achment to their adoptive parents is so important, so the child does not have any trust issues and they bond with their adoptive parents more quickly. With all of the issues surrounding transracial adoption, adoptive parents have to understand, is that no everyone is suited for transracial adoptions. Families have to care a great deal about the heritage of the child they are adopting. Adoptees should never have to choose between their ethnic heritage and the culture of their new family, whether the child is an infant at the time of adoption or an older child. This becomes very important to the “child the older they become” (Cox, 1). The adopted child will have questions that will arise, and “identity formation can be changed” or stopped during this period in the child’s life, if they cannot find the answers to their questions (Simon, 169). As with many children, the adopted child may tend to adopt the identity of their parents. All adolescents go through a stage of struggling with their A IV identity, wondering “how they fit in with their family, peers, and the rest of the world (Horner, 83). During the stage of adolescence, young people seek their own identity, through linking their current self-perceptions with their self-perceptions from earlier periods and with their cultural and biological heritage (Baran, 23). Children who are adopted, have difficulty with this because they do not have all the information they need, in most cases, to develop a sense of whom they are. Identity formation can often be impaired by the lack of knowledge the adopted child has of their past and heritage. Often an adopted child grieves, not only for the loss of...
