Written by Tara Collins Brent, ABCFOC Parent
I’ve always hated the idea of getting a new birth certificate when we adopted our kids.
The paperwork makes it look so neat, like a child was born into our family all along. Like the history before us didn’t exist. A clean slate, they call it. But to me, it feels like erasure.
Because you can’t sweep a whole childhood under a rug. You can’t rewrite where someone came from. And a new piece of paper doesn’t erase the reality that adoption is built on loss.
The same goes for last names. One of the only gifts their parents gave them, the name they carried into the world, shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s part of their story, even when the story is painful.
When I realized our kids’ names would be changed on paper, I was distraught. I went to ABC for advice, because I felt torn in two. On one hand, I hated the idea of erasing something so core to who they were. On the other hand, I worried that by keeping their names, our kids might think we didn’t fully see them as ours.
Those two emotions lived side by side: wanting them to feel completely, irrevocably part of our family, while also wanting to protect the story they brought with them.
ABC reminded me of something I couldn’t see in the fog of paperwork and fear: we could do both. We could be a family without erasing their history. We could honor their full names, the ones their parents gave them, while still making it clear that they belonged completely in our home.
And so that’s what we did. Our kids all have different last names. And that’s okay. If one day they come to me and say, Yes, I want your last name, we’ll talk about it. But my first question will always be: Why? Is it because they want it for themselves, or because they think it will make me happy?
That difference matters. Because adoption already takes so much from a child: their family, their home, their sense of stability. I can’t in good conscience take their name, too, and pretend it never belonged to someone else first.
Maybe someday one of them will choose to change it. And if they do, I’ll honor that choice. But until then, I’ll honor the names they came with. Because those names, like their stories, deserve to be carried, not erased.