Adoption And Identity Formation Essay Research Paper

Adoption And Identity Formation Essay, Research Paper

There has been an tremendous sum of research conducted about adoptees and their

jobs with individuality formation. Many of the research workers agree on some of the

causes of individuality formation jobs in adolescent adoptees, while other

research workers conclude that there is no important difference in individuality

formation in adoptees and birth kids. This paper will discourse some of the

research which has been conducted and will try to reply the followers

inquiries: Do adoptees have individuality formation troubles during adolescence?

If so, what are some of the causes of these vicissitudes? Is there a important

difference between individuality formation of adoptees and nonadoptees? The National

Adoption Center reports that 52 per centum of adoptable kids have

attachment upset symptoms. It was besides found that the older the kid when

adopted, the higher the hazard of societal maladjustment ( Benson et al. , 1998 ) . This

is to state that a kid who is adopted at one-week of age will hold a better

opportunity of normal accommodation than a kid who is adopted at the age of 10. This

may be due in portion to the chance that an baby will larn how to swear,

where as a ten-year-old may hold more trouble with this undertaking, depending on

his history. Eric Erickson, a developmental theoretician, discusses trust issues in

his theory of development. The first of Erickson`s phases of development is

Trust v. Mistrust. A kid who experiences disregard or maltreatment can hold this phase

of development badly damaged. An adoptive baby may hold the chance to

to the full learn trust, where as an older kid may hold been shuffled from Foster

place to group place as an baby, thereby ne’er larning trust. Even though Trust

v. Mistrust is a major phase of development, the greatest psychological hazard for

adopted kids occurs during the in-between childhood and adolescent old ages ( McRoy

et al. , 1990 ) . As kids grow and change into striplings, they begin to

hunt for an individuality by happening grounding points with which to associate.

Unfortunately, adopted kids do non hold a biological illustration to which to

bend ( Horner & A ; Rosenberg, 1991 ) , unless they had an unfastened acceptance in which

they were able to organize a relationship with their biological households every bit good as

their adoptive 1s. Besides cardinal 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 do trust issues in the adoptee ( Wegar, 1995 ) . Baran

( 1975 ) stated, Late adolescence. . . is the period of intensified individuality

concerns and is a clip when the feelings about acceptance become more intense and

inquiries about the past addition. Unless the adopted kid has the replies to

these originating inquiries, individuality formation can be altered and slightly halted.

McRoy et Al. ( 1990 ) agree with this point: Adolescence is a period when immature

people seek an incorporate and stable self-importance individuality. This occurs as they seek to

associate their current self-perceptions with their ego perceptual experiences from earlier

periods and with their cultural and biological heritage ( Brodzindky, 1987, P.

37 ) . Adopted kids sometimes have trouble with this undertaking because they

frequently do non hold the necessary information from the yesteryear to get down to develop a

stable sense of who they are. They frequently have uncomplete cognition about why

they were relinquished and what their birth parents were like, and they may

grieve non merely for the loss of their birth parents but for the loss of portion of

themselves. In kernel, it seems that the adolescent`s individuality formation is

impaired because he holds the cognition that his roots or his kernel have been

severed and remain on the unknown side of the acceptance barrier. The individuality

battles of the stripling are & # 8992 ; portion of a human demand to link with

their natural kin and failure to make so may precipitate abnormal psychology ( Wegar,

1995 ) . Besides in understanding with Wegar, McRoy, and Baran is Frisk. Baran et Al.

( 1975 ) wrote, & # 8992 ; Frisk conceptualized that the deficiency of household background

cognition in the adoptee prevents the development of a healthy familial self-importance. .

. In most of the surveies surveyed, the research workers are in understanding about

one fact. Vital to the adopted adolescent`s individuality development is the

cognition of the birth household and the fortunes environing the acceptance.

Without this information, the stripling has trouble make up one’s minding which household

( birth or adopted ) he resembles. During the hunt for an individuality in

adolescence, the kid may confront an array of jobs including ill will toward

the adoptive parents, rejection of choler toward the birth parents, self-hatred,

transracial acceptance concerns, feeling of rootlessness. . . . ( McRoy et al. ,

1990 ) . While seeking for an individuality, adolescent adoptees sometimes are

involved in a behaviour which psychologists term household love affair. This is non a

love affair in a sexual mode, but instead a love affair in the sense of fantasying

about birth parents and their personal qualities. Horner and Rosenberg ( 1991 )

stated that & # 8992 ; the adopted kid may develop a household love affair 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

unreciprocated inquiries about the fortunes of the acceptance. The adoptee may

hold a inclination to harbour negative feelings about himself, experiencing like he was

unwanted, bad, or rejected by the birth parent. These feelings can be rather

powerful, so the adoptee will prosecute in this household wooing behaviour in order

to countervail the negative feelings and seek to accommodate his individuality crisis. This

point is stressed by Horner and Rosenberg ( 1991 ) when they write, The painful

world to be confronted by adoptees is that their biological parents did non

privation, or were unable, to happen a manner of maintaining and rise uping their ain kid. The

kids feel that they were either non intend to be or unbearable. . . .

Finding an individuality, while sing both sets of parents is a hard undertaking

for the stripling. The adoptee does non desire to ache or pique his adoptive

parents, and he besides does non desire to disregard what is known about his biological

roots. Horner and Rosenberg ( 1991 ) write: Adoptive position may stand for a

developmental intervention for kids during adolescence. Alternatively of the usual

battles over separation and the constitution of a cohesive sense of ego and

individuality, the

adopted kid must fight with the viing and conflictual

issues of good and bad parents, good and bad ego, and separation from both

adoptive parents and images of biological parents. If all acceptances were unfastened,

the adoptee would hold the ability to cognize about the traits of each household. He

would hold an easier undertaking of organizing an individuality for himself, instead than

fighting with the issues of to whom he can associate. If the stripling has some

information about his birth parents, such as ethnicity, socioeconomic position,

and faith, Horner and Rosenberg ( 1991 ) believe that the followers can go on:

From the spots of fact that they possess, adopted kids develop and lucubrate

accounts of their acceptances. At the same clip, they begin to explicate

themselves, and they struggle to develop a cohesive and realistic sense of who

they are and who they can go. It appears that if the adoptee has even a

minimum sum of information about his birth parents and acceptance, he will hold

an easier clip with individuality formation than an adoptee who has no information

about his acceptance. The adoptive parents can besides play a cardinal function in helping in

individuality formation of the adoptive stripling. Much of the research I surveyed at

least touched upon the function of the adoptive parents. Kornitzer stated that the

more cryptic the adoptive parents make things for the kid the more he will

resort to fantasize ( Baran et al. , 1975 ) . This is yet another statement for unfastened

acceptances. Again, if the kid knows the fortunes of his acceptance and other

pertinent information about his biological roots, he will hold an easier clip

organizing an individuality in adolescence. It is besides noted that, . . . immature

adoptees are vulnerable to experiencing different or bad due to the remarks and

actions of others ( Wegar, 1995 ) . This is to state that the kid will experience more

accepted, and that his acceptance is non a stigma if his adoptive parents have the

strong belief that being adopted does non do the household bad, and it does non intend

that the adoptive parents are failures because they could non hold biological

kids. Sometimes the negativeness of adoptive parents about the fortunes

of the acceptance can be sensed by the adoptee, therefore doing the adoptee to

believe that there is something incorrect with being adopted. Once once more, this can

cause individuality formation jobs, particularly if the stripling believes that he

is inferior or bad because he is adopted and non raised in his biological

household. The literature on adoptive kids has long documented peculiar and

sometimes intense battles around individuality formation, and suggests that in many

ways adopted kids follow a different developmental class from kids who

are raised by their biological parents ( Horner and Rosenberg, 1991 ) . While

most of the surveies I read found that adoptees have trouble in individuality

formation during adolescence, I did happen an article which refutes this point.

Kelly et Al. ( 1998 ) write: Developing a separate, independent, mature sense of

ego is widely recognized as a peculiarly complex undertaking for adoptees. While

many bookmans have concluded that individuality formation is inherently more

hard for adoptees some recent comparings of adopted and nonadopted young person

have found no differences in adequateness of individuality formation, and a survey by

Stein and Hoopes ( 1985 ) revealed higher self-importance individuality tonss for adoptees. Goebel

and Lott ( 1986 ) found that such factors as subjects` age, sex, personality

variables, household features, and motive to seek for birth parents

accounted more for quality of individuality formation than did adoptive position. In

decision, it is hard to state who is right in their beliefs about adoptees

and individuality formation. The research I have reviewed has largely shown that

adoptees do hold rather a spot a trouble organizing an individuality during

adolescence, and that this trouble can be due to a figure of factors.

Negative parental attitudes about acceptance can hold a negative affect on the

adoptee. The issue of unfastened versus closed acceptances will everlastingly be a argument, but

the research does demo that the more an adoptee knows about his birth household and

the fortunes environing his acceptance, the easier it will be for him to

signifier an individuality during adolescence. Most of the research workers who wrote about the

household love affair seemed to make so in a negative mode, when in fact I believe that

the ability to fantasy about the birth household may be a healthy option for the

stripling who is the victim of a closed acceptance. It allows him to build a

position of what his birth household is like, and it besides allows him to alleviate himself

of some of the internal hurting which is caused by closed acceptances. Overall, most

of the literature supported the impression that adoptees do so hold individuality

formation jobs.

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