Why doesn't he want to marry me?

daisiegg

jetplane wrote: »

Why would my children not have their fathers name, not being married to him wouldnt matter in the slightest.

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Why would your children not have your name, after all you carried them and gave birth to them?

Errata

jetplane wrote: »

A quick question thrown out to the office has returned a resounding yes to the child having the fathers surname whether married or not. A couple of people have said that if they were a single parent they would use their own name.

It's a wise child that knows its own father.

jetplane

Agreed but we are a family, never crossed my mind to use my my name and when we married I changed my name to theirs.

daisiegg

jetplane wrote: »

Agreed but we are a family, never crossed my mind to use my my name and when we married I changed my name to theirs.

So you do want to have the same name as your children - otherwise you would not have changed your name when you got married.

What would have happened if you and the father split up before you got married? Would you have been so happy having a completely different name to your children if they lived with you? That is what would bother me; not quite so much having a different name if I was in a relationship with the father, but having a different name if I was a single mum. It is usually (though I know not exclusively) the mother who ends up with the children living with her, and I personally would not want my children to not share a name with an adult who takes care of them, lives with them and has responsibility for them.

I am, though, speaking entirely personally. This is how I would feel (I also would not have had a child outside marriage anyway). I'm not casting judgement on people who do things differently. It takes all kinds of kinds...!

Person_one

jetplane wrote: »

:rotfl:Just read your post out .... replies are ... it's a name not a label .... it's an identity thing .... dad didn't choose we did ..... people might think she's not his ..... we are a family married or not. Office is made up from early twenties to over 50's.

Having said that we work in a multi cultural area where many married couples don't even have the same name never mind the children. It is common for the children we work with to have their fathers name, married or not.

I don't really think any of those answer the 'why' very well.

Maybe 'why dad's name over mum's name? Why is his more important than hers?' is a better way to word it.

seven-day-weekend

I would want us all to have the same name, whatever it was (his, mine, double-barrelled). However, if we were not married, any children would have my name. (I would not plan to have any children without being married, but sometimes plans go wrong).

If, after having children, he refused to marry me, I personally would think he was just biding time until something better came along. I probably would not stay and that is why any children would have my name.

I'm glad to say we were firmly married for nearly ten years before we had our son

Just mho.

jetplane

daisiegg wrote: »

So you do want to have the same name as your children - otherwise you would not have changed your name when you got married.

No if I wanted the same name as my children I would have given them my name. I changed my name to my husbands when I married him which was some years later.

What would have happened if you and the father split up before you got married? Would you have been so happy having a completely different name to your children if they lived with you? That is what would bother me; not quite so much having a different name if I was in a relationship with the father, but having a different name if I was a single mum. It is usually (though I know not exclusively) the mother who ends up with the children living with her, and I personally would not want my children to not share a name with an adult who takes care of them, lives with them and has responsibility for them.

Yes I was perfectly happy living with a different name to my children and would have left it that way if I had never married. That would have been the same if I had divorced my children would keep their fathers name even if I did not.

I am, though, speaking entirely personally. This is how I would feel (I also would not have had a child outside marriage anyway). I'm not casting judgement on people who do things differently. It takes all kinds of kinds...!

Well I must be a kind of a kind.... I never planned to have any children and would have had to abort my child if I had decided not to have her outside of marriage.

daisiegg

jetplane wrote: »

Well I must be a kind of a kind.... I never planned to have any children and would have had to abort my child if I had decided not to have her outside of marriage.

As I said, it takes all sorts to make a world and one person's way is not better than another's

If I had got pregnant accidentally before I was married I also would not have aborted. I do know unplanned things happen. I suppose the only difference is I would have given the child my name.

Noctu

Mm. Making two children with you but not bothering to commit with marriage, despite knowing it's very important to you. It's a difficult situation but I'd be questioning a future with him.

That might raise the hackles of the "marriage is just a piece of paper" crowd but that's just my opinion.

jetplane

Person_one wrote: »

I don't really think any of those answer the 'why' very well.

Maybe 'why dad's name over mum's name? Why is his more important than hers?' is a better way to word it.

Dont think dads name is more important but those are the answers I got and I'm not about to ask them all to be philosophical about it at quarter past 4 :rotfl:

Certainly the 'why' in some of our families is cultural and the way names are used for example some married women take their husbands first name as their second name. Others have surnames which are male and female eg the males have one surname and the females have a variant of that or a different surname. I know that we can never assume that parent and child have the same second name.