A Few Words on Words in Adoption, Page 2

Where modern language came from

Let's take a look at more recent developments. In 1979, Marrietta Spencer, a Minneapolis social worker, wrote an article entitled "The Terminology of Adoption" for the Child Welfare League of America. It laid the groundwork for her work on "Constructive Adoption Terminology" that would later evolve into Pat Johnston's work on Positive Adoption Language (PAL) and Speaking Positively: Using Respectful Adoptive Language (RAL). All of these works were developed to help adopted people, birthparents, adoptive parents, and adoption professionals find the right words to convey the reality of their adoption experience.

Finding simple terms that apply to everyone's experience is obviously a challenge, and I would say an impossibility. In the first place, not everyone has the same experience with adoption and, as mentioned previously, words often hold different meanings based on an individual's experience with them. Another difficulty is that terms that elevate one person's experience often diminish someone else's. Speaking thoughtfully is not only about relating our own experience accurately, but taking others' experiences into account as well.

Another factor to take into consideration is that some words, even if used with the best intentions, have an effect on how people view themselves, others, and their actions. A primary example of this is the use of the word "birthmother" to describe a pregnant woman considering adoption for her baby. Using the term "birthmother" in this way is inappropriate since, in adoption circles, a birthmother is someone who has relinquished her rights to parent her child. Until she signs a consent to adoption she is still the child's legal parent/mother. Many birthmothers have stated that being given the title "birthmother" before their decision was final acted as a form of subtle coercion in that they began to see themselves as birthmothers prior to making a final decision, and not the mothers or parents of their children. Additionally, prospective adoptive parents who are "matched" with these expectant mothers, also often have a harder time accepting the mother's decision to parent her child when they already believe her to be a birthmother. In fact there are a number of pre-adoptive parents who refer to a pregnant mother as the birthmother of their child, or simply "our birthmother."

Other words are simply loaded. Take, for instance, the use of the word "family." In adoption language it is a word that is often preceded by another word... adoptive family, birth family, and foster family immediately come to mind. For those who are in these families, these descriptions of their family can seem diminishing. They see themselves as family, pure and simple. For years, adoptive families have battled the ignorant assumptions of the general public that question the validity of their family. Consider the following scenarios: A casual acquaintance at a birthday party asks an adoptive father if he knows who his child's "real father" is. The sister of an adoptive mother of two little girls asks if her daughter can have the pearl pin she inherited from their mother since the adoptive mother "doesn't have anybody" to pass it down to. An elderly aunt says to a beaming couple holding their new baby, "Now that you've adopted you'll probably get pregnant with one of your own." All of these comments imply that becoming a family through adoption is "less than" becoming a family by giving birth.

© Brenda Romanchik

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