It was about a year ago. We were standing outside a cafe chatting away, adoptive moms to adoptive moms. I don’t even remember what I was talking about exactly when another mom, a mom who has become a dear friend (you can check out Amber’s blog by clicking HERE), interrupted me to correct me.
Expectant mom not birthmom. She’s not a birth mom until she places a child for adoption. Right now, she’s an expectant mom.
I stumbled over my words a bit but accepted her correction. Really though? Is that verbiage that big of deal? I usually overthink all the adoption verbiage, but really? Can I not use birthmom without having to overthink that too?
5 days ago, I helped a friend out by sharing her post on Facebook.
Do you know of a family who wants to adopt? I know of a PA birth mom, due 2/28-3/5 with a full Caucasian baby girl. No drug or alcohol exposure, just began prenatal care. She is parenting 2 little ones, cannot raise another baby. She does need reasonable living expenses (thus PA residents are not eligible). She is looking for an active, loving couple who is willing to meet and have ongoing contact in an open adoption. She prefers a couple under 40, but will consider a little older (40-43), would like a couple with no more than 1 child. PM me if you would like to be connected with the friend of mine who is working with her.
I just copied and pasted, didn’t overthink anything, just wanted to get the word out, trusting that the right family for this child would see it.
Whether or not the right family saw it hasn’t been confirmed yet, but I can tell you that a lot of families saw it. Like thousands of families. My inbox couldn’t keep up with all the messages I started getting. I’m still getting them–some with full profiles, their whole histories, youtube videos, etc. etc.
As I read each and every one of those messages, all from couples desperately wanting to parent, I remembered my conversation with my friend.
Expectant mom not birthmom. She’s not a birth mom until she places a child for adoption. Right now, she’s an expectant mom.
She was so right for correcting me.
I don’t know this woman due in only 2 months. I can’t begin to understand what her days are like, what today is like for her. I imagine that she’s exhausted both physically and emotionally. I imagine she’s getting up in the middle of the night too many times to keep count between dealing with a toddler who still cries out at night and having to get up to pee…again. I imagine she fights an internal battle daily as she feels her baby girl squirming around inside her but hear’s the cries of the children she’s parenting and sees the bills stacking up on her counter. I imagine she feels alone and inadequate and remembers ideas she had of what life would be like for her and wonders if she’ll ever get remotely close to them again. I imagine she is looking for redemption somehow and thinks that maybe knowing that her baby would be raised by a couple who desperately want a child would somehow bring that. But, that’s just what I imagine.
She’s expecting. And, she’s hurting. That’s what I know.
I feel ashamed of my own act of hitting ctrl-C and ctrl-V to put those words on my page as if she’s somehow reduced to a baby carrier and that I encouraged hurting couples to write to me with verbiage in kind. I have found myself thanking those people who used the words expectant mom in their messages to me and encouraged them for their compassion and sensitivity.
So, here it goes. For anyone out there reading these words now — it’s expectant mom not birthmom. She’s not a birth mom until she places a child for adoption. Right now, she’s an expectant mom. And, if you’re talking to or about women who are considering placing their children for adoption, please use the words expectant mom. It’s kind, sensitive, compassionate towards the only thing we can truly know of them that is true–they are expecting and they are hurting.
you know I big big love this!
AMEN. I’m a birth mom and that’s one of my HUGEST pet peeves. Doesn’t matter that it’s coercive to use the term before they’ve even given birth (though that’s a consideration). It’s simply not what they are. Thank you so much, “Bumber”, for the original correction… :)….and thank you to YOU for being an adoptive mom who will correct. Though I know that I do have a voice, the most powerful voices in the adoption constellation are the adoptive and hopeful adoptive parents.
Great post, Kelly! As a birthmom, I agree that the difference is subtle but profound. Way to explain it with compassion.
I’d never thought of that before – but absolutely understand and agree. I’m both a birth mom and an adoptive (or adopted?) mom – expectant mom makes more sense in that situation for sure.
Mental Resolutions
Brilliant as always. Thank you for correcting me!
We do not even use birthmother after placement. We just use mom :-)
Thank you so much! This one was worth overthinking.
Such an interesting point. My husband is adopted. I have always consider his birth mom as a gift as well. Because she provided the amazing gift to my inlaws. She was alone and did not share that she was pregnant with many, She also had a little one as well. what a hard time it was for her. Great Post
Sherry
wow! This was an amazing post. I don’t think I ever noticed what a difference a word makes. But it so does.
Great post. I am a huge (admittedly converted) believer that language is so important because it sets up perceptions and expectations.
I was corrected by a birth/first mom last year—that she found the term “birth mom” condescending. That it has the connotation that she is an incubator for others. She preferred “first mom.” Personally, I have trouble keep up on what’s PC and what’s not. And I don’t mind being corrected if someone prefers it another way.
Our agency was very sensitive to this, and rightfully so. Stats at our state office showed that 70% of expectant mothers don’t end up placing, but end up parenting.
I’m also a birth mother and it is a pet peeve of mine. I know that the unethical facilitator through which I placed used the word birthmom to separate me, mentally, from my child, to make me feel like she already wasn’t mine. A mother is a mother, without a determiner, until she signs TPR. She deserves the respect of such titleage.
While I can appreciate the subtlety in the use of expectant mom vs birth mom, I can see where so much correctness can cause confusion. I guess that makes my daughter’s biological mother not a “birth mother” because she did not put her child up for adoption, she abandoned her. So does that make her an “abandonment mother?” Just wonderin…
Beach Mama, Thanks for visiting, reading, and commenting. In my opinion, due to the cultural differences and state of legalities in China, abandonment is the only way for a family to place a child for adoption legitimately (rather than placing a child informally with a kinship adoption or otherwise). The woman who gave birth to my daughter deserves way more respect than the suggestion of the terms “abandonment mother.” We use birth mother or China mother synonymously at this stage of our daughter’s life and talk about her with the utmost respect whenever the door is opened to do so.
P.S. This particular post was more about what to call women who are considering adoption for their children BEFORE they place a child for adoption. Here is a guest post I had on my blog more about nomenclature for birth moms AFTER adoption – http://www.myoverthinking.com/2012/11/real-and-natural-mother-guest-post.html
Of course it is not only China where birth mother abandon babies. There is adoption through foster care too. My daughter was removed then abandoned. The woman who gave her life, however, will always be called by a title of respect. Right now we use her first name, birth mom, bio mom, whatever. I couldn’t dream of referring to the woman who gave my child life, regardlessness of her mistakes, anything but something respectful. I have never walked in her shoes. I am not to judge.
Oh thank you thank you thank you for this! Thank you for having a compassionate heart to understand what this mother is going through. Than you for thanking those that do understand.Thank you for correct those that don’t so they can. Thank you for teaching, for leading.
As the people who have lived adoption we must be the ones changing what is wrong from the inside. Sharing this knowledge is such a huge step for so many. Thank you! I will be sharing this on my networks.
You’re so right. Calling an expectant mother considering adoption sends the message that we view her role primarily as a family planning option for others, rather than what she is–a mother who must make a decision *after* her child is born. Calling her a “birth mother” before relinquishment also sends *her* the message that her decision is already made, cannot be changed, and that her parenting rights have already been discredited. Of course, this message should be avoided because mothers need to have their decision making and options expanded during this time, not limited.
Beach Mama, if I can be so bold to offer input. “Birth mother” is intended to imply “the mother who gave birth” or “biological mother” and is not a judgment based on how we perceive the merit of her actions.
As a feminist, I stay away from the term personally because “birth mother” has negative social connotations. But many mothers do identify with the “birth” label and I respect their right to self-identify.
As an adoptee with a biological parent who committed an act of violence and by all means could rightfully be called any number of negative names, I still advise against using labels for biological parents that infer negativity. The adoptee ultimately has the task of finding meaning and assigning feelings about their adoption and original family members. This becomes harder when messages of distain or fear, for example, are exuded of the original parents in the adoptive home.
Surrender circumstances are a good lesson in the humanity of people. Do mothers callously abandon their children, or as another commenter mentioned, are they left with no options other than to place a child in an orphanage because of misogyny and a lack of social welfare programs? Poverty and desperation may have been a mother’s challenges but they are not who she is. She is a human being who has value and who also has strengths–strengths that perhaps no one has ever helped her utilize.
Because adoptees may someday see a part of themselves within their original parents, we need the acknowledgement that our parents were real people with real human problems, not unknown beings defined only by their catastrophic mistakes or shortcomings (not that all original parents fit that category etc).
Amanda
http://www.declassifiedadoptee.com
Thank you for this post. It does create the expectation and mentally supports separating her from her child before the child is even born.
Now, putting her in touch with someone to really break down the issues that she is seeing, because as you stated, you don’t know what she is facing. Having multiple children is a challenge yes, but maybe she is just needing support and resources.
If she is given this ‘courtesy’, and all obstacles have been identified to be permanent and not livable (by HER of course!), then she will be able to make a ‘fully informed choice’ to give her child to another family.
Again, thank you for the post, and please continue the education, because it is important.
Women need to support other women – after all – it does take a village – right?
(Just for clarification, I help women just like the expectant mother that you heard about do just what I mentioned above, and that is the ONLY reason I use the ‘b’ term – because as I have found they have already been called this if they have connected with any ‘adoption professional’, and they usually search the web with that term looking for information.)
wow! seems I am always learning. Good to know.
Bravo. It’s always wonderful when someone gets it – and spreads the word.
Sorry but i don’t see how you get it? yes the term birthmom has been thrown around a long time. It is a term to say that a woman was just a vessle and not a real person who dies inside to lose her baby. And as a young person has not heard all the truths about the abuses in adoption. how difficult it is for children to grow up having to pretend they are someone else for the sake of buyers. how many of these children end up in group homes and jails. I am not and never will be birthmom. I begged and pleaded to everyone i could find to keep my baby, they wanted that quick easy sale, thousands of dollars for a couple hours work while ruining a life for all of history. When you conspire to take another person’s baby, you conspire to teach total selfishness to entire planet.
Actually, I think it should be up to the woman carrying the child what she would like to be called. As an adult adoptee, I resent adoptive parents or women who reliquished, forced or not, a child to tell me what I should call them, I didn’t ask to be adopted and I will take ownership to the verbaige I choose to use. The woman who gave birth to me is my birthmother, the woman who raised me is mom. I have never introduced her as my adoptive mother. It is very difficult for adoptive individuals at any age to use the proper names in the adoption triad because someone is always getting offended, well guess what, we were the products that were purchased so someone else could have a family, it should be up to us, it is time we took control of a system that takes away our identities, falsifies our birth certificates and forces us to mold to another set of parent’s beliefs and hertitage. It is our journey, our words, our definitions to titles.
most people who buy people try to control others. you have the right to say what you want to be called and how you want people to view your situation. you can decide to call people other than what they are asking you to call them. and that would be as it is in all other situations rude controlling and insulting. and it happens quite often. ADOPTION SUCKS
Kelly, thank you for bringing this topic up. In the situation given, I might have made the same mistake. I’m also so saddened by some of the comments here. As a mother of four kids, one who happens to be adopted I’m horrified by some of these comments. I would like to ask if adoption is so horrible, what is the better recourse for these children without families?
It’s so encouraging to me when people begin to recognize some of the tactics that subtly steer a woman toward relinquishing her child. The effects of separation on mother and child are sobering — those of us who understand the impact of coercive practices and the ramifications of relinquishment must continue to educate others. It’s simply too important an issue for us to remain silent. I’m so glad you took the opportunity to share this with your readers. Blessings.
Great post Kelly! I’m also a converter to the idea that language is really important. “Expectant Mother” or simply “mother” is really the only appropriate thing to call a pregnant woman who may be considering adoption. The subtlety of already pigeon-holing a woman as ‘birthmom’ before the baby has been been is disrespectful and coercive. I’m sooo glad to see adoptive parents thinking about this and advocating for women who may be considering adoption!
Robyn
http://www.gobbelcounseling.com/blog
Thank you for sharing!
Lauren
aheartforadoption.wordpress.com
Great post and thank you for sharing this with so many, and also with making changes!!!
I really loved this post. I’m not sure if I’ve commented on your blog before, but I know I’m a bit of a minority in the adoption blogosphere because 1) I’m a guy, and 2) I’m an adoption social worker. Your article resonates with me; so often, prospective adoptive parents and the agencies they work with haven’t got the right perspective. I’ve heard foster care workers use “birth mother” to refer to the mother of kids who are still in the process of reunification. I think that this reflects ignorance and carelessness rather than malice, but it’s still something that needs to be corrected. In my dealings with agencies, adoptive parents, and expectant parents, I will do my best to be ethical, sensitive, and a facilitator of understanding. Thanks for the reflections that your post prompted for me :)
I love this and would like to link this post in my blog if that is ok with you? I am also a new blog follower!
I totally agree! We are hoping to adopt, and when I speak to agencies, they almost always use the term “birthmom”. I then respond by throwing in “expectant parent” (I don’t want to leave out the dads either). When they respond again, it’s still all, “birthmom, birthmom, birthmom”!
Wow, great post. Brought tears to my eyes. I have not been in a position to even use those words. But if I am, I will definitely keep this in mind.
What a wonderful post. And a wonderful reminder of an expectant mom’s heart too. Beautiful.
Thank you for sharing this.
~Maria-Isabel
http://www.agapelovedesigns.com