Identity Formation Problems In Adolescent Adoptees

The amount of research that has been conducted about adoptee and their problems with identity development is enormous. Many of the researchers agree on some of the causes of identity formation problems in adolescent adoptees, while other researchers conclude that there is no significant difference in identity formation in adoptees as birth children. This paper will discuss some of the research which has been conducted and will attempt to answer the following questions: Do adoptees develop identity formation difficulties during adolescence? If so, what are some of the causes of these unpredictable changes? And finally does the role of the adoptive parent play a crucial role in the adoptees identity development?

The National Adoption Center reports that fifty-two percent of adoptable children have attachment disorder symptoms. It was also found that the older the child when adopted, the higher the risk of social maladjustment. This is to say that a child who is "adopted during infancy to a loving home, usually progress' rapidly, especially in the cognitive development" (Myers, 1999). Myers also states that "babies reared in constitutions without the stimulation of a regular care-giver are often withdrawn, frightened even speechless." This may be due in part to the probability that an infant will learn how to trust, where as a ten-year-old may have more difficulty with this task, depending on his history. "The quality of attachment and the foundational sense of basic trust that derives from it, sets the stage for significant developmental outcomes concerning the individual's sense of self participation in relationship" (McRoy 1990 ). Eric Erickson, a developmental theorist, discusses trust issues in his theory of development. The first of Erickson's stages of development is Trust v. Mistrust which takes place during infancy. A child who experiences neglect or abuse can have this stage of development severely damaged. An adopted infant may have the opportunity to fully learn trust, where as an older child may have been shuffled from foster home to foster home as an infant, thereby never learning trust. Even though Trust v. Mistrust is a major stage of development, the greatest psychological risk for adopted children occurs during the middle childhood and adolescent years. As children grow and change into adolescents, they begin to search for an identity by finding anchoring points with which to relate. This is the fifth stage of Erickson's model, which is called Identity v. role confusion. This is the time when "teenagers work at refining a sense of self by testing roles and then integrating them to form a single identity, or they become confused about who they are. The gradual re-shaping of self-definition that unifies the various selves into a consistent and comfortable sense of who one is, is an identity" (Myers.1999). Unfortunately, adopted children do not have a biological example to which to turn, unless they had an open adoption in which they were able to form a relationship with their biological families as well as their adoptive ones. Also key to the development of trust is the ability to bond with adoptive parents. The absence of a biological bond between the adoptee and adoptive parents may cause trust issues in the adoptee. Baran (1975) stated, "Late adolescence . . . is the period of intensified identity concerns and is a time when the feelings about adoption become more intense and questions about the past increase." Unless the adopted child has the answers to these arising questions, identity formation can be altered and somewhat halted. McRoy (1990) agrees with this point, "Adolescence is a period when young people seek an integrated and stable ego identity. This occurs as they seek to link their current self-perceptions with their self perceptions from earlier periods and with their cultural and biological heritage." Adopted children sometimes have difficulty with this task because they often do not have the necessary information from the past to begin to develop a stable sense of who they are. By the very idea of adoption; guilt, shame, and rejection may shape the adolescents emerging sense of self and identity. They often have incomplete knowledge about why they were relinquished and what their birth parents were like, and they may grieve not only for the loss of their birth parents but for the loss of part of themselves. In essence, it seems that the adolescent's identity formation is impaired because he holds the knowledge that his "roots" have been severed and remains on the unknown side of the adoption barrier. For example, adopted persons might feel that they are missing a crucial piece of their personal history because of lack of knowledge about their birthparents and therefore might find the process of identity development longer and more complex. The identity struggles of the adolescent are part of a human need to connect with their natural family and failure to do so may lead to psychological disorders later in life. In most of the studies surveyed, the researchers are in agreement about one fact. Vital to the adopted adolescent's identity development is the knowledge of the birth family and the circumstances surrounding the adoption. Without this information, the adolescent has difficulty deciding which family, birth or adopted, he resembles. During the search for an identity in adolescence, the child may face a range of problems including "hostility toward the adoptive parents, rejection or anger toward the birth parents, self-hatred, and feeling of rootlessness" (McRoy. 1990).

While searching for an identity, adolescent adoptees sometimes are involved in a behavior which psychologist's term 'family romance'. This is not a romance in a sexual manner, but rather a romance in the sense of fantasizing about birth parents and their personal qualities. Horner and Rosenberg (1991) stated that "the adopted child may develop a family romance in order to defend against painful facts." Often times, adoptees wonder why they were adopted, and because closed-adoptions are common, the adoptee is left with many unanswered questions about the circumstances of the adoption. The adoptee may have a tendency to harbor negative feelings about himself, feeling like he was unwanted, bad, or rejected by the birth parent. These feelings can be quite powerful, so the adoptee will engage in this family romancing behavior in order to offset the negative feelings and try to reconcile his identity crisis. This point is stressed by Horner and Rosenberg (1991) when they write, "The painful reality to be confronted by adoptees is that their biological parents did not want, or were unable, to find a way of keeping and rearing their own child." The children feel that they were either not meant to be or intolerable.