I’ve thought long and hard about this and there is yet another conversation that is making me think about it again, the idea that first parents should collaborate with adoptive parents on names for children so that the names are the same on the birth certificates.
What a load of BS. It is about adoptive parents controlling a situation in my opinion. I get so sick of hearing “it is in the best interest of the child.” More BS. It is in the best interest of the adoptive parents, so that they can have what they want and what they are comfortable with. Never mind the fact that this woman just carried this baby for nine months and maybe had a name for him or her while she was pregnant. Never mind that this woman may only get to name one, yep one child. Never mind that maybe she wants to give her daughter or son a lasting gift, which may be a family name from her family or the first father’s family.
Oh yes, that’s right, first parents pick out names too. Really, no one gets pregnant thinking “Yippy I’m going to place my child for adoption and never get to name them. This is SOOOO exciting.” No one sits around thinking, “Yay, there is going to be this couple that is going to adopt my child and they are going to strong arm me into a name that I don’t like for the original birth certificate, something that they can change anyway.”
Does it ever occur to people that maybe these expectant moms and dads aren’t so happy about being forced into collaborating about a name? Maybe they aren’t so happy about putting names on the birth certificate that THEY create that they don’t like? Something tells me that a lot of people don’t give a rat’s butt. As long as they are getting what they want and can hide behind “best interest of the child” they’ll be happy.
For the record, I would have been devastated if my first mother hadn’t named me. She had every right to do that. Of course my parents changed my name to something they liked, and hey I like it too, but M had every right to give me a name too.
I’m not confused about my identity, I know what family I belong to. It isn’t strange or weird, it just is. As long as firstparents are respectful and use the name the adoptive parents chose for the amended birth certificate, what does it matter if they choose a different one for the original?
