I get all the way to the bottom of the thread and bam, my thought gets stolen.
At the very least, even if the OP isn’t necessarily against adoption, I’m surprised she seems to put the act of childbirth on such a pedestal.
I hereby choose to henceforth call lamp-posts “mom” and bus-stop shelters “dad”, just to screw with the OP.
Look, my mother gave birth to me and all that jazz. I also pretty much wrecked her life by being born. She loved me, I think, but I know in her heart she wishes I was never born.
My father? Didn’t even want to see me, once he found out I was a girl. As far as I know he’s never seen me.
My adoptive parents had a lot of problems and really were not good parents. Love was lacking. But they put a roof over my head and fed me and clothed me and better even brought me to the States.
Sometimes I don’t think any of them really deserve the title “Mom” or “Dad” but if I had to make a choice there’s no choice, really.
And there’s more to it than that. At 34 I can look dispassionately back at my life and say, I don’t really have parents, per se. At 4? I desperately needed someone to call Mom and Dad. It’s as much for the kids as it is for the parents.
IME it is not so much about maintain a fiction as about preserving privacy when most of the world has no need to know how the kids came to be related to the parents.
My older siblings were both adopted. This was never kept from them, or family or friends… not that it tended to come up. If a different term were used for adoptive parents, it would ALWAYS come up. Sadly, there are still people (the OP perhaps?) that attach a negative stigma to adoption. Using “Mom” and “Dad” keeps information that is none of their fucking business from such people. If this annoys them, so much the better.
Where it really seems to come up, and matter, is “family history” type questions from doctors. There is very good reason that my brother’s doc needs to know that there is no reason at all to think I’d be a match as a (partial) liver donor.
I certainly don’t put childbirth on a pedestal. I find it a rather irresponsible decision for many people. It’s mostly a question of why such terminology is so important to so many people that they make it the be all of a relationship between a child they claim to love. I’ve certainly paid plenty of bills for nephews, nieces, and cousins, but it never occurred to me that I should require them to call me mother. In fact, I would be very worried that they were suffering from some sort of delusion if they did.
You lost me. How is paying bills related to all this, again?
So, some people are using words in a way that makes the OP uncomfortable?
Let me guess, you’re an adopter. Based on your description of parenting (does the raising, changes the diapers, is there for the milestones, shaped the child into the person they are today, etc.) a great many “parents” are actually Latin American maids rather than the people whose names are listed on the birth certificates. Though you are correct that a blood relationship has nothing whatsoever to do with that. $7.50 an hour however is the tie that binds. The client’s ability to to be “the single most important person in the child’s upbringing” appears to me far from good thing and I’m not sure what the client “achievements” could be said to be other than make a person who did love her actively dislike her. Lately, the client has been blathering to me that if this young woman (whom she claims she loves) actually tries to find her biological parents, the client is going to stop paying her college expenses. I usually don’t get that involved with other people’s lives when they are not family, but really this client honestly makes me sick. I can contact the young woman and tell her about the mental state of the client. My advice for the young woman would be to lie as much as she must until she gets her degree or has somesort of safety net in the world then let her emotions lead her.
Several adopters seem to feel that because they support a child they should be called a parent.
Until you provide evidence that some culture, somewhere, has actually insisted that adopted children refer to their adoptive parents in a manner different than birth children address their parents, you are simply railing against the way that language has been employed across multiple societies. Language follows its own path, so there is clearly no overt effort to “lie” about a situation. (Even if you found some society where the distinction was enforced, you would still find that a vast majority of societies have not made such a distinction which should be a pretty clerar indicator that you just have a skewed view of the world.)
How is referring to an adopted parent as Mom or Dad not the same as what you addressed above? After all, in your examples the terms of address used aren’t technically correct. Calling the woman who raised you “Aunt”, if she isn’t actually your parent’s sister, is even further from the literal truth than calling her Mom.
I say this since Aunt carries absolutely no implications about the type of relationship that exists. I have actual Aunts who I wouldn’t recognize if I bumped into them. If I refer to a woman as Mom, it carries certain implications.
How about the terms Mom and Dad for step-parents? When I married my current wife, my son from my previous marriage called her by her first name and eventually transitioned to Mom. Should he not have done that in order not to obfuscate the relationship?
There are adoptive parents here who said that financially supporting the child is what makes them a parent? Where?
NO. And if you continue to hold this disingenuous position, I will begin to think that you are not here for a seious discussion.
Many people feel that when they bring a child into their home as their own–the meaning of the word adopt–providing support, but also love, caring, discipline, nurturing, affection, play, healing, and everything else that one provides for one’s birth children, then the child should be allowed to respond to the parent (adoptive or birth) in the same way that any child born to them would respond to a parent.
You are setting up arbitrary boundaries that most people do not employ and then expecting us to defend ourselves against your charges of not respecting boundaries.
So, basically, because you have one emotionally distraught person with whom you are interacting, you want to go out and declare that the pretty much universal forms of address should be abandoned?
ZPG Zealot, in another thread you said that all the adopted people you’ve met have been screwed up beyond belief. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11972923&postcount=240
Call me crazy, but considering that you are a fortune teller and these folks are coming to you for advice, you may want to take into account that your sample is somewhat skewed towards people who have serious problems, which aren’t necessarily caused by adoption. There are plenty of well-adjusted people who are adopted, but most of them probably aren’t looking to a psychic to help solve their problems.
Well, it does make it more difficult to figure out what the actual relationship between the adult and the child is.
It is far from universal to address people that did not give birth to you as, mother.
The actual relationship is PARENTAL.
Why are you so obsessed with knowing bloodlines?
We adopted our daughter through the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services foster care program. The birth mother was a mess: sexually abused by her step-father, eventually moved back in with him and her mother where he proceeds to abuse her daughter! That daughter and a son are taken from her and adopted by non-family members. She has two more kids that are taken away for neglect and adopted by non-family members. Then she got pregnant with our daughter and had her taken away shortly after her birth.
We entered in to the foster program looking to adopt. During the process we had to maintain parental visits with the birth mother (the father was nowhere to be found) and she had to undergo “parenting classes” and have an assessment done of her ability to provide proper child care. Her evaluation said (and this is a direct quote from one of the psychologists) that “she doesn’t have the ability or emotional wherewithal to nurture a houseplant, let alone a child.” Her rights were terminated and we were able to finalize the adoption.
Shortly afterwards, she got pregnant again! That baby was taken from her at the hospital. We would have been the first ones they would have called but we were not able to handle another baby at that time. Fortunately, our close friends were looking to adopt and were able to take that little girl home.
What does all this mean? Well, our daughter has always known that she was adopted. She understands that she grew in another lady’s tummy (hey, she’s just turned 9) but that lady wasn’t able to take care of her so she came to us. She loves when we tell her the story about how she came to us. She knows that she has three special days: her birthday, the day she came to us and the day we finalized the adoption. She also knows that she has a sister living at our friend’s house. She knows that if she is ever interested in meeting the lady that we will help her.
Above all, she knows that we are her mom and dad. Anyone can be a father or mother. It takes a special person to be a mom or dad. We have this poem on her bedroom wall. You’ve probably heard it a million times but it is still relevant:
My heart goes out to all of you that never knew the love of a mom and/or dad. I hope that, if you never received the love and nurturing you needed as a child, you were able to get the help you needed as an adult to deal with the pain of rejection.
But above all, ** ZPG Zealot**, please do not try to “counsel” someone about parenting when you obviously have an extremely negative view of children and child-rearing. Your bias is not the norm and could be extremely harmful to people in conflict. They need to speak with professionals who have studied and practiced psychology, specifically in aspects regarding adoption issues.
More difficult for whom?
You?
Why should anyone care what’s difficult for you?