Attitudes toward adoption and child-bearing by American and Brazilian students

A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design with country of origin (U.S. or Brazil), education (high school or college), and sex (male or female) as independent variables was used to investigate cross-national differences concerning: the number of natural children wanted and expected, the number of adopted children wanted and expected, and concern about overpopulation. Subjects were 67 American and 74 Brazilian high school students, and 64 American and 78 Brazilian college students. Several interesting findings emerged. For one thing, Americans reported thinking more about adopting children and expected to have more adopted children than did Brazilians. Also, concern about overpopulation was more predictive of the number of children wanted and expected in the U.S. than in Brazil. The implications of these and other findings for population planners was discussed.