Mom shares excellent advice on what to do if your kid doesn’t share your last name in viral video

In this day and age, it’s becoming increasingly common for women to keep their maiden name after marriage, so how do you navigate last names when you have a kid? Or if you have a child with someone who’s not your spouse?

Indiana-based parenting reporter and Instagram star Kayla Sully (@kaylamariesully) has experience with the latter, and decided to give her son his father’s last name. Last month, she posted a story about how she’s been grappling with her son not sharing her last name and after receiving an outpouring of support, she shared a reel about how she’s coping.

“About three weeks ago, I was crying and I was writing Christmas cards to my son’s teachers and feeling a little embarrassed because I felt the need to put ‘Allen’s mom’ in parentheses because my last name doesn’t match my son’s,” she explained in the viral video. “I was never married to my son’s father but I did give my son his last name. I don’t regret that.”

“I don’t want to change it for a multitude of reasons. Thank you to the people who suggested that, it’s just not something that I want to do, but what I do want to focus on is not focusing on the last name,” Sully added. “I just got engaged and I’m going to be taking his last name and his son has his last name—he also has a son—and I don’t want my son to be feeling like the oddball out so I will not be putting our last name on Christmas cards. I don’t want rugs or signs that say our last name because I don’t want my son to feel left out.”

“I know it may sound silly, but a lot of people struggle with not having the same last name as their kid and it does hurt sometimes,” she confesses.

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A post shared by Kayla Sullivan (@kaylamariesully)

This type of situation is increasingly common these days, but that doesn’t make it easier. Sully encouraged others to share their stories and offer suggestions in hopes to help other parents experiencing the same emotions feel less alone.

And the comments were flooded with support. One suggestion was to create a portmanteau of the family last names and use that socially (i.e., if one family name was Gallo and another was Woodward, you could call yourselves the Gallward family). 

One commenter shared his experience as a former teacher. “I used to be a teacher and I had plenty of kids whose last names didn’t match one or both parents,” he wrote. “It was part of my job to know my students and that was part of knowing them. I genuinely appreciated the variety of shapes that my students’ families took, some living with one parent, or both, or neither, or in a multigenerational household, or in a house with many languages.”

“For their part, I never got the sense that my students ever really thought twice about it. I think it’s common enough that it doesn’t bother them,” he added. “There’s nothing wrong with any family because of its shape or the names its members have. It matters only the love in that family.”

These words are so true and serve as a great reminder: Families are not one size fits all, and each variation comes with its own beauty. The common thread is ensuring our children feel loved and safe.