to think it's out of order to change a child's name when you split up?

[yankiedoodledandy]

DB and ex SIL split last year after 7 years of marriage. They married young (her idea), had DN youngish (her idea) and now she decides to leave DB and run off with an old boyfriend taking DN with her. Fair enough that happens to lots of couples, but she has now officially changed surname of DN (aged 4) to make it double barrelled to include her maiden name which she's gone back to. Obviously I am biased but just feel that the poor child is confused enough with being uprooted from her home (changing nursery in the process) and with the whole split without also having her identity changed. AIBU or do lots of people do this? I have plenty of friends and family who have split from partners but none have done this to their children.

[willowstar]

my mum and dad divorced when I was about 4. I could
never understand why my mum kept my dads name (still has it at 61). I always wanted her to go back to her maiden name and change ours too.

[thursday]

i dont really see it as a problem. she's added herself in there, not removed him and he agreed to it. my DS is 4 and i think he'd be able to grasp why it happened if we split up. we only got married last year and he understood me changing my name to match him. if i were her i'd be thinking ahead to if i had more children with someone else, i wouldnt want the kids surnames to all be different as someone i know has 4 kids and all 5 of them have different surnames. double barrelling makes sense there (though i dislike it as a rule)

a friend of mine at school's mum got remarried and changed their surname to her new husbands :-/ i found that really peculiar, her dad was very involved in her life but surely must have agreed to it? then when she divorced husband mark II she changed back to her dads name again.

[sunshineandbooks]

I don't think this it too bad. It would be wrong to change from one to the other, but adding an extra name doesn't seem that odd to me. I wish I'd double-barrelled my DCs names TBH. It's not that I want to diminish their father's connection to them because I don't, but because there is no reflection of my name in theirs, it feels like my own connection with them is diminished IYSWIM. I do get fed up of being called Mrs XXX simply because that's my children's name, when I never actually changed my own.

[Awordinedgeways]

Interestingly the government website mentioned earlier gives advice on how if the absent parent (ie father, lets be honest) does not consent then the court process can be used with double-barrelling used as a halfway house to eventual removal of the father's name.
(see note 11. Applying for a court order to change your child's name without the consent of the other parent).

Now there is a debate to be had about why children are traditionally given their father's name. However, that is the current cultural norm and so to be honest without a compelling reason (eg long term abandonment, DV etc) as a father I would (god forbid i was separated from them) feel (rightly or wrongly) any attempt to remove a father's surname as being an unfriendly act and an attempt to write the father out of the child's history.

I appreciate that is not the case with in the original post.

[Awordinedgeways]

*this is not the case

[First post nerves!]

[eurochick]

At 4 I can't see it being a significant (if any) problem for the child and it is reasonable for the mother to want to have the same name as her child. She is not removing your brother's name, just adding to it, so I really don't see the problem.