ed child must struggle with the competing and conflicting issues of good and bad parents, good and bad self, and separation from both adoptive parents and images of biological parents. If all adoptions were open, the adoptee would have the ability to know about the traits of each family. He would have an easier task of forming an identity for himself, rather than struggling with the issues of whom he can relate. If the adolescent has some information about his birth parents, such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and religion, the following can happen: From the bits of fact that they possess, adopted children develop and elaborate explanations of their adoptions. At the same time, they begin to explain themselves, and they struggle to develop a cohesive and realistic sense of who they are and who they can become" (Horner, 81). It has been shown that if the adoptee has even a small amount of information on his or her birth parents and adoption, identity formation will be easier, than an adoptee that has no information about the circumstances of the adoption. The adoptive parents can also play a key role in aiding in identity formation of the adopted adolescent. The negativity of adoptive parents about the circumstances of the adoption, Ap VIcan be sensed by the adoptee, thus causing the adoptee to believe that there is something wrong with being adopted, this can cause identity formation problems ( Adamec, 136). While many researches have concluded that identity formation is inherently more difficult for adoptees, some “recent comparisons of adopted and non-adopted youth have found no differences in adequacy of identity formation, and revealed higher identity scores for adoptees” (Simon, 117). Factors such as the subjects' age, sex, personality variables, family characteristics, and motivatio...
