. While no parent is encouraged to reveal the status of an adoption or their sexual and gender identity, they should be aware that in case they require help, educators will be happy to counsel them and even serve as a facilitator during the parent-child dialogue.

Finally, the educators will be engaged in the training on communicating with adopted children in the learning habitat. While children can be socially isolated or even bullied once sensitive information is revealed, early childhood interventions should encourage resilience and acceptance of social identity. By establishing this advocacy plan, educational establishments have the chance to bridge the gap of stigma and discrimination in the learning space, meanwhile securing the minimization of self-identity issues later in life.

References

Farr, R. H., & Vázquez, C. P. (2020). Stigma experiences, mental health, perceived parenting competence, and parent-child relationships among lesbian, gay, and heterosexual adoptive parents in the United States. Frontiers in Psychology, 11(445), 1-16. Web.

Goodliff, G., Canning, N., Parry, J., & Miller, L. (2018). Young children’s play and creativity: Multiple voices. Routledge.

Hupp, S. & Jewell, J. (2020). The encyclopedia of child and adolescent development. John Wiley & Sons.

Jeong, J., Franchett, E. E., Ramos de Oliveira, C. V., Rehmani, K., & Yousafzai, A. K. (2021). Parenting interventions to promote early child development in the first three years of life: A global systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS Medicine, 18(5), 1-51. Web.

NAYEC. (2011). Code of ethical conduct and statement of commitment. Web.

Rosenhaus, N. (2021). When to tell a child they were adopted & age-appropriate adoption language. Adoptions with Love. Web.