Adoption-Friendly Language or Honest Adoption Language

The Goal is Respect
Contributed by Guest Author Sandra Falconer Pace, educator and Director of the Canadian Council of Natural Mothers. Her son searched for and found her, and they have been reunited since 1995. (Copyright (c) 2003, all rights reserved.)

A common term to describe a mother who has lost her child to adoption is 'birth mother' or 'birthmother.' The old term was 'natural mother.' Some adoptive parents objected to their children's first or original mothers being referred to as 'natural' because they felt that this made them its opposite, 'unnatural.' So, a movement called 'adoption-friendly' language has grown up to give a positive slant to all aspects of adoption. Adoptive parents felt that their families were not viewed as positively as natural families and that, by changing the language, they could change this view of adoption as a 'second choice' for family creation. Social workers eagerly followed this trend by spreading the terminology broadly. This movement was quickly allied to politically correct language to make it legitimate. Neither adoptive parents nor social workers consulted particularly with the people they were naming about how the term 'birthmother' made them feel.

Let's go back to where politically correct language arose, however. It arose as the right of a people to name themselves. For example, we once referred to the Eskimo people, but now we use their own term for themselves, the Inuit. Instead of the Ojibway people, we talk about the Anashinabe. We refer to African-American people and Hispanic people because those are the terms that they have chosen for themselves. It is respectful to use the terms people themselves choose. When talking about people with challenges, we use the term 'people' first, to indicate their essential humanity, and then we use the descriptions we need to indicate who we mean: 'people with brown hair' or 'people in wheelchairs' or 'mothers who've lost children to adoption.' Out of respect, we place their humanity above their description.

Mothers who have lost children to adoption are coming to feel that the term 'birthmother' attempts to limit their role to the birth of their children. However, even the dictionary says simply that a mother is a female who has given birth to a child. We never tell a mother whose child is stillborn or dies that she's not a mother just because she can no longer raise her child. And these days, progressive adoptions are open and the children know always that they have two mothers who play different roles in their lives. Even for those children adopted under the old secrecy laws, as adults more and more of them seek and find their first mothers, re-building the relationships that began in the nine months they grew in their mothers' wombs.

It is important to note that parents who had lost children to adoption did not refer to adoptive parents as anything but adoptive parents. It was adoptive parents who highlighted the opposition between natural and unnatural. The dictionary defines the opposite of natural in terms of parenting as adoptive, not unnatural. One begins to wonder at the insecurity of the adoptive parents who have such difficulty referring to their children's first parents and who can only see themselves in opposition to those whose children they have taken. Why are natural and adoptive seen as opposite terms? Both sets of parents are important to an adopted child. Why are these terms not seen as complementary?

So what do we do with this dilemma of what to name the first parents of a child later lost to adoption?

Comments

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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

This may not exactly be on-topic, but I would just like to say that I hate the term "politically correct." It's just a not-so-subtle way for a speaker to say that others' concerns are fabricated or otherwise invalid. A pretty effective method of silencing people who have those concerns, using that label is a modern version of being in the first grade and calling someone a "sissy" when s/he shows compassion for another kid.

Posted by: absolutely at 11/11/2005 09:12 AM

Whether you are a birthmother, a first mother, or natural mother you are still a mother. Yes it is wrong to call a woman that is pregnant with a child and is considering adoption a birthmother. In fact, she should be called a mother until she comes up with her own term that she is comfortable with. I think that sometimes we try so hard to be "politically correct" that we miss the boat entirely. Being honest is always the best policy. Honesty in your speech and in your actions shows that you have integrity and honor.

Posted by: jmrodg at 11/10/2005 02:20 PM

When reading this article, I was troubled by the following sentence:

"Some of these mothers, cloaked in the shame of unwed, young motherhood, accept the term that is common."

Actually, not simply that sentence, but many others in the article paint a picture of the first mother as someone accepting a loss, "cloaked in the shame," "giving up," and other negative terms that seem to feed into the often false stereotype of the young unwed mother as the typical standard for the "first mother." In today's world especially, single mothers occupy a much higher "status" in the world than they used to; not only are single mothers making it (of all ages!), working hard, and raising healthy and happy children responsibly, but many women are actually making a conscious choice to become single parents, or surrogate parents for loved ones that cannot have children of their own. I think it's a different world, and the language just hasn't quite had the time to catch up. Plus, there's still this strange idea that the "traditional" and typical family structure is a nuclear one -- with two parents, etc. -- when in reality, that is actually an abnormal type of family because of rising divorce rates, "non-traditional" life choices, etc. But we have politicians (President Bush for one) that are continuing to perpetuate the negative images of being "single," and "unwed" by insisting that the country's family values are slipping simply because the families don't resemble the nuclear "standard." Of course, these false stereotypes carry over when people are thinking of who first mothers are, and so we're often getting false representations across the board. I think finding appropriate language is not only about political correctness and respect, but also about accepting the diverse realities that exist instead of trying to put a label on everything.

Posted by: bandstand at 11/08/2005 12:12 PM

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