The shared experience of All or Nothing Thinking
All children have parents; some have abusive ones, others have loving ones, and all adoptees have at least one missing parent set aside to haunt in unremembered memory. If a child is told he's adopted, he will wonder what brought him to a new set of parents. If a child is not told he is adopted, I'm sure the child will have ways of knowing a lie is being told and a secret is being kept. Children watch their parents very carefully; we have to... that's how we learn. Nothing can be done to change who our parents are; adoption just adds more confusion to that absolute fact.
Search and Reunion is a huge business that gets tied to a major milestone in the life of the curious and brave lost family-member. Reunion in my mind implies a sense of closure and completion, yet how can it be so when it comes to Original Family Members?