"You're not what I expected."

Someone said this to me recently. They had never met me before but knew that they would be meeting me that day and knew ahead of time that I am a birthmother. I guess by their comment that they had some preconceived ideas of how I might appear or act and I’m guessing also by their comment that I didn’t meet their preconceived notion of a birthmother.

Perhaps they were expecting someone younger, like a teenager or perhaps they were expecting someone who is uneducated. Maybe they were expecting someone who wasn’t parenting a child or maybe someone who isn’t married. I really don’t know! I’m not really sure what they were expecting! But whatever it was, I am guessing that I wasn’t it.

Last year at the South Carolina Adoption Conference, in the workshop that Lani and I conducted together, one of the things I talked about in detail was stereotypes. I did a whole presentation and spill on the various stereotypes that society in general as well as possibly some adoption professionals thought about birthmothers. The truth of the matter is that anyone could be a birthmother. There is no “look” or “age” that predicts a birthmother.

In my presentation, I had a visual aid in which I had pictures of three different women I am friends with. I told a little bit about the women in each picture. One woman, V, was in her mid forties, loved coffee and antique shopping. The second was pictured in her prom dress and was seventeen years old, while the third woman was in her late twenties and pictured with her three children. Then I told the attendees that each of the women picture had had a baby in the past two years. Then I asked which one did they think was a birthmother? It was kind of a trick question and one that was supposed to make them think as the answer was each woman is a birthmother.

It did visually prove that birthmoms are all different ages and come from different walks of life.

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Related Posts:
Annoying Comments about Birthmoms in General
Annoying Comments about Open Adoption