Predictors of domestic infant adoption – what characterizes the family circumstances of parents and children prior to adoption?

While many studies have shown that adoptees develop more positively than peers placed in other types of care, less is known about whether these outcomes are influenced by initial differences in family circumstances. This study investigates whether family circumstances before childbirth predict infant domestic adoption compared to out-of-home care. Using Firth logistic regressions (penalized Maximum Likelihood logistic regressions) on Danish administrative data from the 1998-2004 birth cohorts, we examine how family circumstances are associated with adoption versus out-of-home care placement before age one ( n = 1,348). Our results show that initial differences in family circumstances such as parents’ age at childbirth, parents’ cohabitation status, parents’ education, parents’ crime history, mother’s employment, and mother’s mental health are associated with the probability of adoption before age one compared to out-of-home care placement before age one. These findings suggest potential selection bias in previous studies on adoption that have not taken pre-adoption differences into account, indicating a need for further investigation of this topic.