Birth mom. First mom. Natural mom. Original mom. Real mom. Biological mom. Tummy mom. Each appeals to some while offending others. I personally have come to identify as a birth mom. Not because I’m blind/deaf and don’t see what people type and hear what they say. I have encountered those who use the term in a derogotory way. I have heard and seen the sterotypes. But I have also heard the love in my son’s voice as he tells people I am his birth mom.
I tend to use the conjoined birth/first or first/birth if I’m not sure of the preference of those who I am addressing or use whichever term is prefered by the person I’m speaking (typing) of or to.
I’m sure I’ve said all of this before so why am I rehashing it now? Because of a video. Stay with me it may take a minute to explain the connection.
This quarter I’m taking a course on Chemical Dependancy and in this week’s class we watched a video on FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, which includes Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). The video began with a woman explaining her journey to getting her daughter diagnoised. Under her face as she spoke was label explaining who she was. It said “Birth Mom and FAS Advocate”. I’m not 100% sure of the second part but the first part of the title definately said birth mom.
I first began to wonder why her status as a birth mom mattered. The topic she was speaking on was FAS did it matter that she’d relinquished parental rights? Then I started to understand that she HADN’T relinquished her rights. She was parenting her daughter and always had been. I became even more confused by her label of birth mom. Perhaps she’d relinquished her parental rights to some other child but again why mention it on a video where she’s speaking about FAS and a child she obviously parented.
Then I figure it out. They were not used the term “birth mom” to mean someone who had relinquished their parental rights. they were using it to apply to any of the moms who’d given birth to their children as opposed to the foster and adoptive moms.
Technically this application of the label makes more sense if you just look at the words. Birth mom, a mom who gave birth. Yep makes sense. EXCEPT that the definition of birth mom isn’t a mom who gave birth. Someone decided that a birth mom is a mom who relinquishes her parental rights and over time this is the definition that has been accepted (and sometimes despised).
So here’s my point. If you’re going to give a group of people a label to segregate them (and thats what lables do) then you can’t apply that same label to a different group of people who do not share the defining characteristics.
And by the way this applies to all you people involved in foster care who refer to the parents of foster youth as birth parents. They aren’t birth parents, they haven’t relinquished parental rights or had them terminated.
If one wanted to re-do the labels and apply logic to the situation here’s one way to do it. Birth mom would become exactly what is sounds like. A mom who gave birth regardless of parenting status. Any woman who is a mom would be called a mom. Simple right? First, Foster, Adoptive, Biological, and Step (and any other prefix you can think of) would ONLY be used when necessary to avoid confusion.
But I don’t have that power and obviously logic has no place in this life. So I will continue to be a birth mom because no matter how un- politically correct it is. Any time I hear or see that term now I am transported back to our day at the pool and hear Kidlet’s voice filled with love and pride as he tried to recruit his friends to help him splash me, his birth mom.
**This was originally wittier but when I went to post it I found out the hard way my roommate had disabled the wireless and it was gone by the time I fixed that. (TG can I get that ninja up here please?)**
