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From: ellen@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.kids
Subject: kids and parents with different last names
Message-ID: <1231@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 17-Sep-84 14:53:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.1231
Posted: Mon Sep 17 14:53:16 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Sep-84 06:40:48 EDT
Organization: UCLA CS Dept.
Lines: 31

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?

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.

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.  

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'?

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.