Researchers can encounter various ethical challenges when conducting oral history interviews with potentially vulnerable participants. The authors of this paper share their experiences interviewing children born of war (CBOW) in Austria, Vietnam, and Japan, with a focus on the expectations the CBOW participants had when taking part in those oral history research projects. As CBOW often lack effective social, legal, and psychological support, researchers were faced with both anticipated and unanticipated expectations their participants had of them. Such expectations affected various aspects of the research process as well as the personal well-being of researchers and participants in complex and evolving participant-researcher relationships across a range of political, socio-economic, and cultural contexts. The paper explores case studies that exemplify the kind of ethical decision-making that takes place when seeking to balance participants’ various expectations with meeting a project’s research goals.