Problems in Families That Adopt NATURE OF THE STUDY Statement of th

LeVine and Sallee (1987) have stated that existing research on adoption indicates that families that adopt have many problems that would have existed even if the adopted child had been a biological member of the family, but that these problems become more complex and intense due to adoption. Specifically, the authors present a psychosocial and psychodynamic perspective toward family life which suggests that in addition to standard family stresses and strain, the adopted child and his/her family experience stress associated with the adoption itself.

The stresses and strains associated with adoption are said to consist of five predictable stages or phases. These phases are:

(1) pre-awareness of the adoptive status.

(2) dim awareness of a special state.

(3) cognitive integration of biological and social differences.

(4) personal and identity crisis of the adopted adolescent. (5) concomitant acceptance of the biological and adoptive family.

The implications of LeVine and Sallee's thesis is that adoptees live lives that, all other conditions being equal, are inherently more stressful than the lives of non-adoptees. Regarding this implication, it needs to be noted that high levels of stress have been associated with a number of psychoemotional and behavior problems including depression (Barocas, Reichman & Schwebel, 1983) and substance abuse (Abadinsky, 1989; Milby, 1981). In addition, in their discussion of human development across th

that their adoptive parents behavior cannot be fully identified with or internalized as their own. Goebel and Lott (1986) have discussed the identify crisis problems faced by adopted adolescents in more depth. According to the authors, the establishment of one's identity represents a normative developmental crisis at adolescence. The authors note that in existing research, it is commonly speculated that adopted adolescents find resolution of the identity crisis especially difficult, with some work suggesting that adoptees who search for information about their birth heritage have failed to make satisfactory progress toward identity formation. In an effort to test this speculation, search motivation status, selected family attributes and personal traits were examined in samples of 83 adoptees and 81 non-adoptees between the ages of 18 and 35 years. Multiple analysis of covariance showed that resolution of the identity crisis varied more with family and personal attributes (sex, age, anxiety, and family conflict) than with search status. Adoptive status was found to make some contribution to the level of experienced crisis, although not as great a contribution as family and personal factors. Results also indicated that fema

Category: Psychology - P