I totally disagree with the assumption that babies should have their fathers' name. And honestly I don't think pregnancy and birth = ownership either.

At this stage I don't plan on taking my DF's surname when we marry so any children had before we wed will have my surname. It started that way as originally DF preferred a termination with DS and said he was staying with me for me and not for the baby... of course he fell in love with the idea of DS and we are happy now, but at the time I made that decision.

My MiL was a biartch about it saying that DF had no family pride and that she would disown him if we gave DS my surname. Which only added fuel to my fire. I don't believe the man has any more right to the surname than the woman and when MiL turned around and said our children should have th DF name because otherwise their heritage would die out and it was our responsibility to carry it on I felt like slapping her.

Everything she said made me feel like I wasn;t good enough and she never once apologised for it. And of course to this day she still hassles me about it. I am at a point where I will not have any more children just so i don't have to have an 'xyz' because she is being completely disrespectful and DF is totaly intimidated by that.

We are still in negotiations to try and meld our surnames together into something new to stop the arguments altogether but it is taking time... luckily no wedding date set yet so plenty of time.