Every time I go through another breakup or tragedy in my life it brings up old feelings of rejection. From a very early age I felt rejection and as if no one cared. All these feelings stem from being an adopted child. Fear of rejection and failure is prominent in those of us given up by our birth mothers and it is an innate feeling that does not go away easily. Even after finding my birth mother and family some 30 years after being given away, that feeling of rejection is still hard to overcome and it affects my life and my relationships. It is hard to let people in and believe that they really do care and it's harder to trust people for fear of betrayal. I am not alone though and there have been countless studies done on adoptees and the feeling of rejection.
One such study comes from the Child Welfare Information Gateway. It states: "The loss of the birth parents as a result of adoption sets the stage for the feelings of loss and abandonment that many adopted persons may experience at some point in their lives. Even those who are adopted as newborns at times experience a loss of the early bond to the mother, although this loss may not become apparent until the child is older and able to understand the consequences. In the book Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self, authors Brodzinsky, Schechter, and Marantz (1992) suggest that dealing with the loss of the birth parents, coupled with a search for self, are two processes that can contribute to shaping the psychological development of adopted persons. These authors outline developmental tasks that an adopted person should address at each stage of life in order to make a healthy adaptation and to cope with the feelings of loss and the search for self.
Loss, as well as feelings of rejection and abandonment by the birth parents, are frequent themes throughout the books and articles written by adopted persons about their experiences. Adopted persons, as children and as adults, may wonder why they were placed for adoption or what was "wrong" with them that caused their birth parents to give them up. Grief is a common reaction to the loss of the birth parents, and grieving may begin when the child is old enough to understand what being adopted means. Young children who are able to comprehend that they have gained adoptive parents are also able to understand that they have lost birth parents, and comprehension of this loss may trigger grief. The adopted child or adult may have a difficult time finding an outlet for this grief, since grieving for birth parents is not a reaction that society acknowledges. If the adoptive family is a generally happy one, the adopted child or adult may even feel guilty for grieving.
Along with grief and guilt, the adopted person may react to the loss through the normal feelings of anger, numbness, depression, anxiety, or fear. These feelings may occur during childhood and adolescence, as well as during later points in life, especially during emotionally charged milestones, such as marriage, the birth of a child, or the death of a parent. In addition, new losses may trigger memories of the loss of the birth parents. For instance, some adopted persons who face divorce or death of a spouse may find the experience especially difficult, because this new loss reawakens the old fears of abandonment and loss. Adopted persons who experience feelings of loss or abandonment during adulthood may or may not recognize a connection between their current feelings and their old feelings about the initial loss of the birth parents. Research from The National Adoption Center reports that "fifty-two percent of adoptable children have attachment disorder symptoms.
Adopted persons may also suffer secondary losses. For instance, along with the loss of birth mother and birth father, the adopted person may experience the loss of brothers and sisters, as well as grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. There may be a loss of cultural connection or language (in cases of inter-country or trans-racial adoption). For those who were adopted as older children, there may be a loss of siblings, friends, pets, foster families, schools, neighborhoods, and familiar surroundings. All of these losses may trigger grief and may require some outlet or some form of resolution.
The absence of a biological bond between the adoptee and adoptive parents may cause trust issues in the adoptee (Wegar, 1995). Baran (1975) stated, "Late adolescence . . . is the period of intensified identity concerns and is a time when the feelings about adoption become more intense and questions about the past increase." Unless the adopted child has the answers to these arising questions, identity formation can be altered and somewhat halted. McRoy et al. (1990) agree with this point: Adolescence is a period when young people seek an integrated and stable ego identity. This occurs as they seek to link their current self-perceptions with their 'self perceptions from earlier periods and with their cultural and biological heritage' (Brodzindky, 1987, p. 37). Adopted children sometimes have difficulty with this task because they often do not have the necessary information from the past to begin to develop a stable sense of who they are. They often have incomplete knowledge about why they were relinquished and what their birth parents were like, and they may grieve not only for the loss of their birth parents but for the loss of part of themselves. In essence, it seems that the adolescent's identity formation is impaired because he holds the knowledge that his "roots" or his "essence" has been severed and remains on the unknown side of the adoption barrier. The identity struggles of the adolescent 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 Wegar, McRoy, and Baran is Frisk. Baran et al. (1975) wrote, "Frisk conceptualized that the lack of family background knowledge in the adoptee prevents the development of a healthy 'genetic ego' . . . ." In most of the studies surveyed, the researchers are in agreement about one fact.
Vital to the adopted adolescent's identity development is the knowledge of the birth family and the circumstances surrounding the adoption. Without this information, the adolescent has difficulty deciding which family (birth or adopted) 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, trans-racial adoption concerns, feeling of rootlessness . . . ." (McRoy et al., 1990). While searching for an identity, adolescent adoptees sometimes are involved in a behavior which psychologists term 'family romance.' This is not a romance in a sexual manner, but rather a romance in the sense of fantasizing about birth parents and their personal qualities. Horner and Rosenberg (1991) stated that "the adopted child may develop a family romance in order to defend against painful facts."
More and more adopted persons are acting on their desire to search for their birth families. This is reflected in the number of websites and books about searching and even in the change in some State laws that regulate access to adoption records. Reports of adoption reunions are mixed; some lead to happy new relationships, and some do not. Regardless of the result, most searchers report that they are content to have found the truth about themselves and that the truth has filled a void for them.
