I’ve been thinking a lot about the words used to describe relinquishment of children who are placed for adoption. Some of the words I hear frequently are give up; surrender; relinquish; throw away; abandon.
Relinquish:
1.) 1). to cede something, to renounce or surrender something
2.) abandon something, to give something up or put something aside
3.) let something go, to let go of something physically
Abandon:
1.) Leave somebody behind, transitive verb to leave somebody or something behind for others to look after, especially somebody or something meant to be a personal responsibility
2.) Leave place because of danger, transitive verb to leave a place or vehicle, especially for reasons of safety and without intending to return soon
3.) Renounce something, transitive verb to renounce or reject something previously done or used
Surrender:
1.) Declare yourself defeated, intransitive verb to declare to an opponent that he or she has won so that fighting or conflict can cease
2.) Give up possession of something, transitive verb to relinquish possession or control of something because of coercion or force
3.) Give something out of courtesy, transitive verb to give a seat, position, or office to somebody as a courtesy or as a gesture of goodwill
4.) Give up self to something, reflexive verb to yield to a strong emotion, influence, or temptation
5.) Abandon rights to something, (law) transitive verb to give up or abandon rights to something, especially to give up a lease before it has expired
6.) Giving up fight, act of declaring defeat at the hands of an opponent
7.) Giving up control, an act of relinquishing control or possession to somebody or something
8.) Delivery into legal custody, the delivery of a prisoner or fugitive into legal custody
9.) Abandonment of legal rights, (law) the abandonment of legal rights, especially the giving up of a lease or an insurance policy before it has expired
10.) Giving self up to authorities, an act of willing submission to authorities
Give up:
1.) Surrender or admit defeat
2.) Hand over somebody or something
3.) Lose hope for somebody or something, to stop hoping for a good outcome with regard to somebody or something
4.) Stop trying, abandon a pursuit that has a goal
5.) Devote yourself to something, to devote or dedicate yourself to an emotion, experience or activity, especially exclusively
6.) Reveal information, to reveal information or a secret
7.) Allow an opponent something in baseball
Throw away:
1.) Discard something, to get rid of something no longer wanted
2.) Waste something, to fail to take advantage of an opportunity to do something
3.) Say something in an offhand manner, to say a line in a play that makes it seem unimportant, even though it may be crucial to the plot
There are so many truths hidden in all the definitions of these words, many different and complicated stories of loss and grief and defeat. There is so much more than I ever thought there could be inside of those words when I think about them in relation to my husband and my son and adoption. It bothers me very much that many of the definitions are rooted in legal language and treat human beings as chattel or property. We should not be using the same word to give up a child as we do for breaking an insurance contract. As the spouse of an adoptee and mother of another adoptee, they impact the people I love most in this world every day, indeed they have impacted the very core of their identity.
On my son’s referral papers, the first information we ever received about him, it stated that he was surrendered shortly after his birth. That word, surrender, has many definitions and all of them seem appropriate in this instance. We know that his first mother tried to keep him, tried to get help from his first father, she did not move into the unwed mother’s house until the day before his birth. Everything we were told suggests she wanted very much to keep her child, but feeling defeated by her circumstances and being out of options, she gave up. There were people willing to help her with medical expenses in Korea, to help her have her child, but only if she would give him up. She gave up, surrendered, relinquished. We call this a choice. She ensured that her child was born safe and healthy and made a plan for his future without her because she felt it impossible to raise him alone. She never abandoned him and she certainly never threw him away.
Now that we are about to finalize my son’s adoption, I was saddened to learn that the court records will state that my son was a foundling; that he was abandoned and is an orphan. This is supposedly done in order to ease the paperwork required for international adoption in a non-Hague country and protect the first mother’s identity (and completely excludes any requirement that his father agree to the adoption). Abandon suggests that my son was simply left, irresponsibly left, irrevocably left, rejected.
This is not what my son’s first mother did. She made the best plan she could for both of them and the reality is that she had no good choices available to her. I wish my son’s records better reflected the true intentions of his first mother and spoke the truth about the decisions she made.
Throw away is the term my Korean mother-in-law uses for adoption. Since she is the only Korean first mother I know, I asked her whether she thought Tae-son’s Korean family would ever want to meet him as an adult. She knows that more and more adoptees are searching for and finding their Korean families as adults and I wondered what she thought about it. She told me that Tae-son’s family “threw him away” and thus never deserved to see him again. She also told me that they wouldn’t want to see him because they had thrown him away for a good reason. I was quite taken aback and wondered if that phrase spoke more about her feelings of guilt for relinquishing my husband than about anything to do with my son.
She used it repeatedly when speaking about both my husband and my son’s adoptions and I felt like I was being punched in the gut every time she used it in front of them, hearing the self-flagellation behind it but knowing it was very hurtful to my husband to hear that she felt this way. All this pain radiating from her, all this guilt that she still carries almost 30 years later was palpable.
This is a woman who endured the shame of being an unwed mother, the stigma of having a child with an American soldier, the struggle to survive as a single mother with no help and finally the agony of losing her son to adoption after nine years of being his mother; a woman who waited for over twenty years for her son to come back to her and to Korea. But she still hasn’t forgiven herself, or other first mothers, for not being able to survive in a society that offered nothing but discrimination and recrimination for loving the wrong man and getting pregnant at the wrong time. A sin that many women, including me, have committed with few if any repercussions.
I know my son is young. I know it will be many, many years before he ever reads these court records or explores the reasons behind his adoption. But I also know that much of it will be very painful for him, and I will need to be ready to help him understand things that I can barely rationalize myself.
Korea is slowly changing, and while there is still great difficulty for unwed mothers it is becoming possible to survive. Organizations like An-Rae-Wan and Korean Mothers Support Network are doing important work to create change in societal attitudes and provide support for single moms in Korea today. Hopefully someday, none of these words will apply to babies in Korea being sent en mass for adoption in faraway lands.
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