The Development of Cross-Cultural Identity Among Young Adult Chinese Adoptees

This thesis focuses primarily on adoptees’ own perceptions of their childhood and parental actions and explores other factors that have shaped adoptees’ identities as they have reached young adulthood. This includes any negative or positive emotions attached to their adoption and what steps they have taken to reconcile them. In addition, the research examines how parents navigated their child\u27s adopted status and ethnicity in order to create a transnational family. I also explore parents’ impacts on their child’s cross-cultural identity and the ways that adoptees have begun constructing their identities on their own. By including both children and parents, the research aims to understand the complex process of cross-cultural identity formation among Chinese adoptees in the contemporary U.S