Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

KJEveryday OP t1_j2fa7m7 wrote

Reply to comment by Mysterious_Bridge_61 in [35M][37F][4.5F] My wife wants to change our daughter’s middle name to her surname. I am hesitant, but want to compromise. Any advice? by KJEveryday

I get this. Thank you. I agree that her happiness is extremely important. A few things I want to call out:

  1. My wife has her own last name.
  2. I would have been fine with our kids having a hyphenated last name to begin with but she didn’t mention it at the time and we actively talked about it. She said it would be less of a hassle to just have mine.
  3. I would be fine to have even changed my own last name via hyphen but she never brought it up.
  4. She’s really against the compromise of having two middles, and the kids current one which myself and our families enjoy and know. We have a bunch of stuff that is embroidered already.

Again, I’m not sure if you saw, but I am leaning towards her getting to change the middle, and not doing what I think is a compromise by having two, and having her explain it to everyone. I suppose I’m just a bit salty about it. I feel like she isn’t compromising.

3

Mysterious_Bridge_61 t1_j2fj535 wrote

I’ll just add that I didn’t realize that as time went on I would be more sad about the name issue. So the fact that she agreed to give your daughter your last name but not hers, may have felt ok to her at the time, but after a few years it is getting increasingly hurtful.

You think that she should “compromise,” but really she naively gave up her “right” to fight for giving her child her own last name originally not realizing it would hurt her. So now she comes to you saying that if her daughter gets the maiden name as a middle name, this feels like the right sort of compromise she should have asked for to begin with.

If she was asking to switch our your last name for her last name entirely, then a compromise would be appropriate. But she is suggesting an actual compromise that still leans towards the patriarchy that kids get their father’s last name and she is only asking for her last name as a middle name.

I hope this helps you feel able to get over your saltiness about her not “compromising”. Sexism in our culture often has women not even realizing that something is skewed towards males to begin and just accept it as normal, and then after some time they can see that the sexism has caused some hurt and resentment and it is very difficult to deal with.

16