By Teesta Bhola-Shah
“The biggest misconception is just how people think birth parents ‘gave away’ their child and were being selfish,” says Kerry Tobar, Adoption Education Manager at the Gladney Center for Adoption. “In reality, it’s the opposite. One of my birth mom friends told me, ‘I broke my own heart. I did it because I love my daughter so much.’ That’s the reality most people don’t see.”
Tobar has nine years of experience at Gladney, an organization that has been helping children find adoptive homes for nearly 140 years. She emphasizes that the language we use around adoption matters. “Society paints birth parents in this negative light, and it shows up in the words we use—‘gave up’ or ‘gave away.’ But that’s not what’s happening. They’re making a conscious parenting decision. They’re saying: I love my child so much that I’m going to place them with a family who can provide what I can’t right now.”
Her work spans far beyond adoptive and birth families, and she’s seen the dangerous effects misconceptions around adoption can have. “We realized our caseworkers were running into barriers with nurses and hospital staff,” she said. “They would walk into a room where a birth mom was making an adoption plan, and sometimes they’d hear comments or even pushback. These women are in extremely vulnerable places—maybe dealing with homelessness, addiction, or other crises—and instead of being supported, they’d feel judged. That’s why we’ve expanded our work to educate not only students, but also teachers, nurses, and hospital staff, so they understand adoption as the option it is.”
Tobar is careful to acknowledge the complexities in every adoption story. “We never want to act like all adoption stories are easy, because they’re not,” she said. “In every adoption story, there’s pain, grief, and loss—otherwise, there wouldn’t be a need for adoption in the first place. But alongside that loss is incredible strength and love. That’s what we try to help people understand, every adoption story looks different, and every person in it deserves compassion.”
She stresses the importance of choosing the right words to make everyone feel supported. “It’s not semantics,” Tobar said firmly. “For adoptees, those words can mean the difference between believing they were unwanted and knowing they were loved. For birth parents, it acknowledges the courage it takes to make such a heartbreaking decision. And for adoptive families, it shows adoption as a thoughtful and intentional process, not some accident.”
Small shifts in language are all that it takes. “Birth parents are not ‘giving up’ their child,” Tobar said. “They are making a parenting plan. It’s one of the hardest and most loving decisions anyone can make. They get to pick the family for their child. They can still be in their child’s life. And it’s not the right option for every unplanned pregnancy—absolutely not. But when it is the option, it deserves respect.”
Her advice is simple but powerful: avoid saying “gave up” or “given away.” Say “placed for adoption,” “made an adoption plan,” or “was adopted.” “These small shifts matter more than you might realize,” Tobar said.
I’ve seen this personally in my own family. My younger brother is adopted, and when he was little, people sometimes told him that his birth parents had “given him up.” Adults would say it casually, not realizing what he was hearing. Kids would repeat it on the playground because it was the phrase they’d picked up from TV or even from their parents.
For a long time, he truly believed it. He thought his birth parents hadn’t loved him, that they had simply decided to let him go, or that he had been unwanted from the very beginning. He asked me once, matter-of-factly, why his birth parents didn’t want him. Hearing him say that broke my heart.
But, as Tobar explains, the truth is very different. Birth parents often make the hardest, most selfless decision to place their children for adoption, so that they can have the kind of future the parents weren’t able to provide at that time. No one “gave up” my brother, they loved him enough to put his needs first.
Shifting the language from “given up” to “placed for adoption” has made things better for him. It helped him see adoption not as a sign of rejection but as an expression of love and care. And for me, as his sister, it’s a reminder of how choosing the right words to talk about adoption can have a huge impact.
