My wife is in graduate school and shared a picture with her cohort. My mom reshared it and her comments were such as this: “Soon, we’ll have a Dr. (My last name) in the family.” We saw her for dinner on Sunday and she expressed a similar message. My wife corrected her and said that actually she would go by Dr. maiden name. Even before my wife made the compelling argument to me that she started grad school with her maiden name, is going to be the first PhD in her family and is co-published on a major paper with her UG advisor, has two papers in an undergraduate research journal and is now first author on one project and second on another under her maiden name, I just didn’t really care what she decided to call herself. Even still, the case for her keeping her maiden name is strong and it makes sense.
My mom made a very strange point that she needed to get used to being a married woman and I cut her off, told her that I really thought that that was enough out of her. My wife looked like she was going to annihilate her and my dad tried for a change of subject. She’s already explained why she’s going by her maiden name for professional purposes, it never bothered me and I really think she should just get over it because it is what it is. My mom threw a fit about whether or not we would use our (my family’s) last name for future kids and mentally, I’d already decided that the conversation was closed so did not engage further. My dad told her that it wasn’t any of her business how our kids were named and I thanked my dad for having an ounce of tact and asked if we could move on now.
Dinner went on normally for a time and then descended into more chaos as we were leaving when my mom asked her to at least consider hyphenating her name because it would mean a lot to her (my mom) and that there are certain values in marriage that we shouldn’t let go of. I said “oh my God will you STOP it.” My dad pulled me on the side and reminded me that he and my mom are old school. He thinks she should change her name too, he’s just too polite to actually say it out loud. We went out separate ways after that but it was just such a deeply aggravating experience to witness my mom’s entitlement in that particular case. She just would not let it go.
How do I get my mom to drop this? Do I just not engage and ignore? Or is there something else that needs to be said? More explanation?
TLDR mom’s upset that wife is using her maiden name professionally
Submitted October 21, 2021 at 07:50AM by throwawayjxl https://ift.tt/3pnSbre
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