In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
Hubert H. Humphrey

There was a huge discussion on Claud’s blog about the term birthparent and where it came from. One of the discrepancies was that birth parent (two words) and birthparent (one word) actually came from two different places. The two-word version was used mainly by the agecies and seems to be attributed to Pearl S Buck where as the one word version is attributed to Lee Campbell, the founder of CUB, however it was based on the two word version and joined up to make the acronym work. (Since Claud wrote it up so well, you can go read her entry on the details of this.)

Anyway, there are still some huge arguments about it and I didn’t get them at first. The term birthparents seems to bring out an anger in some as a epithet that denotes a worthlessness or as degrading. I get that with the two word version since it splits the names from each other but I don’t get the oneword version.

To me, as an adoptee, it denotes my origins, from this person I came into being and from this person my past flows. (Whether they share it with me or not.) This person is my beginning because without someone to give birth to me, I would not exist.

Webster’s defines birth as:

1 a : the emergence of a new individual from the body of its parent b : the act or process of bringing forth young from the womb

Using that, I guess that birth and parent are a bit redundant since birth means “from a parent” so to speak. Next, I decided to look up parent:

1 a : one that begets or brings forth offspring b : a person who brings up and cares for another

Okay, I can see where definition “b” may bring up some issues with defining birthparent although many birthparents I have talked to care a great deal for their children, whether they gave them up willingly or not, or even whether they can or want contact with them or not. So despite the first part of b, it still works.

So what are the other feelings that come thru? I have seen some equate birthparent to mean they were a breeder or just a vessel for a commodity. Others say it doesn’t give enough importance to the position they hold. Still others say it is a term given by agencies or adoptive parents and so it isn’t “their” term. Then there is the group who doesn’t seem to mind the term.

Words can hurt, but it’s only our own reactions to those words that truly hurt. Labels are the same way. Bastard Nation took the epithet bastard and made it their own. We took Chosen Babies and made it our own as a group, not as the simple platitude of the agencies or uneducated masses but as a demand to control it and make it ours. It hurts when my son says I am mean because I put him on a time-out but it’s my reaction to his comment, not the comment itself but I get how hard it can be to curb the initial reaction to words and labels.

During the course of my conversation with Lee, we got to talking a bit more about this word birthparent. She commented that maybe it is time to come up with a different term. When I asked her what she thought, she replied that she would call them what they want to be called.Thinking about that, I realized that while I still don’t understand the argument against birthparent and it’s derivatives, I can’t really be part of the argument. Only those who are in it can argue it and decide what they want to be called.

So what do you call a group of people who all want to be called something different without offending them but still getting your point across? I don’t ask this in a sarcastic or belittling tone but to truy try to understand. We have the choices of “Natural” and “First” tossed around but they offend as well. There can be such a sense of an “us against them” within the plane that it is hard to decide which is an honest/considered reaction and which is a gut/knee-jerk reaction to the the words/feelings/thoughts amongst the more out outspoken of us out there. (Yep, I am including myself in this group because I freely admit some of my reactions have been knee-jerk. However, I am going to plead the 5th and let you figure out where and when, partly because I don’t usually go back and read my own posts.) I hate the thought that some adoptee out there is scared off when they mention the word birthparent and are rebuked because of it, or the birthparent who decides to come out and is turned away because of the arguments, or the adoptive parent who decides to try to understand who is attacked because of their position. Several have posted that there has to be a better word we can use so what can you come up with?

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