In my last blog I said that adoptive parents, who have often been at the mercy of social workers and birthmothers to tell them if and when they can parent, need to claim their child as their own. If this is not done it can interfere with the parents’ ability to give themselves to the child completely. Sometimes the parents feel so lucky to have been given this child that they don’t provide needed discipline.
Many adoptive parents enjoy formalizing the transition with a ritual, especially since the actual court appearance may take less than five minutes and/or may be delayed for months after the child’s arrival.
This ritual may take many forms. It may be a “welcome home” ceremony with immediate family only or with extended family. For some families, their religious tradition has a ceremony such as a naming, Baptism, dedication or “sealing as a family” in which the parents promise to love and raise the child. In Korea, my daughters’ adoption agency practice is to have the agency founder pray over each child before they left for the U.S. If the adoptive parents have traveled to Korea, he takes the baby from the foster mother during the ceremony and hands him/her to the adoptive mother.
Many parents who adopt infants in the U.S. now participate in an entrustment ceremony. The difference between these and other ceremonies is that the birthparents participate fully and make a statement of choosing the adoptive parents as the child’s parents, receive the adoptive parents’ statement that they will love and care for the baby, and formally hand the baby to the new parents, “entrusting” them with the child’s full care.
Other than these elements, the ceremonies can vary widely. When my friend adopted the ceremony was held in her church. Another ceremony was held in the chapel of the high school the birthmother attended. A ceremony may be held in the hospital, at an agency office, or in a home. Birthmother (and sometimes birthfather) and adoptive parents participate. Sometimes grandparents, both birth and adoptive, participate as well. Ceremonies may include readings and songs chosen to express the feelings and hopes of both families. The book Designing Rituals of Adoption: For the Religious and Secular Community by Mary Martin Mason and Daryl Parks has examples of entrustment and welcoming ceremonies.
Creating Ceremonies: Innovative Ways to Meet Adoption Challenges
by Cheryl Lieberman and Rhea Bufferd offers not only entrustment, farewell, and welcoming ceremonies but ceremonies for adoptive family life such as “For the End of the School Year”, “Bolstering Self-esteem” , “Monsters and Fears”, and “You are Safe Here”.
Please see these related blogs:
Naming, Claiming, and Letting Go
Birth Parents (Part 6) Acceptance