The second criticism wasn't included in the official survey results because the woman was unwilling to come back and take the survey. She did, however, email her concerns to the person who shared the survey address with her and gave that person permission to forward them to me and have them included in the results. Her concerns were about the language used. As an adoptive parent, she was unhappy with the use of the word "family" to describe her child's biological relatives. She said, in part:

the author refers to [my child]'s genetic relatives as her 'first family' and her 'other family.' [she] doesn't have any 'other family.' we are her family. if any of those people walked into my house she wouldn't know who they were. and we were her 'first family.' she left the hospital with us. ... i REALLY cannot complete that survey.

... we aren't usurpers, we didn't take what belonged to someone else. we aren't the 'second' family. 

I realized when I first made a decision about what term to use for first/birth families that this might be a hard sell for some users and might even lose some community members. However, I hadn't expected a response this extreme.

While her email didn't make me feel like I ought to rethink how I used language in the survey or on the site (especially because I think adoptive parents are over-represented in the discussions already and so it serves the community best to be explicitly welcoming to first family members) it was a reminder that it has an impact on who participates here and so I thought it was an important part of the survey.

It's also a reminder that every single person who comes to this site is coming from a different place and that many of us are struggling with very entrenched issues about family and loss and love. It makes us pretty vulnerable.

Next I'll get into the nitty-gritty of responses.