Deciding to have a baby is a difficult decision for couples to take. However, when it comes to decide to adopt a child, the decision become harder. Adoption is a process where a couple bring a child from his/ her birth parents and become a new “member” to their family; The birth parents transfer all the right as a mother to his/her new mother and legally is no longer this child is her own (“Glossary” 2). Couples who choose to adopt a child, they will not know how the child would resemble, behave, or think in the future. The only thing they know at that moment is to give love, care, and provide all the child’s need until s/he grow up. Adoptees are the reason to unit adoptive families with birth parents for lifelong, which often known as triad unites. There are many reasons that stand behind placing children for adoption such as, child abuse, neglect, or unwanted child from their biological parents. Children who are adopted during their awareness or unawareness stage of life, it will not prevent the negative effects to approach their life. Although children who are adopted sound as a positive occasion, it has negative aspects of emotional and behavioral disorder on those adoptees.
According to 2015-2016 statistics that was published by Child Welfare Gateway, The AFCARS Report, illustrate that currently there are 111,820 children who are waiting to be adopted. 25 per cent out of those children are infants. Those children were placed for adoption for several reasons ranging from neglects, physical abuse, and other painful issues (2). For some they might be lucky to be rescued from the miserable situations they were living in. For others, they might be left or brought there by coercion. It is good to have such places like foster cares where children can be placed and give them the sense of being secured. Nevertheless, many researches and studies conducted on adoption process and their result stated that this is the most negative, unique experience a child can suffer throughout his/her whole life.
The feel of loss of birth parent aspect is one of the major emotional disorder that adoptees suffer, especially in their adolescence. As long as they are unware of their status, everything tends to go positive, but once they start to be aware as they are adopted, things go more complicated. Loss is the first negative side effect that happen to form adoption. It starts at the moment where adoptees are separated from their birth parents, or the moment that they are told that they were adopted. Afterwards, it sits in their unconscious level of their mind and it can be recalled at any moment throughout their life. This feel of loss builds up a fear inside the adoptees mind that they feel they might lose their current adoptive families or any loved ones in their life. Unfortunately, this feel of lose cannot be removed from their life and might take several years until adoptees recognize how to deal with this issue. Whether adoptees lose a pet or a best friend, this will remind them about their loss of their biological parent. Arthur Sorosky, Annette Baran, and Reuben Pannor stated in their The Adoption Triangle book that adolescence who are separated from their birth parents are the most who suffer from severe “sense of loss” (111). Therefore, this first negative feel that adoptees gain causes them sadness and kind of trauma that increase the chance to get psychological conflicts during their development.
Attachment disorder is another part of emotional disorder, that is followed by the feel of loss, that adoptees suffer. Attachment in psychology is defined as the positive emotional bond between a child and a particular person, whether that person is the mother or caregiver (McLeod 7). This issue increases more with adoptees who are placed in several homes or foster cares. The multiple placement that adoptees experience prevents them to have the enough time to build a strong attachment with their new parents, or caregiver. It also leads adoptees to have problem with trust and safety to their surroundings if the reason behind placing them for adoption was they were physically or sexually abused. Neglect is an additional key factor that leads to attachment disorder. If a child was adopted during his/her adolescence, attachment disorder increases more due to their fear and thoughts that they might be removed or returned to foster care again (“Development Issues” 2). They feel more that they are stranger and fear to attach a person who might loss again. Therefore, attachment is one of the important factor that need to be focused on during adoption process.
Rejection is another emotional issue that adoptees face throughout their development. Adoptees will continually think of what, how, and why their birth mother did not keep or preferred to abandon them. Most adoptees would think the only reason they were placed for adoption is because they were rejected (Silverstein and Kaplan 2). Even though when their adoptive parents explain to them that they were the preferred chosen one to be adopted, it will not prevent adoptee to think that they were first rejected then chosen. Most adoptees develop thoughts that there was something wrong with them or with their birth parents that led to reject them. The feel of rejection causes psychological issues, such as embarrassment. One adoptee expressed her feeling as being “chosen” as: “I was told I was adopted from the very beginning, but felt that my parents overdid it by introducing me as “our specially chosen adopted daughter.” This always embarrassed me as it drew attention to my being adopted” (Sorosky, Baran, and Pannor 88). In other words, the adoptive parents try to help their adoptee daughter by focusing on how much important and special she is for her parents. They also try to ignore the idea of she was once un chosen to prevent her from thinking about it, but their attempts were unsuccessful since it reminds the daughter that she was adopted which embraces her. Whether adoption is viewed positively or negatively from the adoptees perspective, when it is addressed to the public it made them feel ashamed of their status.
Just as adoptees get emotional disorder, they also get behavioral disorder. Identity is part of behavioral issues that is faced by adoptees, precisely at their teenage stage of life. Adolescence is the stage of life where they start to develop identity, physical changes, and sexual maturation (“World Health” 1). Generally, adolescence development is a challenging stage of life, however, the development of adopted teenagers tends to be more complicated than their biological peers. Some adopted teen wonders are about their genetic, medical, religious information. Their focus and suffer become more on their identity since they have two different parents, therefore, they develop confusion and wonder of who are they, and who are their real birth parents (“Parenting your adopted teenager” 3). Some adoptive parents welcome these questions and wonders, but other parents do not. Certain parents who unwelcome these questions are because they afraid to lose the love of their child toward them, or because the lack of information that they have about their adoptees birth parents. One adoptee said that the most important question she needed an answer on was “how I will look like later?” (Sorosky, Baran, and Pannor 110). Her wonders were not only about who she will resemble later; instead, she wondered about her behaviors, what she will like and dislike, and other genetics that she may inherited from her birth parents.
Another behavior issue is when adoptees turn to be violent due to their thoughts that they are illegitimate children. As teenage adoptees, they start to come up with more advanced questions about the reason of being placed for adoption. Whatever the adoptive parents give a reason to their adoptees adolescence, adoptees mostly analysis those reasons with either good or negative fantasies. For instance, a conversation revolves about adoption between a mother and her three adoptees children started with the adoptive mother told her adoptees that their birth parents wanted their children to have a better life, and therefore, they placed them for adoption; the adolescence analyzed these reasons as their birth parents were not married and probably they did not want to keep them, so they gave them away (Burgess 102). Certain adoptees analyze themselves as they are illegal in the eyes of their society and even non-affiliation. Their reaction various based on their personalities. Some might be shy and afraid to express their ideas. However, most of them express their feeling by having aggressive behaviors. A research showed that, depends of the type of adoption, children are mostly “tend to act out” (Kingsbury 1). Additional adoptee wrote that:
I was nine years old when I was told I was adopted, and fourteen when I found out the circumstance behind my birth. . . . I acted out. I drunk and smoke pot and hung around with the wrong crowed. . . . I did not know how to get rid of those bad and angry feelings, other than by hurting myself and others, namely, mom and dad. . . . I began to think of [my birth mother] as a whore and a tamp. [My adoptive parents] tried to convince me that she wasn’t. (Sorosky, Baran, and Pannor 109)
Although the adoptee’s parents tried to convince him/her the opposite, it did not work and went out of control. Other adoptees choose to not act because of they were shamed of their status as illegal child (Sorosky, Baran, and Pannor 109). This way of their cognitive process of their status influences their behavior negatively and might lead them to have more serious problems.
Dependency is another behavioral issue that faces adoptees. During adolescence, teenager detach themselves from their parents and start looking for their own private spot. For adopted teens is complicated because of two reasons. First reason is because of the overreaction of their adoptive parents in fear that their adopted children will act, or the “bad blood” of birth parents will come out at their behavior. An adoptee was interviewed about his/her adopted parents reaction to her adolescence development said: “When I became an adolescence my mother panicked about my sexual interests. She was afraid that I would be an unwed mother like my own mother” (Sorosky, Baran, and Pannor 108). The other reason that makes dependency an issue for adoptees is because detaching evokes to them the sense of loss. “Threating to leave home or run away is often the adopted youngster’s counterphobic attempt at covering up these abandonment fears” (Sorosky, Baran, and Pannor 112). Adoption is a painful experience that turns adoptees to be very sensitive, or aggressive to any loss they experience. When they come to a point to be independent they start to fear that they will be abandoned again. Approaching independency for adoptees request additional time compared to their non-adoptees peers, to help them understand the difference between loss and being independent.
In conclusion, these disorders should be never neglected. Adoptive parents should seek help through psychiatrics, social workers, and other necessary help sources if they noticed these symptoms on their adopted kids; that can help them to keep their adoptees on the right and normal track of development as the non-adopted kids. All the emotional and behavioral disorders that were addressed above do not guarantee or explain what or why they exactly adoptees feel this way. Until now, there is no technology that reveal to us what is going on inside the human mind, and therefore, no one can know for sure what is happening inside those adoptees mind. The way they express their feeling, behaving, and thinking only factors to make people do their best to help them forget for a while this painful task, but it will never abort it from their mind.
Adoption is not an easy task for the adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents. However, adoptees are considered the most pained victims of this task. The birth parents loss or place their children for adoption, and then get therapist and recover from this issue; the adoptive parents recover from their infertility issue through adopting a child and get the feel of motherhood that they are searching for; but they will both never feel as adoptees feel unless they, themselves, were adopted in the past.