So I’m going through a divorce right now, (husband traded me in for a younger model) and I’ve got friends and family telling me I should go back to my maiden name. If it was just me, I’d do it without a second thought, but I have two small kids, ages 4 and 6. More than just the convenience factor of having the same last name as them, I’m wary that changing my name will hurt them, like I’m trying to separate myself from them or something, and not just from their father. Not being a child of divorce myself (parents just celebrated 47 years), I don’t really have a good frame of reference for these things.
So, children with divorced parents, or parents who have been through this, what are your experiences/opinions? I really would love to go back to my old name, but if it’s likely to cause my kids any more trauma than they’re already going though it’s not worth it to me.
My mom kept her married name after divorcing my dad, because of us kids. Then she got remarried a couple years later and changed her name to my stepdad’s name. I was the same age as your kids when my parents got divorced and I didn’t care at all about what name my mom used. We lived with her and she was by far the primary parent (she’s a lot closer to too involved than not involved enough), so I never would have thought she was trying to distance herself from us. If, by chance, you’re the one moving out, that might be a little different.
This might have been a serious concern in the past, but I think families with different surnames are so common now that they’ll never care. They’ll probably never notice the change at that age, and it’s doubtful they’ll ever remember the status quo ante. How often to they think of your last name, anyway? You’re “Mom.”
I do remember knowing that my mom decided to keep my dad’s last name when I was 6. I definitely would have noticed if she’d changed it. Lots of papers with the parent’s name end up going back and forth between home and kids’ school, for one thing. I don’t think I would have cared, but I would have noticed.
Kids are different though. A friend of mine was going through a divorce and was worried about upsetting her 5-year-old when she stopped wearing her ring. That, I never would have noticed. Hell, I wouldn’t notice that now.
In Canada, people who marry don’t even change their name anymore. It is not a default like it is in most US states, where a bride must specify at the time of marriage if she wants to keep her maiden name. I suspect that is the trend and will be commonplace in the USA very soon. Women will just keep their birth name their whole lives.
They’re too young to even notice it. If they ask you can just say “that’s what my name was before daddy and I got married, since we’re not anymore, I changed it back”. They’ll drop it after that. That’ll be the least of the hard conversations you’ll have to deal with. Don’t keep his name for the kids. I understand he left you, but it would seem very clingy. Changing your name back is just one more thing that you need to do, emotionally, to help make a clean break. Telling yourself you’re keeping it, for the kids, is just an excuse.
ETA, when you’re ready to date again, it’ll be a lot easier to not have to tell guys that you’re name is “Susan Johnson…but that’s my ex-husband’s name” or “Susan Smith-Johnson”. Makes it sounds like the divorce isn’t final yet.
I divorced when my daughter was 4, and it was extremely important to her that we have the same last name. How did I know? I asked her. Now she’s 9 and I’m about to get legally married to the man we’ve been living with for 5 years, and she’s just as excited about me taking his name as she was opposed to it before. In fact, she doesn’t remember that she didn’t want me to change it before, and when I explained her reaction as a 4 year old, she smiled and said, “Now I’m old enough to know that a lot of kids and their moms and dads have different last names!”
So I suggest asking your kids what they think, and then you have more information on which to base your decision. Not that you have to let them tell you what to do, but at least then you’ll know if it’s even something they have an opinion about.
Problem with that is (for the time being anyway) that we haven’t evolved a really consistent and predictable standard for what the children’s surnames will be. Father’s name? Mother’s name? Hyphenated name? If we start getting lots of people with hyphenated names, then what are their children’s surnames going to be?
By having a single default standard that women, upon marriage, took their husband’s surname, it avoids having to make decisions like that every time. There could have been other conventions than that, that would work as well. But there needs to be some fairly standard and fairly simple naming standard so that we don’t have everybody having to work it out their own way unless they really want to.
Once we evolve a reasonably consistent societal standard for how the children will be named, then it will be feasible for women, by convention, to keep their maiden names instead of taking their husband’s names.
Fine. But OTOH one hears or reads of lots of couples “agonizing” over such seemingly simple decision. (ETA: I knew one couple who “agonized” over it. For lack of any convincing reason to buck the “standard”, that’s what they finally chose.) By having a “standard”, there’s just one less petty decision for a lot of people to have to make.
Be prepared, if you go back to your maiden name (or remarry and take a new name) for teachers and school staff to call you Mrs. Kidslastname. To me that was a small deal.
I didn’t change my name back right away. When I moved to a new state and was getting a new license anyway is when I made the change. What drove that decision was opening a business with my last name prominent in the business name.
When I married for the second time I did not change my name to his. The biggest factor in that decision is what a pain in the ass it was to change it. Nearly 15 years letter I still haven’t been able to get my name changed on a few accounts, including PayPal. I stopped trying very hard years ago.
I didn’t specify I wasn’t changing my name. I just didn’t fill out any paperwork to change my name. I got married in a fairly conservative state, too (MO). A large portion of my family who live in Canada, most younger than I am, did change their name (Toronto and Montreal).
My job involves collecting lots of demographic data gathered at the time of a baby’s birth. Nowadays, there is no standard. Married women often keep their maiden names. Non-married mothers keep their names–“maiden” or perhaps from their last husband. People from other cultures are giving birth to American Citizen Babies–but often retain their original naming customs. Which can vary widely. (Or not.)
The Spanish system gives everybody two last names, which they keep all their lives. If the father is Juan Gonzales Garcia & the mother is Maria Suarez Rodriguez, their son will be Jorge Gonzales Suarez–shortened to Jorge Gonzales for informal occasions. Unless they drop the custom & go as Mr & Mrs Gonzales–or Mr Gonzales & Ms Suarez. Or she might be Ms McGillicuddy. And they could name the kid George–or Sean. Or the kid might be adopted & the parents are Ms Gonzales & Ms McGillicuddy…
I suggest the OP ask her kids what they think, then make her own decision.
I didn’t change my name back for a couple of reasons.
It’s an ‘easier’ name. I never had to spell his last name for people.
I anticipated that it would be easier and less confusing for my son to have the same last name as his mom.
I’m allergic to bureaucracy and didn’t want to deal with the paperwork and hassle of changing it back.
My maiden name was my dad’s stepfather’s name (he adopted my dad after marrying his mom) so I had no attachment or family history with the name. I actually would have changed it back to my dad’s family name, if I could have, but that didn’t seem like an option.
In Canada, women who marry sometimes don’t change their name (I assume you meant women when you said people since I think it has always been pretty rare for men to change their name). They sometimes switch to their husband’s last name. They sometimes switch to a hyphenated combination of both names. I know couples with each variation.
As some follow-up info, no…I’m not the one moving out, and I’m not in any way pulling away from the kids. They’re with me five out of seven nights of the week, and even though I doubt myself every day as a parent, I never doubt my ability to love my kids and to show them that love. We’re very cheesy about it, in fact.
And I don’t know how relevant it is, but just for more background…my ex and I have actually been separated for almost two years now. We never fought in front of the kids, and so far have been able to keep things very civil in front of them. We fight about other things (usually via email or text), but not about the kids and custody issues, etc. I may hate his guts some days, but I want my kids to have a dad they love so I tread very carefully there, which is where my doubts about this whole issue are coming from.
Asking them their opinion is a fine idea, but I’m not really sure how useful it will be. My son (the four year-old) won’t care. My daughter will care depending on how I present it to her. If I say “this is just what happens when people aren’t married anymore,” she’ll be fine with it. If I ask her if she wants us to keep the same name, she will of course answer yes. I’m more concerned with long-term effects and psychological ramifications down the road as they grow older and understand more about the situation.
The importance of the name of the parents is diminishing. In the USA, 40% of all births are out of wedlock, about the same in Canada and Mexico. Among African Americans, it is,over 70%. The number is between 50-60% in Iceland, Norway and Sweden, where it has literally become the norm.
In countries like Mexico and Chile, where divorce is prohibitively difficult to attain, there are probably many more than the reported 40%, but often the mother of the child is still legally married to some absent ex-, and therefore falls through the statistical cracks.
I foresee, soon, a civil custom of a parent carrying a government issued card, bearing the names of children and the degree of responsible custody/guardianship he/she legally has for those children.
In the mid-eighties I went back to my maiden name because I was tired of having two names that everyone misspelled. The kids were old enough to explain things and they thought it was kind of cool. They hadn’t thought of the possibility of someone changing their name before that.
When I filled out their school information cards, I added my MN as a second middle name for each of them. If we traveled, it was on their luggage tags. It never came up, but it was there, just in case.
Why would we ever need a govt issued card like that? The birth certificate names the parents. In any situation in which my relationship to my kids must be verified I can use that. For custody cases there is already a mechanism for verifying parental right to take the child out of the country. My relationship to my kids has never been questioned in any meaningful way.
Based on what we know about yo and your kids, I can’t imagine there would be any “psychological ramifications” down the road. Changing your name back is not a particularly unusual or radical move. I would do it if you would prefer to have your old name back. Kids can find all kinds of things to be upset about if they want to be upset, and they can be fine with all kinds of things when they want to be. Keep loving them and encouraging them to have a healthy relationship with their dad, the name thing is unlikely to be an issue to them if you’re okay with it.
