The 7 Core Vulnerabilities in Adoption
What everyone should know about adoption’s complex emotional threads
Posted November 17, 2025 | Reviewed by Davia Sills
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:
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:
Adoptive parents may fear:
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:
This shame often goes unspoken for years.
Birth parents may face:
These emotions can endure for decades.
Adoptive parents may feel:
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:
Adoptive parents may grieve:
5. Identity: The Lifelong Question of “Who Am I?”
This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.