To ask why you gave DC his last name?

[Tsort]

If you kept your name/aren’t married, but gave DC their father’s last name (as opposed to double barrelling or giving them you own), may I ask why?

Because it was a legal requirement in the country where they were born, unfortunately.
I did insist on thm all having my own name as a "middle" name, but it only appears when their full names are listed on official documents:

Quite simply not giving a shit.

Indeed. You just happen to not give a shit, for reasons that you won’t examine. Like lots of other women also don’t care for some, completely unconnected reason. And most men do care, for some unfathomable reason.

And none of this has anything to do with misogyny, internalised or otherwise, and it’s condescending to suggest it does.

Right.

Oh, interesting! May I ask which country? What about if parents are unmarried and the father is absent, do DC still get the man’s last name?

Because I didn't want her growing up having to repeatedly spell out her surname and having it continually mispronounced. It was a small way of making her life a bit better in the future. As an adult she has told me a few times that she is glad I gave her her dad's last name and not mine.

I think throwing around "internalized misogyny" is a bit reductive. Real life is complicated.

For example, I "followed tradition" but was perfectly aware it was a sexist tradition. I didn't go along with it because I was blind to it being a patriarchal tradition.

But it was not something I wanted to have a fight or create bad feeling about. To me, there were other issues in my marriage that were more important.

I needed to conserve my energy for those and eventually I was able to use that energy to do other more important things (e.g. break free from a shitty relationship, after having tried my utmost to make it work). Rocking the boat over what surname to use just wasn't high on the priority list.

Also my surname is one that gets misspelled, mispronounced, and sometimes mocked, especially in the UK. Why would I saddle my child with it? And personally I think double-barrelled names are pretentious (though if that's what someone else wants to do, fine.)

So it's a lot more complicated than pointing the finger and chortling over someone else's "internalized misogyny." I also shave my legs once every 3 months or so. I'm perfectly happy to admit that that's sexist too but I do it anyway because I don't live in some idealogically pure feminist world, I live in the real world, and I consider other things I do to have far more feminist impact than this issue.

Presumably you thought the same if you had 3 children without getting married.

It’s not pointing a finger and chortling to recognise the patriarchal constructs within which we live and make our decisions. Examining why we do what we do is often treated with suspicion and it really shouldn’t be. And while you weren’t blind to it being a patriarchal tradition, a quick skim of the responses on this thread illustrates that this is not the case for all posters.

I’m not saying that women need to make ideologically pure feminist choices. I’m asking that women examine the choices they’ve made and questioning the motivations behind them. If they don’t want to do that, they don’t have to engage - it’s an MN thread, not a prison.

I will say that the very idea of not expressing an opinion, having a conversation or taking a stand in a relationship because one doesn’t want to rock the boat and is conserving one’s energies for other issues seems exceedingly toxic to me. I wouldn’t want to be in such a relationship. However, that’s not what this thread is about, and is none of my business.

We had our first child before we married but I knew we would marry. I always intended to take DH's surname because I really like it! It sounds so good with my first name (unlike my maiden name). I also wanted us to have a family name. I couldn't be bothered with having a double barrelled name. It wouldn't have sounded good. Seeing as I preferred DH's surname it was an easy decision.

I'm married but

Because my surname isn't mine, it's my ex husband's.

It IS your name. It's yours unless you believe that no woman ever retains ownership of her own name; that it's always only on loan to them from a man.

And here's where the disparity lies. Women, even in 2022, come under all manner of pressure to take their husbands' names on marriage. This is in evidence all over MN, with people telling those women their names are not really theirs but their fathers'. Offline I've had outright rudeness, and people (MiL for one) refusing to address me by my own family name (they know fine well what it is).

At the same time we meet the counter-expectation that a woman's name - her whole identity - lasts only as long as her relationship lasts. In many cases this is a temporary measure. As soon as her association with that man ends, it's frequently assumed that the name will be handed back like any old borrowed item. IMO, these two expectations really don't sit well together. Women's names are not library books, to be handed back when the loan period expires: nor are we chattels to be tagged like cattle with the name of the man we happen to be associated with.

The child's name question doesn't apply to me, but on every thread about naming conventions I'm struck by the strange contradiction in the two positions above.

I'm married but our son has my name as DH took my name when we married. Would recommend as a route to ensure your children have your name regardless of marriage! 😁

Lots of women don’t care about it, the vast majority of men do care about it. Why do you think that is? Seriously, think it through.

Absolutely. We are married, I kept my name. But the DC have DH's name. We talked about it. But because of the way we'd been brought up, I found i just didn't care as much about the DC having my name. I had spent most of my life just assuming that any children would have my future DH's name. And he had spent most of his life just assuming that any children would have his name.

DH did try to convince me that we should do a girl/boy thing - so any boys have his name (we knew DC1 was a boy so I wonder how much that affected his thinking ) and any girls have my name. From a purely feminist perspective, there's no doubt that would have been a better option. But I made a conscious decision not to go that route because I just couldn't face it and again, after 30+odd years of not expecting it, I just didn't care enough.

I still regularly have to explain why I don't have the same name to people, or get called Mrs DH name+ and the thought of having to constantly justify why the DC had different surnames was too much for me, even if I could see it wasn't the "feminist" decision.

• one of the things I am loving about DS new school is that they clearly have a policy of properly checking parental names. I am consistently referred to in communication and in person as Ms MyName and it's very pleasant.

DH did try to convince me that we should do a girl/boy thing - so any boys have his name (we knew DC1 was a boy so I wonder how much that affected his thinking Grin ) and any girls have my name. From a purely feminist perspective, there's no doubt that would have been a better option

I strongly dislike this option because I don’t like the idea of a family gender divide. The families I know with opposite sex children tend to split that way anyway- boy plays football with dad, girl goes shopping with mum etc. the idea that girls somehow belong to mum while boys are dads is abhorrent to me.

so I don’ t think it’s feminist at all. It’s a further division of the sexes to two different sides and roles. I wonder how kids would feel as well, that one parent is “more” than the other.

His surname just sounds way better with the names we chose than mine does!!

Well, i think in DH and my case, the thinking was a patriarchal line and a matriarchal line.

As DH is busy packing DD's ballet kit to take her to ballet shortly, while I am thinking about how I must stop MN so that I can get my work finished in time to take DS to his sports activity this evening, and these sorts of splits are pretty normal in our house, I'm not really concerned about anyone thinking the girls are mine and boys are DH.

I'm always surprised at how many women hate their surname vs how many men don't seem to have this issue.

Particularly amusing in the case of a very good friend who said she couldn't WAIT to ditch her (admittedly,, very dodgy) surname but who has nothing to say about her brother's wife happily giving up her perfectly normal and non-offensive surname.

"I will say that the very idea of not expressing an opinion, having a conversation or taking a stand in a relationship because one doesn’t want to rock the boat and is conserving one’s energies for other issues seems exceedingly toxic to me. I wouldn’t want to be in such a relationship. However, that’s not what this thread is about, and is none of my business."

Yeah no shit Sherlock! 😂That's why I left. But like a lot of women in abusive relationships, it took time to get there, and the building of a lot of confidence and gathering of a lot of resources. Leaving a toxic relationship is incredibly difficult and it's a complex situation, and that's exactly why I brought it up: because real life is very complex and sometimes making the more feminist choice on something that is (to one individual) less important may be valuable in paving the way for being able to make healthy choices on something far more important.

I get where you're coming from, I'm a bit perplexed by women who change their name upon marriage and wonder "But don't you REALISE it's a patriarchal tradition?!" But at the same time I've come to realise that, yeah, life is complex, and the big picture of how someone lives and what kind of choices they make is a lot more interesting than focusing on whether they've toed the line on this one little piece of the puzzle just because I happen to think they should be behaving in a particular way.

This is such an important feminist conversation OP - thanks for initiating it!

Being totally honest I find it quite disheartening the amount of women on here saying stuff like "his name is nicer". It seems a bit unlikely that every man out there just has a nicer surname than every woman - and yet I've personally met only ONE family whose children had the mothers name. It's not a coincidence. It's a symptom of a fear of feminism and the reassurance of tradition

It was to be mine for girls and his for boys. We got boys.
In hindsight 27 years later I wish I'd given them my name as a middle name. I loathe hyphenated names and didn't think of it until later.

I’m specifically asking women who kept their names why they gave their DC their husband’s name.

OP, this is a good point.

I felt like I was already "pushing it" by not taking DH's name (not by DH but just by society).

I felt "too cheeky" to say the kids should have my name, as there is no real reason as to why they should have mine name over his.

Again, not anything DH said or did, just my own internal dialogue that it was one thing not to change my name, but another thing entirely to not let DH have his name passed on.

And in this sense it just kind of happened that they would have DH's name, as that is not what would have "traditionally" happened.

What is in a name? I guess.

I should add that I'm from a different culture to DH and they both have first names and middle names that are from my culture.

Nope, clearly not a coincidence. However, people react very negatively when you point that out.

I think it’s interesting (and a bit sad) how reluctant a lot of women are to even have the conversation.