Dear Adoptee,

This is my second installment to clarify the things I wrote in my prior post, Adoption Pet Peeves. The last point in my original post was also upsetting to a number of you.

The section of the original post is italicized. I’ve added comments/clarifications in bold.

Here is part 2:

A word or two about the proper adoption terminology.

Apparently, the term “biological” isn’t PC anymore.  However, I don’t like the term “birth parents” because only one person is a birth parent, the mother.  Where does that leave the father? [Someone said this point indicated I thought the child-parent bond didn’t extend beyond that of the birth. I argue the exact opposite. The meaning of birth is, as quoted from dictionary.com, “an act or instance of being born” and “the act or process of bearing or bringing forth offspring.” When I consider the definition of Birth, it seems to use the term is to say the parental bond DOES NOT extent beyond birth.]

Also, I was there for Paige’s birth, so couldn’t I also be called the birth mother? [That same person said my presence in the birthing room was coercive but if she had read any of my other blog posts, she would know I had no intention of adopting Ruth’s daughters when I became her birth coach.]

A second term I’ve heard is “first parents.” I don’t like that one because we adopted through foster care and technically we are our girls’ third parents. 

Another term I’ve heard is “life parents.” This is true because they gave my girls physical life.  However, I am giving them a life by raising them so that term isn’t accurate either. [All of these terms are a matter of semantics, I suppose. I’m a bit of a perfectionist in that regard and it comes out here.]

I recently heard the terms “real parents” or “natural parents.”  These terms absolutely disgust me!!  (The other terms don’t bother me; I just choose not to use them.)  It implies I am not an actual parent and my daughters don’t have real parents.  It also implies our family is unnatural, or wrong. [Until recently, I’d only heard “natural” and “real” parent used by adoptees who didn’t have good relationships with their adoptive parents and thought there was nothing good about adoption. Obviously, the tone with which those words were used put me on the defense. Thanks to adoptee activist Angela Barra, an absolutely amazing and lovely woman who uses the term “natural parent,” I’ve been educated about the term natural parent. I still don’t like the term but now I understand it.]

To me, biological birth parents is exactly what they are; people who gave my girls their biology but are not raising them.[I recently asked both my daughters and Ruth what term they prefer. They all said birth parent so that is what I am using from here on out. I still prefer the term biological, but will use the term they chose because I love and respect them.]

Though, to be honest, I think Payton came up with the best term of all.  Shortly after she began calling us mommy and daddy, she began calling her biological birth parents “my other mommy and daddy.”

I have absolutely no problem with that – she does have two mommies and two daddies. [And this, Dear Adoptee, was the whole point. I am not the only mother in my daughters’ lives; to deny that is to deny a vital part of them. That is something I will NEVER do!]