Jul 19, 2023·edited Jul 19, 2023Liked by kelly johnson
Wonderful article! I ended up using my last name as a middle name and took my husbands name legally, but with my career I still use my last name. A few reasons went into this thinking:
1) I have a very unique last name, and my husbands is very common.
2) I didn’t get married until I was 39, even though we had been together for over 10 years. We do now have a child and I wanted to have the same last name as her
3) I’ve used my last name in my career for a long time and I didn’t want to be known as anyone else as it would feel like starting over
4) my husband was supportive either way. He did say he would prefer we all have the same last name but wasn’t going to push it and left the decision to me.
I doc think the beauty of this type of conversation is that we get to choose. I have so many friends who have chosen all the different types of options you mentioned above and love that they made those decisions themselves and I would never judge them for what they felt was right for them.
Thanks again as I know so many people struggle with this!
I love that you mentioned the different routes your friends have gone. I think the most supportive thing we can do for our friends and family who choose a different path is to respect their decision, whatever it may be.
honestly, i find the "beauty" of "choosing" kind of overrated? like if what one is choosing to do is adhering to an incredibly patriarchal and sexist norm, that's disappointing, rather than liberating.
That’s your opinion and I believe you have every right to that opinion as it relates to yourself, but the point was to not judge another women or man for what they choose is best for them, their partners and family.
Totally agree with you that there are so many great options out there!
I would be so curious to know - can your husband articulate specifically why he would prefer you take his last name? Just always very curious to understand this and don't feel that I've ever gotten a clear/satisfactory answer
Nothing really concrete on why he preferred it, just that traditionally that’s what has been done in his family, and in mine. I did ask his opinion so respected that was the way he felt and he was not pushy about the decision so I think that made it easier to make the decision to change it legally. He was also supportive of me not changing it with work.
I did not change my last name nor for one second consider it, and I feel really discouraged when my friends change theirs! It's like, get with the program y'all!
I almost called off our wedding when my Aunt-in-Law sent us a card addressed to "Dr. and Mrs (husband's last name)." Not only is this offensive on the basic level but I am ALSO A DOCTOR. I was genuinely confused and hurt. Did they just forget that I also graduated medical school at the same exact time as their nephew? WTF.
NOW I'm pregnant with our first kiddo and I swear the hardest thing about it is figuring out what their last name will be. It IRKS me that the default would be my husbands last name. Still considering!
This is something I think about - even though it seems to be more popular for women to keep their last names when marrying men, the overwhelming default is STILL to name the kids the father’s last name. Why is that practice not also being challenged on the same scale?
My feeling as a mom (who kept her own last name) is that my husband did not get the biological gift (and, let’s be clear, risk) of being able to carry our child. I feel liking giving our son his last name is his way of carrying him.
I just heard this perspective for the first time recently and it really surprised me! I had never even really thought about it this way. Consider my brain expanded!
I have a friend and the first child got the father's last name and the second child got the mother's last name (she kept her 'maiden' name).
Another friend combined her and her husband's last names (he did this also), so their child has two last names. She was an only child and didn't want her family name to end with her.
Fascinating! I wonder if the siblings get questions from their friends about why their last names are different. Like I totally get why they went that direction, but I wonder what kind of an effect it has on the kids experiences? (Or maybe they're too young!)
I have more than one friend who has a different last name than their sibling (specifically for the same reason of passing along both parents’ names), and they haven’t had many issues that I’m aware of. It’s a pretty easy explanation (tbh I probably have spent more time correcting misspellings of my last name, which is the same as my whole family) and I think it set them up to feel comfortable challenging the status quo because it’s been directly modeled.
Also- it’s kind of interesting that the older child now is married with 2 kids and the younger is a doctor. The mom whose name the younger one got us also a doctor!
The ‘kids’ are my age and it’s never been an issue to my knowledge and I’ve known them since elementary school. We did go to private school where more mothers had professional degrees that led to more keeping birth names, at least professionally.
I’m in residency and getting married September. Very torn about what to do. I’m proud to have my family’s name on my med school diploma, it’s also frequently mispronounced. Also it’s tied to publications. I feel like a bad feminist for liking the idea of a cohesive unit with my husband’s name and/or giving potential kids his name. Blah
There is literally a book about the feeling of being a Bad Feminist!! For the record I don't think wanting to be a cohesive family unit with your partner and potential future kids is "bad" at all but I recognize the struggle between wanting to feel like as women we're independent and fuck the patriarchy, and more traditional things like shared last names!
I kept my name professionally but otherwise we decided to hyphenate our names but with mine first. We chose this as a feminist statement because it’s not usual in France and I want to « set an example » that it’s possible.
Also, if we have kids : my vagina, my career, my name ;)
yes yes yes! cannot fathom how any woman - who does the physical and emotional LABOR of child carrying - would be okay with the child not having her name.
I told my husband I would change my name if he also changed his, dropping his middle name and replacing it with mine. He didn’t want to do that, so I didn’t change mine.
I live in the PNW, so it’s more common for people to have different last names. It doesn’t bother me that my son has his father’s last name -- I gave birth to him, I will always be connected to him! I did give him the masculine form of my first first name as his middle name though! :)
As a teenager, I couldn't wait to change my last name (cultural identity issues), but now as an adult who recently got married, I am so glad that I made the choice to keep my last name because it represents so much of who I am and my heritage. The kicker came when I first met my sister-in-law and she was jokingly trying out my name + future husband's last name to see how it would sound. It was then that I realized how much I wanted to keep my last name. My husband was very supportive, as it should be, can't see myself being with some of those Men's Health followers....
Like other comments below, people have brought up the issue of flying with children, and even if that's the case, I can't see how that obstacle should be the reason for not doing what you want out of convenience. My mother and father-in-law don't understand why I've chosen to keep my name and seem concerned about what we are going to do if we have children (they were very questioning of hyphenated last names) but ultimately I've come to peace with the fact that everyone will likely have an opinion and at the end of the day, it's not their choice. I have many friends who have taken their partner's last name because it was important to them, friends who have kept their own name out of laziness, or friends who have made a mashup last name. I'm a firm believer in doing what is right for you!
I believe I will be one of the lazy ones you speak of, ha. Changing my name just seems like such a hassle. All that paperwork just to conform to a norm I don't truly believe in? Nah.
Try Olsson with two s and you’ll find it’s one of the most common named in Sweden (and I think other Scandinavian countries :)). (As is Johansson btw which I’ve always assumed is the origin of Johnson? We have Jonsson as well thou so who knows).
Anyway, I kept my name and our children have my name as well. I figured the one growing them had a veto?
Of course some of my husbands relatives address us all by his name, but others know or ask. We did have a plan of finding a new common last name but haven’t gotten round to it in the 10 years we’ve been married so it probably won’t happen.
I did not change my name until after having children. Changing your name requires a lot of time and effort and there is always something you forget. After a divorce, I regretted the choice . I did not change it back because of the time it takes to change everything, so to answer your question if I had it to do over I would have not changed my name.
I was on the fence about it, since I loved the last name I grew up with. Once I decided to change it to my husband's however, I haven't looked back! It unknowingly gave me a 'chapter 2' type of feeling where I felt empowered to start taking on the world with my new identity :)
My mom kept her name, as did my mother-in-law, so I think my husband was unsurprised when I decided to keep my name. A big part of it was that this is the name I’ve gone through life with and have on my two degrees - two major accomplishments I want to look at and still see my name on. We’re both writers and we want to see ~our names~ on our work. I love him and have full faith in our marriage, but I’d hate if something were to happen and it wasn’t my name on something. And, I do feel like my last name ties me to my cultural identity, and marrying someone from a different culture, i didn’t want to lose that. That said, especially since we’ve been together so long, it did feel a little weird that we weren’t connected under a new name for a new stage in life? If that makes any sense. And while we’ve discussed a hyphenated last name esp if/when we have kids, but we also agree it’d be too long so... who knows.
Honestly I never had really thought about the whole "the name on my degree" thing until recently and I'm like wow yeah, that's really accurate (for me!) I would care!
On a feminist level, I agree wholeheartedly with not changing the name! Personally, having three names (first, middle, last) that are always mispronounced and misspelled (ahem, Starbucks), and are very unique (you can always find me on google, which I hate), I have been waiting until I had a good reason to change my last name - aka when I get married. Since I’m not tied to my last name (and was often made fun of for it in school), taking on my partners name was never a negative thing in my book - it will be my choice to take his name and share the name together! Though if my partner had a bad last name then maybe I would rethink it and we could pick a new one lol!
It's so funny to think about how you really don't have a lot of control over the last name of the person you meet, even if you're willing/interested in changing your name. My sister had a friend in college whose last name was Green, and I would always joke like oh obviously we should get married so my name would be "Kelly Green" and I don't know why but 18 year-old me thought that was HILARIOUS
Thanks for the article! I’m currently struggling with this question after getting engaged. My last name is unique and I love it. I don’t want to deal with the hassle of hyphenating. But I also think he thought I would take his name and was sad when I said I think I probably want to keep mine.
Jul 26, 2023·edited Jul 26, 2023Liked by kelly johnson
I didn't change my last name, and it was barely a conversation. I asked my then-fiance, "how would you feel if I kept my last name?" and he said "you do you, playa." But really, he understood my attachment to my name, my identity, and my independence, even if most of our families did not. After nearly 3 decades, it felt weird to shed my name, and my last name doesn't really work with a hyphen (nor did I want that compromise). Plus I hate paperwork.
It hasn't impacted my life in any tangible way, and we are child-free by choice, so no issues will arise around that. The only time I really think about how much easier it would be with his last name is when I have to spell my long, consonant-riddled Polish last name over the phone. His is easy to say, spell, and understand.
I also relate to your sentiments about unique-ness. I think I'm 1 of 3 people in the world with my name (based on a Facebook/LinkedIn search, lol). If I took his last name, I'd be one of a lot more than 3. What's funny is that my preference for a unique name goes totally against my husband's. He prefers the anonymity that his name lends him.
P.S. In Spain, children are named after the matriarch's line. It's first name, father's (paternal) last name, mother's (paternal) last name.
Ooh so many thoughts! I have not legally changed my last name since getting married almost 2 years ago, and we both agreed we didn’t want to hyphenate or for him to take my last name (his business is named after his last name and I have a cousin with his first name so it felt weird to me too haha).
My plan is to keep both my middle and last names and just have 4 names - but his will be my ‘official’ last name. Mostly, I love it - I like having one family name, I even like saying ‘my husband,’ but I also have never referred to my current legal last name as my ‘maiden’ name and I really bristle when anyone else does too. To his credit, he has always said it seems like a pain in the ass to change a name and has no strong feelings about me changing mine.
But I will say the reason I haven’t changed it yet is purely because of what a headache it seems like… so we’ll see if it ever officially gets there haha
When telemarketers would call the house during dinner, always during dinner, and they’d ask for Mrs. Christiansen, my mom would always curtly reply “She doesn’t live here” because that was her mother-in-law’s name and not hers. I aspire to be so cool as to just shut it down. I hate getting mail incorrectly addressed, and truly deeply appreciate people who take the time to address me correctly. Which is to say, thank you for stalking your new friend on LinkedIn to get his name correct.
Great post! I took my husband’s last name mainly because I wanted all of us (we have 2 kids now) to have the same last name. It wasn’t a hard choice for me though because I did not like my last name. I do not have a relationship with my father or his family and was very happy to give up his name and take my husbands. That is also why I kept my middle name and did not consider dropping it for my “maiden name”. I also hate this term.
Fun read:) I took my husband’s last name and moved my maiden name to the middle spot. This was done mostly in the name of having same last name as my future children. I love still having my given last name as part of my name and I know my dad was delighted to learn I kept the name in some capacity.
Now that I have a kid, a daughter, I am learning that my very progressive husband feels real, genuine pressure to have a son that will carry on our last name. It’s so weird to me.
Wow! I really wonder where that pressure comes from. Like is it a symbol that his family line has "died out" and that's depressing, even if it isn't necessarily true?
On the note of a family ‘dying out’, my brother and I are the last of our family name. My dad is an only child and none of his very few cousins had children. I’m not having children and my brother isn’t sure but is leaning towards no.
It’s a very real possibility but I’m grateful there has been ZERO pressure from my parents to ‘carry on the line’ in any way.
My mom even mentioned that it is somewhat of a relief to her as she and my dad think long-term about finances. They want to do their best to support me and my brother in whatever way they can but knowing that we won’t need to expand and prolong any generational wealth makes her feel more at ease with where my parents are financially and where my brother and I are.
As my parents look at the state of the world and the rising cost of living, they’re almost grateful that we know our family is ‘done’ besides fur babies of course.
Wonderful article! I ended up using my last name as a middle name and took my husbands name legally, but with my career I still use my last name. A few reasons went into this thinking:
1) I have a very unique last name, and my husbands is very common.
2) I didn’t get married until I was 39, even though we had been together for over 10 years. We do now have a child and I wanted to have the same last name as her
3) I’ve used my last name in my career for a long time and I didn’t want to be known as anyone else as it would feel like starting over
4) my husband was supportive either way. He did say he would prefer we all have the same last name but wasn’t going to push it and left the decision to me.
I doc think the beauty of this type of conversation is that we get to choose. I have so many friends who have chosen all the different types of options you mentioned above and love that they made those decisions themselves and I would never judge them for what they felt was right for them.
Thanks again as I know so many people struggle with this!
I love that you mentioned the different routes your friends have gone. I think the most supportive thing we can do for our friends and family who choose a different path is to respect their decision, whatever it may be.
Love this thinking! Thank you for sharing in such detail, so lovely to really dive into these reasons and see them listed like this! ❤️
honestly, i find the "beauty" of "choosing" kind of overrated? like if what one is choosing to do is adhering to an incredibly patriarchal and sexist norm, that's disappointing, rather than liberating.
That’s your opinion and I believe you have every right to that opinion as it relates to yourself, but the point was to not judge another women or man for what they choose is best for them, their partners and family.
Totally agree with you that there are so many great options out there!
I would be so curious to know - can your husband articulate specifically why he would prefer you take his last name? Just always very curious to understand this and don't feel that I've ever gotten a clear/satisfactory answer
Nothing really concrete on why he preferred it, just that traditionally that’s what has been done in his family, and in mine. I did ask his opinion so respected that was the way he felt and he was not pushy about the decision so I think that made it easier to make the decision to change it legally. He was also supportive of me not changing it with work.
I did not change my last name nor for one second consider it, and I feel really discouraged when my friends change theirs! It's like, get with the program y'all!
I almost called off our wedding when my Aunt-in-Law sent us a card addressed to "Dr. and Mrs (husband's last name)." Not only is this offensive on the basic level but I am ALSO A DOCTOR. I was genuinely confused and hurt. Did they just forget that I also graduated medical school at the same exact time as their nephew? WTF.
NOW I'm pregnant with our first kiddo and I swear the hardest thing about it is figuring out what their last name will be. It IRKS me that the default would be my husbands last name. Still considering!
Omg "Doctor and Mrs," when you're both doctors, I am DEADDDDDDDDDDDD. I am infuriated on your behalf, I would lose my shit lol
your labor. your surname!
This is something I think about - even though it seems to be more popular for women to keep their last names when marrying men, the overwhelming default is STILL to name the kids the father’s last name. Why is that practice not also being challenged on the same scale?
My feeling as a mom (who kept her own last name) is that my husband did not get the biological gift (and, let’s be clear, risk) of being able to carry our child. I feel liking giving our son his last name is his way of carrying him.
I just heard this perspective for the first time recently and it really surprised me! I had never even really thought about it this way. Consider my brain expanded!
Thank you for sharing your perspective!
I have a friend and the first child got the father's last name and the second child got the mother's last name (she kept her 'maiden' name).
Another friend combined her and her husband's last names (he did this also), so their child has two last names. She was an only child and didn't want her family name to end with her.
Good luck!
Fascinating! I wonder if the siblings get questions from their friends about why their last names are different. Like I totally get why they went that direction, but I wonder what kind of an effect it has on the kids experiences? (Or maybe they're too young!)
I have more than one friend who has a different last name than their sibling (specifically for the same reason of passing along both parents’ names), and they haven’t had many issues that I’m aware of. It’s a pretty easy explanation (tbh I probably have spent more time correcting misspellings of my last name, which is the same as my whole family) and I think it set them up to feel comfortable challenging the status quo because it’s been directly modeled.
Also- it’s kind of interesting that the older child now is married with 2 kids and the younger is a doctor. The mom whose name the younger one got us also a doctor!
The ‘kids’ are my age and it’s never been an issue to my knowledge and I’ve known them since elementary school. We did go to private school where more mothers had professional degrees that led to more keeping birth names, at least professionally.
I’m in residency and getting married September. Very torn about what to do. I’m proud to have my family’s name on my med school diploma, it’s also frequently mispronounced. Also it’s tied to publications. I feel like a bad feminist for liking the idea of a cohesive unit with my husband’s name and/or giving potential kids his name. Blah
There is literally a book about the feeling of being a Bad Feminist!! For the record I don't think wanting to be a cohesive family unit with your partner and potential future kids is "bad" at all but I recognize the struggle between wanting to feel like as women we're independent and fuck the patriarchy, and more traditional things like shared last names!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/02/bad-feminist-roxane-gay-extract
Ooo I will check it out!! Thank you for validating me:)
I kept my name professionally but otherwise we decided to hyphenate our names but with mine first. We chose this as a feminist statement because it’s not usual in France and I want to « set an example » that it’s possible.
Also, if we have kids : my vagina, my career, my name ;)
yes yes yes! cannot fathom how any woman - who does the physical and emotional LABOR of child carrying - would be okay with the child not having her name.
I told my husband I would change my name if he also changed his, dropping his middle name and replacing it with mine. He didn’t want to do that, so I didn’t change mine.
I live in the PNW, so it’s more common for people to have different last names. It doesn’t bother me that my son has his father’s last name -- I gave birth to him, I will always be connected to him! I did give him the masculine form of my first first name as his middle name though! :)
As a teenager, I couldn't wait to change my last name (cultural identity issues), but now as an adult who recently got married, I am so glad that I made the choice to keep my last name because it represents so much of who I am and my heritage. The kicker came when I first met my sister-in-law and she was jokingly trying out my name + future husband's last name to see how it would sound. It was then that I realized how much I wanted to keep my last name. My husband was very supportive, as it should be, can't see myself being with some of those Men's Health followers....
Like other comments below, people have brought up the issue of flying with children, and even if that's the case, I can't see how that obstacle should be the reason for not doing what you want out of convenience. My mother and father-in-law don't understand why I've chosen to keep my name and seem concerned about what we are going to do if we have children (they were very questioning of hyphenated last names) but ultimately I've come to peace with the fact that everyone will likely have an opinion and at the end of the day, it's not their choice. I have many friends who have taken their partner's last name because it was important to them, friends who have kept their own name out of laziness, or friends who have made a mashup last name. I'm a firm believer in doing what is right for you!
We love opinionated parents-in-law 🙃
I believe I will be one of the lazy ones you speak of, ha. Changing my name just seems like such a hassle. All that paperwork just to conform to a norm I don't truly believe in? Nah.
Try Olsson with two s and you’ll find it’s one of the most common named in Sweden (and I think other Scandinavian countries :)). (As is Johansson btw which I’ve always assumed is the origin of Johnson? We have Jonsson as well thou so who knows).
Anyway, I kept my name and our children have my name as well. I figured the one growing them had a veto?
Of course some of my husbands relatives address us all by his name, but others know or ask. We did have a plan of finding a new common last name but haven’t gotten round to it in the 10 years we’ve been married so it probably won’t happen.
I did not change my name until after having children. Changing your name requires a lot of time and effort and there is always something you forget. After a divorce, I regretted the choice . I did not change it back because of the time it takes to change everything, so to answer your question if I had it to do over I would have not changed my name.
I was on the fence about it, since I loved the last name I grew up with. Once I decided to change it to my husband's however, I haven't looked back! It unknowingly gave me a 'chapter 2' type of feeling where I felt empowered to start taking on the world with my new identity :)
Love this perspective Jamie, thank you!
My mom kept her name, as did my mother-in-law, so I think my husband was unsurprised when I decided to keep my name. A big part of it was that this is the name I’ve gone through life with and have on my two degrees - two major accomplishments I want to look at and still see my name on. We’re both writers and we want to see ~our names~ on our work. I love him and have full faith in our marriage, but I’d hate if something were to happen and it wasn’t my name on something. And, I do feel like my last name ties me to my cultural identity, and marrying someone from a different culture, i didn’t want to lose that. That said, especially since we’ve been together so long, it did feel a little weird that we weren’t connected under a new name for a new stage in life? If that makes any sense. And while we’ve discussed a hyphenated last name esp if/when we have kids, but we also agree it’d be too long so... who knows.
Honestly I never had really thought about the whole "the name on my degree" thing until recently and I'm like wow yeah, that's really accurate (for me!) I would care!
On a feminist level, I agree wholeheartedly with not changing the name! Personally, having three names (first, middle, last) that are always mispronounced and misspelled (ahem, Starbucks), and are very unique (you can always find me on google, which I hate), I have been waiting until I had a good reason to change my last name - aka when I get married. Since I’m not tied to my last name (and was often made fun of for it in school), taking on my partners name was never a negative thing in my book - it will be my choice to take his name and share the name together! Though if my partner had a bad last name then maybe I would rethink it and we could pick a new one lol!
It's so funny to think about how you really don't have a lot of control over the last name of the person you meet, even if you're willing/interested in changing your name. My sister had a friend in college whose last name was Green, and I would always joke like oh obviously we should get married so my name would be "Kelly Green" and I don't know why but 18 year-old me thought that was HILARIOUS
Thanks for the article! I’m currently struggling with this question after getting engaged. My last name is unique and I love it. I don’t want to deal with the hassle of hyphenating. But I also think he thought I would take his name and was sad when I said I think I probably want to keep mine.
I didn't change my last name, and it was barely a conversation. I asked my then-fiance, "how would you feel if I kept my last name?" and he said "you do you, playa." But really, he understood my attachment to my name, my identity, and my independence, even if most of our families did not. After nearly 3 decades, it felt weird to shed my name, and my last name doesn't really work with a hyphen (nor did I want that compromise). Plus I hate paperwork.
It hasn't impacted my life in any tangible way, and we are child-free by choice, so no issues will arise around that. The only time I really think about how much easier it would be with his last name is when I have to spell my long, consonant-riddled Polish last name over the phone. His is easy to say, spell, and understand.
I also relate to your sentiments about unique-ness. I think I'm 1 of 3 people in the world with my name (based on a Facebook/LinkedIn search, lol). If I took his last name, I'd be one of a lot more than 3. What's funny is that my preference for a unique name goes totally against my husband's. He prefers the anonymity that his name lends him.
P.S. In Spain, children are named after the matriarch's line. It's first name, father's (paternal) last name, mother's (paternal) last name.
"You do you, playa" is how you know he's a keeper
Ooh so many thoughts! I have not legally changed my last name since getting married almost 2 years ago, and we both agreed we didn’t want to hyphenate or for him to take my last name (his business is named after his last name and I have a cousin with his first name so it felt weird to me too haha).
My plan is to keep both my middle and last names and just have 4 names - but his will be my ‘official’ last name. Mostly, I love it - I like having one family name, I even like saying ‘my husband,’ but I also have never referred to my current legal last name as my ‘maiden’ name and I really bristle when anyone else does too. To his credit, he has always said it seems like a pain in the ass to change a name and has no strong feelings about me changing mine.
But I will say the reason I haven’t changed it yet is purely because of what a headache it seems like… so we’ll see if it ever officially gets there haha
When telemarketers would call the house during dinner, always during dinner, and they’d ask for Mrs. Christiansen, my mom would always curtly reply “She doesn’t live here” because that was her mother-in-law’s name and not hers. I aspire to be so cool as to just shut it down. I hate getting mail incorrectly addressed, and truly deeply appreciate people who take the time to address me correctly. Which is to say, thank you for stalking your new friend on LinkedIn to get his name correct.
Hahahahah I really love that. "She doesn't live here, bye"
Great post! I took my husband’s last name mainly because I wanted all of us (we have 2 kids now) to have the same last name. It wasn’t a hard choice for me though because I did not like my last name. I do not have a relationship with my father or his family and was very happy to give up his name and take my husbands. That is also why I kept my middle name and did not consider dropping it for my “maiden name”. I also hate this term.
Fun read:) I took my husband’s last name and moved my maiden name to the middle spot. This was done mostly in the name of having same last name as my future children. I love still having my given last name as part of my name and I know my dad was delighted to learn I kept the name in some capacity.
Now that I have a kid, a daughter, I am learning that my very progressive husband feels real, genuine pressure to have a son that will carry on our last name. It’s so weird to me.
Wow! I really wonder where that pressure comes from. Like is it a symbol that his family line has "died out" and that's depressing, even if it isn't necessarily true?
On the note of a family ‘dying out’, my brother and I are the last of our family name. My dad is an only child and none of his very few cousins had children. I’m not having children and my brother isn’t sure but is leaning towards no.
It’s a very real possibility but I’m grateful there has been ZERO pressure from my parents to ‘carry on the line’ in any way.
My mom even mentioned that it is somewhat of a relief to her as she and my dad think long-term about finances. They want to do their best to support me and my brother in whatever way they can but knowing that we won’t need to expand and prolong any generational wealth makes her feel more at ease with where my parents are financially and where my brother and I are.
As my parents look at the state of the world and the rising cost of living, they’re almost grateful that we know our family is ‘done’ besides fur babies of course.