Adoption terminology

Years ago, I wrote an article for a publication that I won’t name. It was deeply personal and focused on my budding relationship with my birth mother. I was adopted in 1982, and my brother tracked me down in 2013. Over the next couple of years I reunited with other relatives, including my mother. Understandably, this was probably the most raw and difficult of all the relationships. She was deeply hurt and traumatized by what had happened to her, and we both had expectations that were perhaps unrealistic. But we persevered, and our tentative relationship eventually blossomed. Writing about it and reflecting on it was difficult, but it was an experience I wanted to share. The initial response was positive: 

“I think this is great!” effused the person who had commissioned it. “There’s just one thing: we prefer the term “birth mother”, so can you amend this?” 

I’m aware the term “birth mother” is probably the most commonly used term when discussing adoptions, and I use it myself quite often. However, this article was not about any “birth mother”, but about mine. Writing it, the term “birth mother” felt anonymous and transactional. It smacked, at that time, of the Handmaid’s Tale: someone who had been there merely to provide a baby for someone else. This didn’t feel right in this context, where I was writing about a real, beautiful, complicated, flawed, loving human being, who had a name. So instead I had used the term “natural mother”, which sounded somehow warmer, while being still entirely accurate. 

But he persisted. 

“The problem is,” he explained, “The term “natural mother” is likely to alienate adoptive parents as it implies they are unnatural.” 

I have heard this argument before in response to people who use the term “real mum” - that it implies that adoptive parents are only pretend. “Real mum” is a term that I, personally, don’t like as an adoptee, and would not choose to use myself, but I know many people who do. For some adoptees, this absolutely feels like the most appropriate term to use, so they should be allowed to do so. I also don’t use the term “first family”, because I was adopted at a young age and so to use the term about people I didn’t live with feels disingenuous, but for many it’s both an accurate and empowering description. And so on my use of the term “natural mother”, I dug my heels in. Revisiting the email exchange in order to write this, I am quite pleased with my response.   

“I DO use the phrase “natural mum”, because, from a purely factual point of view, this is linguistically correct,” I explained in my reply. (I have a degree in English and Linguistics, so he had inadvertently picked a fight with the wrong person.) “As far as biology is concerned, I have her genes; she gave birth to me, and my adoptive mum did not. To imply my adoptive mum is my “natural” mum is disingenuous, as she became my mum through a careful and painstaking process, and not an accident of biology. I do find the idea that I cannot use a particular word about one very important and vulnerable person in my life because it might upset a stranger quite troubling. Birth mums often feel forgotten in the adoption equation, and often they are the most vulnerable people of all.”  

I hadn’t even felt particularly strongly about it when I was writing the article. “Natural” just felt like a softer word, so I used it. But having my language choices questioned made me think about it in more detail. My reply - complete with capital letters for emphasis - summed up the frustrations so often felt by adoptive people over others’ reactions to the language we choose to use.

Adoptees are often - consciously or otherwise - trying to keep other people happy. We can be all too aware of the pain of others - the pain of the parent(s) who had to give us away, the pain our adoptive parents experienced in what is often a long journey towards having children. We are aware of the power of language - I’m sure I wasn’t the only adoptee who, as a teen, reached for the ultimate weapon in the form of the phrase “you’re not even my real mother!” (and regretted it).  

In more recent years I’ve settled on even more familiar terms as my relationships have grown. To differentiate, I now refer to my mum and dad when referring to my adoptive parents, and mother and father when talking about my birth parents. For me, these are all familiar, positive and accurate, but reflect that I still have a much closer bond with my adoptive parents, the people I grew up calling Mum and Dad.

Just as some people refer to their parents by their given names, or as Mummy and Daddy, just as Americans say Mom rather than Mum, the terms we use are personal to us, and they can change over time. Questioning the language choices of adoptees might seem innocuous, but doing so takes some of our autonomy away. If you refer to my mother as my “real mum”, I might correct you and explain this is not the term I choose to use. If you refer to your own mother as your real mum, I will smile and try to remember to use the same term when discussing her with you. Adoptees often feel that the power sits with other people. If we at the very least have the power to tell our own story, in our own words, this can have a positive impact on our experience as a whole.