Abstract In this case study, five international adoptees from Finland were interviewed about their search and reunion experiences to find out what meanings they ascribed to their identities and family relations. The thematic analysis yielded three themes: search and reunion in significant periods of life, meaning of reunion for identity, and belonging and relatedness within family. The first theme was characterized by the changing interest in birth family from the inability in childhood to fully understand the meaning of adoption and the growing interest in adolescence to adulthood where participants’ own parenthood intensified their interest. The second theme was characterized by the sense of coherence and sense of continuity that the adoptees, despite the conflicting emotions of reunion, felt they had achieved through reunion. In the third theme, reunion with their birth family appeared significant, even though belonging to a family was interpreted more as an outcome of attachment and nurture than biology. Particular for all themes was the meaning of communicating about adoption-related issues for the adoptee–adoptive parent relationship. Future research is needed to concentrate in more detail on the broad themes and to investigate how the meanings of the birth family for adoptive identity change over life courses.

中文翻译：

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寻找自我：成年国际收养者寻找并与出生家庭团聚的叙述

摘要 在这个案例研究中，五名来自芬兰的国际收养者就他们的寻找和团聚经历进行了采访，以了解他们赋予自己的身份和家庭关系的意义。主题分析产生了三个主题：生命重要时期的寻找和团聚、身份团聚的意义以及家庭内的归属感和相关性。第一个主题的特点是对出生家庭的兴趣不断变化，从童年时期无法完全理解收养的意义和对青春期的兴趣日益增长到成年期，参与者自己的父母身份加强了他们的兴趣。第二个主题的特点是连贯感和连续感，尽管重逢的情绪冲突，但被收养者认为他们已经通过重聚获得了。在第三个主题中，与他们的出生家庭重聚似乎很重要，尽管属于一个家庭更多地被解释为依恋和养育而不是生物学的结果。对所有主题而言，特别是就收养人与养父母关系的收养相关问题进行交流的意义。未来的研究需要更详细地关注广泛的主题，并调查出生家庭对收养身份的意义如何随着生命历程而变化。