Teenagers in general are bad enough to make me never want kids. And when I hear stories about how bad my foreign-adopted fiance' was as a teen, I'm not so sure I want to adopt, either. Boo.

Well, if that is how Zahara turns out, wouldn't it be just like her Mom (at least for a little bit)?

All teenagers act out and are terrifying at times. Show me a kid who went through adolescence smoothy and without conflict, and I will call Bullshit loud and clear.

what about children of adopted children?

@WaltzingMatilda: I was thinking the same thing. Wouldn't rebellion for the Jolie-Pitt kids be more like wearing polo shirts, popping their collars, and wanting to play tennis?

@WaltzingMatilda: I sure hope not. I wouldn't wish AJ's role in 'Life or Something Like it' on ANYBODY.

Maybe it's all that "we chose you specially" attention as children that turns them into teen terrors. Or maybe I'm just cranky this morning because there's no more Diet Coke.

@KathrynwithaY loves Joan Collins: Although I can't imagine going through the adolescence I did with the knowledge that there was some alternate life I very well could have lived. Rough.

My aunt and uncle adopted a beautiful little girl from Romania because she had emotional and behavioral problems. They figured she needed the extra love. Anecdotal evidence, but did the researchers consider it may happen?

Huge DUH factor left out: the possibility that some of these children came from women who may have used drugs or alcohol during their pregnancies, or may also have genetic tendencies towards depression or mental illness--which may have lead to them deciding against parenthood. Both are HUGE factors in the liklihood of depression.

@biscuitdoughjones: For real. And considering what a pain in the ass I was as a teen, karma will not be kind to me I imagine.

Isn't it usually an attachment disorder from being abandoned/neglected/abused early in life and then not able to make a secure attachment to the adoptive parent? Who thought it was because adoptive parents are RICHER? Weird.

If anyone can handle rebellious teens though, I have a feeling it's Ms. Angelina. They can share blood vials! It will be like when my sister went through her goth phase and would come home with "vampire" bites on her neck so one day my dad brought her home a RAM'S SKULL to show her he was supportive.

Don't tell the Ice Ice Baby from the Snap Judgement thread. She'll take that as free license to experiment with all different states of matter.

does this study say anything about children raised by parents of a different race? i have a few (caucasian) domestically adopted friends, and i know they've struggled with *no one in my family looks anything like me*, so i'm wondering if it's harder for say, african kids adopted into white families. i'm sure there are other mitigating circumstances, but still-- any one have any ideas?

I can just imagine all of those self-indulgent yells of, "I didn't ask to be born!" being replaced with, "It's not like you're my real dad/mom!" Extra ouch.

@WaltzingMatilda: Embracing Jon Voight, getting queasy around blood, not being especially close to their siblings...these are otehr ways the Jolie-Pitts could rebel.

It's just like when that Penelope Brewster went through her "Punky" phase, what with those mismatched bandannas tied around her knees and all.

@J.D.Regent: easiest way to quash teen rebellion: make it seem lame.

@Khrushchev: Please don't look at my spelling of "other."

@KathrynwithaY loves Joan Collins: Yeah, I agree that it's just not that simple. One of my best friends was adopted at age 2 from Korea. She was so much more centered and calm than any of my other friends were in high school. Every case is different and generalizations like this are very frustrating. (Especially since I want to adopt my child(ren) when the time comes.)

@Khrushchev: oh god, you know Gramps Voight is gonna be all up in that shit.

I dated a guy who was adopted, but his Mother couldn't have handled it worse. It's a long story, but it fucked with him really bad. Needless to say, he listens to Morrissey all the time, and was a drug addict, and was a hopelessly rebellious teenager (from what he told me. I dated him in his 30's). He is also a paparazzi, and the occasions he ran into Ms. Jolie, he BITCHED HER OUT about adopting children. Her response was always polite, apologizing that his experience was so terrible, but that she was working on creating a much more healthy environment for her adopted children. Psh. Jolie Shmolie!

@eleanorstrousers: No, it's probably, the "my real parents, who are supposed to love me unconditionally, abandoned me" thing that turns them into terrors. Or, at least, that's what mine tells me.

I'm hoping Maddox or Zahara will write a tell all once they hit 18 a la "Mommy Dearest".

@J.D.Regent: To me, Gramps Voight will be a lot like your dad in the story you told above, offering the kids rams' skulls to lure them into an alliance.

It makes sense if you consider that a lot of adopted kids had horrible things happen to them before adoption - possibly being removed from an abusive home, floating around in the foster care system. Those formative years can be squandered.

I did a little bit of work with a treatment foster care program, they dealt with the kids who had been in the system for years and had mental and emotional problems because of it. Mostly teens with records of theft, abuse, sometimes they even became abusers of younger children. The one thing the administrators told me was that no matter how messed-up and scary these kids seemed on paper, they were KIDS who needed love, they were screaming out for it.

Even though I was domestically adopted, I didn't "act out" half as bad as some of my nonadopted friends. So, moot study. All teenagers have issues.

@raleigh likes swaddling: This story just made me like her.

I'm sure adopted children have it harder than other kids, especially if they have been removed from their homelands and cultures at a young age.

On a seperate note, will someone comb that child's hair?

@tscheese: you gotta watch out when your ice baby starts playing around with water vapor...everybody knows that it's a gateway phase to plasma.

@Khrushchev: except with Grampy, instead of ram's skulls, it will be RNC conventions. Alternatively, they could go back to Brad's homeland of Missouri and take up farm life.

@hortense: I liked "teen rebellion, Brenda Walsh style" which consisted of putting on a bad French accent and wearing unfortunete striped outfits and jaunty little hats.

@BiBiVirtue: for the love of christ, they need a nanny who has a clue what to do with black hair. talk about scarring a child for life; z. is never gonna forgive her mom for these photos when she gets older.

What's wrong with listening to Morrissey nonstop and never leaving your room? I'm 27 and I do that now.

My office manager has two adopted daughters who are now fully-grown and well-adjusted with children of their own. One of the things she said to them (which I will say if I ever have adoptive children) is that their mommies loved them so much that they were willing to give them a better life, even though they missed their little girls. So, I think that helps make the idea of being "abandoned" or "given up" hurt a little less.

I have some issues with adopting children of colonized/oppressed countries, but I think that Jolie's pretty mindful about it and realizes that it's not a perfect scenario, but it's better than the alternative. That's why she was so upset when she found out that Zahara's biological mother was still alive.

@virginiabelle: and my life would have been A LOT worse than screaming fights with my parents and emo music had I not been adopted. My non adopted older sister through my birth family has way more problems than i do. Adoption FTW.

@Khrushchev: Yeah, if you know that you could be living another life somewhere else, it can totally affect your development. All kids develop in different ways, its hard to lump everyone together and generalize. This stuff is not cut and dry simple.

One of my good friends was adopted, and he had a really excellent time of it. He's very close to his adoptive folks, had a great childhood and education, and is now a terrific husband and father. I know his life hasn't been without struggles, but just anecdotally speaking, I think he had a good time of it.

Also, to up the awesome ante: his adoptive parents were originally from Brazil. He's like 6'2" with a complexion the color of printer paper, and he busts out in brilliant Portuguese whenever we're out for rodizhio. He is freaking awesome.

@Rebecca: Me, too.

@J.D.Regent: Ha! But they use Carol's Daughter!

@PinkSoxHat: @WaltzingMatilda: When my sister wanted to rebel from my tattooed, a-religious, often purple haired writer mother who volunteered as a storyteller at school events, my sister declared herself a republican and a Christian and asked to join a sports team.

I am pleased to report that the li'l sis is doing much better now and is an artist...

@J.D.Regent: RNC conventions and making impassioned pleas to Access Hollywood. Thus exhausts my knowledge of Jon Voight.

@tscheese: Oops, I meant to add his adoptive parents are "mom" and "dad" to him. He recently met his birth mother and unfortunately found he had nothing in common with her. So I mean, the system CAN work.

I don't know if I want to have children of my own--there are so many kids who need love, but my family kind of wants me to have little tscheeseclones. Whenever they question this, I tell them about my friend, since it's a good example of the system working.

@AthertonMerriweather: Or more like the memoire by Josephine Baker's kids-- she too wanted a child from every continent and wound up with, like, 11.

Wasn't there a Simpson's episode where Ned Flanders reminisced about acting out as a kid and being sent to the Minnesota School of Spankology? Perhaps this study was released by the same institute.

Every interracially adopted child I've known has gone through some major internal struggles at some point in his/her life - including me. I just waited until I was in my 20s rather than my teens. It's no joke that somewhere around 30% of treatment center clients are adoptees. However, there's no guarantee your child-rearing's going to go easily if you have biological children either.

@virginiabelle: Same here. I asctually think I "acted out" less than most people because of my adoption. I knew I was the only shot mom and dad had at parenting, and I certainly wasn't going to screw up when they had sacrificed so much for me.

Come to think of it, pretty much every adopted kid I knew behaved in much the same way, but statistics are easily manipulated, so whatever.

@sarah.of.a.lesser.god: Yes, it is frustrating to see studies that generalize and try to simplify something that can be too great to pare down. Also, while I don't think I could handle having and raising children (adopted or my own), I think that's great that you want to! Adoption shouldn't be a fad or a vanity thing, it should just be a family or a person willing to take in a child and give them a good home.

Does the study make any kind of distinction not only to race, but as to whether these kids have adopted siblings? Because I feel like there are always those stories of families with several adopted kids (like the Jolie-Pitts), and I think that would hugely effect development, ie, not being "different" from your family members?

I know a couple families with only one adopted child amongst other bio kids, but I know others who have several adopted children, and the attitude is different.

As an adoptee, I think that adoptive parents tend to overcompensate for whatever was fucked up about the baby/child's situation that led to his or her being put up for adoption by being too strict and religious (hey, mom and dad!), or too pushy about success and grades, and generally hyper-vigilant about when the drug addiction or alcoholism or mental illness that made the biological parents unable to keep the kid themselves will show up. And lord help the adoptee if her parents manage to have a biological kid. No matter how hard the parents try to make everyone feel equal, the adoptee will ALWAYS be second best.
Seriously, I don't see adoptive parents as angels. I see them as people who really, really, really want someone to love and raise and influence, which is a natural biological imperative, and like many biological imperatives, completely selfish. And for those who adopt non-white or otherwise hard-to-place kids (hi again, Mom and Dad!) the selfish reasons also include the desire to be looked at a saint in their community - and believe me, that child will ALWAYS be expected to be grateful for being 'saved', in a way that no biological or perfect-white-baby adoptee is. Yes, I admit, in general, that it's better for kids to be adopted than to grow up in foster homes. But I also think that the idea that having a baby and putting it up for adoption is somehow morally superior to abortion is absolute bullshit. There are enough children in the world. If abortion is safe and legal where you live, and you don't want to raise the baby, HAVE A FUCKING ABORTION. If you can't afford it, call me, I'll help.

i am adopted (international from korea) and my brother is too (domestic, irish/german from brooklyn) and now that we are both in our 20's people always think we are a couple and so when we are shopping or something, ill say something really loudly like "remember when mom and dad wanted us to buy us matching clothes all the time, GOD"

Bogus. They interviewed 11-21 year-olds and expected to get straight answers out of them? As usual, bad science rules. Sample size was too small and assessments are notoriously weak, given the amount of latitude there is in answering questions and the effect of the assessor.

@KathrynwithaY loves Joan Collins: Yeah, I've wanted to adopt since age 10. In the past 17 years, my position has not wavered once. I just have no desire to bear children even though I want to be a mother. Adoption seems more natural to me. It drives my mom nuts, unfortunately.

@Justlikekatie

WHOA did you just invalidate your entire life? and mine? and my brothers?

Side question for those who've adopted/adoptees: how do you feel about the fact that its so costly to adopt? It seems like the cost/process would deter a lot of good parents from helping children. I know little about adoption, but this has always kind of bothered me. Thoughts?

@sarah.of.a.lesser.god: Hahaha, I think most decisions (marriage, children, haircuts, college, etc) tend to drive mothers nuts. I hope you are successful in adopting, I know its a hard road to be on.

@virginiabelle: ...i'm not even going to bother with explaing the difference between a generalized finding and an anecdote.

though, i guess, congrats on not having a difficult adolescent.