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From: saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.kids
Subject: Re: Raising kids out of wedlock
Message-ID: <8935@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Sep-84 11:45:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.8935
Posted: Tue Sep 11 11:45:58 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 12-Sep-84 00:35:23 EDT
References: <1185@hcrvax.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 96


From Paul Bonneau

>However, we are both very much in love, and at some point in the
>relatively near future, want to have children.  I have been told by
>people that this is an irresponsible attitude - that children need
>to identify with a mommy and daddy who are husband and wife.
>
>I disagree with that because I believe that the concept of husband
>and wife does not have to be legal or religious.  I can consider
>myself to be the "husband" of my "wife" from an emotional standpoint
>alone - which seems to me to be all that (young) children understand
>about their parent's marriage anyway.
>
>Other problems are:
>	1) Whose last name is given to the children,
>	2) Will the children be the subjects of teasing at school
>	   because their parents have different last names,
>	3) Will the children be confused why their parents are
>	   not married when they are old enough to comprehend the
>	   difference between their parents and others (assuming
>	   marriage is still the norm).

These are interesting questions.  My personal feeling are that having
children together involves much more of a commitment than getting
married does, and that in divorces or breakups the hardest thing to
deal with would be how not to hurt the children in the process, so I
think that people who do not get married because they want to make
an eventual breakup easier, but have children anyway, are fooling
themselves.

However, the reasons you mentioned for not wanting to get married
are not the ones I just mentioned, so my preceding comments probably
do not apply to your case.

To answer your questions in order:
1/ the answer depends on the province you are living in.  I believe that
in Ontario the child will automatically get the name of the father, if
the father recognises that child.  I don't know what happens if the father
doesn't. If you care about which name your child gets, you should check
the laws of the province on that matter before having a child.

(Ontario seems to have rather non-flexible laws when it comes to naming
children.  I recall hearing 2 years ago about a woman who was married,
had a child with another man, and as a result was abandonned by both
her husband and the other man, and was trying unsuccessfully to give the
child her name;  even though she had been the only caretaker of the child
since birth, the only choices she had were either of the 2 men's names or
either one of those 2 names hyphenated with hers.  I never heard the
outcome of the trial)
 
2/ the children will not be teased on the basis you mentioned more than
children of married people who have different names, and depending on
where you live this will be more or less common.  In Quebec, where the
default now is for a woman to keep her maiden name after she gets
married, children with parents with different names will soon be, if
not a majority, a very sizeable minority.

I think that there is a chance that they might be teased because their
parents are not married, if marriage is still the norm.  However my
impression is that the marrital situation of parents is less and less
used as a reason for teasing.  When I grew up, it already wasn't, as
there were enough people around with divorced or widowed parents, and
now most family situations are so complicated anyway that children
who live with their 2 biological parents who are still married are
becoming a minority in big cities.  My mother who is a schoolteacher
in Montreal observed the same thing.  The situation is probably very
similar in Toronto.  Here, however, I can imagine that having unmarried
parents might possibly be a social stigma for children.  So, if you
are worried about your children being teased because they are "different"
it might be a good idea to check out what the "norm" is.

But no matter what one does, there will always probably be something for
your children to be teased about unless they conform absolutely, so
there is not much you can do about it;  if you differ with society so
much in your opinion of marriage, my bet is that you probably differ
in many other ways, and your child will be different from the norm
anyway.

3/ one can't really answer that question without an oracle.  I guess it
all depends on how your child is, and how you explain your reasons for
your choice of marrital situation to him/her.

Additional comments:  I have an abundant wealth of older cousins who seem
to have tried every possible marital situation, and explaining relationships
between people in my family to outsiders is not an easy task.  In these
terrible messes of multiple marriages, divorces, out-of-wedlock and in-of-wed-
lock children, the happiest children of the lot seem to be the ones
who are in a family where people get along well together; this includes
single parents and married and unmarried couples who get along well.  I think
that it is not the marriage of their parents which necessarily make the children
happier, but the fact that people around them love each other and get along
together well.

Sophie Quigley
...!{clyde,ihnp4,decvax}!watmath!saquigley