Naming in a closed adoption?

Question

Why would a birth mother name their child before giving them up? My husband's b. mom made sure that his birth was a complete secret to her whole family, she went as far as going to Germany (she was in the military) to hid the fact that she was pregnant. We were told by his adoptive mom that his birth mom didn't know he was a boy until three days later andthat she wants to nothing to do with him. Yet she named him, giving him her last name. Recently we found out that her older son (who she kept) has almost the same name, he was James and my husband was Jerome. They have the same middle name and last...

I'm confused...

Answer 1

Maybe she was scared or there was too much at stake with the other son, she could not afford your husband..

I would just say she made a choice and she has to live with the thought that she has a son out there that she will not know... Thus maybe the reason she gave the boys the same middle and last names, to in some way have a connection!!

I just thought of some thing maybe your husband is a product of rape.. It would make sense for her to hide him from her family and not waint anything to do with him.. For as a raped person a child that looked like the guy would be hard to handle!!

Has your husband meet the brother? Maybe he could shed light on to the subject!! I would say start there and pray!!

Answer 2

Though the two answers that agree with mine have been given "bad marks" I think they're probably the correct ones.  

I hate the fact that so many people are answering your question with things that don't even make sense.  It's as if they didn't read the entire statement.  The thing that seems so odd here is that she went to such legnths to have a closed adoption and (most espescially) that she didn't even know he was a boy until it was time to sign the papers - then suddenly came up with a name.  Of course, the mother may have been having internal turmoil.  I can't imagine any person who wouldn't be in an emotional tornado at that point in time.  However, it still makes no sense for her to not even find out what s*x he was and then decide to name him.  Also, the fact that only the first name differed from his brother seems to signify that she didn't really give much thought to it.  It really seems like she came up with a name solely to make filing the paperwork easier.  

I really hope your husband is able to get all his questions answered.  It sounds like since you know his brother's name that he is either already united, or else has a good start on it.  Maybe the best thing to do is wait and ask the birth mother when/if you meet her.  Please keep in mind that if she went through such lenghts to hide the pregnancy, she will likely have some reluctance about re-openning that time of her life.  This doesn't always mean that she doesn't want to, but you will want to be delicate about how you approach it.  Good luck!

Answer 3

she has issues...

Answer 4

sounds like she didn't want to let go. Must have been a difficult choice for her.

Answer 5

What on earth is wrong with naming your own child?  The adoptive parents don't have to honor that choice, but it might have been nice.

My mother did not name me, and this has contributed to my belief that she didn't care, didn't think of me as human, and wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible.  That doesn't do a lot for a person's self-esteem.

Maybe your husband's mother had mixed feelings about giving her baby away; I know I would.  Maybe she knew he was hers and nobody else's, adoption plan or no, until he was born and relinquished.  Maybe he felt like a part of her.  He did, after all, grow inside her body.

Women who are planning to give up their kids, even the ones who say they want nothing to do with the child, do have human hearts like anyone else.

Answer 6

Hmmm, let's see, why do mothers name their children?

Um, because we love them?

Mothers who relinquish are just like mothers everywhere--we love our children.

Answer 7

Because maybe, in her heart, she didn't really want to give him up, but felt she had no other choice.  Naming a child is a way to "claim" him as her own.  Hiding it from her family is something most women do out of fear and shame.  And what his adoptive mother was told by someone at the time may or may not be true.

My adoptive parents were told things about my birth mother that weren't true.  I know because I now have copies of the court records.  Why someone told my parents the things they did, I have no idea.  

The story that his birth mom "wants nothing to do with him" may not be true. I find that hard to believe from the very fact that she named him.  And especially because she gave him a name so close to that of her other son, one that she would think of every time she looked at him.  One that resonated so clearly in her other son's name.  

Even if she said at the time that she 'wants nothing to do with him', she may not still feel that way today.

check out a few links:

http://www.exiledmothers.com/

http://originsusa.memberlodge.org/

http://www.birthmothers.info/

and the book, The Girls Who Went Away

http://www.thegirlswhowentaway.com/

Good luck, my friend. Feel free to e-mail me...

PS  Sadly, there are often a lot of lies & secrecy surrounding adoption.  You have to peel back the layers, like peeling an onion, to get to the truth at the center.  Some stories just don't make sense.  And when they don't, hmmmm...there may be another side to explore.

Answer 8

well i am not sure why but you have to admit if you aren't going to keep a baby it is good to have a name of sorts for when they do find their paper work. i mean its only right and if you didn't ahve last name it would be horrible for the one not named. i guess that is why.

Answer 9

She may have just not had her life together yet. She probably was not mentally ready to be a parent, and made the choice to give him up. The whole name thing, she probably wanted people to know that she wsa his mother, but she didn't want to be with him because she didn't want to get close to something that she knew she couldn't have.

Answer 10

I think bmoms, like any woman who has carried a baby to term, simply identifies the child within by a name.  Like it or not, I think this is just one of those things.  Why did the name end up on a birth certificate...several possible reasons.  #1  Bmom really wanted the baby to have the name she wanted to give.  #2 Someone who passes out the forms in the hospital told bmom that she could, could not, should or should not do one or the other things.  A question about paperwork that got a paperwork answer...unfortunately this is just another one of those things we learn to deal with living in the modern world.

Amazingly, the name given to me by aparents in a very closed adoption...rhymes with bsibling's name and just happens to be my bmom's sister's name.  Go figure!

My children were born in a foreign country...and you would not believe the flaming hoops the bureaucracy made us Americans jump through to name our kids as we wished!!  

Is your husband's original birth certificate German with a consular's report of birth abroad...or born in an American hospital with an American birth certificate?

Edit:  I seems to me that your husband's aparents have a lot of information that they've never shared fully.  Do you get the impression that they are making it up as they go along?  Are simply tipping the scales one way or another?  I think it is time to sit them down, seriously tell them that you want the truth here and now, if you discover falsehood/omissions later on or in the future....you finish that sentence.

Answer 11

My Mother named me before relinquishing too.  And I'm almost certain she kept her pregancy from her family also.

I believe she cared, I believe she loved me and since reading the Girls Who Went Away, the feelings I once had that she 'threw me away'  have disappeared

I have spoken to many mothers who surrendered their children and am assured that the majority named their baby - even if the documentation says different.

Answer 12

Although I did not name my daughter, I had to get pretty adamant about my wishes. They kept trying to get me to name her. They said it would make it easier for us to reunite later on. How much truth there is to that statement I do not know. I have reunited with my daughter but her parents too were told things about me that were not true. So why would they try to get me to name her for reuniting purposes and then make my situation more bleak than it really was? I have no idea. It wasn't that I didn't care enough to name her. I did. I had other reasons.

Answer 13

I second Concerned's answer. Because a woman surrenders her child does not mean that she don't love her child. The  continuity of names is a very strong statement by your husband's mother. Our children, whether we are fortunate enough to raise them or not, are a continuity of our own lives. They connect us with our pasts and they are our futures. This is why adoption doesn't make sense to so many of us, we just find ourselves years down the road wondering what the h**l happened? How were we so young and naive as to lose our son/daughter?

I was sold on the idea that I would not be raising my child even before he was born. I named my son, but did not think that I had the right to give him a name for his birth certificate, so my son's obc will have listed "baby" X(last name). It is so unfortunate that so many of us were not told our rights - even if they were over-turned and our babies renamed.

I hope your husband finds out the truth surrounding his surrender and that gives him at least some peace of mind.

Best

ETA: I didn't go to great lengths to have a closed adoption, but I do know that the adoptive parents had an awfully lot more "information" about me than I had about them. Then there is the 21 years they had to meld that information into something that they wanted their son to believe - about them, about me... about adoption in general.  My son isn't really talking to me now, but I imagine how the info might be mangled to somebody else's best interest.

Answer 14

I was told not to name my baby so she was referred to as Baby girl (my maiden name) for the first 6 weeks of her life before she was adopted..

Answer 15

Hospitals will sometimes push a parent, even one making plans for an adoption with a family, to put a name on the birth certificate so they can legally file the documentation with the hospital and court house in the county the hospital resides. Hospitals will automatically put the last name on the certificate for the parents who are biological to the child. The certificate is later changed to reflect the adoptive parents names once the adoption is finalized in court. The originals I believe are sealed in court or placed in birth records after the  new printed certificate is given to the adoptive family.

Answer 16

I had a girl almost 18 years ago and had to give her up for adoption.  I named her but they changed her name which is fine.  I did not want her to not have a name when she was in foster care.  I think it helped me to put some closure on having to give her up which was and has been the hardest thing I ever went through.