Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ucla-cs.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!hou3c!hocda!houxm!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!sdcrdcf!trwrba!cepu!ucla-cs!ellen 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.