Adoption and identity: what research says | MyOwnChildbook
Around her fifth birthday, an adopted girl once asked her mother: “Did I already have a name with my first mummy?” It’s a small question that touches on something developmental psychologists have studied for decades: how a child builds a coherent sense of self when part of that story begins somewhere else, with people other than the ones raising them now.
What a child understands about adoption, and when
In their widely cited study (Child Development, 1984), researchers Brodzinsky, Singer and Braff examined how children of different ages understand adoption. Young children, up to around age six, often tell their adoption story as a simple fact, much like a birthday: “I was born, and then I came to live with mum and dad.” What is usually still missing at that age is the recognition that adoption also involves a loss - an earlier parent, a different beginning.
Around six to eight years old, that recognition starts to land. Cognitively, children become able to hold more complex, even contradictory feelings at once: happy in their current family, and curious or sad about what came before. That is not a problem to be solved. It is the normal, healthy development of a complete sense of self.
Identity is an ongoing project, not a single conversation
Developmental psychologist Harold Grotevant, writing on adoptive identity (Adoption Quarterly, 1997), describes identity formation in adopted children as an ongoing project stretching across childhood and adolescence, not something resolved in one conversation. Each life stage asks the question again, at a deeper level: a preschooler asks “where do I come from,” a teenager asks “who am I, given where I come from and where I am now.”
That ongoing nature is exactly why a single “the adoption talk” approach tends to work less well than something a child can keep returning to.
Life story books: an existing, recognised practice
Adoption support already has an answer for this: the life story book. Social workers and adoption organisations have used it for decades - an honest, chronological, child-friendly record of where a child comes from: photos, documents, a narrative told in age-appropriate language. The idea behind it is simple but powerful: a child who holds their own story doesn’t have to guess at it, or hear it from someone else at an unexpected moment.
When this is not the right approach
It’s worth being honest here: a cheerful, illustrated storybook featuring your child’s name and likeness is not a substitute for professionally guided life story work. Where there has been early trauma, multiple placements, or unresolved grief for the child, the way and moment the story is told belongs with a qualified adoption or family therapist, not a home-made book, however warmly intended. A ready-made illustrated book supports everyday belonging within the family; it is not a treatment tool.
The alternative: making a scrapbook together
Many parents choose to build a scrapbook themselves, without professional help or technology: photographs, train tickets, drawings, a handwritten timeline. That has a value a printed book can’t match - the process of paging through and adding to it together matters as much as the finished result. For families who value that process, a scrapbook can be a better fit than any ready-made alternative.
Where a personalised story can help
Where an illustrated book with your child’s name and face can play a role isn’t in telling the adoption story itself, but in repeatedly reinforcing something simpler: you belong here, in this family, today. The moment a child recognises themselves in a story is developmentally powerful, and that anchor works for every child, whatever way their family was formed. A book where the child is the hero of an ordinary, warm day with their family, read again and again, adds to the sense of belonging that supports identity development.
Other families deliberately choose other sensitive themes for a personal children’s book, from explaining an illness to remembering a grandparent. It’s the same underlying idea: giving a child their own understandable, recognisable place in a story, in a way that fits their age.
The thought worth keeping
Identity isn’t built in one conversation, or one book. It’s the sum of a thousand small moments where a child feels seen, counted, and at home. A life story book, professional guidance where needed, and a warm read-aloud book in which a child recognises themselves aren’t competing with each other - they’re different threads in the same fabric.