Giving baby HIS name - losing my feminist card?

[Artemi]

Hi there, posting as genuinely unsure what to do re: future DC's surname.

DH and I both kept our surnames on marriage, which was important to me for reasons of feminist principle.

DH offered to take my surname but I refused as I'm not close to my family (particularly my dad who is a total arse) and it's not even a particularly nice name
We did consider both double barrelling but frankly cba and we never got round to it

Anyway, I feel like on principle I "should" give DC my surname.

However I genuinely think his surname is nicer, and it makes sense for DC to share the surname of the supportive extended family

I'm not totally opposed to double barrelling but feel like I'd be doing it purely on principle.
One of my friends mentioned giving DC both surnames (no hyphen) so my name is on official documents but can be dropped for day-to-day use if wanted (is this a thing?) or to give one surname as a middle name (his would work well as it can be a boy's first name)

DH is happy with whatever I choose.
I'm scared if I give them a clunky double barrelled name I'll regret the actual name, but if I give them the nicer surname I'll constantly feel defensive about making an "unfeminist" choice

In hindsight, I really wish I'd changed my surname by deed poll before marriage and could then happily pass that on to future DC. I thought I'd made peace with my surname, reclaimed it as "mine" rather than my difficult father's, but evidently not ..
😁

Pressed send too soon, I completely understand why your torn. I would have kept my name if it meant something but it didn’t sadly.

What's in a name? A baby by any other name would smell as, uh, much.

The point of a shared surname is that it shows you're a family. Shows you are all kin. You recognize that this matters yourself when you talk about your discomfort at bearing your father's name - because it shows kinship. If it's important there, it can be important with your new family who you do love.

When you become one half of a marriage, you do give up some individuality. You're meant to - a family is a greater whole and everybody loses a little bit of their identity into it. They're meant to. Your husband and you both. What I'm saying is it's not wrong to feel you're giving up some element of yourself for something better. Your husband does the same.

He has offered to take your name so he plainly feels this same unity with you. And be fair to him, there is more social stigma for a man to take a woman's name than for a woman to take a man's so he is making a strong gesture of love in both doing so and being happy for you to choose the child's surname.

I'd avoid hyphenating. That's something grand families did to reflect a union between their estates, showing a child was descended from both. If you don't need your child to be wearing his noble lineage on his crest of arms, screw that. 9/10 it sounds awful (sorry people in this thread who hyphenated! :D )

What matters most of course is the child. You say his surname is much nicer. Well if his name is Charles Debonair and your name is Frieda Clunkbucket, I think that gives you an idea of what might be best. The child wont be capable of making its own choice for another decade or so, so you have to choose for it based on what you think is best.

And based on your opening post, I feel like you don't really want your own father to be chuckling over your child still bearing his name not the father's. I really think you might be underestimating how understanding and accepting your husband has been on this as I think most men even today would feel a bit rejected on this front. As I said above, the shared name reflects people becoming a family ahead of an individual. And that's okay.

It sounds like you're worried about what you ought to do rather than what you want to do, because of feminist principles. Followed to its extremes feminist principles would mean that the refuse collectors going down my street would be 50% female and I haven't seen protests about underrepresentation there. Feminism is meant to free, not be another cage. So do what you want but for yours and the child's sake, let it be what you want not what you "should".

And congratulations by the way. :)

Most of the married women around me keep their maiden names for work, ID and social media etc but might go informally by their husbands name.

I'm the same. My ID will stay in my own name but I'm not going to tear strips off the neighbour or teacher who refers to me as Mrs DH.