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WHEN AND WHETHER TO TELL A CHILD about his adoption; whether to allow adolescents and young adults access to their preadoption history and, potentially, their biological parents are issues pertinent to the special mental hygiene considerations of adoptive families (Wieder, 1977), (in press). Extending conclusions and inferences from my previous papers (Wieder, 1977a), (1977b), (in press) with additional clinical observations on people in adoptive families, I examine herein the rationale underlying the traditional practices regarding disclosure. The prevailing practice now sanctioned by tradition is to tell adopted children while they are still toddlers or of preschool age, (Bernard, 1953); (Knight, 1941) and to close off information from adoptees of school age and beyond.
The logic of disclosing at an age when mastery of the communication is limited and barring access when data could be assimilated seems convoluted. One might assume that clinical studies, including data from psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic treatment of adoptive family members, had been addressed to these controversial questions and had led to the recommendations. A review of the literature failed to produce such reports. Some authors however (Clothier, 1943);