Grrr...

So your DH is John Smith and you are Mary Jones, children could become Fred Jones-Smith or have an extra middle name ie Fred Jones Smith.

Both under 7

Hesterton, anyone can change name at any time, whether to disavow family or just because they were called Harry or Harriet potter before jk Rowling hit a typewriter...

But the social conventions mean that women have a defined time when they make that decision, so any such decision gets linked to marriage in a way that it needn't.

How old are your children strawberry?

My surname is much "better" than DH's. his is the kind that got a light mocking at school, mine is fairly well known but not Smith levels of frequent.

There was never any thought he would take mine!

I respect and agree with everything you are saying BertrandRussell. Do you think it's something that can be changed once you've already taken a partner's name? I don't want to live the rest of my life with regret that I don't have my name so I think I will have to. Is it wrong then that I also want my children to change names so that we all have the same? Won't I be making them feel the same as I have?

My feminist epiphany only happened as with a lot of women - after marriage/childbirth. I wonder how many women must regret changing their name.

Can I just point out that once again on a thread that's about something that impacts on women, we are talking about the effect on men and on children?

Needforasitter- there is a perfectly good convention for children's names- to hyphenate them. You may not like it, but it is there and free for people to use.

x-posted with the last few posts, I agree that it would help if men felt more free to change their names. I can't make a man change his name so I have very limited power to enable that change to take place, apart from maybe challenging expectations by asking men I know who are marrying if they will be changing their surname. However I can make a stand against the expectation that women should change theirs by simply not doing so.

That is the problem, many people are under the illusion that changing to a husband's name on marriage is a completely free choice. However it isn't, perhaps most women don't come under severe pressure as on that other thread, but look at how many threads there are with women complaining that the ILs, banks etc insist on adressing them as Mrs DHSurname. All because they wish to use the name they were born with, just like most men do. My DH has never been asked why he didn't change his name on marriage, doesn't get birthday cards addressed to him in my surname, doesn't have the rigmarole of "is that Miss or Mrs?" when he gives his name out. So changing name may be something that any individual is perfectly entitled to do but when vastly more women than men do so it perpetuates inequality.

It does seem weird for either party to change their surname. But if neither changes their name, it still leaves an open question for any children. Personally I'm not keen on double-barrelled surnames. My wife didn't change her name, so we alternated surnames for our children which has been fine, but occasionally confusing at their school. And to my shame I once gave the wrong name for one of my children when I was filling out a form - hard to explain that mistake to an official.

I changed my name and i wish I hadn't. I would love to be maiden name-married name. But dh at the time wasn't keen and i didn't really think it through.

Now that my boys are 4 and 2 I especially wish I'd done it. I took the surname of my stepdad when I was a child, so it's a name I chose and still love. I don't feel like I chose my married name really.

I would love to change it now, but my dh would get so upset. Which I know shouldn't be a consideration but it is

"Over on another board there is a woman whose fiancé wants to cancel the wedding rather than accept she won't change her name"

Oh god that thread is horrendous but sadly not uncommon. That's the thing. There are no threads on reddit (or wherever the men frequent) worrying about upsetting the apple cart by not taking their wife's name. It's just something they don't have to think about.

Hesterton everyone can choose their name. Clearly for you, changing your name has been a positive and meaningful experience.
However - it's not a free choice with no cultural context. Over on another board there is a woman whose fiancé wants to cancel the wedding rather than accept she won't change her name. I have a good friend who has got married and changed her name although she didn't want to - because she felt the pressure from her mother and his parents, not even her husband.
Feminism looks at the cultural context for things that happen to women and examines how they differ to things that happen to men and analyses why this is. It's not simply a case of saying 'I choose this therefore it is a feminist act/choice'

Sorry Hesterton no one means to be harsh on you. Of course you are entitled to change your name but we're looking at the macro picture that's all.

Imagine a man wanted to rid himself of an abusive family. He wouldn't have the same opportunity to change his name or it wouldn't occur to him because those are the norms in our society. No one is saying you individually are to blame for perpetuating that system or that you're not a feminist. At least I'm not

"I don't fully understand what you mean. But perhaps that's my flaw. I feel rather upset about this - I think of myself as a feminist and have for 50 years. I don't see why we can't choose the name we want.

I think you may be right and that this is not really the board for me."

Of course you can choose the name you want( and of course it's the board for you) and you obviously have hugely compelling reasons for not wanting to keep your father's name. But most women do not have any reason except "it's what people do". So it's not a choice- it's a process.

I am so sorry you've been upset. Please understand that it's not an attack on you and your choice. It's just that your situation is very unusual and, as the saying goes "hard cases make bad law"

"I'm saying it is about choice. Don't tell me we can't choose."

Oh please. If it were really and truly a free choice you would have a situation where roughly half of women changed their name and the same figure for men or a lot of double-barrelled names taken on by both the husband and wife.

But we don't do we? We have upwards of 70% of women who take their husband's name and downwards of 1% of men who even consider the idea of taking the idea of their wife''s name or double-barrelling their own.

I'm not blaming those women at all. We all live in society and are subject to its norms and subtle coercions but please, let's call a spade a spade!

I'm not sure that it's about the choices we make, but about the ideas and social norms around those choices.

Hesterton has enormously valid reasons behind her choice to change her name on marriage. A lot of women do it because that's the social norm, without acknowledging or even knowing about the ideas of chattel that that norm perpetuates.

Most people don't choose, though. They just go with the flow.

And as this is on a feminist board- a choice does not become feminist because a woman makes it.

Well hesterton that's fine for you if you feel that way. To argue that the same applies to all women is just absurd.

I wasn't aiming it at anyone. I just thought I'd save people time by providing a handy cut out and keep summary of the discussion

Bertrand wasn't direct ing that at you specifically hesterton, just those are the various things that come up on this topic!