adoptee

11 5.4

A person who was legally made part of another family and raised by them

noun
/əˈdɑpˌti/

: adoptado

What about the perspective of the adoptees, now adults, telling their stories?
adult adoptees
transracial adoptees
transnational adoptees

And it's not more often than not when you, you know, reuniting adoptees with birth families often times doesn't work out.

Examples

And that was a difficult job, even for an adoptee.

Fiction book (2000)
Tell that to the thousands of adoptees of all ages who are trying to find their biological parents.

Blog text (4)
I suppose it's done so that the adoptee is not even tempted to try a search.

Fiction book (1995)
All these activities can help adoptees and their families hold on to and value their special identity.

Academic text (2001)
For the US too, it appears that only a minority of adoptees search for birth parents.

Academic text (2007)
In Canada and the United States alone, we are dealing with nearly 20,000 adoptees from abroad every year.

Academic text (2001)
Many birth parents, public adoption agencies, adult adoptees, and social workers, however, are considerably less enthusiastic.

Academic text (1994)
Even when adoptees state they don't care, their children might; their children's children might.

Blog text (4)
I think that is just as true with today's adoptees as with those from the older generations.

Blog text (10)
Many adoptees share their experiences to help others understand the challenges they face.

Surface Forms

adoptee singular

adoptees plural

Morphology

adoptee = adopt (transparent) = adopt + ee

The meaning 'a person who has been adopted' is directly derived from the verb 'adopt' plus the agent/patient-forming suffix '-ee', which is predictable for learners.

Etymology

Adoptee comes from the verb adopt, which means 'to take someone as your child', plus the ending -ee, which shows 'the person who receives the action', as in employee. So an adoptee is the person who has been taken into a family.