I stole the title of this post from Ivy. To steal the phrase from Adoptive Families, I have a thumbs down to go to Reuters and Moviefone for posting this article.

The article states "The new baby joins the couple's adopted children Maddox and Zahara, rounding out a family People magazine has already dubbed 'the most beautiful in the world'."

Granted, I am a new mom in the adoption circle, but this segregation of children has always bothered me. Actually, it doesn't bother me any more that I now have my son than it did before he came into our family. This type of wording continues a stigma that somehow adopted kids are less than and/or that biological kids are more than. Taking a presumptuous stand, I'll guess that these authors do not have any adopted children.

There were times before we adopted Bec that I wondered if I would feel a difference between having him and having Ivy. Now that he is home, there is a difference. The difference has nothing to do with how he came into our family though. The difference is that I love him as Bec and I love Ivy as Ivy. As far as the level of love that I feel for my kids it is exactly the same. Identical love to each of my kids, regardless of adoption or birth.

I haven't ever read of any advice on how to speak up against this type of wording in an article, especially an online one. I'm sure that writing in to the editor to at least draw attention to it would help. It would also help to alleviate some of the guilt that I feel about not doing more to protect my children. Having written that, I suppose that my next step will be searching for some web addresses!