Will I Get to Choose the Name of My Adopted Baby? - Weekend Wisdom

Question: Is it important to keep a young child or baby’s birth-given name? How often, if ever, do expectant mothers let adopting parents name the baby in private adoptions? 

Resources:

• Understanding the Birth Parent's Experience
• Open Adoption
• Creating a Family Online Facebook Support Group

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Welcome to We Can Wisdom. We Can Wisdom is put on by the non -profit,
CreatingAFamily .org. It is the second in our lineup of podcasts.
We have a long -form podcast, which is just called Creating A Family. Let's talk
about foster adoptive and kinship care. And then we have We Can Wisdom. We Can
Wisdom is our chance to answer your questions. It's much shorter, usually about five
minutes or so, and we rely on you, your questions that you send in,
and each week we pick one to answer. So send us your questions to info
@creatingathamily .org. Today's question comes from Cleveland,
Ohio, she said. This person says, don't know if it's a male or a female. Is it
important to keep a young child or baby's birth given name? How often, if ever,
do expectant mothers let adopting parents name the child in private adoptions? I'm
going to answer this question separately for newborns and young child, because she
mentioned young children and then she also mentioned newborns. So for newborn, first
of all, this is something that should be discussed during the matching process
between the prospective adopted parents and the expectant mom. This is something that
should be talked about. But to specifically answer your question about how is it
common, the answer is it's very common for the adoptive parents to name the child,
keeping in mind that the expectant parents may want input, but often it is something
that is discussed and talked about and coming up to a mutual agreement. However,
ultimately, keep in mind that it is the parent's decision, meaning the birth parent's
decision on what the child's name will be on the birth certificate. After birth, the
parents have not yet relinquished their parental rights, and they are the parents and
they will be the ones filling out the birth certificate, and they will put on the
name that they choose. If you have talked with them ahead of time, they may be
well be putting the name that you've chose or that you mutually agreed upon as all
of you who are involved. The adoptive parents can change the child's name when the
adoption is finalized and they receive an amended birth certificate. So ultimately,
it would be your choice because you could always change it at that point. However,
in an ideal world, this is something that is talked about between the expected
parents or if it's after birth, the birth parents and the prospective adoptive
parents. Alright, so now let's talk about a young child. It's somewhat dependent on
the age of the child, but generally, once a child is past infancy,
it seems to me the standard practice is the child keeps the first name but changes
the last name to reflect the last name of the adopting family. Now there can be
some things that would change that one if the adoptive parents have very strong
feelings about a name or they feel the name has really negative attributes and that
they wouldn't want the child to have or the child may have the same name as
somebody else in the family. But even in all of those situations, the child could
be called by a nickname or a middle name to avoid actually changing the child's
name. Another time that where we see it come up is if the family has a naming
tradition where let's say every child has all the children's first names begin with
an A or something like that and the feeling is that they may want to try to keep
the naming tradition so that the new child coming in feels more included within the
family. I guess the bottom line would be that if the child is old enough, certainly
the child needs to have input and buy -in. And also, if depending on the situation,
if the biological parents are involved, then they also, it seems like a kind thing
to do to loop them into this discussion as well before you would make this
decision. I hope this has been helpful for our audience member from Cleveland, so
thank you. And before everyone leaves, let me remind you that we really would
appreciate, we really need, your reviews for this podcast. You'd be reviewing both
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and we will see you next week.