Explanatory Notes
Jul. 16th, 2010 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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7rin_on_adoptionTurski, D. (2002) Why "Birthmother" means "Breeder" [online]. Available at: http://foundandlostsupport.com/birthmothermeansbreeder.html [Accessed 07 December 2010]
<Quote>
I had never heard the term "birthmother" until I reunited with my son. When the social worker who located me referred to me as his "birthmother," my first reaction was to instinctively recoil in distaste. What is a "birthmother?" It occurred to me that perhaps she had merely applied this ridiculous sounding term in an attempt at political correctness, so I ignored it. However, when my son's adoptive mother initiated her first contact with me she referred to him as my "birthson." What is a "birthson?" And what would a "birthfather" be - I didn't know that fathers gave birth! In a "birthfamily" are there also "birthsisters," "birthbrothers," "birthgrandparents," "birthaunts," "birthuncles," "birthcousins," "birthpets," etc?
Investigating, I learned that U.S. social workers had collaborated about 30 years ago to invent their own list of contrived terms to appease their adopting clients. Adopters no longer wanted anyone to use the original term "natural mothers." Why? Three reasons: 1) it indicated respect for the mother's true relationship to her child - she could not be written-off as a "convenient slut" whose only value was reproduction, 2) it recognized that the sacred mother/child relationship extended past birth and even past surrender, and 3) it implied that the adoptive mother's relationship to the child was unnatural.
The adoption industry didn't want adoption to be considered unnatural - they could lose customers this way! After all, people were paying good money for "a child of their own."
Adopters didn't want a reminder that the child they were adopting still had a loving parent somewhere else. After all, social workers had promised them a child "as if born to."
So social workers responded by creating a list of ridiculous "birth" terms meant to confine the mother's relationship with her child to simply giving birth, ending at that point. In other words, "birthmother" is simply a euphemism for "incubator" or "breeder."
Then, social workers deliberately disguised their disrespectful intent by calling it "Respectful Adoption Language." "Respectful" to adoptive parents, who are now to be called "parents," as if the two natural parents no longer exist.
<Quote>
Read the rest of the article over at the Why "Birthmother" means "Breeder" web-page.
Putting a child up for adoption? @ http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100910110801AALw7r3
As asked by H******:
"Where did this term originate?
"Putting a child up for adoption"
Put up where?"
... and answered by gypsywinter (amongst others):
"Well people and children have been "put up" for sale and slavery for quite awhile in this country. Slaves were 'put up' on platforms to be viewed by white people who had the cash to purchase human beings. Foster care kids have had their 'pictures' "put up" in a Picture Gallery within shopping malls to entice the general public to become a foster parent or to adopt. And then there were your Orphan Train children who were "put up" on platforms along the train route. Many of these children not even true orphans."
Read the rest of the answers (and investigate the links) over at the Putting a child up for adoption? Y!A question page.
<Quote>
I had never heard the term "birthmother" until I reunited with my son. When the social worker who located me referred to me as his "birthmother," my first reaction was to instinctively recoil in distaste. What is a "birthmother?" It occurred to me that perhaps she had merely applied this ridiculous sounding term in an attempt at political correctness, so I ignored it. However, when my son's adoptive mother initiated her first contact with me she referred to him as my "birthson." What is a "birthson?" And what would a "birthfather" be - I didn't know that fathers gave birth! In a "birthfamily" are there also "birthsisters," "birthbrothers," "birthgrandparents," "birthaunts," "birthuncles," "birthcousins," "birthpets," etc?
Investigating, I learned that U.S. social workers had collaborated about 30 years ago to invent their own list of contrived terms to appease their adopting clients. Adopters no longer wanted anyone to use the original term "natural mothers." Why? Three reasons: 1) it indicated respect for the mother's true relationship to her child - she could not be written-off as a "convenient slut" whose only value was reproduction, 2) it recognized that the sacred mother/child relationship extended past birth and even past surrender, and 3) it implied that the adoptive mother's relationship to the child was unnatural.
The adoption industry didn't want adoption to be considered unnatural - they could lose customers this way! After all, people were paying good money for "a child of their own."
Adopters didn't want a reminder that the child they were adopting still had a loving parent somewhere else. After all, social workers had promised them a child "as if born to."
So social workers responded by creating a list of ridiculous "birth" terms meant to confine the mother's relationship with her child to simply giving birth, ending at that point. In other words, "birthmother" is simply a euphemism for "incubator" or "breeder."
Then, social workers deliberately disguised their disrespectful intent by calling it "Respectful Adoption Language." "Respectful" to adoptive parents, who are now to be called "parents," as if the two natural parents no longer exist.
<Quote>
Read the rest of the article over at the Why "Birthmother" means "Breeder" web-page.
Putting a child up for adoption? @ http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100910110801AALw7r3
As asked by H******:
"Where did this term originate?
"Putting a child up for adoption"
Put up where?"
... and answered by gypsywinter (amongst others):
"Well people and children have been "put up" for sale and slavery for quite awhile in this country. Slaves were 'put up' on platforms to be viewed by white people who had the cash to purchase human beings. Foster care kids have had their 'pictures' "put up" in a Picture Gallery within shopping malls to entice the general public to become a foster parent or to adopt. And then there were your Orphan Train children who were "put up" on platforms along the train route. Many of these children not even true orphans."
Read the rest of the answers (and investigate the links) over at the Putting a child up for adoption? Y!A question page.