Taking DH's surname after 8 years of marriage

[5by5]

I have been mulling over changing my name recently. I didn't change my name when I married for feminist reasons and for weirdness reasons - I found/find the idea of changing your name strange, it must be an odd process to go through.

However, there are a few reasons why I'm thinking of doing it now...

1. I am now NC with my parents and sometimes I don't like this tie I still have to them. I feel much more like DH's family are my family now.

2. We are moving overseas, a fresh start, seems like a good time to do it if I was to do it.

3. My name needs spelling out or people don't get it right. This is trivial.

4. DCs have DH's surname, though my name as a middle name. The more I refer to friends and family groups as 'the So-and-Sos' the more I'd like us to be 'the DHsurnames'. This is also trivial.

Reasons against would be:

1. Moving overseas will be a testing time for our relationship. I fully believe we are strong enough for it to be a great adventure for all of us, but I'd be a fool if I didn't consider the idea that it might all go wrong, and while changing my name back would be a minor point in what I'd be dealing with if it did, it seems like it would be salt in the wound.

2. Still feminist reasons.

What do you think? I haven't mentioned this to DH at all.

As i said pages ago my dd is keeping her name for work she will be registered in her surname but she says she will use her husbands name too I guess that isnt a feminist choice either. Incidently double barreling how do you decide whos name goes first ? I know a couple where manname was first but it was alphabetical which seems logical

didn't think it would bother me not having the same surname as the DC's but it did, as well as people assuming we weren't married

Are there still people who judge a woman for not being married to the father of her children? And you would give tuppence for their opinion?

Just read thatstoast's username properly and am sooooo disappointed- I thought it was thatstoat...........

See my 1542 post BR

I left my name first. Not that it matters as nobody ever gets it right.

Bertrand That Stoat?

Sorry, yonic- missed that. I see what you mean , but I actually think this is an important issue. It's such a very public and unquestioned piece of patriarchal bullshit.

Thatstoast- I just liked the idea of someone being called thatstoat- it made me smile. Ignore me- odd sense of humour.......

ALassUnparalleled I think there are people who have judged me for not being married to my children's father. Even before I left him I was asked 'are you getting married?' and 'why not?' following by condescension and pity, and always from the women with the most mediocre men and the smallest diamond rings not that poverty and mediocrity necessarily mean that the relationship between the two is mediocre. I understand that. But my defensive voice said bitchy things inside my head.

Even now, I have a job, a house, two clever, confident, attractive happy children who see their father (and he contributes financially) there are couply types who will keep me at arms length. Might be catching, the whole single-itus.

urbanefox really? I'm speechless. DH and I have different surnames. I have never got a pity look or been judged. We must move in very different circles.

However, we do get lots of sexist addresses on letters because I use Dr as my title. We get letters from companies addressing Dr myname and Mrs/Ms dhname regularly. It is as if only men can have PhDs! DH thinks it's hilarious and doesn't mind a bit. This is never from friends though. I remember national trusts doing this, and I know our water bill has that too. This is ofc unrelated to the OP surname problem. But it's sexism in addressing non the less.

Oh and I don't have a ring so we do look very unmarried.

Wow. So if you made a choice, for example, to pay a woman employee less than a man that would be a feminist choice? To help your son go to university but not your daughter because "she'll only get married- no point educating girls"? To insist that your dds do housework but not your dss? All feminist choices?

Come on now, use your common sense. You know full well what I mean.

Exactly all of those choices are about other people's lives, I think it's much trickier to make judgements about how feminist the choices people make about their OWN lives are.

I hope that made sense. All of those examples are simply sexist.
However if I CHOOSE not to go to university and prefer to get married and have kids is that "anti feminist"?

Probably Lemon

Ha, good to know

'I actually think this is an important issue. It's such a very public and unquestioned piece of patriarchal bullshit.'

I couldn't agree more.

"However if I CHOOSE not to go to university and prefer to get married and have kids is that "anti feminist"?"
Nope. Because you are not publicly perpetuating an outdated patriarchal system in which women were regarded as chattels to be passed from one man to another.

I have some sympathy with Lemon as there is a school of feminist thought that says my preference for dresses and ballet pumps also perpetuates an unthinking stereotyped version of femininity (as opposed to what I like to wear and I'm comfortable in).

I therefore feel slightly hypocritical in saying it surprises me that whilst any woman is free to change her name if she wants that she doesn't see the bigger picture.

All the dismissing of a woman's name (it's just her father's ) which is never applied to a man irritates me. A man's name has passed through generation after generation on the patrileneal line- wouldn't it be interesting if women's names had passed through generation after generation on the matrilineal line?

We never discussed it. It was taken as read I would keep my name.

Since women are not chattels to be passed over any more just do as you like.
My father had died before I married and I had lived alone for 8 years so I wasn't 'passed' anywhere.
I had free choice and used it.

A third of women in their twenties are keeping their name, according to this:

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10166717/Do-you-take-this-mans-name-Not-necessarily.html

So two thirds are changing it.

"Since women are not chattels to be passed over any more just do as you like."

No, they're not. So why use language and perpetuate traditions that suggests they are?

No one is saying you didn't have free choice Mehitabel. It's the reasons and the effect of that choice which is being discussed.

A correct if redundant statement, Mehitabel!

Though judging by the article, about 3% double barrel. This is a survey of FB users rather than a census or similar.

I've just done my own FB sample based on me and my married friends.

29 married women. 1 kept her name, two double barrelled.

The one who kept her name is one of two women I know who self identifies as a feminist.