I was reading an article about international adoption in a magazine, looking for ideas to blog about on my Hoping to Adopt blog. I skimmed through the article but did not see anything that piqued my interest: Most of what was said has been said numerous times before (and better, in my possibly biased opinion) by Sandra on the International Adoption blog and Erin on the Transracial Adoption blog. I was about to toss the magazine when I read the final sentence, stating that the author and her husband "have an adopted son." That sentence gave me an important topic about which to blog.

The statement "have an adopted son" just got all over me. Why didn't the magazine say that the author and her husband have a son who joined their family through adoption? Some people might say that I am splitting hairs here, but I do not think that I am. I see a very big difference between "having an adopted son" versus "having a son who joined the family through adoption."

Adoption is a one-time event that explains how a child joined a family; it is not a state of being. A child who joins a family through adoption is no more of an "adopted child" than a person who is born by C-section is a "C-section child." My friend, who delivered her daughter through a C-section, never refers to her daughter as her "C-section child," so why should I refer to my son as my "adopted child"? Both are simply ways of explaining how a child joins a family: Neither defines who the child is.

I do use the phrase "adopted child" on my adoption blogs for clarification purposes (and it is a handy keyword phrase for search engines), but I never refer to my son this way in any other context. My son is just my son. His adoption is the footnote, not the headline. Yes, his adoption is an important part of his history, but it is exactly that – his history, not his present.

This magazine is not one devoted to adoption. In fact, I have been subscribing to the magazine for several years, and this is the first article about adoption that I ever recall reading in it. So, I am certain that the publisher had no idea that the way this was worded was bothersome to adoptive families. However, we adoptive parents need to educate those in our lives about the difference between an "adoption son" and a "son who joins a family through adoption." The difference really does matter.

Related Topics:

• Not My Adopted Child: Just my Child



• Positive Adoption Language – Was Adopted, Placing Mother



• Embracing an Adopted Child as Your Child

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt