Developmental Challenges for Adoptees across the LifeCycle

Abstract

Adoptees face challenges becoming part of a new family in the context of separation from the biological family. To see adoption as a simple variation on the typical manner in which families are formed is to miss the complexity surrounding the processes of relinquishment and adoption. As Brodzinsky, Smith, and Brodzinsky (1998) point out, overall adoption statistics are difficult to come by as national data have not been systematically collected for some time. States are not required to record or report the number of private, domestic adoptions, although international adoption statistics are reported. The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute (1997) estimates that there are 1.5 million adopted children in the United States—that is, more than 2% of American children. When other members of the “adoption triad” (birth and adoptive parents) are added to these numbers, as well as extended birth and adoptive families and all those who will become connected to adoptees during their lives (e.g., adoptees’ spouses, children, grandchildren), the percentage of persons touched by adoption grows considerably. The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute’s 1997 Public Opinion Benchmark Survey found that 58% of Americans know an adoptee, have adopted a child, or have relinquished a child for adoption. Of children who are adopted in the United States, slightly more than half are adopted by birth-family members, often referred to as “kinship adoptions,” while the remainder are adopted by persons to whom they are not biologically related (Brodzinsky et al., 1998). Kinship adoptive parents have often become so reluctantly as a result of their own personal losses such as the death or inability of the child’s birth parents (e.g., their own child or sibling) to raise the child. The circumstances preceding relinquishment are often tragic and sometimes include the trauma(s) of neglect, abuse, or other mistreatment. In nonkinship adoptions, parents often adopt due to infertility, which carries its own issues of shame, sadness, and loss. The process of attempting to conceive a child and failing, often repeatedly, can be a lengthy and traumatic one for couples who ultimately choose adoption to create their families. These circumstances can put considerable strain on the couple as well as on each individual parent. In most cases, then, although it may not be the case for single, gay, or lesbian persons, adoption situations are not the first-choice route to parenthood. As Russell (1996) has noted, “People do not