When adoptees change their names back to their birth names

Jane

Thanks to one of our readers, we saw this gem of misinformation in Dear Abby’s column of June 27.

ADOPTED SON'S NAME CHANGE CUTS REAL DAD TO THE QUICK

“DEAR ABBY: My wife had an unhappy five-year marriage to her high school boyfriend. They divorced when their son, "Noah," was 20 months old. Then she met me, and we have been married for 34 happy years.

I adopted Noah with the consent of his birth father, who also remarried and had a family. My wife and I added a daughter to ours.

I was aware that Noah had re-established contact with his birth father and half-siblings. We supported it. But we were blindsided when Noah told us he plans to take back his original surname. He says it isn't "personal," but he wants his children to have their "rightful" name and know their "true" lineage.

Abby, we are hurt and confused. This has caused a painful rift in the family. Please help. -- NOAH'S REAL DAD IN NEW YORK

DEAR REAL DAD: I strongly believe that the people who raise a child are that child's "true" parents, regardless of whether the child meets his or her birth parents. Is there any ill will between you and Noah? Could there be money or prestige connected with Noah's birth father's name, which could account for what's happened?

After investing 34 years of yourself in that child, you have reason to feel hurt. Family counseling might smooth some of this over. I am sorry for your loss.”

  Abby and Real Dad need to know that Noah is not alone. While it is not common for adoptees to change their last names to their birth names, it is not unheard of. I’ve known of a half dozen who have done it including an adoptee who changed both her first and last names. All were adopted an infants.

Florence's memoir

Florence Fisher, author of The Search for Anna Fisher, an early adoptee search memoir, and founder of the
search and support organization Adoptees Liberty Movement Association, took her birth father’s last name. After her adoptive mother’s death when Fisher was 20, she had little contact with her adoptive father. After a 20-year search, she found her birth parents and learned they had been married when she was born. She kept the first name her adoptive parents gave her which was the same as her birth mother’s first name.

I sympathize with Real Dad. It would be a slap in the face to any adoptive parent who had nurtured a child from infancy. However, I believe that the reasons for adopting one’s original name go far beyond “money or prestige” as Abby suggests. It is, as Noah says, an attempt to re-claim what is rightfully his. It may be also be a way for some adoptees to try to become the persons they would have been, to resume their original identity. I invite our readers who have changed their names or know of others who have done so to comment.

Identifying himself as the “Real Dad” suggests that the adoptive father is unaware that the adoption could not sever Noah’s bond with his biological father completely. Noah is probably more like his bio dad than his adoptive father.

Abby too shows a lack of understanding when she writes “that the people who raise a child are that child's ‘true’ parents.” It’s an old myth that adoptive parents replace natural parents, perpetuated to discourage searching and reassure adoptive parents.  It reminds me of scenes from TV dramas of the 50s and 60s where an anguished teen cries out “I want my real mother.” An serene older woman says knowingly: “Your real mother is not the one who bore you, but the one who reared you.”

This “true/real parent” language is divisive and patently untrue. Adoptees have two sets of parents, one set is not more true or more real than the other. In the best of all worlds, they work together for the adoptee’s welfare. My advice to Real Dad is: “Accept the relationship you have with Noah and accept him for who he wants to be."

Post Script 10/5/11. I just came across an article in the Spring, 2011 issue of Adoption Constellation by Astrid Dabbeni, Executive Director of Adoption Mosaic. Responding to an adoptee interested in changing her name back to her birth name, Dabbeni writes: "Lately I have met more and more adoptees who have changed their first and last names back to their birth names.  ... Reclaiming a birth name can be an act of empowerment  and positive identity formation.... I think this is a very courageous journey you are exploring."