ABSTRACT
Adoptive families who raise and accommodate children of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds experience not only ordinal developmental demands for their adopted children including nurturing, educating, and socializing tasks but also the additional challenges of supporting their adopted children’s acculturation and bicultural accommodation throughout different stages of the life cycle (W. J. Kim, 1995). Other salient emerging issues that concern adoptees, parents, and helping professionals include (1) psychosocial issues of ethnic identity; (2) resolution of intrapsychic trauma associated with losses and emotional cutoff; (3) cohort group networks; and (4) bridging interethnic boundaries (French, 1986; Smit, 2002). In previous studies on Korean adoptees’ intellectual and adaptive performances, many authors have noted their relative satisfaction in comparison with other international adoptees in American settings (Clark & Hainisee, 1982; DiVirglio, 1956; D. S. Kim; 1977; W. J. Kim, 1995; Rathburn, McLaughlin, Bennet, & Garland, 1965) as well as in European countries (Hoksbergen, 1991), but more studies are needed to understand internal mental processes of adoptees’ search for meaningful self-concept and ethnic identity integration (Liow, 1994).
