Birth Parent (Glossary)

Birth Parent: This is another term used to refer to the biological parents of a child, whether male or female, and regardless of whether the parents of the child are married to each other, or are shown as the parents of the child on its birth certificate.

A Birthparent is a man or a woman who are biological parents to a child that they voluntarily or involuntarily relinquished their parental rights to. This term should only be used after the relinquishment of a child for adoption, or after rights have been terminated. Until then, the correct terms that should be used are; pregnant woman, expectant mother, expectant father, etc.

A birth parent may have voluntarily relinquished their rights to their child after completing an adoption plan for their child. In other cases, a birth parents rights may have been terminated for either reasons of abuse, neglect, or criminal conviction or they may have been terminated without their knowledge, which unfortunately happens all too often to the birth father that does not know he fathered a child.