Creating a Positive Adoption Experience: Positive Adoption Language (PAL)
By Lily Spertus
If you are a woman experiencing an unplanned pregnancy and looking to understand how to give your baby up for adoption with adoption agencies in Colorado, you may benefit from using Positive Adoption Language (PAL). Adoption can bring on a wide variety of emotions and is complex for everyone involved, whether they be birth parents, adoptive parents, or adopted children. One way we can make this process easier is to change the way we think about adoption by changing the way we speak about it. By using Positive Adoption Language, we can make birth parents, adoptive families, and adopted children feel more empowered in their decision-making, more included, and more connected. In this article, we will aim to understand how to use Positive Adoption Language, why it helps everyone involved in adoption, and how to use it in our everyday lives.
Understanding Positive Adoption Language: an Introduction
Positive Adoption Language is a set of words and phrases to describe common components of the adoption process. These words and phrases promote respect and sensitivity for those involved in adoption. Essentially, Positive Adoption Language is used to lessen the stigma around adoption and therefore help make you as a birth mother, and everyone else involved, feel more comfortable and empowered when it comes to adoption. When using Positive Adoption Language, we replace outdated and less inclusive terminology with positive alternative language. When choosing to give your baby up for adoption, utilizing positive adoption language creates a more compassionate feel to the adoption journey, therefore being supportive of you and adoptive families.
Negative Adoption Language versus Positive Adoption Language
Negative adoption language can perpetuate stereotypes of adoption that are not necessarily true to your circumstances and make you feel negatively about your choice of adoption. Below are some examples of how you can replace terms that might have a negative connotation with Positive Adoption Language:
- Instead of using “real mother,” or “real father,” you might opt to say “birth mother” or “birth father. This also goes for “natural parent”—instead you might say “biological parent.” Additionally, you might choose to replace “natural/real/own child” with “birth/biological child.”
- Positive Adoption Language also works in reference to adoptive families, who might refer to themselves as “parents” rather than limiting themselves to “adoptive parents.” Adoptive parents should feel that their adopted children are an equal part of the family.
- As a birth mother, it can be harmful to think of your child as an “abandoned child” or “unwanted child.” Instead, think of your child as one that is “placed for adoption.”
- Positive Adoption Language is also helpful when referring to the action of adoption. Instead of saying “giving up/away for adoption,” you might say “creating an adoption plan,” or “choosing adoption.”
- Lastly, children who are adopted should not feel limited to labels—instead of saying someone “is adopted,” one might say someone “was adopted” since the adoption took place in the past.
These are just some examples of how you can incorporate Positive adoption Language into your day-to-day vocabulary. There are plenty of other ways to use inclusive language, so get creative!
Benefits of Using Positive Adoption Language for Birth Parents and Adoptive Families
Using Positive Adoption Language is beneficial to everyone involved in adoption. For birth parents, Positive Adoption Language should feel empowering. Positive Adoption Language recognizes the selflessness it takes to place your baby for adoption. It also reduces the stigma around being a birth parent, and should help you feel more supported by those around you. Lastly, as a birth parent, you are bound to feel a whirlwind of different emotions during your adoption journey.
Using Positive Adoption Language can help you feel more reassured in your decision and improve your emotional well-being. For adoptive families, Positive Adoption Language acknowledges the role of adoptive parents, and makes them feel the love and gratitude they will give to a child. Inclusive language is also helpful in creating a relationship between birth parents and adoptive parents in open adoptions. Adopted children will also feel positive about their identity as someone who has been adopted if those around them use Positive Adoption Language. Children deserve to feel like a full part of their families.
Tips for Using Positive Adoption Language in Everyday Adoption Conversations
- Think before you speak. Choose your words with other people in mind—it is important to think about how your language can affect other people. Adoption is something to be celebrated, not put down.
- Educate those around you. Help others change the way they think and speak about adoption. This will allow them to be supportive of your adoption journey and create a more inclusive community.
- Emphasize the love and care that goes into adoption. By utilizing Positive Adoption Language, you show yourself and others just how much goes into the adoption process.
- Listen to others in adoption conversations. Take in the language others use when speaking about adoption. Encourage them to use positive words, and guide them if they need help.
- Reflect on your own adoption experience. If you have a good experience with your adoption journey, help others have the same experience by supporting them with Positive Adoption Language.
The Role of Respectful and Inclusive Positive Adoption Language (PAL) in Conversations
People deserve to be respected throughout the entirety of the adoption journey. Open and respectful communication will help everyone feel better about adoption and more confident in their identities. Using Positive Adoption Language shows empathy and helps all parties feel valued and supported. Adoption Choices of Colorado is here to support you as you create your adoption plan. Adoption in Colorado Springs does not have to be daunting—using Positive Adoption Language can help this process feel less intimidating.
Stephanie joined the Adoption Choices family in 2014 as the Child Placement Supervisor. Her love for adoption began in first grade when she made friends with twins adopted from Vietnam. Her heart grew strong over the years for adopted children and ultimately led her to graduate school where she continued her focus to her dream of working in the adoption field. Stephanie earned a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Denver in 2001. Over the past 15 years, Stephanie has worked as a pregnancy counselor and as an adoptive parent counselor for foster care, international adoption and domestic adoption, writing hundreds of home studies for families, and helping build their forever families. Stephanie is married and has three boys ages 12, 9, and 5. Together with her family she enjoys riding bike, playing games, watching her three sons compete in their various sporting and musical activities and go on vacations.
Christy Ikeler, is our Executive Director and Birth Parent Director. Christy has been with Adoption Choices Team for 18 years, since opening the doors in 2002! Christy has a true passion for what she does and her true love is working with and helping each birth parent. Whether she is up all night on the phone talking with them, taking them to doctors appointments, out for their favorite treat, providing counseling or at the hospital during labor and delivery, Christy is very involved every step of the way. She has a contagious laugh and a spunky personality that our birth moms all can bond with and relate to. As an adoptive parent herself, adoption holds a very special place in her heart and she can relate on every level with both birth parents and adoptive parents. In her free time Christy loves spending time with her daughter, gardening, baking and taking vacations with her family. Christy is an excellent leader for our team at Adoption Choices and is truly one of a kind!! As Executive Director, Christy spends time with the staff, birth parents and adoptive families in order to ensure that the agency is running smoothly. She has placed a huge emphasis on community outreach and programs for birth parents. Christy loves the opportunity to lead the agency into a brighter future.
Ms. Mackenzie has built a successful counseling career over the past 20 years, supporting mothers and families, people of all ages and genders, students, community professionals and fellow clinicians. Liv values a diverse professional focus, including the entrepreneurial life of a sole proprietor, the evaluative process of certifying foster/adoptive homes, the insightful and mindful one-on-one one work with enthusiastic clients, and serving as an advocate for underserved populations. Liv is a Licensed Professional Counselor and holds a BA in Pre-Law and Economics from American University, an MA in Counseling from Adams University and a certificate in Human Resource Management from Villanova University. Away from work you will find Liv spending time in nature, biking to the farmer’s market and adventuring with her family.
Catherine A. Madsen, joined the Adoption Choices family as legal counsel in 2013. Catherine is responsible for providing legal guidance to the Agency, training and updating staff on developments in adoption law and legislation, and program development. Catherine
Virginia Frank is an adoption attorney accredited since 1991 with the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys. Ms. Frank is a leader in the field of private adoption and has completed over 4,000 adoptions in her career. Ms. Frank has a law degree from Oklahoma City University and a BA in both Political Science and Communications from the University of Oklahoma.
Cassidie has been with Adoption Choices since 2015, she has her bachelors in Interdisciplinary Affairs with concentrations in both Sociology and Business Management. Cassidie has additional training in Victim Advocacy, foster care and has been working in women’s services for over 10 years. Cassidie has always had a heart for adoption and it was her career dream to work in adoption. She started off doing volunteer work for advocacy programs, adoption organizations and worked in High Risk Maternal Fetal Medicine through the University of Colorado Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Colorado. Cassidie is also blessed to have personally experienced an adoption of her own in 2012, completing her family of five! Cassidie loves what she does as a case worker from initial phone calls, meetings, doctor appointments, interaction with the adoptive families to delivery and counseling. Cassidie has a passion for those in need and strives to help make a difference in the lives of the people she meets. She is a firm believer in being kind, compassionate and open minded in all situations. “Unless you’ve walked in their shoes, there’s no place for judgment. A kind word or compliment can go a long way!” The bittersweet moments in adoption reminds Cassidie each and every time, why she loves what she does!