Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 exptools 1/6/84; site ihuxi.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!ihnp4!ihuxi!rcj1 From: rcj1@ihuxi.UUCP (r j) Newsgroups: net.kids Subject: Re: kids and parents with different last names Message-ID: <1100@ihuxi.UUCP> Date: Thu, 20-Sep-84 16:32:09 EDT Article-I.D.: ihuxi.1100 Posted: Thu Sep 20 16:32:09 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 25-Sep-84 20:09:17 EDT Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL Lines: 71 >Certainly it is not yet commonplace, but it is no longer unusual >for mothers and fathers/ husbands and wives to have different last >names. I have my name and my husband has his. Why should I take >his name anymore than he should take mine? To each his own, but a family to me means everyone having the same name. I would have resented it vehemently had my wife refused to take on my last name. BTW, my wife was previously married, with 2 kids. They were 2 and 3 yrs old when we married. I have not legally adopted them yet,(they're 15 and 16 now) but have been going by my last name since they started school. (I'm going to have to adopt them, and soon to avoid problems with things like drivers license application, SS, etc...) >We had a daughter - and both agreed that she should have both names, >hyphenated (after all, she is no more the child of one of us than >of the other). As for the problems of later life, if she should >have children, I assume that she will reach a solution agreeable to her >and the children's father. You forgetting one thing. She gets married before she has children, in which case she'll probably take on her husbands name I guess. (It seems un-common to me that a woman does not want to take her husbands name, obviously, you are the exception.) >Why should a child be teased for having parents with different names? >It definitely does not mean anything regarding the marital status of >the parents. And plenty of children have divorced parents, with the >mother resuming her pre-married name, or re-married parents, so that, >the mother may have a different name than the child and the father if >she is conventional and has taken her new husband's name. Children tease other children for the dumbest things... I imagine kids view other kids with last names different then their parents as being odd. Especially the younger kids. They know somethings different, they just cant get a handle on it. >How about families with children from different marriages and a >multiplicity of names? I don't know from personal experience, >but do children from such multi-layered families get teased because >their last names are different from their siblings'? I know of one case in particular where there were 3 children from 1 father and 1 child from another. The later being the youngest child. My kids used to play with them and i can't say I recall any teasing going on. >In some cultures, newly married people take totally new names, >and in some cultures, names are PERSONAL, not reflecting parentage, >ancestorage, etc. In some cultures people do not have first and >last names at all, but one single name - and the methods for >acheiving names are flexible enough that one is unlikely to run >into too many others with the same name. Our system may well be >the anomoly. ...can you imagine: 253889, do you take 74338 42990 to be your...... Ray, ihnp4!ihuxi!rcj1