Adoption and Identity Formation
There has been an enormous amount of research conducted about adoptees and their problems with identity formation. 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 and birth children. This paper will discuss some of the research which has been conducted and will attempt to answer the following questions: Do adoptees have identity formation difficulties during adolescence? If so, what are some of the causes of these vicissitudes? Is there a significant difference between identity formation of adoptees and nonadoptees? 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 (Benson et al., 1998). This is to say that a child who is adopted at one-week of age will have a better chance of "normal" adjustment than a child who is adopted at the age of ten. 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,
Kelly, M., Martin, B., Rigby, A., & Towner-Thyrum, E. (1998). Adjustment and Identity Formation in Adopted and Nonadopted Young Adults: Contributions of a Family Enviornment. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 68(3), 497-500. Developing a separate, autonomous, mature sense of self is widely recognized as a particularly complex task for adoptees. While many scholars have concluded that identity formation is inherently more difficult for adoptees some recent comparisons of adopted and nonadopted youth have found no differences in adequacy of identity formation, and a study by Stein and Hoopes (1985) revealed higher ego identity scores for adoptees. Goebel and Lott (1986) found that such factors as subjects' age, sex, personality variables, family characteristics, and motivation to search for birth parents accounted more for quality of identity formation than did adoptive status. Hajal, F., & Rosenberg, E. (1991). The Family Life Cycle in Adoptive Families. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 61(1), 78-85.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Horner Rosenberg, Goebel Lott, Frisk Baran, Trust Mistrust, , Adoption Center, Journal Orthopsychiatry, identity formation, Eric Erickson, adoptive parents, adopted children, Stein Hoopes, rosenberg 1991, horner rosenberg 1991, birth parents, horner rosenberg, et al, journal orthopsychiatry, american journal, McGue Sharma, american journal orthopsychiatry, identity adolescence, identity formation adopted, adoptees identity formation, et al 1990,
Approximate Word count = 2175
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)
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