Having children is a real task. However, adopted children presents a bigger challenge to many people. Adopted children have many issues with who they are due to a lack of a blood bond with their adopted parents. Over the years, there have been many questions raised about adoptees and their problems with identity formation. Many of top the researchers on this subject agree on the causes of identity formation problems in adolescent adoptees, while many other researchers conclude that there is no significant difference in identity formation in adoptees and birth children. There are three questions to be asked when looking at adolescent identity problems. The first is Do adoptees have identity formation difficulties during adolescence? If so, what are some of the causes of these problems? Is there a significant difference between identity formation of adoptees and nonadoptees? These key questions help to determine the problem and to eventually find the causes.The National Adoption Center reports that 52% of adoptable children have attachement disorder symptoms. It has also been found that the older the child is when they are adopted, the higher the risk of social maladjustment (Benson, 1998). This theory says that a child who is adopted at one-week of age will have a better chance to be “normally adjusted than a child who is adopted at the age of ten. This may all be caused by age, but may also be in part to the probability that an infant will learn how to trust, where as a ten-year-old may have more difficulty with this task, depending on their history. Eric Erickson, a developmental theorist, discusses trust issues in his theory of development. The first of Erickson’s stages of development is Trust v. Mistrust. A child who experiences neglect or abuse can have this stage of development severely damaged. A n adopted infat may have the opportunity to fully learn trust, where as an older child may have been shuff...
