I was having a discussion earlier with my friend Bonnie. She’s a parent through International Adoption and an advocate for ethical adoption practices. Obviously I’m not a parent through International Adoption but since I’m an advocate for ethical adoption as well, we get along and each value the opinions of the other. She asked me if I’d ever heard any adoptive parent or hopeful adoptive parent via domestic adoption use the term “orphan” to describe the child they adopted or are interested in adopting. I haven’t heard that term used and frankly the idea caused me to feel physically ill.
It is my opinion that unless the hopeful adoptive parent(s) are truly intending to adopt a child that has no identified biological parents, that term should not be used at all. Perhaps I should make myself clearer. The term “orphan” applies if the child’s mother dies in childbirth (or shortly thereafter) and no additional biological relatives are known. The term also applies if the child is left at a “safe haven” (such as a fire station) and after a thorough search no biological relatives are found.
I can’t say that I even want that term to be used in those circumstances, however. The problem that I have is that it has the potential to feed into the industry stereotype that all adoptive parents are saviors. I’m not saying here that I think all adoptive parents agree with the stereotype. I do think the more this stereotype is perpetrated the more adoptive parents will start to think of themselves that way. I also think that religious adoption agencies in general help to feed this stereotype. Because they focus on the fact that the hopeful adoptive parents that use those agencies tend to believe “God has called them to adopt”, it’s easy for those parents to take on the role of “savior.” I’m not painting Christians who want to adopt as evil beings. I believe their intentions are good in most, if not all, cases. However, I don’t believe that any adoptive parent or parents is a savior simply because they may be more prepared for parenting than someone who finds themselves confronting an unplanned pregnancy. As much as I love T & C, they didn’t save my daughter, nor was she an orphan or unwanted. Unplanned doesn’t equal unwanted.
The other hazard with using the term “orphan” for a child that is relinquished to adoption is that it feeds into another stereotype. It feeds into the stereotype that all mothers who relinquish their children are abandoning their kids. I didn’t abandon Mack, nor do I ever have the intention to do so. Again, I realize that there are mothers who make the choice to abandon their kids in favor of drugs or other choices. However, a woman who carefully and agonizingly makes the decision to choose adoption is not abandoning her child.
Unintentionally or not, the orphan stereotype may have been started by Georgia Tann when she asked for legislation to seal original birth certificates of infants born and then relinquished to adoption. When I relinquished my daughter, I didn’t relinquish directly to her parents. Due to state laws that I believe are in force regardless of the state, I relinquished my parental rights to the state. At that point the state signed over their rights to her parents. Even though she was in the legal custody of her parents before the adoption was finalized, you could say that Mack was a ward of the state, or an orphan.
I really detest that concept. I didn’t relinquish my rights to make my daughter an orphan. I relinquished my rights to add to her parentage. She has wonderful adoptive parents, but Nick and I are still her biological mother and father. We didn’t abandon her, nor did we want to do so. There might be mothers out there who claim to not love or care about their children, but I don’t know a single birth mom that doesn’t love her child and think about him or her every single day.
I have a hard time believing that mothers internationally who are forced to give up their babies due to societal rules or other considerations don’t think of their kids with love at least occasionally. If a child has no biological family because of famine, AIDS, or other health causes I don’t really have an issue with the use of “orphan.” But if a child has biological family somewhere then that child still has biological family. That family may know about the child and intentionally have abandoned that child. But I’d almost rather call a child “abandoned” rather than call that same child by the term “orphan.”
I realize that my bias as a birth mom is heavily influencing this post. I can’t say that my bias and experience as a birth mom doesn’t influence every post. However, I associate the “orphan” term with abandonment and my hackles go up at any implication that I or any of the other birth moms I know abandoned our children.