Teen Asks If He’s The Jerk For Rejecting Foster Parents’ Idea Of Changing His First Name

Being a foster parent is truly a life-changing experience. Along with the typical parenting duties, it also requires people to understand or make accommodations for the background that their child is coming from. If they don’t do that, it might lead to uncomfortable situations.

This is what happened to a teen whose foster parents didn’t like the name his bio mom had given him. They kept telling him to get it changed and justified their pressuring by saying it was because they were worried about his future job prospects.

More info: Reddit

Every foster kid wants to feel accepted just as they are and if they are pushed to change to please other people, it will undoubtedly cause pain

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The poster explained that he really liked his current foster parents and wanted to stay with them at least till he was 18, as he had been moved around a lot before

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The teen mentioned that one issue his foster parents had was with his name, Ryder, and that they wanted him to change it to something more “sophisticated”

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The foster parents told the teen that they felt his name would hold him back from his professional future, and they kept trying to convince him to change it

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The teen told them that he’d never be open to changing his name as he liked it, and it would be a big waste of time to get it done

It seems like the OP’s foster parents were hell bent on changing his name to something more palatable. They found his real name cringy and were worried about how it would affect his future. They also kept telling the teen about how it would hold him back from getting the job he wanted because of how “lewd” it sounded.

To understand more about whether people’s names can really affect their job prospects, Bored Panda reached out to Dr. Ricardo Twumasi. He is a lecturer in psychosis studies at King’s College London and a research fellow at Region Hovedstadens Psykiatrisk Center, København. Dr. Ricardo’s research focuses on employment discrimination and equality for people living with psychosis. 

He explained that “there is a lot of evidence that names influence people’s job prospects in the way we would expect–due to the signalling of gender, ethnicity, age, or unconscious bias. It can also happen in unexpected ways, such as alphabetical order of names.”

“Due to the primacy effect, there is evidence that alphabetical order of names correlates with the likelihood of an individual being voted for and even academic success,” Dr. Ricardo added. Therefore, it seems like the poster’s parents were onto something when they offered their advice, but ultimately, the decision to change his name was in his own hands.

The parents wanted him to go and get it done because they could not change his name unless the child welfare agency gave its approval. Since he didn’t want to go ahead with it, there was nothing they could do.

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Even when the teen was telling his foster parents that he didn’t want to change his name, they kept pestering him about it. They didn’t realize how meaningful it was to him or that it was one of the few things that connected him to his mother.

Dr. Ricardo explained that “the decision of anyone to change their name should be a deeply personal one. The motivation for any name change should come from the individual and their own personal sense of identity. The [OP] states he likes his birth name, and the motivation to change a name should only come from the individual themselves.”

He also shared a story told by his grandfather about “fellow Africans studying in the UK, who would have ‘white names,’ given by church elders or slave owners, such as ‘John Smith.’ This would lead to a situation where his fellow students would apply for a room for the summer with a family in a city they would like to stay in, usually London, by responding in a letter to an advert in a paper.”

“This led to a situation where the very eloquent African Smiths and Taylors would receive positive responses to their letters, and then, when the summer arrived and they took the train down to their new summer accommodation, the family would realise they were African, and tell them the room was no longer available. This left many in an awful situation in an unfamiliar city with no accommodation,” he added.

It’s clear that a person’s name can affect their job prospects or even create an unconscious bias in people’s minds. Despite that, it’s still the poster’s decision about whether he should change his name or not, but since he seems to like it, he should be allowed to keep it.

How do you think the OP should handle this situation with his foster parents? Do let us know what you think, and also share whether your name ever played a role in how you were perceived. 

People sided with the teen and told him that the adults were wrong to pressure him

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