"Natural mother?" or "Birthmother?"

I have occasionally spoken with Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh, a mother who relinquished her baby.  She is fighting to use the term “natural mother” instead of “birthmother” for a woman is such a situation.  Apparently, there are many women who feel this way even though I have talked to very few.  Even those few say, “It makes the adoptive mother sound ‘unnatural’ and that is not good either.”  I leave this to you readers.  Please respond, anonymously if you like.  Here is Karen’s letter.  Check out her web site at http://www.babyscoopera.com/

"Natural mother" was the industry standard until the late 70s and into the 80s. There are reasons why the "birth" prefix is used today. It emotionally distances us from our children and them from us. That aids the agenda of the adoption industry which pulls in over $1.5 BILLION every year.

If one must distinguish, saying "exiled mother" is accurate and preferable to any other.  "Mother," of course is the MOST accurate because women who give birth are mothers. If anyone needs a qualifier, it is the adoptive mother.

Please don't aid and abet the adoption industry agenda. It's really frightening how these people are trying to redefine reality.

Reality based terms are always the right ones.

Mothers are mothers.  People who adopt are "adoptive." When people object to the "natural mother" term, exiled mother works.

I don't know the mothers to whom you are referring who feel uncomfortable with the use of "natural mother," but the many, many mothers of adoption loss who I know are adamant about not being referred to as walking uteruses. We are not breeders.  The "birth mother" term must be dispensed with. It is highly offensive, inaccurate, oppressive and down-right wrong.

The reason I wrote is because you said you didn't want to be part of the problem.  Word injure and hurt. They are often times weapons used against the disenfranchised. Those living on the margins which is where the industry has banished exiled mothers to! We are now fighting for our voice and our rights. One of those rights, which was taken from us, along with our babies (i.e., our MOTHERhood), is labeling. Back during the Baby Scoop Era we were referring to (i.e., labeled) as "unwed mothers."  Today the industry has decided to change the labeling to "birth mother." This started with Pearl S. Buck in 1955 and then again in 1956. Marietta Spencer then took the reins of that term and ran with it. It was NOT coined by an exiled mother, as CUB claims. Buck adopted. Spencer was an adoption social worker. They apparently knew each other.

You may use any of my explanations in your blog if you'd like. I have the research to prove them.

Thank you!

BEST,
KarenWB


From Alice again.  I have not found anyone who wants to use "exiled mother."  Is there a term that can be used to unify everyone, such as "woman who gave me life" or WWGML?  Probably not, but there are so many factions with strong ideas that the entire system is fractured.  I am not implying that any of them are wrong!  We need unifying terminology for those trying to understand "what is broken" and "what needs to be fixed" with the adoption system.  Motherhood Silenced: The Experiences of Natural Mothers on Adoption Reunion


Until next time,
Alice

Getting Heard

I try to read a few of the blogs and web sites on adoption every night.  I always check Adoption Experience Workshop by adoptee, Joy Miller, since I know her.  Today's blog post has a great idea that is inexpensive and would let folks know there is another side to adoption and let adoptees and birthmothers know there are resources and emotional support for them.  She is advocating for putting short ads in the adoption section of newspapers with the ads seeking homes for babies or ads seeking babies for families.  Read what she has to say at  http://adoptionexperienceworkshop.blogspot.com/

I cannot improve on  Joy's suggestion, so until next time,
Alice
Search Amazon.com for adoptees and birthmothers

Unseen Connection

In the 12 or more years I have been trying to answer the question “why can’t adoptees just be content to have loving parents and a happy home?”  I have a better understanding of unseen forces now than I ever have.  I cannot see electricity, my voice on the phone wire, or how this computer can send things around the world, but I know it happens.  I cannot see what makes the tides come and go or what makes fish, birds, and animals migrate, but I know the “unseen” pull is powerful.  There are many other things that are powerful and unseen such as prayer, wind, sexual attraction, and love.

Why wouldn’t a baby who spent nine months growing and hearing a world from inside his or her mother not have a connection to her?  It seems like a no-brainer to me and has for a very long time, way before I began to understand the “need” to search for that connection when there was an early separation.  Just today I had that same old conversation about the adoptee being whiney and ungrateful.  I know I did not convince her that neither of those words applies to the situation.  Yes, she is an adoptive mother and feeling very threatened.  She is sure her teenage daughters have no thoughts of seeking that other person.  I happen to know that they are waiting until they are old enough to do their own search.  They love their mother and understand her insecurity.  (I may wish I had not written this if she ever reads it, but the girls said to go ahead.)

These girls (young women, if you will) have spent endless hours playing games about who their mother and father are since they are apparently unrelated.  They both recall when mom caught them “play-like other mothers” when they were really little.  One says, “Mom almost passed out when she realized what we were doing.  She was so hurt!  We never let her catch us again, but it was our favorite game---looking at people and trying to guess if they were related to us.”   They never intend to tell her when they search or when they find their “other family” because neither one would hurt her for the world, but both say they “have to, absolutely have to search.”

My question is-how could there not be a connection?  Share your thoughts.

Until next time,
Alice

Check out the Resource Links

Please check out the links at the side to educate yourself on the issues of adoption.  You will have more “food for thought” than you ever thought possible.  The web sites will introduce you to advocates for opening all adoption records so adopted adults can get their birth certificates and find out who they really are.  You will find out what the states are doing about such bills to do just that.  There are search registries to assist those searching for family separated by adoption.  If you are part of the adoption triad, you will find others suffering as you are and be able to make a connection.

In the meantime, I will keep trying to refine this blog.  Share the interesting items you find with us.  Tell me when I’ve gotten it all wrong.  I want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. 

Until next time,
Alice

Keeping my Promise

At the AAC Conference, I said I would help right a great injustice to the adoption triad, especially birthmothers and adoptees.  I am working on an article that I hope will be published in a major magazine.  I expect many of you have done that too.  On a smaller scale, Joy Miller, an adoptee, and I are co-hosting a public meeting at our local library on Sunday, April 25, 2010 to talk about what we learned at the AAC Conference.  I will be adding links to organizations on our attendee list.  Please be patient as I learn how to make the components of this blog do what I want them to do.  So far I have not mastered that.  It is somewhat like a cat that does as it pleases or nothing at all.  I will keep working at it!  Be sure to check Joy's blog, Adoption Experience Workshop.

I have learned that the estimated population of Missouri in 2009 was about 6 million, which is the estimated number of adoptees in the United States.  If there are a million and a half adoptees that cannot get their birth certificates, that is equal to Idaho's population. 

Until next time,
Alice