Tuesday, February 16, 2010
pet peeve
I may have many pet peeves in the world of adoption, but one thing that really really bothers me is when a pregnant woman is called a birth mom. She is NOT a birth mom, she is an expectant mother that is looking at adoption as an option so please don't slap that label on her---can you say subtle coercion?
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4 comments:
I really agree with you on this one. I think they should never be called birthmom's until after the TPR's are signed. Also, they should be reminded from time to time that nothing is final and they can choose to parent their child. I think it's kind of like if I over and over tell someone that they are ugly after a while there is a good chance that you will think you are ugly. Thanks for blogging about this.
I truely think with alot of people it is a lack of knowledge, but I do think the higher ups in the industry that know better should start the trickle down trend to stop it, and the first step would be to stop the dear birthparent letters for pre-birth matching
Our social worker is very guilty of doing this, but to be fair to her she mainly deals with children in foster care where parental rights have already been terminated involuntarily. As we are hoping to adopt through the US domestic system, I tend to refer to them as "potential birth parents" - they are both "potentially going to be parents" and "potentially going to be birth parents" I suppose - as I think she'd be a bit thrown by "expectant parents" as it's not a very common term here.
(though I think I do remember saying things like "if an expectant mother contacts an agency..." where the context is a bit clearer - if I said "expectant parents interested in adoption" then she might think that meant either us OR the pregnant mother...)
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