Each year during November, we celebrate National Adoption Month. We honor the families built through adoption and acknowledge the thousands of children still waiting for permanency or reunification. Yet behind the celebrations and heartwarming narratives exists a far more complex emotional landscape, one that is often misunderstood, minimized, or completely overlooked.
For more than four decades, adoption researchers have emphasized that adoption is not a single moment or legal event; it is a lifelong developmental journey. In their seminal book, Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency, Sharon Kaplan Roszia and Allison Davis Maxon identified seven emotional themes that consistently appear across all members of the adoption constellation: adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and extended families.
7 Core Vulnerabilities for Each Member of the Constellation
These issues are not pathologies. They are predictable, universal core vulnerabilities shaped by the inherent complexities of adoption. Understanding these vulnerabilities helps us move beyond simplistic narratives of adoption as “beautiful,” “grateful,”“”“ or “rescuing,” and instead see adoption for what it truly is: a layered experience in which love and loss coexist throughout a lifetime.
1. Loss: The Starting Point of Every Adoption Story
Adoption begins with loss, no matter how loving the adoptive home or how necessary the separation. This loss is central to every member of the adoption constellation.
Adoptees experience the loss of:
- Their birth family
- Genetic mirroring
- Medical and ancestral history
- Cultural or racial heritage
- Early trust and safety
They often experience additional “grief anniversaries,” such as birthdays, last days of school, or other milestones. When adoptees express grief, they are often told to “be grateful,” which silences their emotional reality.
Birth parents grieve:
Their grief is often disenfranchised, unrecognized, or invalidated by society. Many are told to “move on,” even though their loss is lifelong.
Adoptive parents may grieve:
They are also often told that “babies don’t remember,” which oversimplifies infant attachment research.
2. Rejection: The Fear Beneath Many Adoption Struggles
Loss often leads to questions of rejection, real, perceived, or feared. This vulnerability affects all sides of the adoption constellation.
Many adoptees internalize rejection:
“Why did she leave me?”
“What was wrong with me?”
This may lead to feelings of shame, unworthiness, or fear of future abandonment. Transracial adoptees may experience dual rejection from both their culture of origin and their adoptive environment.
Birth parents may feel rejected by:
- Society
- Their community
- Their own families
- The adoptive family and sometimes their child, later in life
Adoptive parents may fear:
- “Not being enough”
- The child preferring their birth family
- Being seen as the “second choice”
These insecurities can lead to secrecy, overprotectiveness, or resistance to open adoption, none of which serve the child’s long-term well-being.
3. Shame and Guilt: The Silent Passengers in Adoption
Shame says, “Something is wrong with me.”
Guilt says, “I did something wrong.”
Both are deeply woven into the adoption experience.
Many adoptees internalize the idea that something about them caused the separation. They may feel:
- “Defective”
- “Unlovable”
- “Wrong”
This shame often goes unspoken for years.
Birth parents may face:
- Shame over an unplanned pregnancy
- Guilt about relinquishment
- Societal judgment
- Family rejection
These emotions can endure for decades.
Adoptive parents may feel:
- Shame around infertility
- Guilt for “taking” another family’s child
- Fear that they aren’t the “real” parent
Shame often prevents them from seeking support, leading to isolation.
4. Grief: Recurring, Not a One-Time Experience
Grief in adoption “recycles”; it reappears across development. It is not something to “get over,” but something to process repeatedly.
For adoptees, grief may resurface at:
Grief may present as sadness, anger, withdrawal, or questions about identity.
Birth parents grieve:
- Holidays without their child
- Milestones they never witness
- Not being recognized as a parent
- The circumstances that led to the separation
Adoptive parents may grieve:
- Their child’s losses
- Trauma responses that they cannot fix
- The complexity of healing that they cannot simplify
5. Identity: The Lifelong Question of “Who Am I?”
Identity formation is challenging for all humans. For adoptees, it is layered with missing information, cultural dissonance, and unanswered questions.
Adoptees often lack:
- Medical history
- Genetic context
- Cultural heritage
- Ancestral narrative
They may be asked to “borrow” the adoptive family’s identity, which can feel incomplete. Transracial adoptees may require reculturation to reclaim ethnic identity.
Birth parents may feel:
- “I am a parent, but not a parent.”
- Shame about their story
- Fragmented identity
Simple questions like “Do you have children?” can be painful and confusing.
Adoptive parents may face invalidating comments like:
“Do you have children of your own?”
“Are they your real kids?”
They must integrate their infertility, adoption journey, and parental identity into a cohesive whole.
6. Intimacy: How Early Separation Shapes Attachment and Trust
Early separation affects relationships throughout life.
For adoptees:
- Intimacy may feel unsafe
- They may fear abandonment
- They may withdraw emotionally
- They may sabotage relationships
- They may over-attach or become hyper-independent
These are not character flaws; they are survival strategies.
For birth parents, unresolved grief may make trusting others difficult.
For adoptive parents, some fear emotional competition with birth families, which can impede openness and trust.
7. Mastery and Control: Restoring Power After Powerlessness
Adoption involves profound powerlessness.
For adoptees, they had no choice in:
- The separation
- The placement
- The family
- The timing
They may attempt to regain control through defiance, perfectionism, or rigidity, all normal responses to overwhelming powerlessness.
For birth parents, they may feel:
- Silenced
- Coerced
- Excluded from decisions
- Stripped of agency
For adoptive parents, they may feel:
- Powerless navigating trauma
- Missing history
- Fear of open adoption
Toward a More Compassionate Adoption Culture
When parents, professionals, and policymakers understand these seven core vulnerabilities, adoption shifts from something that is done to families to something that is supported through families.
Seven healing steps for a healthier adoption culture involve:
- Telling the truth early and often
- Inviting emotional expression
- Honoring grief as natural
- Eliminating shame and secrecy
- Including birth parents in the narrative
- Prioritizing adoptee needs over adult comfort
- Seeking adoption-competent therapy when needed
Adoption is not about replacing one family with another. It is about integrating a child’s “origin” story with honesty, dignity, and compassion. True healing happens when we make space for every part of that story, every loss, every connection, every unanswered question, every piece of identity that “is a birthright” to be known and honored.
When we support adoptees in holding both their families without shame or secrecy, we foster resilience rather than confusion. And when caregivers, clinicians, and communities commit to openness, curiosity, and lifelong dialogue, adoption becomes not a rupture to endure, but a journey of integration, belonging, and empowered self-understanding where healing is possible.
