Adoption Newspeak

In his novel, 1984, George Orwell painted a vivid picture of a future world where everything was controlled by the Party...Big Brother was watching and Newspeak was the acceptable language.  The idea behind Newspeak was that by controlling the language, the Party could control the perceptions and thoughts of the populace by eliminating words that allowed creative thinking or shades of meaning. 

The ideas espoused in his book were an outgrowth of an idea that Orwell had earlier advanced, a concept he called Constructed Language Basic English, which he promoted from 1942-1945.  While 1984 was fiction, the Newspeak idea was one that has since been accepted and advanced under various guises in the social sciences (psychology, sociology, etc) and in sales, marketing and strategizing for the most advantageous way to present concepts, ideas or products.  Newspeak has become accepted in the lexicon of today. 

Generically, Newspeak has come to mean any attempt to restrict disapproved language by a government or other powerful entity.

During the Era of Mass Surrender, or EMS, Women described their children as "lost to adoption", "given up", "surrendered" , "relinquished" and "taken for adoption". 

They described themselves as formerly "unwed (or unmarried) mothers", simply "mother" or "natural mother" of the children to whom they gave birth.  They stayed either in "Wage  Homes", "maternity homes" or "Homes for Unwed Mothers".  The ones who were allowed to remain at home were hidden from sight, so that the neighbors wouldn't see them.  If company came, they were sent to hide in their rooms,  or in attics or cellars until the company was gone, too shameful for public view, because, according to the families who told the tales at the suggestion of the industry, the girls had "gone to an aunts" or "was visiting out of town", all euphemisms to explain their absence.

In 1972, with the passage of Roe v. Wade, and other civil and human rights laws that allowed women the independence to decide whether or not to parent and provided them the ability to provide for a child if they chose to keep it, there was an almost overnight drop in the number of infants surrendered for adoption.  For the first time, women had the ability to earn a living, stay in school, rent an apartment, get credit on her own, and be a full fledged member of society...without a husband or father to give it to her!

The newly formed Adoption Industry, created on the premise of unlimited numbers of infants to be adopted by wealthy and infertile couples was in danger of collapsing.  The first few years after the passage of Roe showed huge numbers of adoption agencies, and homes for unwed mothers closing, when just a few years before the supply seemed never-ending and so secure that an entire profession, Adoption Social Worker,  was built based upon it.  In order to save their dying industry, the newly professionalized industry had to take creative steps.

In the mid to late 1970's focus groups were held and we all know the outcome of those...Open Adoption.  However, there were other things that came from those meetings, too.   Marketing and Marketing Strategies had to be incorporated, as well.   Everything had to be recreated, from the shame-based, religious standpoint that they had previously operated from to a more adoption-friendly, pro-surrender, female empowerment stance, which allowed mothers to believe that their carefully-guided choice to relinquish was their own, rather than having it forced upon them, as was done during the EMS. 

Enter Framing -

A frame in social theory consists of a schema of interpretation — that is, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes—that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events. In simpler terms, people have, through their lifetimes, built series of mental emotional filters. They use these filters to make sense of the world. The choices they then make are influenced by their frame or emotional filters....

...Framing is so effective because it is a heuristic, or mental shortcut. According to Susan T. Fiske and Shelley E. Taylor, human beings are by nature “cognitive misers”, meaning they prefer to do as little thinking as possible.  Frames provide people a quick and easy way to process information. Hence, people will use the previously mentioned mental filters (a series of which is called a schema) to make sense of incoming messages. This gives the sender and framer of the information enormous power to use these schemas to influence how the receivers will interpret the message.

...Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman have shown that framing can affect the outcome (IE. the choices one makes) of choice problems, to the extent that several of the classic axioms of rational choice do not hold. This led to the development of prospect theory as an alternative to rational choice theory... (emphasis added)

In short, Framing WORKS.  Quick to pick up on this, social workers, psychologists and other found ways to frame people's experiences to change their perceptions of that episode, in order to achieve the desired effect, often healing on the part of the patient.  As an example, people who had been the victim of crimes were no longer referred to as VICTIM, but the more empowered, SURVIVOR.  No one denies that the person, in order to achieve Survivor status had to first be Victimized by the crime, but suddenly the word, VICTIM was no longer acceptable.  This was used frequently in rape crisis counseling, so that the women who had been traumatized by their experience, could move past their "victim-hood" into the more positive "survivor-hood". 

However, there were others who had less noble ideas in mind for these same principles.  It was used to increase sales, and for developing effective marketing strategies.  You have seen this in action on  HGTV, when the Realtors who are showing a home refer to their clients as "My Buyers".  You experience it when you go to a hotel or restaurant, where you are no longer renting a room for the night or treating your family to dinner, but are suddenly the restaurant or hotel's "Guest", as if you were an old friend come to visit.  You no longer have a waitress, but a "server" and the list of examples can go on and on.

The adoption industry, already in crisis mode, jumped on this new way of changing perceptions by changing language and took it in a more sinister direction.  Marietta Spencer, Minneapolis Adoption Social Worker, used the concept of framing to change the outcomes when she created and coined Positive Adoption Language in the mid 1970's.  In 1989, California Adoption Attorney, Matt Widelock even created a list of Positive vs. Negative Adoption Language to guide the message.  Suddenly, mothers who surrendered their children for adoption were no more.  Now Birthmothers, working closely with their social worker, formed an adoption plan, for placement of the newborn with a Loving Home where the Adoptive Parents (adopters is too sterile and limits them to one function...adopting) were just waiting for the birthmother (so called even before she delivers the infant), to deliver their baby.  All so very PC, so civilized, so positive, so subtle, so inherently coercive, so Adoption Newspeak .

This has been further adjusted in the new millenia as Respectful Adoption Language, in 2004, which has been further tweaked to the point where the Prospective Adoptive Parents, or Paps  no longer even have a "homestudy.

This term carries with it an old view of the process as a weeding out or judgment. Today, more and more agencies are coming to view their role as less God-like and more facilitative. The preferred positive term, then, is parent preparation, a process whereby agency and prospective adopters come to know one another and work toward expanding a family."

The author of the article on Respectful Adoption Language, Patricia Irwin Johnson, even gives a reluctant nod to the Era of Mass Surrender.  I don't think it was done willingly, but grudgingly due to the mothers of that time who had begun speaking out, and the release of the book by adoptee Ann Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away, an account of the well-documented experiences of numerous Baby Scoop Era (or EMS) mothers.  After this, they no longer could pretend they were not aware that "horrible things happened back then" and think that a whispered acknowledgement to a sobbing EMS Mother would suffice  In her article in Perspective Press, she says,

In the past, it is true, birthparents often had little choice about the outcome of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. In earlier times they did indeed surrender, relinquish, give up and even sometimes abandon their children. These emotion-laden terms, conjuring up images of babies torn from the arms of unwilling parents, are no longer valid except in those unusual cases in which a birthparent’s rights are involuntarily terminated by court action after abuse or neglect.

Since we now are aware that Framing a discussion changes outcomes by changing perceptions and that Adoption Newspeak is a method of Framing that pertains to Adoption, to suggest that women who make decide on adoption are doing so willingly, and without coercion from the adoption industry who profit from it would be disingenuous and naive.  It works, we know it works, the industry knows it works and they are making a tidy profit each time it does. 

Orwell, I think, would be pleasantly surprised at just how far the Party has come when Newspeak is applied to adoption.  The cover picture of Time Magazine (shown at left) where Orwell is proclaimed  "Big Brother's Father" makes one wonder if he is actually Big Brother's Adoptive Father.  Newspeak seems tailored for the Adoption Industry in 1984, and as fact often imitates fiction, today and into the future we and our children actually live in.

Beware, Mothers....Big Brother is watching.....