ind a way of keeping and rearing their own child. The children feel that they were either 'not meant to be' or 'intolerable' . . ." Finding an identity, while considering both sets of parents is a difficult task for the adolescent. The adoptee does not want to hurt or offend his adoptive parents, and he also does not want to ignore what is known about his biological roots. Horner and Rosenberg (1991) write: Adoptive status may represent a developmental interference for children during adolescence. Instead of the usual struggles over separation and the establishment of a cohesive sense of self and identity, the adopted 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 to whom he can relate. If the adolescent has some information about his birth parents, such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and religion, Horner and Rosenberg (1991) believe that 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." It appears that if the adoptee has even a minimal amount of information about his birth parents and adoption, he will have an easier time with identity formation than an adoptee who has no information about his adoption. The adoptive parents can also play a key role in aiding in identity formation of the adopted adolescent. Much of the research I surveyed at least touched upon the role of the adoptive parents. "kornitzer stated that the more mysterious the adoptive pare...
