An expecting mum says she’s protecting her daughter by not passing on her husband’s unfortunate surname.
The 31-year-old mum-to-be and her 30-year-old husband have been together for 10 years, and married for three, but she says she never took her husband’s surname. And he has no plans to take hers.
While the expecting mum is excited about welcoming their first baby, a girl, in August, an uncomfortable situation with her in-laws are taking some of the shine off the build up.
“My husband’s family name is quite unfortunate,” she explained. “I won’t say what it is for privacy reasons, but it’s a very slightly different spelling of a sexual word. You also should know it’s a sexual word that mostly be used for or relate to a female rather than a male.
“I’ll say that it’s a very common word for a woman’s breasts that starts with a T. Pronounced the exact same way with one letter difference.”
“Because of this, we agreed together that our children will take my family name to prevent bullying in school and throughout their youth. I felt even stronger about this when I found out we were having a girl – growing up a girl is a pretty rough experience anyway, and myself and so many of my friends experienced harassment and sexual comments from young men growing up even without an unfortunate surname. It sucks but it’s reality, and I want to minimise my daughter’s experience of this as much as possible.
“We have recently broken this news to my husband’s parents and they are very upset about it.”
The mum-to-be explained that her husband is an only child, and it took more than 10 years of trying before he was born.
“They are a small family and his parents only have sisters who took their husbands’ names. This means that my husband is the only chance to carry on their family name and they’re upset that we’re taking that chance away and effectively ending the family name. Although it was a mutual decision between my husband and I, they are particularly upset with me because I have three younger brothers who could have kids and carry on my family name, and yet I ‘feel the need’ to ‘take’ theirs away.
“We’ve tried explaining the reasons but they think I’m being overdramatic. They were insulted that I could compare their last name to a dirty word and they say my husband ‘never had any issues’ when he was young. It’s true he didn’t experience that much harassment in school (aside from occasional mild bullying) but he is a male and like I said the word relates a lot more to a female, and also girls are so much more likely to be sexually harassed by boys than vice versa.
“I know that teenage boys can be cruel, so I just want to give my daughter and any future kids the best chance at minimising harassment.”
The mum wants to know if she and her husband are in the wrong for making this decision. Let us know what you think in the comments below.
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