Being adopted doesn’t change how teens handle love and dating

A new study published in the Journal of Adolescence provides evidence that adoption status had no bearing on whether 15‑ to 18‑year‑olds had a boyfriend or girlfriend or on how long those relationships lasted. The adopted group did report slightly more emotional support and slightly more arguments in their relationships, but the connection between relationship quality and well‑being looked the same for everyone in the study.

The research team set out to fill a noticeable gap in knowledge about adopted youths’ romantic lives. Previous adoption studies have shed light on health, academic achievement, and family attachment, yet almost nothing is known about how teenagers who joined their families through adoption experience dating. This question is important because adolescence is the period when intimate partnerships begin to shape identity, social skills, and eventual adult relationships.

International findings hint that adopted children can face extra hurdles with peers, making it unclear whether they approach romance differently or experience unique benefits or challenges. The Spanish context offered an additional wrinkle: the country experienced a surge of international adoptions in the early 2000s, so large numbers of internationally adopted youth were now in secondary school alongside peers adopted within Spain’s child‑protection system.

To explore these issues, the investigators used responses from the 2017–2018 Spanish edition of the Health Behaviour in School‑aged Children survey, a nationwide project conducted during class time. The full survey includes thousands of pupils, but only students who were 15 or older answered the dating questions. From those respondents, the researchers identified 276 adopted adolescents and drew a comparison group of 276 non‑adopted classmates matched on age and gender.

About two thirds of the adopted participants were girls, a reflection of China’s one‑child policy era that resulted in many girls being adopted by Spanish families. Nearly three quarters of them had been adopted internationally, most often from Asia or Eastern Europe; the rest had been adopted domestically after early contact with child‑protection services. Half of the adopted teens had joined their families in infancy, while the rest arrived later in childhood.

Students completed the anonymous questionnaire on computers during regular school hours. They first answered whether they currently had a romantic partner. If not, they were asked if they had ever had one. Those who had ever dated then indicated how long the relationship had lasted: less than six months, six months to one year, or more than one year. They also rated three qualities of that relationship—conflict, emotional support, and affection—using nine items adapted from a well‑known relationship inventory.

For example, they noted how often they and their partner argued, how often their partner cheered them up when they felt down, and how loved they felt. Finally, all participants completed two measures of well‑being: a ten‑item health‑related quality‑of‑life questionnaire that asked about energy, mood, and loneliness during the past week, and a life‑satisfaction ladder where respondents placed their current life on a 0‑to‑10 rung scale.

Standard statistical tests compared adopted and non‑adopted students on each outcome and explored differences between domestic and international adoptees. The analyses also examined whether relationship quality was linked to health‑related quality of life and life satisfaction and whether these links varied by adoption status.

The findings painted a picture of broad similarity. Twenty‑nine percent of adopted teens and twenty‑three percent of non‑adopted teens said they were dating someone at the moment. An additional forty‑one percent of adopted and forty‑eight percent of non‑adopted teens had dated in the past. These differences were not statistically meaningful. Relationship length was alike as well: in both groups the most common pattern was a relationship of under six months, yet about one in three ongoing relationships had already lasted more than a year.

When the adopted group was split into domestic and international subgroups a modest pattern emerged. Domestic adoptees were somewhat more likely to report having dated in the past than either international adoptees or non‑adopted youth, although the three groups did not differ in current dating rates or in how long their current relationships had lasted. The authors note that early dating can be helpful or risky depending on context and called for more work to understand why domestically adopted teens might start dating earlier.

Relationship quality revealed both reassuring and intriguing patterns. On average, adopted teens scored higher than their non‑adopted peers on emotional support—suggesting they felt especially able to lean on their partners for comfort. At the same time they reported slightly more conflict. The size of both differences was small, and the groups did not differ on affection, the measure that asked how loved they felt. When domestic and international adoptees were compared separately with the non‑adopted group, the extra conflict was driven mainly by the international subgroup, hinting that early experiences before adoption or cultural background might influence how disagreements play out.

A key question was whether these relationship qualities related to well‑being. Across the full sample, teens who described more conflict tended to report poorer health‑related quality of life and lower life satisfaction, while teens who felt more supported and more loved tended to report better well‑being. Importantly, adoption status did not change these links. In other words, supportive, affectionate romantic relationships were associated with higher well‑being for both adopted and non‑adopted adolescents, and contentious relationships were linked to lower well‑being for both groups.

The study, while informative, had limitations that shape how the results should be interpreted. The adopted sample, though one of the largest assembled for this type of question, still included just 276 teenagers, and girls and internationally adopted youth were over‑represented. Results might look different in a larger or more balanced sample or in countries with different adoption systems. All measures came from self‑reports collected at a single point in time, which means the data capture perceptions rather than observed behavior and cannot determine which factor came first—poor well‑being or relationship conflict, for example.

Cultural factors unique to Spain, such as the prominence of international adoption from China and Eastern Europe, may also limit how well the findings translate elsewhere. Finally, the survey did not gather information on sexual orientation, gender identity, or ethnicity, all of which could influence dating experiences.

But even with these caveats, the research adds a valuable chapter to the story of adopted adolescents’ development. The absence of large group differences suggests that many adopted teens build romantic ties that look much like those of their classmates. The small uptick in both emotional closeness and conflict hints that adopted youth might experience romance with a bit more intensity, possibly linked to attachment histories that remain in flux during adolescence. The fact that supportive relationships were linked to better well‑being for adopted and non‑adopted teens alike underscores the universal importance of healthy connection.

Future investigations can build on this foundation by following adopted and non‑adopted adolescents over time to see how early dating experiences influence adult relationships, mental health, and family formation. Larger multi‑country samples would allow researchers to explore how adoption policies and cultural norms shape romance. Including partner reports, observational data, and biological markers of stress could deepen our understanding of how conflict and support operate within teenage relationships.

The study, “The romantic relationships of adopted adolescents,” was authored by Carmen Paniagua, Inmaculada Sánchez-Queija, Carmen Moreno, and Francisco Rivera.