For women who didn't change their names, but gave their children their husband's last name...

[Anonymous]

I am Dr. Maiden Name because I did my residency and fellowship under my maiden name and I didn't want to un do all that paperwork and all those google searches and all my publications etc etc. Socially though I am totally and almost always Mrs. Married Name. I actually like it because it keeps my work completely separate.

[Anonymous]

I don’t get this either. It doesn’t apply to me bc I changed my name to my husband’s and my kids have his surname too simply because I really didn’t like my maiden name and don’t really like my father or his family so didn’t want to be associated w the name anymore. But I don’t understand why even women who don’t want to take their husbands name often still default to giving the kids their husbands name.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Help me understand why most women who choose not to change their names when they get married still choose to give their children their husband's last name? It just seems like if you choose to give up an old tradition of taking your husband's last name, why would you choose your husband's last name for your children? I'm not criticizing. Really. I'm just trying to understand...

I have never understood refusing to take your husband’s last name as you s have a man’s name as your surname.

My surname is my name in the same way that my first name is my name. Once it was given to me when I was born, it became mine. It's the name I had for 30 years before I married dh. Why should I change it?

The protocol of naming infants is far more patriarchal than women changing their name as an adult. Defaulting to the man's last name for children is PARTICULARLY unfair if a couple with two different last names. and middle names don't count. No one knows or cares what people's middle names are.

On a side note, I think it's hysterical that a bunch of grown ass women are still holding on to their daddy's name like it was some kind of emblem of feminist power. Its so weird.

Prince was way more successful than ALL Y'ALL and he went by a SYMBOL for awhile. Get over yourself. Your career as a mid-level executive, or struggling academic, or non-profit/government G-whatever is not going to merit a chapter in a history book anytime soon, you don't have to be so self-important about your stupid name. Your identity is far deeper and more complex than your place in the alphabet. Please, stop making this a "thing" that is supposed to matter.

Ooook. So you recommend... what? That we all change our names to something picked out of a hat? That running around and doing paperwork and waiting in line to change to a spouse's name is more feminist than just doing nothing?

[Anonymous]

lol was too lazy to change my name....but son has husband’s name.

Is it so hard to understand that you like both your maiden name and your husbands and chose to give your kid a last name For whatever reason? (Aka husband’s name is easier to pronounce, I like it, etc). What a dumb sanctimommy thread.

[Anonymous]

I didn't change my name. No one's business but my own. I told DH he was welcome to change his last name to mine.

DH felt really really really strongly about our child having our last name. Like, REALLY strongly. Rejected hyphenating, despite me repeatedly trying to have that conversation. Same with using my last name (because, bluntly, my rather generic WASP name is about 6 million times easier than his Polish name). Fine, I said. Kid can have your last name, but I pick the first and middle name from the list of names we had narrowed down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Help me understand why most women who choose not to change their names when they get married still choose to give their children their husband's last name? It just seems like if you choose to give up an old tradition of taking your husband's last name, why would you choose your husband's last name for your children? I'm not criticizing. Really. I'm just trying to understand...

Cause their husband asked, maybe?

[Anonymous]

it's an imperfect system, I agree. I didn't want to give my kid a hyphenated last name (too long and cumbersome) and didn't want to make up a weird last name for her. so she has my husband's last name and not mine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our children have my name as their middle, my husbands as their last. So they have both names.

+1 Same

[Anonymous]

My mother kept her maiden name and gave her children our father’s name, so in our family that’s the tradition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Help me understand why most women who choose not to change their names when they get married still choose to give their children their husband's last name? It just seems like if you choose to give up an old tradition of taking your husband's last name, why would you choose your husband's last name for your children? I'm not criticizing. Really. I'm just trying to understand...

Because my husband's name came first alphabetically, so if they lined up in alphabetical order, they'd be closer to the front.

I'm not kidding. That was literally the tie breaker. Every other argument one of us had for giving the children our last name, the other one also had. So, that's how we decided.

[Anonymous]

I agree it's weird. I didn't change my name. My kids have husband's last name.

I think you're misunderstanding the reason why some women don't change their name. As someone else said, for me not changing my name was less some statement about the patriarchy and more about how odd it seemed to wake up one day, in my case at close to 30, and start calling myself a new name. I like my name. When I asked my to-be husband if he would start calling himself a new name one day, he thought about it for 3 seconds and said of course not. When I thought about having a new name, it felt very weird to me. Totally get it that it works for others.

Flash forward several years and I didn't really think about giving the kids my last name and we probably should have at least had the conversation. But they're getting one name or the other. I knew I didn't want to hyphenate. But yes, it is just women accepting the default that the man's name gets passed on and ours doesn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Help me understand why most women who choose not to change their names when they get married still choose to give their children their husband's last name? It just seems like if you choose to give up an old tradition of taking your husband's last name, why would you choose your husband's last name for your children? I'm not criticizing. Really. I'm just trying to understand...

I kept my name because it's my name and has been all my life. I didn't want to keep it because it came from my father, just like I wouldn't want to keep it because it came from my mother if I had her maiden name as my surname. The connection that mattered to me was that it was mine, had been mine my whole life, and I didn't see any reason to give it up. I didn't care to have my husband take my name (and he had no interest) because he doesn't have that connection, and didn't care to take his (and he had no objection). These are our names. I know people who grew up hating their name (hard to spell, hard to pronounce, reminds them of relatives they hate, any reason) and jumping at the chance to get away from it. That wasn't my experience, nor was it my husband's.

Our kid has her own name. If I didn't like my DH's last name it might have been different (I'm always thrown when I meet someone with the surname "Lynch," for instance), but I do like his name. Both of us have very common, easy to spell, easy to pronounce surnames, so there was no sense of "keeping it alive" by choosing one name or the other. He strongly wanted any kids to have his last name, and I did not have a strong preference in the other direction (see above, my name mattered to me because it was mine, not because I was carrying forth my father's line). So my daughter shares her father's surname, and it is now *her* name. She'll probably feel her own way about her last name and may make different choices. Or maybe not. Who knows?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'll bite. I wasn't out to fight the patriarchy when I decided to keep my name. It just completely weirded me out to go by a completely different last name. Plus, my given name does not go well with my husband's last name.

TL;DR - didn't want a new last name so I kept mine.

Same here. It was not a political decision.

[Anonymous]

It is weird. I didn't change my name and my kid has husband's last name. Out of 20 kids in her preschool class for two years straight, 50% of moms had a different last name from dad, but (no joke) 100% of kids had dad's last name or hyphenated. We think through the decision about whether to change our names when we get married, but still default to the societal norm for our kids.

We did the same. My kid has my last name as the middle, but 99% of the time she is First HusbandLast. We decided to do it the other way around First HusbandLast MyLast for a second kid, and it was actually husband's idea to do it that way, but alas secondary infertility got in the way and we're one and done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Help me understand why most women who choose not to change their names when they get married still choose to give their children their husband's last name? It just seems like if you choose to give up an old tradition of taking your husband's last name, why would you choose your husband's last name for your children? I'm not criticizing. Really. I'm just trying to understand...

Getting a name for the first time is a completely different issue than changing a name.

Correct. It's really not that difficult to understand. In honesty, I like my last name far more than my husbands. But, he wanted his kids to have his last name and at the time hyphenating seemed cumbersome. Retrospectively I might have given them both my name as a middle but I didn't and I sleep just fine at night.