ABSTRACT
The Early Growth and Development Study (EGDS) is a longitudinal study of birth parents and adoptive families recruited from domestic US adoption agencies across the United States beginning in 2002. The EGDS demonstrates many benefits of the adoption design, including the ability to study heritable and environmental contributions to health and behavior within families, and adoption-specific outcomes such as openness between members of the adoption kinship network. Birth parents have been historically neglected in adoption research, and this chapter presents information on their characteristics and their experiences with making an adoption plan. Adoptive family characteristics are also described, as are key findings resulting from the overarching study aims of the EGDS. Finally, future directions and implications for adoption designs in general and EGDS in particular are considered.
