Between Worlds: Identity Development in Adoptees and Third-Culture Kids (TCKs)

There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes from being between cultures—of knowing that you belong everywhere and nowhere all at once. Both adoptees and third-culture kids know this feeling intimately. Though their life stories diverge in significant ways, these groups often navigate eerily similar emotional and psychological terrain. By examining the overlapping identity development experiences of adoptees and third-culture kids (TCKs), we not only offer insight into identity development but also extend a bridge of empathy and connection between these two often-misunderstood communities.

Defining Identity Development Experience in Adoptees and Third-Culture Kids (TCKs)

Adoptees are individuals who have been permanently placed into a family other than the one into which they were born. In transracial or international adoptions, the experience of navigating identity becomes layered with complex issues of race, ethnicity, and cultural displacement.

Third-Culture Kids (TCKs) are children raised in a culture different from that of their parents for a significant portion of their developmental years—often because of parents’ careers in diplomacy, military, missions, or international business. TCKs typically juggle multiple cultural identities and often feel a strong affiliation to neither their passport country nor their host cultures.

Where Their Stories Intersect

At the core, both adoptees and TCKs grow up in environments where their external surroundings do not mirror their internal roots. They are often praised for their adaptability, their "global perspective," or their resilience, but these compliments can mask a deeper disorientation.

Displacement from Biological Culture: Both groups often grow up disconnected from their cultures of origin. Whether due to adoption or a highly mobile childhood, this lack of cultural continuity can create a sense of cultural homelessness.
Conflicted Sense of Belonging: They may feel like outsiders in their host culture, alienated in their passport or birth culture, and disconnected from their familial roots—leading to a fragmented sense of self.
Pressure to Assimilate: Whether it's TCKs adapting to new countries or adoptees assimilating into a family culture, both experience pressure to "blend in" and often suppress parts of themselves to gain acceptance or avoid conflict.
Grief That Isn't Always Visible: There's a quiet, persistent grief in being separated from one’s origins—even when surrounded by love and opportunity. This grief is often invisible or dismissed by the people closest to them.

Where They Diverge

While adoptees and TCKs walk similar emotional paths, their structural realities differ in key ways:

Loss vs. Transition: Adoptees often experience a primal wound—a foundational loss of the birth family and culture. TCKs may not experience this type of severance, but rather repeated transitions that slowly erode their sense of rootedness.
Legal and Familial Dynamics: Adoptees are permanently integrated into new families—often across racial or cultural lines. TCKs, by contrast, typically remain with their biological families but live in cultures not their own.
Control and Agency: TCKs often have more awareness of their moves and may retain some connection to their biological culture through family. Adoptees, particularly when adopted as infants, usually lack any memory or connection to their original culture unless it is intentionally cultivated.

How They Might Understand Each Other

Despite different pathways, adoptees and TCKs can deeply resonate with each other’s experiences of:

Not being “enough” of any one culture.
Feeling misunderstood by peers who don’t know the depth of cultural loss.
Navigating hyper-visibility (being racially or culturally different) and invisibility (having their inner struggles minimized).

They might find mutual comfort in shared language around rootlessness, cultural longing, and the complexity of identity as something that is never static, but continuously constructed.

How Society Misunderstands Them

Greater society often romanticizes these identities:

Adoptees are painted as “lucky” or “rescued,” erasing the trauma of separation and the complexities of transracial or international adoption.
TCKs are seen as worldly or privileged, which can obscure the emotional cost of constant transitions, goodbyes, and disconnection.

Both groups are misunderstood as well-adjusted success stories when, in reality, they may be carrying unprocessed grief, identity confusion, and isolation.

Misunderstood Within Their Own Families

This is perhaps the most heartbreaking layer of identity development.

Adoptive families often avoid conversations about race, loss, and difference out of fear, discomfort, or a desire to create a “normal” family. This silence can stifle an adoptee’s ability to explore their full identity.
TCK parents may unintentionally downplay their children’s longing for stability or cultural grounding. In some cases, they reject their own cultural backgrounds, opting for an international or "neutral" identity that sidelines ancestral traditions.

In both cases, parents’ discomfort with complexity often leads to a denial of their children's full story.

Why Parents Reject Biological Cultures

For TCKs:

Assimilation as Success: Parents may believe that the best way to thrive globally is to minimize national or ethnic markers of identity.
Internalized Colonialism or Racism: Parents may distance themselves from their own cultures due to internalized shame or a belief that Western or cosmopolitan identities are superior.
Practicality Over Heritage: In the hustle of international life, cultural transmission often gets deprioritized.

For Adoptees:

Desire for Unity: Adoptive parents may fear that engaging with a child’s birth culture will undermine the family bond.
Lack of Knowledge or Access: Some adoptive parents genuinely don’t know how to introduce cultural elements they’ve never experienced.
Avoidance of Pain: Birth culture may represent a painful reminder of what was lost or complex adoption dynamics, so it’s easier to avoid.

Dual identity image of girl in contemplation

Identity Development Challenges

1. Cultural Impostor Syndrome

Both adoptees and TCKs often feel like fakes in the cultures they’re expected to belong to—especially when they don’t speak the language or understand social customs.

2. Fragmented Self-Image

The internal dissonance between appearance, language, cultural fluency, and personal narrative can lead to deep confusion about who they truly are.

3. Difficulty Finding Community

It can be hard to find peers who "get it." Mainstream groups don't fully understand, and affinity groups may question their legitimacy.

4. Suppressed Grief

With so much focus on resilience and gratitude, there's little space to mourn what was lost: stability, roots, or a coherent sense of cultural belonging.

6 Tools for Reclaiming and Rebuilding Identity

1. Cultural Reclamation Projects

Start small: cook traditional dishes, attend festivals, or study the language of your birth or ancestral culture. This isn’t about mastering the culture—it’s about building a relationship with it.

2. Therapy Rooted in Cultural Fluency and Internal Family Systems (IFS)

Finding the right therapist can be transformational. Look for someone who understands adoption dynamics, cross-cultural identity, and systemic family issues. Internal Family Systems (IFS), Narrative therapy (to help reconstruct identity stories), somatic therapies (to support grief and trauma held in the body). and identity-focused approaches are particularly powerful.

3. Affinity Groups & Community Spaces

Join groups of adoptees or TCKs online or in person. Hearing others voice your internal world is profoundly affirming and can break the isolation.

4. Journaling & Storytelling

Create space to write or speak your truth. What parts of your story have been silenced? Who are you outside of others’ expectations? Naming your reality is an act of reclamation.

5. Genealogy and Ancestral Research

For adoptees with access, this may involve searching for birth relatives or using DNA testing. For TCKs, this might mean interviewing grandparents or tracing ancestral stories.

6. Creative Expression

Explore music, dance, food, poetry, or clothing from your culture of origin. These can serve as powerful gateways to emotion and memory, even when words fail.

Conclusion: Living in the In-Between

Both adoptees and TCKs are boundary-walkers, straddling multiple worlds without being fully claimed by any of them. Their identity journeys are not linear—they involve grief, reclamation, and a radical redefinition of home and self.

In a society obsessed with boxes and binaries, these individuals challenge us to think more expansively about belonging. Their stories remind us that identity is not inherited—it’s built, lived, and healed over time.

If you see yourself in this in-between space—longing for clarity, connection, or healing—you’re not alone. Therapy can be a powerful container for this work. Whether you’re navigating adoption grief, cultural dislocation, or identity confusion, you deserve support that sees your whole story.

Reach out for a consultation if you're ready to explore your journey in a space rooted in compassion, cultural fluency, and deep respect for your internal wisdom. You don’t have to walk this path alone.

Have you had experiences as an adoptee or a third-culture kid? What has helped you reclaim your identity? Share your thoughts in the comments or connect on social media—this is a conversation meant to be shared.