He May Have Been Your Father, Boy, but He Wasn’t Your Daddy

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, my name is Ben Whiting. I’m calling from Traverse City, Michigan.

And my question is this. So I was adopted back in the day. It was a closed adoption. And through the modern magic of 23andMe, my biological family found me.

Now, of course, I refer to the people that raised me as my mom and dad. But I’m starting to have a great relationship with both my biological parents. And I was wondering, is there a correct phrase to call them?

For now, I’ve just been calling them bio mom and bio dad. But I don’t know if there’s actually a better phrase I could be using or if that’s just what we have, because this is a modern issue that people are dealing with now.

And Ben, how do they feel about those terms?

I mean, they don’t really know what to call themselves either. They’re both so kind, they’re not going to be presumptuous and think that I would call them mom or dad because, you know, we’ve only known each other for a couple of years. But so we’ve all just been kind of going with bio mom and bio dad at this point.

That’s interesting. We use the term bio mom in my household because my spouse was adopted as well and called her parents. Yeah, called her parents mom and dad. And later she found her biological mother and they have a great relationship and she often visits. And when she does, you know, we say her bio mom is coming. Have you tried any other terms like birth parent or first parent?

No, I mean, the people because I was adopted two days after I was born. So it has always just been mom and dad for them. I mean, they raised me. I’m 40 years old now. Other than just, you know, using their names, which also feels weird for some reason. You can’t just buy a mom and buy a dad is the only kind of solution we have.

I had a different experience. I grew up with a stepmother, but I knew her from very young. My birth mother died a couple of weeks after I was born. So for me, my stepmother, I don’t call her that. I just call her mom. She’s always been my mom. And so if I talk about my birth mother, I just say birth mother because I never have to, because she’s not around, I don’t ever have to really refer to her that often. So just birth mother kind of does the job anytime I’m filling out paperwork or referring to her indirectly.

So birth mother works, bio mom being short for biological mother. I probably would say biological mother because she only comes up in more formal situations and bio mom is a little too informal.

Right, right. Yeah, and it’s interesting because this family now, it’s like I feel like my family has just kind of expanded. I am more of an inclusive person than an exclusive person, and everyone’s great. I feel exceptionally fortunate. And you just want to make sure everyone knows that you care about them, and you don’t want anyone to feel bad about any label you might put on them.

Right, right. Psychologists have a reason to differentiate these when they’re talking about lineage and kinship and stuff. And so when they talk about genetic and biological parents, they use genitor for the male and genitrix for the female. That’s G-E-N-I-T-O-R and G-E-N-E-T-R-I-X.

This sounds like it could be like some Greek mythological creature or maybe a transformer from the 80s. Genitor? Genitor.

And then the socially recognized parents are words that you will recognize, mater and pater, M-A-T-E-R-P-A-T-E-R. So these are the ones that we recognize because we have intimate relationships with them. We grow up with them. They’re the ones who are around and that we have everyone around us knows them as our parents. But they may not genetically be our progenitors.

I’ve seen it suggested when you’re talking to a child who has been adopted saying tummy mummy, which I don’t know. Maybe. For a little child, that’s a little too cutesy. It might be a little late in the game to throw that one in the mix.

Yeah, late in the game. That’s what I’m thinking. Thank you so much. This is great. I love the kind of, like I said, the Transformer name and the painter and that stuff. I’d never heard of those. That’s really fascinating.

Well, I’m sure we’ll find some kind of fun way to throw them in the mix at the next large family barbecue. Well, I know that we have a lot of other people in that same situation. So I’m sure we’re going to hear from a lot of people about how they’ve solved that problem. Although I’m not sure that it’s a problem exactly. You’re just looking for something that’s more evocative of your situation. That’s what I found.

If you just address people as, hey, beautiful, everyone loves it.

There you go. There you go. That already goes to my wife, so I can’t get you throwing that around too much. Of course, my wife says that to our dog, so it goes.

All right. Thanks for sharing. Bye-bye.

All right. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Ben. Bye-bye.

Bye.

Oh, it is a really complicated situation, right? Adoptive mother, natural mother, real mother, birth mother, bio mother, and then, of course, all the variations for father. Just a lot of different ways to go with this. And I know that there must be other solutions that other families have come up with. We’d love to hear about them. 877-929-9673. Or tell us about it in email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.