Adoption is a family arrangement wherein children are raised by,provided for, loved and nurtured by adults other than those whogive them birth. It is not a twentieth century phenomenon. Ithas existed in some form in all cultures throughout the earth'shistory. What has changed about adoption in the last hundred yearsor so, however, has been that it has been given a legal statusand is often arranged by professional intermediaries, and thatmore and more often children are being adopted by adults who wereunknown to them or their families beforehand. Through the years,this formalization has led to widespread myth and misunderstandingabout adoption-touched families.
Positive Adoption Language (PAL) is vocabulary relating to adoptionwhich reflects maximum respect, dignity, responsibility and objectivityabout the decisions made by birthparents and adoptive parentsin the family planning decisions they have made for children whohave been adopted. First introduced by Minneapolis social workerMarietta Spencer and having evolved over the past 20 years, theuse of PAL helps to eliminate the emotional overcharging whichfor many years has served to perpetuate a societally-held myththat adoption is a second-best and lesser-than alternative forall involved, that in being part of an adoption one has somehowmissed out on a "real" family experience. The use ofPAL vocabulary acknowledges those involved in adoption as thoughtfuland responsible people, reassigns them authority and responsibilityfor their actions, and, by eliminating the emotionally-chargedwords which sometimes lead to a subconscious sense of competitionor conflict, helps to promote understanding among members of theadoption circle.
PAL begins with the concept of family. Historically people havebeen considered to be members of the same family when one or moreof several conditions are met: they are linked by blood (e.g.father and son,) they are linked by law (e.g. husband and wife,)they are linked by social convention (e.g. woman and her husband'ssister), they are linked by love. We don't blink at the conceptof two non-genetically-related people being members of the samefamily if one or more of the other criteria are met...except inadoption.
Though in adoption parent and child are linked by love and bylaw, the fact that they are not connected by blood has often meantthat some people are unwilling to acknowledge their relationshipas genuine and permanent. So they use qualifiers ("This isBill's adopted son") in situations where they would not dreamof doing so in a non-adoptive family ("This is Bill's birth-control-failureson" or "This is Mary's cesarean-section daughter.")They tend not to assign a full and permanent relationship to personsrelated through adoption ("Do you have any children of yourown?" or "Have you ever met your natural mother?"or "Are they real brothers and sisters?") They assumethat adoptive relationships are tentative ("Will the agencytake him back now that you know about his medical problems?"or "What if his real parents want him back?")
As the concept of family changes, it is important that we consistentlyacknowledge that any two people who choose to spend their livescommitted to one another are indeed a family. A couple who haschosen a childfree lifestyle and a single parent with childrenare just as much families as is a married couple who has givenbirth to six children. The reality is that adoption is a methodof joining a family, just as is birth. It is also a method offamily planning, as are birth control pills or abortion. Thoughadoption involves significant loss and the impact of adoptionmust be acknowledged consistently in helping a person who hasbeen adopted or one who has made an adoption plan to assimilatethis issue positively, adoption should not be thought of as a"condition." In most articles or situations not centeringon adoption (for example, during an introduction, in a news orfeature story or an obituary about a business person or a celebrity)it is inappropriate to refer to the adoption at all. (An exceptionmay be in an arrival announcement.)
When it is appropriate to refer to the fact of adoption, it iscorrect to say "Kathy was adopted," (referring to theway in which she arrived in her family in the past tense.) Phrasingit in the present tense "Kathy is adopted" implies thatadoption is a disabling condition coloring all facets of one'slife.
Those who conceive and give birth to a child are his birthparents:his birthmother and birthfather. All of us have birthparents,however not all of us live in the care of our birthparents. Thosewho raise and nurture a child are his parents: his mother, father,mommy, daddy, etc. In describing family relationships involvingadoption it is best to AVOID such terms as real parent, real mother,real father, real family, terms which imply that adoptive relationshipsare artificial and tentative as well as terms such as naturalparent and natural child, terms which imply that in not beinggenetically linked we are less than whole or that our relationshipsare less important than are relationships by birth. Similarly,when conscientiously using PAL, one would never refer to a birthchild as one of your own, which describes children as chatteland intimates that genetic relationship is stronger and more enduringthan are adoptive relationships. In describing the decision-makingprocess birthparents go through in considering adoption as anoption for an untimely pregnancy, it is preferred to use termswhich acknowledge them to be responsible and in control of theirown decisions. In the past, it is true, birthparents often hadlittle choice about the outcome of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy.In earlier times they did indeed surrender, relinquish, give upand even sometimes abandon their children. These emotion-ladenterms, conjuring up images of babies torn from the arms of unwillingparents, are rarely valid any longer except in those cases inwhich a birthparent's rights are involuntarily terminated by courtaction after abuse or neglect.
In an age of increasing acceptance of out-of-wedlock pregnancyand single parenthood, today's birthparents are generally wellcounseled and well informed about their options, and using PositiveAdoption Language acknowledges this reality. Increasingly, asagencies take on the role of facilitator and mediator rather thanlifter-of-burdens and grantor-of-children, the phrase place foradoption is also being questioned. The preferred PAL terms todescribe birthparents' adoption decisions are make an adoptionplan or choose adoption ("Linda chose adoption for her baby.")Conversely, well counseled birthparents who do not choose adoptiondo not keep their babies (children are not possessions) but insteadchoose to parent them ("After considering her options, Pauladecided to parent her child herself.")
The process by which families prepare themselves to become parentsis often referred to as a homestudy. This term carries with itan old view of the process as a weeding out or judgment. Today,more and more agencies are coming to view their role as less God-likeand more facilitative. The preferred positive term, then, is parentpreparation, a process whereby agency and prospective adopterscome to know one another and work toward expanding a family. Asboth sets of parents consider the ways in which they may planan adoption their choices include retaining their privacy in atraditional or confidential (not closed) adoption or they mayopt to have varying degrees of ongoing contact between birthparentsand adopters in a process commonly known as open adoption.
Some adopters parent children born outside the U.S. in a styleof adoption positively referred to as international adoption.The older term foreign has negative connotations in other uses("The whole idea is foreign to me!" or "I don'tlike it. It seems so foreign") and so is now discouraged.Similarly, adopters who choose to parent one or more older children,sibling groups, or children facing physical or emotional or mentalchallenges are said to be parenting children with special needsor waiting children, terms seen as potentially less damaging tothe self esteem of these children than the older term hard-to-place.
Sometimes children don't move directly from their birthfamiliesto their adoptive families. Substitute care has long been calledfoster care, and, while this term remains in common use, manychild advocates are suggesting that the replacement terms interimcare or temporary care reinforce the need to use substitute caresparingly and as a short term process for children, who need anddeserve to grow up in permanent family relationships whether withtheir birthfamilies or in adoption.
While adoption is not a disability, it is a life-long process.Frequently news stories refer to reunions between people who arerelated genetically but have not been raised in the same family.In most such instances these encounters do not carry with themthe full spectrum of shared experience that the usual use of theterm reunion implies. While children adopted at an older age mayindeed experience a reunion, most adoptees join their familiesas infants, and as such they have no common store of memoriesor experience such as are traditionally shared in a reunion. Themore objective description for a meeting between a child and thebirthparents who planned his adoption is the term, meeting which neither boosts unrealistic expectations for the event nor implies a competition between birthparents and adoptive parents.
This short poem by Rita Laws first seen in OURS: The Magazineof Adoptive Families attempts to point out humorously the impactof negative language in adoption...
Four Adoption Terms Defined
Natural child: any child who is not artificial.
Real parent: any parent who is not imaginary.
Your own child: any child who is not someone else's child.
Adopted child: a natural child, with a real parent, who is allmy own.
Positive Adoption Language, however, is serious business. Justas in advertising we choose our words carefully to portray a positiveimage of the product we endorse (selling Mustangs rather thanTortoises, New Yorkers rather than Podunkers), and in politicswe take great care to use terminology seen positively by the classor group of people it describes, those of us who feel that adoptionis a beautiful and healthy way to form a family and a responsibleand respectable alternative to other forms of family planning,ask that you carefully consider the impact of the language youuse when speaking about those of us who are touched by adoption!
Patricia Irwin Johnston, M.S., is an infertility and adoptioneducator author and publisher providing workshops for consumersand professionals throughout the world. She may be contacted atPerspectives Press, P.O. Box 90318, Indianapolis IN 46290 andshe expects to have an email address starting in August of 1995.This article is printed with permission of the author.
Send comments and suggestions about the photolisting to:annette@precious.org
Return to the main page of the photolisting.