Adopted youth often have contact with or at least information about birth family members--but such relationships or knowledge rarely extend to birth fathers. The current study explores ideas, feelings, and questions about birth fathers among youth raised by two mothers, including whether or not they desire contact. Interviews were conducted with…

Emotion understanding (EU) is a socio-cognitive skill that enables us to understand the expression of emotions in ourselves and others. Exposure to early adversity hinders its development, since quality social interactions are essential for its growth. Language is a critical component of EU, and therefore, it may be a mediator between early…

This study investigates the psychometric properties of the Adoption Communication Openness (ACO) Scale. Following a multi-informant approach, the study considered four versions of the ACO Scale to assess the child's perception of adoption communication openness with both mother and father and the mother's and father's perceptions of communication…