There has been a tremendous amount of research done on adoptees and their problems with identity formation. Many researchers agree on some of the causes of identity formation problems in adopted adolescents, while other researchers conclude that there is no significant difference in identity formation between adoptees and biological children. This article will discuss some of the research that has been conducted and attempt to answer the following questions: Do adoptees have difficulty forming identity during adolescence? If so, what are the causes of these vicissitudes? Is there a significant difference between the identity formation of adoptees and non-adoptees? The National Adoption Center reports that fifty-two percent of adoptable children exhibit symptoms of attachment disorder. It has also been found that the older the adopted child, the greater the risk of social maladjustment (Benson et al., 1998). This is to say that a child adopted at one week of age will have a greater chance of becoming "normal"; adaptation compared to a child adopted at the age of ten. This may be due in part to the likelihood that a child will learn to trust, whereas a ten-year-old may have more difficulty in this task, depending on his or her history. Eric Erickson, a development theorist, discusses issues of trust in his theory of development. The first of Erickson's developmental stages is Trust versus Distrust. A child who experiences neglect or abuse may have this stage of development severely damaged. An adopted child may have the opportunity to fully learn trust, whereas as an older child they may have been dragged from foster home to foster home as an infant, thus never learning trust. Although Trust/Mistrust is an important stage of development, “the greatest psychological risk for adopted children occurs during mid-childhood and adolescence”; (McRoy et al., 1990). As children grow into teenagers, they begin to search for an identity by finding anchor points to relate to. Unfortunately, adopted children do not have a biological role model to turn to (Horner & Rosenberg, 1991), unless they have had an open adoption in which they were able to build relationships with their biological families as well as those adoptive. Another key factor in the development of trust is the ab...... middle of paper ......, K., Kotsopoulos, S., Oke, L., Pentland, N., Sheahan, P ., & Stavrakaki, C. (1988). Psychiatric disorders in adopted children: a controlled study. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 58(4), 608-611. Hajal, F., & Rosenberg, E. (1991). The family life cycle in adoptive families. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 61(1), 78-85. Horner, T., & Rosenberg, E. (1991). Romance with birth parents and identity formation in adopted children. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 61(1), 70-77. Kelly, M., Martin, B., Rigby, A., & Towner-Thyrum, E. (1998). Adaptation and identity formation in adopted and nonadopted young adults: Contributions of the family environment. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 68(3), 497-500.McRoy, R., Grotevant, H., Furuta, A., & Lopez, S. (1990). Adoption disclosure and communication problems: Implications for practice. Families in Society, 71, 550-557. Wegar, K. (1995). Adoption and mental health: a theoretical critique of the psychopathological model. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 65(4), 540-548.