However, these feelings decreased significantly from one year after birth to the end of the second year.More recent research found that in a sample of mothers who had released their children for adoption four to 12 years prior, every participant had frequent thoughts of their lost child. For most, thoughts were both negative and positive in that they produced both feelings of sadness and joy. Those who experienced the greatest portion of positive thoughts were those who had open, rather than closed or time-limited mediated, adoptions.In another study that compared mothers who released their children to those who raised them, mothers who released their children were more likely to delay their next pregnancy, to delay marriage, and to complete job training. However, both groups reached lower levels of education than their peers who were never pregnant. Another study found similar consequences for choosing to release a child for adoption. Adolescent mothers who released their children were more likely to reach a higher level of education and to be employed than those who kept their children. They also waited longer before having their next child. Most of the research that exists on adoption effects on the birth parents was conducted with samples of adolescents, or with women who were adolescents when carrying their babies—little data exists for birth parents from other populations. Furthermore, there is a lack of longitudinal data that may elucidate long-term social and psychological consequences for birth parents who choose to place their children for adoption.
Terms included in HAL include terms that were used before PAL, including "natural mother", "first mother", and "surrendered for adoption". Inclusive adoption language
There are supporters of various lists, developed over many decades, and there are persons who find them lacking, created to support an agenda, or furthering division. All terminology can be used to demean or diminish, uplift or embrace. In addressing the linguistic problem of naming, Edna Andrews says that using "inclusive" and "neutral" language is based upon the concept that "language represents thought, and may even control thought. "Advocates of inclusive language defend it as inoffensive-language usage whose goal is multi-fold:

The rights, opportunities, and freedoms of certain people are restricted because they are reduced to stereotypes. Stereotyping is mostly implicit, unconscious, and facilitated by the availability of pejorative labels and terms. Rendering the labels and terms socially unacceptable, people then must consciously think about how they describe someone unlike themselves. When labeling is a conscious activity, the described persons individual merits become apparent, rather than his or her stereotype.A common problem is that terms chosen by an identity group, as acceptable descriptors of themselves, can be used in negative ways by detractors. This compromises the integrity of the language and turns what was intended to be positive into negative or vice versa, thus often devaluing acceptability, meaning and use. Language at its best honors the self-referencing choices of the persons involved, uses inclusive terms and phrases, and is sensitive to the feelings of the primary parties. Language evolves with social attitudes and experiences.