DP wants to go on new DC's BC

[Jackieharris]

He has just raised this out of the blue.

He isn't on our eldest DC's bc. That's never caused a problem. Now he's saying he wants that changed too.

I know this is 'normal practice' (hence posting on fwr not aibu/chat/parenting/relationships) but it's made me really anxious.

It came so out of the blue, I didn't have much of a response prepared. I said it hadn't caused any problems so why change. I said I didn't want to give up my exclusive rights. He said why and I gave the hypothetical scenario of him running off with a younger woman then being able to restrict where I live etc after a split.

He knew about my stance on this before we had dc1. He knows I had a very bad relationship experience before him (life threatening violence, stalking and breaking into new house after break up type stuff) so I just won't ever feel 100% safe with any man ever and need to have the security that I could escape if that happened again. From my PoV if he was on bc he could potentially use this power to continue to abuse me even if I left. (So many threads like that on relationships board and I know some irl examples too)

As long as he was never violent I'd always let him have fair access to dcs so I said to him why does he want it unless he doesn't trust me?

I'm now going to be constantly worried he'll bring it up again. Maybe he won't. I'll not mention it if he doesn't.

Op was not misunderstood she was quite clear actually. She wants 'exclusive rights' and nothing will change her mind on the matter.

Crikey, so now it's about the "poor FWR regulars" (whoever they are).

It seems to be about anyone except the fucking children.....

It's their BC, it's their right to have their genetic parents on it.

Yes, unfortunately the OP does sound unreasonable to quite a few people - that happens when you're in the wrong....

Unfortunately Arsenic a lot of the true nastiness has been against the poster.

Oi! That was genuine. I actually honestly meant that. It seemed to me Regina was saying that wordiness or whatever was making her feel belittled and I genuinely don't think people should feel that way. I could be wrong on many fronts, my reading of it, my response, whatever, but I don't like being accused of intentional snideness when it wasn't there.

Sorry Shaska I read it as of a piece with the snideness.

I can see it can be read two ways. Is it something you would say out loud IRL?

I'm just utterly flabbergasted that anyone imagines 'pseudo-intellectual' occupies the same shelf as "If people were trying to make you feel small, surely they'd make comments on your intelligence and vocabulary?" (or similar) in any hierarchy of jibes TBH.

I've said some dumb stuff in my time but I'd never have picked a genuine attempt to get along with someone to be raised as a shining example of my failings.

Live and learn

Uh... yeah I totally would have said that, or minor variations on, in real life. More than once.

Doesn't mean I'm not a horrible bitch in real life I guess, but nobody's ever told me I was. It normally goes quite well!

Anyone who reads this board regularly can see there is a lot of disagreement on many issues among the regulars. There are lots of regulars I disagree with who don't resort to the "you lot" attitude. I find the "you lot" attitude to be narrow minded, not constructive and boring.

There are posters like sausagegg and lass who I often disagree with but usually post interesting views (other than the "you lot" crap). Some amazing posters have left MN recently that I really miss and wish they would return.

MN is a broad church and there is space here for everyone. It seems strange me that people expect medals for their posts on every board.

Maryz, not putting the name of the father on a BC is not 'incorrectly' filling it in, as discussed upthread.

I agree, pieces of paper can be very important to children. But I'm fairly certain that the OP's children are not suffering a sense of doubt in the same way the children you know are. OP's children know both their parents. However the wider point you make, about saying this should be seen from the children's POV is important, I'd agree. I don't think anyone got cross about people making that point. People got cross because of how the OP was being attacked and how unhelpful that was. I know I and others posted over and over again asking for kindness, I know our attempts to talk about the context were described variously as man hating, as arse talking, pseudo intellectual etc. So I don't think I agree that this thread blew up because no one would accept the idea that the children should be considered. It blew up because people were insulting and pretty harsh to a vulnerable, pregnant poster whose obviously struggling and who might have been supported and allowed a bit of space to rethink her strategy which basically everyone agreed wasn't really working.

Maybe body language and eye contact help?

Arsenic, I said that because Regina claimed my using a word she wasn't familiar with was an attempt to belittle her intelligence. So I was saying, if I wanted to belittle your intelligence by saying she didn't have a good vocab wouldn't I just say that? She was the person suddenly talking about her intelligence in the context of vocab, not me. Please read all of that exchange, it's grossly unfair to suggest that I just said it apropos of nowt

I challenged the 'pseudo intellectual' remark because it was passive aggressive and had no purpose other than to insult

I said "Pseudo Intellectual", it wasn't to be "Passive Aggressive", it was to highlight the fact (again) that there is a distinct habit on here for certain people to post so much "pseudo intellectual jargon and phraseology" on a thread as to make it almost indecipherable to most people - a form of Passive Aggressiveness in itself....

If you can't say it in terms that everyone can understand, it's probably not worth saying - but as I said, that seems to be the aim. It stops the plebs from joining the club.....

Anyway, to summarise - I don't agree with the OP not allowing the children's father to have his name in the "Father" space on their Birth Certificate, especially not for the reasons stated.....

I read it that the OP didn't want an argument about the rights/wrongs of not putting the father on the BC- but she wanted to discuss her own individual situation.

I also read it (and I've not read every post on here - but a lot, and all the OPs) as saying she is concerned about his change of mind - which is a reasonable concern of someone with a history of an very abusive relationship. She's possibly thinking why does he suddenly want this now? and what does this mean for me? He was happy not to go on the dc1's BC - what has changed? This is perfectly valid thing to question, in her circumstances, as she seems to have been the victim of the highest levels of domestic abuse in the past. You can't just say to her 'oh forget it, that was a different man' - she has clearly been scarred by her experiences. She clearly wants to ensure she is never vulnerable to a partner's domestic abuse again - and we all know that dv can begin at any time in a relationship - after

Hmm. Law is invested in having the real mother on the birth certificate but its only tangentially interested in who the father is. Such law favours a stable society. If law were changed to require the father to be on the certificate and it was, reasonably enough, required that the listed person be the actual confirmed father, then over 200 men in the UK per week could potentially discover they were not the father of the mothers child and a further number of men, approaching the same number, could be told they were the biological father of a child they may have variously either known, suspected, or had no idea about. Something like that would have profound and complex repercussions in society.

Dadwashere- Mike Buchanan's your man on this subject.

However, historically, men are automatically recorded as the father if they are married to the mother, such is the institution of marriage. This gave men carte blanche to get a woman pregnant, and then choose to 'do the decent thing' and marry her, or run for the hills and deny all responsibility - leaving the mother to face the shame of being a single mother/having the baby adopted or whatever.

Now, women are more emancipated in society - they can choose to do it alone with a baby when they are unmarried - with little social stigma (with the exception of the Daily Mail). They have a financial claim on the men that fathered their babies (although fewer than 2 in 5 fathers pay it).

Suddenly the men don't like that very much.

I am not sure what your point is Sabrinna. I read the later part of the thread where people were talking about listing a fathers name on the certificate and CatsCantTwerks impassioned perspective as a child who discovered only later in her life who her real father was. I am not familiar with Mike Buchanan except that google throws up that he leads what is described as an anti-feminist party. Are you talking about universal paternity testing to the same level maternity testing is done? I dont really see universal paternity testing as a victory for men over feminism, because paternity is not a burden removed from one man to vanish into the ether, its just transferred to another man, the actual father. I see it more as a door opening on unpredictable and complex social instability.

I think that what would worry me in this scenario from the point of view of the children is that there is to me a lot of instability in this relationship. A mother that doesn't trust her partner, that wants and believes she has exclusive rights over them and that wants a permanent escape route is also the sort of mother that might potentially look to cut him completely out of their lives in a break up situation if she ever felt like abuse was even possibly on the cards. Given that she's not been terribly rational about this BC thing, I'm not sure if she really woudl facilitate contact as she has stated.

I know her eldest is about seven, so might remember names etc, but there is at least the potential that these children might lose touch with their dad and not know who he was. For example without a record of someone else possibly having PR I believe that the OP could take the children out of the country if the father wasn't on the ball to put in a challenge.

You brought up paternity testing (for some reason) DWH - and Mike Buchanan campaigns for compulsory paternity tests at birth. So he's your man.

Paternity testing has no relevance to the OP at all - I don't know why you brought it up.

DWH also alluded to 'paternity fraud' - another pet MRA hot topic - but completely irrelevant to the OP's situation or this thread. And that annoyed me - because it's a (nasty) derail, on a thread that has been pretty nasty to the OP.

Dadwashere, the second parent on the birth certificate is recorded due to their social relationship to the pregnant woman and the baby, hence some UK birth certificates now having a space to fill in mother and a space to fill in parent, not father, so that the mother's partner can be recorded.

The mother can fill in the father's name if they are married, even in his absence.

Birth certificates record social relationships, not biological ones, except in the case of the mother where the social and biological are the same thing for nine months. There's no reason to paternity test all men in the UK for birth certificate purposes, although men might want paternity testing for other reasons.

Not 'my man' Sabrinna as much as you appear to want to make him so. I have never been nasty to the OP, not that I think anyway, go have a look, I directed two messages to her. As for derails the thread seems to have been barrelling through the countryside smashing all manner of things dont you think? Given many others have brought up the legalities and moralities of listing the father on the birth certificate, or not, its the core of what the thread is about so I don’t agree its a derail. The MRA might think universal paternity testing is a good idea but I think its a huge can of worms with good reasons for it and good reasons against it. But you are right about one thing, the thread has been exceedingly grim to the OP.

Blistory, the OP has not been "deliberately and persistently misunderstood" on this thread.

Almondcakes I have no idea what a UK birth certificate requires and frankly it could have space to list the fishmonger and greengrocer living down the road from the domicile of the newborn for all I really care. Its not about the birth certificate itself its about access to information and the relevance and reasons of giving it or withholding it from the offspring and who decides. You may not regard the information as critical but the reality offspring live is that social relationships do not automatically cause absent/hidden/unknown biological relationships to be shelved or dismissed. Call it a quest for identity, context or whatever, the 'biological relationship' of a person to their mother and father can resonate so deeply they will scour the planet in search of them, regardless of what you think a 'social relationship' should mean to them in regards the people who raised them.

I'm just describing the information that is shown on a birth certificate, not advocating for what I think should be on it, what is critical, or what people should feel about it.

For example, the law currently requires the husband or civil partner of a surrogate mother to be listed as the father/parent on the birth certificate, even if the mother conceived through IVF and everyone involved is fully aware her husband or civil partner is not the biological father.

The biological father and his partner then have to apply to become the parents through a parenting order.

almonds is right about the birth certificate, DWH - it is not a record of biology. It is a record of birth date, place and gives the child a name and a nationality - not biological heritage.

Which is not what the OP wanted to talk about - she didn't want a discussion on the rights or wrongs of what/who should be recorded on the BC and why. Presumably she posted in this section for this very reason. She wanted support - that support didn't need to be "of course he shouldn't go on the BC" - but just be a little understanding of OP's actual situation and fears (whether you feel they are misguided or not).