8221; Adopted children will have problems with these issues, especially if their adopted parents are nothing like their biological parents. Many things with children are inherited, and because of this, it is very helpful for a parent to do quite a bit of research on the child’s cultural background. Adopted children sometimes have difficulty with this tasks because they often cannot gather this information by themselves. They often have incomplete knowledge about why they were put up for adoption and what their birth parents were like. This leaves a giant void in their lives where their biological parents belong. This causes them to grieve for their biological parents as if they had passed away before they were born. It seems like an adolescent’s identity formation is impaired because they hold little knowledge that his roots have been severed and remain on the unknown side of their being. These struggles are “part of a human need to connect with their natural clan and failure to do so may precipitate psychopathology (Wegar, 1995).” Also in agreement with him are McRoy and Baran. Vital to the adopted adolescent’s identity development is the knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the adoption, and the offer to find out more. Without this information, the adolescent has difficulty deciding which family he resembles. During the search for an identity in adolescence, the child may face an array of problems including “hostility toward the adoptive parents, rejection of anger toward the birth parents, self-hatred, transracial adoption concerns, felling of rootlessness..(McRoy, 1990). While searching for an identity adolescent adoptees sometimes are involved in a behavior that psychologists term “family romance.” This is not a romance in a sexual way but rather where they portray their biological parents in an unrealistic manner. The adopted child may develop a family romance i...
