Silence, Loyalty, and the Emotional Burden Adoptees Carry

In Part 2, Lynelle Long and Kristin Molvik Botnmark explored what it means for adoptees and adoptive parents to begin speaking honestly about adoption, loss, and accountability.

Kristin

Something that stayed with me from your reflections was the pattern of silence inside adoptive families.

Many adoptive parents believe “Our child knows they can talk to us about anything.” But I increasingly question whether silence really means safety. Children are extremely perceptive when it comes to emotional atmospheres. They quickly learn which topics feel safe and which feel fragile. If adoption appears emotionally sensitive for the parents, silence may become a way of protecting the relationship. The adoptee may not be indicating that everything is fine. They may simply be protecting their parents.

Do adoptees often feel responsible for protecting their adoptive parents emotionally?

Lynelle

Yes, absolutely. I have experienced that myself and I hear it constantly from adoptees around the world.

For many adoptees, there is an unspoken understanding inside the family: don’t upset your adoptive parents, don’t question too much, don’t express anger, don’t appear ungrateful. Over time, many adoptees learn to suppress parts of themselves in order to maintain emotional safety and connection.

For 45 years, I protected my adoptive parents emotionally. I stayed silent about things that deeply affected me because I felt responsible for protecting them and protecting the family. That silence came at an enormous cost.

It created internal conflict because my own needs, grief, confusion, and questions were constantly pushed aside in order to preserve stability for everyone else. Eventually I realised nobody else was going to stand up for me. I had to do it myself, even though I knew it might damage relationships.

Kristin

That is what affects me most deeply when I listen to adoptees. The emotional labour often seems profoundly unequal.

Adoptees carry the burden of identity, loss, displacement, race, belonging, and unanswered questions — while also carrying responsibility for protecting the emotions of the adults who made the adoption possible. And when adoptees finally begin speaking openly, they are often accused of betrayal or ingratitude.

Lynelle

Yes. Many adoptees are told, “How could you do this to your parents?” or, “They gave you a better life.” That framing itself reveals the power imbalance.

Adoptees are often expected to feel permanently indebted for being adopted. Even when we are trying to speak honestly about pain, trauma, loss, or injustice, our feelings can be interpreted as an attack on the adoptive family itself. That makes honest conversations extremely difficult.

Kristin

I also find myself reflecting on how quickly adoptive parents can become defensive when these conversations emerge.

Recently you shared with me that an adoptive mother contacted you after seeing media coverage about intercountry adoption. You spoke with her for hours, and yet when therapy was gently suggested, she rejected the idea completely. That stayed with me because it illustrates how threatening these conversations can feel for many adoptive parents.

To confront adoption critically can feel like confronting the foundations of one’s family, identity, and moral self-understanding. But if adoptive parents cannot tolerate that discomfort, the burden simply falls back onto adoptees.

Lynelle

Exactly. And adoptees are exhausted from carrying it. Inside ICAV and other adoptee spaces, these conversations happen every day.

Many adoptees describe feeling emotionally unsafe discussing adoption with their adoptive parents because the parents become defensive, minimise their experiences, or interpret criticism of adoption systems as personal rejection.

Some adoptees eventually stop trying altogether. Others distance themselves from their adoptive families because maintaining the relationship becomes emotionally harmful. That is not because adoptees are cruel or rejecting their families. Often it is because the relationship has never allowed enough space for the adoptee’s full reality to exist safely.

Kristin

What you are describing makes me think differently about estrangement and distance within adoptive families. From the outside, some people may interpret adoptees creating distance as coldness or rejection. But what I increasingly hear is that distance sometimes becomes an act of survival.

Lynelle

Yes, many adoptees spend years trying to preserve the relationship first.

Distance often comes much later, after repeated experiences of invalidation, dismissal, emotional manipulation, or being expected to prioritise the adoptive parents’ comfort over their own wellbeing.

And there is another layer people often do not understand — adoptive parents frequently hold not only emotional power, but also practical and legal power. Some adoptees fear losing access to documents, information, financial support, family connections, or even citizenship security.

I know adoptees who have spent decades trying to obtain their own adoption records from adoptive parents who refused to hand them over. Others fear speaking openly because they worry about damaging relationships they still depend upon emotionally or practically. These are not abstract fears.

Kristin

That part has deeply challenged my own understanding. I do not think most adoptive parents fully recognise the extent of the power they hold, not only emotionally but structurally.

And perhaps even more confronting is the question — why are so many adoptees left to pursue truth, justice, citizenship rights, records access, and accountability largely on their own? Why are adoptees carrying the burden of correcting problems created by systems adults participated in?

Lynelle

That is one of the deepest frustrations many adoptees carry. Why are adoptees fighting for citizenship rights decades later? Why are adoptees leading efforts to expose illegal adoptions? Why are adoptees forced to pursue identity restoration, records access, or reparations with so little support from adoptive parents?

There are courageous adoptive parents who do speak up and stand beside adoptees. But many others remain silent because acknowledging these realities threatens the narrative they built their lives around.

Kristin

I think many adoptive parents fear that if they fully confront these truths, the relationship with their child will collapse. But what I increasingly wonder is whether the opposite may also be true. Perhaps relationships break apart not because truth is spoken, but because truth is repeatedly denied.

Lynelle

I think that is often exactly what happens. Most adoptees are not seeking perfect parents. We are seeking honesty, emotional safety, accountability, and the freedom to speak openly about our lived experience without fearing punishment, rejection, or emotional collapse from the people closest to us.

When adoptive parents can remain present without becoming defensive, something different becomes possible. Not perfection. But genuine relationship.

Kristin

What I am beginning to understand more clearly is that these conversations cannot begin from the assumption that adoptees must continue protecting everyone else emotionally.

If adoptive parents truly want honest relationships with their adoptees, then we must become capable of hearing difficult truths without asking adoptees to carry the emotional consequences for us. And perhaps that is part of what accountability actually means.

Next Week: Part 4

Lynelle and Kristin explore power, identity, records access, reunion, and the lifelong consequences of intercountry adoption systems.