Politically Correct Adoption Language

Being a faithful reader of adoption forums can be both good and bad. For example, I was very bummed on Friday when I found out we were still on the 2nd reviewer's desk and over the weekend I read a post from a family that got out of PGN after 3 weeks. While I was very happy that this family didn't have to suffer a longer wait in PGN, I found myself very jealous of them. As a result, I was in a funk all weekend.

However, the nice thing about reading the forums is that many times it brings up good, thought-provoking discussion and that happened today. As a result, I decided I needed to write a blog post on the topic of politically correct adoption language in an attempt to educate others in the same way I've been educated over the last year.

Granted, this is a huge topic and I'm certainly not going to claim to be an expert, nor am I going to try to cover every possible term. Instead I'm going to discuss the topic of "real parent" as I have some recent first hand experience.

About a month ago I had one of our nieces and my friend's daughter here. The girls had met a few months earlier when my friend and I took them out shopping and to lunch with us and the girls very quickly became good friends. Because my friend and her husband were in Guatemala picking up their son during this time and because their daughter is also an adoptee, adoption was on everyone's mind at this moment. Since most children are naturally curious about things, our niece asks her friend, "where are your real parents?" Okay, I certainly couldn't allow this moment to pass and I'm not quite sure how this question was being taken, so the dialogue began. I immediately explained that my friends are her real parents and what started out as an uncomfortable moment turned into a great learning experience for all of us.

However, as I think back over my many years of life, I realize that this very question has probably come out of my mouth on more than one occasion. Not because I was trying to be mean or hurtful, but because I didn't understand there was more appropriate terminology that should be used.

So, here are my thoughts on the topic of real parents.

Biological parents are those who physically gave us life, but our real parents are those that chose to take our lives and provide us with love, nurturing, discipline, education, etc., etc. It really doesn't matter if someone becomes a real parent through biological means or through adoption, when we are given the opportunity to become a real parent, we are given the ultimate gift in life.

I feel very blessed that I'm being given another chance to become a real parent and the icing on the cake is that I'm being given the opportunity to become Liliana's real parent.