Adoption-Friendly Language or Honest Adoption Language, Page 2
Honest Language Isn't Easy Some of these mothers, cloaked in the shame of unwed, young motherhood, accept the term that is common. Many mothers who have lost children to adoption prefer the old term,
natural, because it describes what is simply true. Some prefer the terms
first or
original mothers, because in point of plain fact, that's what they are, though they may not be the children's only mothers. Other mothers prefer to follow politically correct language, and refer to themselves as
a mother who has lost a child to adoption.
This brings us to another effect of 'adoption-friendly' language: it is designed to denigrate and break the bonds of the natural family. For example, the only mother a child has is his or her mother, unless and until the adoption occurs. So, no couple can be parents until they receive a child and no mother can be a birthmother until she has signed those papers. Therefore, to call a mother 'a birthmother' while she's still pregnant is an attempt to have her come to think of the child within her as belonging not to her, but to someone else. This induces an emotional numbing which makes it easier for others to convince her to lose her child to adoption. Honest adoption language would refer to her as the child's mother until the time comes where she is convinced to lose that child to another couple.
The very terms that describe how a mother loses her child convey impressions of her - if she 'gives up' her child, she is callous and uncaring of her child. This is the worst crime a mother can be accused of - that she does not care about her child. Yet in years gone by, few mothers had any choice in losing their children. Society decreed this punishment for those pregnant before marriage. Even now, the terrible loss of one's child is couched in language designed to give a lofty impression - 'giving a gift to a childless couple.' What 'gift' does one give out of poverty, youth, and naiveté? Children are not objects to be given away. The simple fact of adoption is that it separates mother and child so that someone else can raise a child. It breaks a family in order to build or create one.
Similarly, 'making an adoption plan' is really 'convincing a mother to lose her child.' Some people are even so silly as to suggest there aren't 'adoption reunions,' because the (now adult) child is meeting blood relations for the first time. This is patently impossible: how could a baby not have met the person in whose womb he or she grew for nine months? The only reason for such silliness in language is to pretend that the natural family does not exist and that the adoptive family is all. While the adoptive family may come to be the most important in the child's life, this cannot negate the child's bonds to the natural family. Like it or not, adopted children have two families.
The whole suite of 'adoption-friendly' language should come under the same scrutiny. (What man ever gave birth and became a 'birthfather'?) If we're honest about what's happening in healthy newborn adoptions, we're talking about convincing a mother that she should lose her child because someone else can't have a child and wants to take hers to raise. These are not prospective adoptive parents; they are people who want to become parents by taking someone else's child. This honest language is difficult language, of course, because it does not sugarcoat what is happening. It does not help to separate mother and child. It does not denigrate the child's natural mother. Perhaps that is why it is not language the adoption industry will embrace any time soon.
If you want to be respectful to mothers who have lost their children to adoption or even those who 'have surrendered or released their child,' listen to the terms they use for themselves and use those terms. If you want to be clear about what you are doing, use honest adoption language. At the least, balance the language you use so that you are respectful of the terrible pain caused when mother and child are separated.
© Sandra Falconer Pace
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Comments
Why are we remiss in allowing for ALL points of view? If we only allowed ones that favored aparents, that too would be biased, no?
Adoption education is about all points of view and from all sides of the adoption triad. Doesn't mean anyone or even this site agrees with everything posted.
Posted by: Crick at 08/06/2009 12:19 PM
This article is ridiculous and offensive. I am an adoptive parent and I am a real mother. A mother is not just the one who gave birth. According to this article I'm not a mother, which is a lie. Sometimes birth mothers are just in bad circumstances, but sometimes they make very bad choices and choose other things over their child and the child is given in adoption. The adoptive parents are the real parents in either case. They are raising the child and providing for his/her needs. This writer is just feeling bad for themselves that they had to give up their child. She tries to sound like a victim and that adoptive parents stole her child. This is ridiculous. She acts like the only reason she had to give up her child is because someone else couldn't have one. That's bull! People don't just give up their kids. She had her own reasons. Most likely she made choices in her life that resulted in the need to give up her child. It may have been against her will or her last choice, but she still has a lot of responsibility. She is the one, after all, that got pregnant. Rape would be the only case where the birth mother would actually be a victim and even in that case, she has some choice as to whether she keeps the child. This website is remiss in posting this biased and inappropriate article.
Posted by: psbrown at 08/05/2009 01:57 PM
I just can't believe that I'm reading something so one-sided and biased. Writing it might have been good therapy, and I do believe that it represents the point of view for a group of hurting and historically disrespected women in the writer's specific situation, but it's like the writer thinks that every single adoption in the world follows the same pattern that hers did.
Somehow, the writer just breezes past all the adoptions that happen because the child's parents are dead (note: I'm a "double-orphan", in the modern phrase) or in prison (my father died shortly after he was sentenced to 38 years in maximum-security prison for child abuse), like they never happened. Maybe they just aren't "real" adoptions in her mind, just like the adoptive parents aren't the "real" parents.
Based on this, I can only suppose the author also thinks that the guy who disappeared when the baby was only a few months old, and stayed gone for the next 20 years, and never paid a dime in child support or even sent a Christmas card -- but who now wants to escort "his" daughter down the aisle for her wedding -- should always be considered the "real father", and that her mother's second husband, who raised her with kindness, wisdom and loving care, is "only" a stepfather, and can never be considered better than second-best, a consolation prize for those separated from the drunk jerk that provided the biological beginning to their existence. But since her article doesn't even mention the father of her first child, perhaps she never thought fathers were important anyway.
I've learned something in this article, but overall I'm disgusted.
Posted by: Really at 05/18/2009 12:39 PM
Hey....I appreciate you
Posted by: stevemaan at 03/07/2008 01:57 AM
"[I]Other mothers prefer to follow politically correct language, and refer to themselves as a mother who has lost a child to adoption."
"...'making an adoption plan' is really 'convincing a mother to lose her child.'"
"we're talking about convincing a mother that she should lose her child because someone else can't have a child and wants to take hers to raise. These are not prospective adoptive parents; they are people who want to become parents by taking someone else's child."[/I]
These are quotes from the article. I would argue that 'making an adoption plan' is what a birth mother when she has become pregnant and is not able or willing to parent her child.
Adoptive parents and prospective adoptive parents are not "taking someone else's child". They are [I]providing a loving home and future to a child whose birth parents are uable or unwilling to parent him.[/I] Certainly, they are enriching their own family in the process. Does that make them child stealers? Would the author prefer that these children lanquish in foster care and orphanages?
My child's birth parents did not make an adoption plan and they did not 'lose their children [I]to adoption'[/I]. Yes, they lost their children; [I]because they severely abused and neglected them![/I]
I agree, absolutely, that relinquishing one's child... either by choice (even if due to poverty, or circumstances beyond her control,) or involuntarily (due to the birth parent's abuse and neglect of the child)...is a loss of unimaginable magnitude. It is a loss that will be grieved for the birth parent's entire life, I am sure. [B]But surely no reasonable person can blame the adoption process or adoptive parents because birth parents (for whatever reason) are not parenting the children born to them.[/B]
Posted by: forevermom at 02/16/2008 09:21 PM
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