The Sunday News
Delta Ndou
DESPITE the challenges of legal decision-making that can and often do come with letting one’s child use the surname of an absentee father, so many mothers of children born out of wedlock highly value and prefer that the father’s last name be on the birth certificate.
In cases where the father of the child accepts that the child is his, it is easy to feel confident that having the child using his father’s surname will not cause any problems in future.
This confidence assumes that the father of the child and the mother, even if they do not marry, will always be on cordial terms. This is usually not the case. Sometimes people fall out; and often they do so in a very acrimonious manner. How then are legal decisions pertaining to the child to be made?
In a discussion on Twitter one mother said she had simply opted to register her child using her surname to spare herself the trouble of chasing after a disinterested father who had demonstrated that he was not willing to take any responsibility for the child. Such a bold and pragmatic decision is not easy to make in the context of societal norms and customary practices.
In reflecting on why so many mothers of children born out of wedlock choose to have their children using their fathers’ surnames, I came up with at least six factors that inform such a choice.
Societal norms
To understand what motivates a mother of a child born out of wedlock to insist on having the child’s father on the birth certificate, we need look no further than our societal norms.
For instance, it is claimed and indeed accepted that a child draws its identity from its father rather than from its mother. For instance, if a child who uses his mother’s Dube surname takes to identifying himself as a Mthembo ozithembayo he would be viewed as a fraud because that surname is not his father’s and therefore that totemic identity cannot be claimed by him.
Stereotypes and stigma
Drawing from societal norms, there is stigma that is attached to a child using their mother’s surname. Anticipating the shame and succumbing to the pressure of custom, many mothers of children born out of wedlock want their children to be recognised. Imagine how hard it can be for a woman to approach the birth registration officials and, when asked who the father is, she is then forced to say there isn’t one.
To which they are likely to tactlessly query why umntwana engela yise (the child has no father). Sometimes such a woman might be treated as a loose woman who had so many partners that she cannot even tell which one of them impregnated her. To avoid that kind of stigma, many mothers of children born out of wedlock opt to have the fathers’ surnames on the birth certificate.
Sentimentality
Depending on the circumstances, the child might be born out of wedlock to parents who are crazy in love with each other but in Romeo and Juliet fashion; either fate or family conspires to tear them apart. It’s a story as old as time. When they fall out, the father or the mother might become hostile and unco-operative.
A male friend had this to share; “From the point of view of a single father sometimes the fact that you are not married to the mother of your child can bar your exercise of parental rights due to pressure from your own family, the family of the mother and the mother herself due to, primarily, feelings of resentment.” Hence when things were still rosy between the two, deciding on using the father’s surname on the birth certificate is a very simple, normal and sentimental gesture.
But if ever resentment sets in, years down the line, that father might move on, move away and be nowhere to be seen when legal decision-making becomes necessary.
Legal protection for the child
Sometimes the main factor behind whether or not the mother of a child born out of wedlock will insist on the child’s father being on the birth certificate is that she wants her child to be legally protected and fully recognised by third parties as an offspring of that man.
Whether it’s the man’s relatives or his wife and other kids — the birth certificate using the father’s surname is viewed as some kind of insurance to secure the child’s legitimate standing and reinforce the child’s claim inheritance and to maintenance. Although child maintenance can still be claimed even where the child is not using the father’s last surname.
Expectations of mother’s family
Some families will push for damages and then push also for the father’s surname to be on the child’s birth certificate for “respectability” so that it does not seem as though the father of the child is unknown which implies the mother of the child has loose morals and couldn’t identify who got her pregnant.
My friend’s male perspective was that; “Paying damages as opposed to lobola/ roora often has the practical consequence that you are cut off from the child in the formative stages of its life as families assume that seeing as you do not want anything to do with the mother, you automatically do not want anything to do with the child she is carrying. Damages are interpreted as essentially “dumping the mother of your unborn child.” And since, “outside of marriage, there is no structure that permits the non-custodial parent to interact and have a relationship with their child” many fathers get frustrated and eventually back off to later be accused of being absentee deadbeats.
Discrimination within maternal families
Sometimes children born out of wedlock and who are raised in their mothers’ families can be discriminated against and made to feel that they don’t “truly” belong. The discrimination that happens in maternal families against children born out of wedlock usually takes on a subtle form of “othering”. For example, seemingly innocuous practices by family elders such as addressing children by their totems leaves those children who are using their mothers’ surnames feeling like outsiders.
Sometimes members of the mother’s family and their attitude towards children born out of wedlock can be a big determinant in whether or not such a mother can pragmatically forego having the father’s surname on the child’s birth certificate.
According to my male friend, who did not want to be identified but who helpfully weighed in with his male perspective, “the culture we have seen so far seems to place value on parents only if they are bound together in marriage, it doesn’t matter whether that marriage is happy or not. If they divorce the relationship between all the parties involved becomes mechanical, unnecessarily formal and hostile to the point where legal decision making regarding the child becomes an arena to engage in battle.”
In the arguments and counter-arguments I witnessed on Twitter, a high premium was placed on having a father’s name on a child’s birth certificate and the very real consequences of awarding such an honour to undeserving, unwilling, absent and unco-operative fathers who will not be available when legal decisions need to be made was regarded as a less important consideration.
Most of the arguments drew from deeply personal experiences and I am hesitant to argue against the lived experiences of others, moreso when I myself use the name of my father. The discrimination against children born out of wedlock is most felt from the maternal side because the paternal side of the child’s family often accept the child as one of them, as their blood and as one whose birthright it is to use the family’s totem and clan names.
