“It’s amazing to think, because of the generosity and the large-heartedness of families just like those we’re celebrating today, more than 63,000 children found their forever homes.”

These words come from Vice President Pence’s speech at the 2019 National Adoption Month Celebration. As an adoptee myself, I find this to be a frighteningly inaccurate description of adoption (politics aside). It portrays the image of a poor homeless child, god-like adoptive parents and fairytale happy-ever-afters. On the surface, this statement seems unproblematic, even something to praise. After all, tens of thousands of children were brought into new families. 

However, utilizing the words “generosity,” “celebrating” and “forever homes” in the context of adoption negatively shapes the way we think about the subject. As a member of the adoptee community, I have dealt with insensitive language since I was old enough to speak. For example, people use phrases like “real parents” when referring to my birth parents, ignoring how my adoptive parents are real. Less explicitly hurtful terms like those of the Vice President, however, are often overlooked. 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines generosity as “the quality of being liberal in giving.” Although adoptive parents give everything to their children just as biological parents do, adopting a child is not simply an act of goodness. Inevitably, there is a motive behind wanting an unbiological kid, the largest being infertility. According to Adoption.org, 10% of women in the United States struggle with getting or staying pregnant, making them ten times more likely to adopt. Calling parents like these “generous” and selfless discredits the struggles they typically go through in order to even need considering adoption.

With the same concept, “celebrating” families who have adopted feels like praising them for their “generosity” as well. The celebration Pence refers to is the official beginning of National Adoption Month in November, created to thank families for adopting children in foster care. In this context, Pence’s language contributes the false reality that parents play the hero role in an adopted child’s life. Instead, celebrating adoption is about the union of families. My own parents and I celebrate the day I became their legal child, thanking fate for bringing us together – not congratulating them for deciding to come save me.

This day comes with bad memories as well. When my adoptive parents did come to take me from my orphanage in China, my biological parents had left me on a sidewalk only nine months prior. I do not remember anything about that early part of my past, so logically I should have no association with the home I was born in. Still, while my adoptive parents’ nurture shaped me into the character I am today, a fundamental part of my identity comes from nature established by my birth family. 

This is why I cannot support the term “forever home,” either. “Home” describes more than just a house; it also includes the family bonds that makes a house a home. Calling my adoptive home my “forever” one implies that I can disregard my past home, and therefore my birth family. Both of my families are forever, and I do not wish to replace the love I have for my biological parents as well. I have space for more than one.

Using the term “forever” for a child adopted from the foster care system is also a risk. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, up to 3% of Kansas City adoptions alone dissolve — parents adopt but for various reasons can no longer take care of that child, therefore returning it to foster care or another family directly. Adoption does not necessarily guarantee “forever.” 

There is nothing unique about the language in the Vice President’s speech; he rather used the same terminology to talk about adoptive families that America has been using for decades. Language shapes the way we think, so to stop subconsciously ingraining unrealistic ideas about adoption into our culture, we must carefully select the terminology used to describe it. I am hopeful, nonetheless, that this change can be achieved; our world is progressing and we are becoming aware of how much language matters. Now we need only to adopt that concept with all subjects.