Ethnic Identity Development in Inter-Country Adopted Early Adolescent Girls
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Date
2011-02-16
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Abstract
The current study addressed the following questions: (a) How are parent practices related to the development of ethnic identity in early adolescent girls adopted from China; and, (b) Do ethnic identity and national identity explain a significant amount of variance in global self-esteem relative to other dimensions of self-esteem in early adolescent girls adopted from China? The investigator recruited 38 Chinese-born adopted girls, ages 9-13, with White parents who completed surveys assessing parent practices, family demographics, child s ethnic identity, child s national identity, and child s self-esteem. Parents uniformly positive beliefs towards bicultural education were related to ethnic identity. These children had independently high scores in both ethnic identity and national identity. At this point in the developmental process, both ethnic identity and national identity are related to global self-esteem, but do not explain as much unique variance as other age-appropriate domains of global self-esteem (i.e., peer relations and body image).
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inter-country adoption, early adolescent development