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?

I SO want to know what it was now! 😂

We are married but I did not take his name. I did give DS his name, so DS has the same name as his siblings (paternal half-sibs). Also my name is more of a pain to spell, and because of what our names are we can't hyphenate the two together unless we want DS to sound ridiculously pompous.

Any particular reason they didn’t all get yours?

Most of my friends have given their kids the dads surname. They are all working women and take on most of the childcare also. It’s absolutely their right to do this, but I do think it’s strange that women won’t admit that it is a feminist issue - I mean all women can’t statistically have more awkward names than men, and why are women the one’s who ‘don’t really mind’ - if it truly was a 50/50 choice we’d have 50/50 taking on surnames. But we don’t, and this is worth discussing. Maybe not for ourselves, but for our son’s and daughters?

I didn’t change my name when I married, I frankly couldn’t be bothered. Husband never commented.
Knew our first child was going to be a girl, so chose names -3 forenames! His surname sounded better with the forenames we (I) chose and double-barrelling would have been madness. However, I was still unsure.
Then my older sister (decade + older who knew our grandparents) told me that our father had changed his name and our surname belonged to our paternal grandmother’s third husband -someone completely unrelated to us!
Went with my husband’s surname thereafter!

@GerbilsForever24 no one has ever asked me to justify why the kids have my name and not DPs. Not once. In nine years so far.

In case any casual readers were wondering if it would be an issue.

A family member has 2 kids, one with each surname. No questions either.

It would be pretty rude to ask, no?

My partner does more of the nursery drop offs and this is likely to be the case through school, school clubs etc. He felt it would be difficult to be a man and pick up his child who had a different surname.

I have plenty of examples where my life is difficult because of sexism and not being what society expected. I can imagine he is right, a man who is heavily invested in his schools is seen as odd. He had a longer paternity leave then me and some running a baby classes mentioned to me they found it strange to have a dad there. It's a form of sexism that I won't have to experience.

I'm not sure if having a matching surname will help much but having a different surname would give him another hurdle to overcome. In the other side, I'm the main earner and he supports me with dealing with those prejudices and supporting me as well.

I guess in a way it's due to the patriarchy but it's our way as a couple to support each other when we have chosen less gender conforming roles. And it was a very active decision. Still would be nice for me to have the same name as DC but I think it was the right thing for us

This is an interesting twist on the ways in which the patriarchy hurts men as well as women, isn’t it?

I understand your decision, but did you ever discuss all of you having your name?

We did actually. I have a more unique name, which I like and am attached to (although it has its problems with spelling etc). All being equal we might have gone for my name as his is quite common and therefore he feels less of an identity with his name.

But the idea of my partner facing barriers/discrimination as being a very involved parent, made me sympathetic to the idea that having the same name might help him. For him to enter spaces which are mostly for women and children, he wanted to be connected by name to his child so the connection didn't need explaining. I'm hoping as our DC gets older that there will be more involved dad's and actually this wasn't necessary.

He's actually incredibly supportive of me being a "strong" woman and likes how I'm very determined to push through barriers. I think feeling his support on this for over a decade made me immediately want to support him when I could see him having similar barriers. Up until now, he's led a very stereotypical "male" life.

I think the patriarchy hurts those who don't conform to those societal expectations. Usually this affects women but not exclusively.

But yes, we did discuss it in depth and it wasn't clear at the beginning which name was best for us.

*This is an interesting twist on the ways in which the patriarchy hurts men as well as women, isn’t it?

I understand your decision, but did you ever discuss all of you having your name?*

we did. My name is clearly linked to my country of origin and I like the link to my heritage, so would never change it.

like pp with dh as an involved parent we decided on his name for similar reasons to @SophieIsHereToday .

dh is divorced and had a shitty time having to “prove” he was the father of his children at every step. Schools, gp’s, all refused to engage with him until we sent legal letters, and that was with the same name. Whereas once I had to take sdc to a&e in an emergency and they automatically assumed I was mum, until I said I couldn’t consent until a parent got there.

He was worried that a man travelling with kids with a different name would be looked on suspiciously- he takes dd’s away for their hobby and a 40 year old man in the same room as a 15 year old with a different name…? Plus many people assume stepdad and question PR, he had enough of that when he had the same name!

so from personal experience that a female with a child with different names is automatically trusted, whereas a man isn’t, we went with dh’s name.

I am sorry to hear you experienced these kinds of problems. I had hoped we were being paranoid and protecting ourselves against something that wouldn't happen. I hadn't thought far enough ahead to imagine potential issues as a mid-teen.

For us, double barrel of both our names was too long to be practical for DC to carry. But DC have my surname as their second middle name. So we are currently using both our surnames for education purposes. I expect we might drop this at some point but it's nice to have my surname linked to DC.

As MN threads go this one's unusual. As it's unfolded it's amounted to nothing more than a set of imperious demands for women to explain and justify their personal decisions to a complete stranger.

It doesn't work like that. You can create a thread: you don't get to dictate everything others post on it. Conversations evolve, or they stagnate as this one has.

Frankly I'm amazed so many people have gone along with the didactic tone and queenly rebukes on this thread. Naming discussions interest me as a rule, but this is beyond tedious. I'm out. 🥱

@SophieIsHereToday and @Notanotherusername4321 I apologise if I’m being thick, but I don’t understand why you all just couldn't/didn’t use your last names?

Not trying to be goady, this is a genuine question. I’m sorry you’ve had to experience those situations and it sounds horrible for the lovely sounding men you’ve married, but I don’t get why all of you having your last names wasn’t the solution.

Ah, I misunderstood this question when it was asked previously I think.

In my case, DP and I are not married. So we have different surnames to each other.

How feasible would it have been for my partner to take my surname without us getting married, so we all had the same name? I always assumed this is not possible, so DC has to take one of our names.

@MarieIVanArkleStinks it's ridiculous isn't it? If you give a child the fathers surname, your weak, have no self-esteem, it's due to misogyny etc etc.
They can't accept that some of us just don't give a shit. We have 4 different surnames in our house, it's never been an issue, it's just a name after all 🤷‍♀️
I just respect what other people call their kids.

Unclear on the purpose of returning to a thread you’ve barely contributed to…to announce that you’re out. Okay? What are you looking for, exactly? Oh, no! Please don’t go?

Sounds like an amazing partnership.

Not trying to be goady, this is a genuine question. I’m sorry you’ve had to experience those situations and it sounds horrible for the lovely sounding men you’ve married, but I don’t get why all of you having your last names wasn’t the solution

Did you read my post? I explained it.

because dh had had a shit time keeping an active parenting role with his kids from his 1st marriage and remaining involved with schools etc, as I explained.

to start he didn’t want to break the remaining link he had with them so changing his name was never an option. Second can you imagine the issues he’d have had phoning schools and gp’s with a different name to his kids? He’d have had to be producing the kids birth certs, his marriage cert and the letter showing PR before anyone would believe him. as it was you wouldn’t believe the documentation we had to produce even when he had the same name. So many refused to speak to him without his ex’s permission.

as an aside, when his ex got remarried she changed her name to her new husbands. Interesting how that fits into the “want the same name as my kids” reason for name changing.

I think you can change your name whenever you want to whatever you want, either without or via deed poll. Not entirely certain, however.

Your relationship sounds strong, supportive, equitable and loving, though. As does @Notanotherusername4321’s. It’s disgusting what your partners have had to deal with.

@SophieIsHereToday that is interesting as I have also found similar as a woman, with the same surname as my childs, that I feel less exposed in parents evenings, medical appointments etc. I think it is partly because I do not stick out a single parent, which I am, and that does have lower societal expectations. However it is assumed that I am not a single parent, which is quite handy and avoids a lot of predjudice. My kids also feel very tied to me the ‘Banananas’ family, which makes me feel nice. Of course I didn’t know I’d end up a single parent!

How feasible would it have been for my partner to take my surname without us getting married, so we all had the same name? I always assumed this is not possible, so DC has to take one of our names

deed poll. Simple.

This. All of this.

Shame the poster didn’t stick around to see she’d earned another queenly rebuke from unpleasant OP 😆

My son is named after his father. He likes it. His father passed when he was very young.

My daughter has my surname. It's a very cool surname.
My daughter mistakingly gave her DC the father's surname which is an ugly embarrassing name.
She later had it changed to our cool surname.

That's really good to hear. I'm not convinced it would the case around here - I had to make some pretty sharp comments to people who had a LOT to say about me not taking DH's name. It was kind of mind blowing to be honest.

And I've had the odd comment at intervals ever since. But your story gives me hope that things really are changing.