Reply to Changing the name of an internationally adoped child

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[quote=Anonymous]I agree that it's disturbing on several levels.  All this girl has from her former life is her name and the parents just vaporized it -- maybe they asked but even if they did, a young child undergoing major changes isn't going to speak up.  As the parent of a child adopted internationally (from Latin America), I can only shake my head.

The parents' decision and response also speaks to another interesting dynamic.  Parents who adopt from Russia and other Eastern European countries generally do so because they want to make adoption as invisible as possible in their life and don't want to have to deal with difference or culture -- I say "generally" because we know a few families with kids from Russia whose kids take Russian lessons and keep other cultural connections going, but I think the attitude of the family that the OP mentioned is far more prevalent.  This goes on with international adoption from other countries as well, but less so, in our experience.  There was a book published a couple of years back called "Culture Keeping," which explored the difference in attitude between mothers who adopted from Russia versus those who adopted from China.

http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Keeping-International-Negotiation-Difference/dp/0826516181/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316522714&sr=1-6

This experience shows how adoption agencies generally do a poor job preparing parents for adoption.  IMO, parents who do something like change the name of a 7-year old should not be approved to adopt internationally.  My guess (and I could be wrong) is that this girl will probably grow up knowing few, if any, other kids adopted from Russia and, if the family runs into "adoption issues," it will really struggle and have a hard time dealing with them.

The parents in general have a weird concept of "Americanness" IMO -- lots of native-born kids have "foreign" names.

I guess we consider ourselves lucky - our child knows lots of other kids adopted from Latin America, knows Spanish, and is learning to navigate various differences around adoption and race/ethnicity[/quote]

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