how to not be hurtful when talking to adoptees

“Why were you put up for adoption?”

The expression “put up for adoption” is from the orphan train era of late 19th early 20th century, when around 200,000 children were abandoned by their families who couldn’t afford to feed them and "put up" on train platforms. Families needing able-bodied children to help support the family would ride into town on the train and pick out the babies they wanted from the train station platform. Those babies went home to live with these families and work on their farms.

“do you know who your real parents are?”

This question may seem innocent but it’s insensitive because you’re pitting sets of parents against each other, and considering some “real” and some “fake.” It’s absolutely up to the adoptee to decide how they feel about their parents. But the question itself is leading; it invalidates the existence of the first/birth parents or it invalidates the existence of adoptive parents. A hierarchy like this isn’t necessary or helpful. If all goes as well as could be expected, the adoptee is placed with a supportive family and everyone agrees it’s a good match. The adoptee might consider their “real parents” to be the ones who tucked them in every night. But in an ideal situation, there’s also an open adoption agreement. (more on this in another blog post) The adoptee has a loving and supportive relationship with birth/first relatives. They hold a special place in the adoptee’s heart and nobody needs to vie for the title of “real parents;” the role birth families play in the child’s life is unique to them.

in the media: categorizing celebrities’ children

In magazines or online, we often read about celebrities who adopted some children as part of a large family. But for some reason, photo captions always specify that they’re boarding a private jet “with their two biological children and two adopted children.” Why are we categorizing (and implicitly ranking) their kids this way? How does it feel for the kids to read photo captions like this? How does it feel for any adoptee to read captions like this? Instead, I wish the media could just describe celebrities boarding a private jet “with their four children.”

using ‘adopted’ as an adjective

Not all adoptees agree with me on this one, but I cringe when I hear “adopted” used as an adjective. If you say that someone was “adopted at birth,” that’s using the word as a verb. If you say “she adopted her son when he was four,” that’s using the word as a verb. It’s neutral. But if you say, “I heard the new kid is adopted,” that’s using the word an adjective. Why does this matter? Because there’s so much more to the kid than that one-word label. When “adopted” is used as an adjective, it can have a negative connotation. (more on adoption stigma in another blog post) A more neutral way to describe someone is to refer to him as an “adoptee.”