Pathogenic factors in the experience of early and late adopted children.

This study examines factors contributing to the difficulties of 20 adopted children, including their common posture of rejection toward their adoptive parents and interest in reunification with biological parents. The children adopted at or near birth used the fantasy of reunion as a reparative substitute for an intense but ambivalent relationship with adoptive parents, while children adopted after 2 years were less intimately connected with their adoptive parents. A disturbance in the relationship with the parenting figures with whom these children spent their earliest years appeared to be the most unique factor in determining this later course of events.