It makes me cringe. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And then I actually start giggling. When adoptive parents refer to their child's birth mother as "our birth mother," I just can't get past the usual impossibility of it. Take our situation as an example.

D is four years older than me. J is some years older than that; we usually refer to him as old as an inside joke. I'm pretty sure, understanding biology, that it would have been impossible for me to give birth to either J or D and subsequently sign over my parental rights before I was ever born.

Most adoptive parents don't mean it to be demeaning. One can assume that, for some, it's a means of shortening "our daughter's birth mother" when typing online. We're a fast-paced society and abbreviating is a way to save time. However, many birth mothers not only find it irritating but demeaning as well.

I know, I know, another language discussion as we delve into adoption semantics. However, I encourage you to step back for a moment and view it through the eyes of the birth parent(s) in question. If you say, in describing them, "our birth mother," you have just completely removed the connection and relationship that the birth parent has with his/her child and thus placed the determiner on yourself. While many birth parents, including myself, do have a relationship with the adoptive parents, it is not the same nor should it be assumed to be as such. It's true that the commitment should be to both parties (and backwards in the same way) but to totally remove the connection that a birth parent has to or with the child is disheartening, demeaning and completely unnecessary.

It also smacks of ownership and/or a sense of authority over someone else. Birth parents do not belong to the adoptive parents nor should they be made the feel as though they are "less than" by association. Regarding a birth parent as an equal (to an adoptive parent) in terms of respect (not in parenting responsibility) could help alleviate a lot of problems with communication. In the words of James L. Gritter, whose book we are looking at it, open adoption functions best "on the premise that adoptive parents and birth parents draw equally from the same wonderful yet flawed well of human nature." We're different, for sure, but we're similar as well. I'm not less than you because of my title. I am not more than you because of my title.

Basically, it just sounds tacky. It doesn't add an immense amount of syllables to add "daughter's" or "son's" between the two words. It's not a huge amount of extra letters to type. And, in the end, it shows respect for the connection that exists instead of completely removing it.

Seems simple to me.

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For more, read:

1. Can We Assign Our Own Titles, Please?

2. What To Call Us.

3. When To Use the Term Birth Mother.

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