A qualitative exploration of how adoptive parents experience the direct and indirect trauma of their child’s early maltreatment

Abstract

Adoptive parents face the emotional impact of parenting a child with adverse and often traumatic early experiences. The current qualitative study explores the experiences of adoptive parents who display heightened trauma symptoms relating to their child’s previous experiences and challenging current behaviours. In total, 10 adoptive parents reporting high levels of trauma symptoms on a quantitative screening measure, the revised Impact of Events Scale (IES-R), were interviewed by telephone to explore their experiences of being an adoptive parent. From the thematic analysis, four main themes were generated: direct trauma, the emotional impact of parenting, support network and sense of self as a parent. The findings suggested that how the parents experience their child’s early trauma, the current parenting demands, including child-to-parent violence, and the presence of lack of support are important factors in the adoptive parents’ trauma response, which all draw together to influence the parents’ sense of self. The clinical implications of the findings about the trauma experience of adoptive parents, and importantly their relevance for addressing child-to-parent violence, are discussed along with factors, such as parents’ support networks, that determine their evaluations of their competence and sense of self as a parent. The limitations of this study and recommendations for further research are also discussed.