Time to rethink words we use about adoption

Certain child-rearing subjects hit huge nerves, one such subject being adoption. I opined in a recent column that it is unwise for parents to make a child's adoption a centerpiece of his or her life, to do what most adoption professionals recommend and refer to it regularly. (I am also generally opposed to "open" adoption, which I think would be more accurately termed tentative non-kinship custody, but that's another column and yet another controversy.)

Needless to say, I received a good amount of mail from both adoptive and so-called "biological" parents, as well as adults who were adopted as children.

Surprisingly, most people agreed with me. Those who did not tended to disagree with a vengeance, or great drama, or both.

One e-mail message was especially interesting. It came from a mother who has adopted two children and agrees with me that adoption should be no "big deal." It is, she said, simply one way of building a family.

In subsequent correspondence, this very eloquent mom (who obviously possesses a good sense of humor) identified incorrect adoption terminology, most of which I was guilty of using. For example, children are not "given up for adoption." They are not objects to be given. Women (and, less often, men) make adoption plans or choose adoption. Likewise, my new pen pal maintains that women do not "keep" their babies -- they accept responsibility for them -- and that "foreign adoptions" are not strange at all. The term "international adoption" avoids the implication that something peculiar has taken place.

I've always been slightly uncomfortable with the terms "real parents," "natural parents" and "biological parents" but never took the time to figure out the correct alternative. My correspondent points out that she is a very real, as opposed to imaginary, biological life form. As for "natural," she writes, "I am very natural, if not sometimes supernatural for putting up with the [societal prejudice attached to adoptive parents]." She maintains that an adopted child has one and only one set of parents. I agree and would add that tentative non-kinship custody arrangements confuse this fact for all concerned. They are "open" in the sense that they leave open the question "Who are this child's parents?" (Keep those letters and e-mail messages coming, folks!)

As for the unwitting unseemly question, "Is (that child) your own?" I take it the adoptive parent should answer "Most definitely, although I do not own him/her, but if you are asking whether or not my (sperm, ovum) contributed to (child's) genotype, then the answer is no; my spouse and I became (child's) very real and responsible parents through adoption." That ought to shake 'em up a bit.

In our e-mail exchange, I had expressed my view on so-called "open" adoption, and said adoptive mom agreed. "The [person or persons who contributed directly to the child's genotype] need to move on," she writes, adding that in these truly foreign situations, it is often the so-called "biological" grandparents who create the most problems. Even absent that influence, "open" adoptions put the adoption at center stage and often interfere with the formation of family in the truest sense of the term. My professional experience compels me to agree with all of that. I have been a witness to a good number of "open" adoption situations in which a child reaches his or her early adolescence, with its oft-attendant drama, and decides that the adoptive parents are the cause of his/her angst and that all would be well if he/she could only live with his/her "real" parent(s). The ensuing chaos and heartache/break are in no one's best interest. If, having reached adulthood, an adopted child wants to investigate his/her biological origins, fine, but that should be done with utmost respect for the right to privacy of his/her "biological" parents, which is where objective third parties come in to the picture.

All in all, a most interesting subject that only promises, in the Age of Oprah, to become even more so.

(Family psychologist John Rosemond answers parents' questions on his Web site at www.rosemond.com.)