There are more families with second children with their mother's surname
The mainland marriage law clearly stipulates that children can follow their father's surname and their mother's surname. Literally everyone understands, for example, the child's father's surname is Zhang, the child's mother's surname is Wang, then after the child is born, whether it is a first child or a second child, the child's surname can be Zhang or Wang, which is completely decided by the child's parents.
The original intention of this provision is, first, to show that the husband and wife are completely equal in the marital relationship, and second, to avoid the concept of "son preference" leading to uncontrolled childbearing. This is the past "the children of the husband from the mother's surname" is different, in the past it was usually the children of the son-in-law who came to the door to follow the mother's surname, and the woman who married into the man, no matter how many, generally followed the father's surname.
You may also notice that with the opening of the second and third children, many of the multi-child families around them do follow the mother's surname, especially the second child follows the mother's surname. However, in such an environment, it is only a form, and many people still have difficulty accepting children with their mother's surnames, taking the data of the fourth issue of the Chinese Women's Social Status Survey in 2021 as an example:
Among all the respondents, only about 40% of the respondents were willing to let their children follow their mother's surname, and even 28.7% of the respondents believed that children with different surnames could not inherit their parents' property on average. Unlike many people who have moved out of thousands of years of tradition, some people have proposed from a physiological point of view that women cannot inherit family genes.
Can men pass on family genes? The truth is: the Y chromosome is shorter than the X chromosome and carries less of a gene load!
In real life, some people do think that children with the mother's surname genes have disappeared for several generations, while men's genes can be found for thousands of years, can only men inherit family genes?
Directly say the answer, men can pass on the family genes, the statement is not correct at all! Know that every normal person has more than 20,000 to 30,000 genes, located on different chromosomes and mitochondria. Whether male or female, 22 of the 23 pairs of chromosomes are autosomal, and these chromosomes carry the same amount of genes, and there will be no more because you are male.
Essentially, sex is determined by sex chromosomes, the 23rd pair of chromosomes in humans, and the female and male pairs correspond to XX and XY, respectively. Do you know? In fact, the Y chromosome is smaller than the X chromosome, which determines that X carries more genes than the Y chromosome. The genes carried by the Y chromosome mainly determine male sexual characteristics, while the X chromosome contains not only genes related to sex, but also many genes related to intelligence.
Why do X-linked recessive genetic diseases like red-green blindness have a higher incidence in men? The fundamental reason is that men are relatively small Y chromosomes, easy to lack some genes that can match X, and women carry sex chromosomes are X, as long as there is an X chromosome gene is normal, it usually does not appear.
Why is there scientific research showing that men's intelligence is more influenced by their mothers? The reason is that the X chromosome in the male body must be obtained from the mother, and some genes in the X chromosome are just related to intelligence. In short, whether it is the number of chromosomes or the amount of gene carried by chromosomes, there is no scientific basis for such a statement that "men's genes are found for thousands of years, while women's genes are gone for several generations".
The Y chromosome is indeed passed on to male or female, but only the mother's mitochondrial genes can be passed on to the offspring?
In real life, there are still people who blame the woman for "giving birth to boys and girls", but if there is a little common sense of chromosomes, there will be no such fallacy. To put it simply, if you want to give birth to a son, you must have a Y chromosome from the father, which the mother cannot decide, because the most typical feature of the Y chromosome is "passing on the male to the female", which only exists in the body cells of the male gene.
Fewer people know that in addition to the genetic characteristics of the Y chromosome, in fact, mitochondrial genes are also special when inherited, because the distribution mechanism of this gene is not random, nor is it a mitochondrial gene that divides parents equally, but is completely obtained from the mother.
As we all know, the volume of sperm is much smaller than oocytes, the two cell plasma contains no mitochondria at all in an order of magnitude, and the so-called mitochondrial genes are in the mitochondria, even if there are mitochondria from sperm entering the oocyte during fertilization, but it will also be decomposed because of enzymes, so the mitochondrial genes in the offspring body are completely from their mothers.
In other words, men often inherit more than 4% more genes from their mothers than from their fathers, which further negates the idea that men can inherit family genes.
From a genetic point of view: "the son follows the father's surname, the woman follows the mother's surname", or "the son follows the mother's surname, and the woman follows the father's surname", all have their rationality!
If in real life scenarios, children are directly required to follow their father's surname, or their children follow their mother's surname, they may be labeled as "son preference", but from a genetic point of view, there are reasonable reasons to explain, why do you say so?
The beginning of life begins with the union of sperm and egg, so the genetic material obtained by the new life from the parents, although it cannot reach the absolute "AA", is not much different, and the production risk is mainly borne by the woman, so it is unfair if the child's surname cannot be jointly decided by the mother.
However, this is not what I am mainly talking about today, but from a genetic point of view, it is reasonable for children to follow their father's surname or their mother:
Taking "the son follows the father's surname, the female follows the mother's surname" as an example, under such a transmission rule, it is possible to trace the family history from the maternal and paternal lines, respectively, and the female mitochondrial DNA with the same surname is the same as the male Y chromosome with the same surname.
The male inherits the father's Y chromosome, which in turn can only come from his patrilineal ancestors, which makes the surname closely related to the Y chromosome.
Both men and women will obtain mitochondrial DNA from their mothers, but men cannot continue to pass it on after they get it, so when mitochondrial DNA is transmitted through the mother, it is passed on to the offspring, and the daughter with the mother's surname is equivalent to associating the maternal ancestor with the common mitochondrial DNA with the female heir.
Why is it reasonable to say that "the son follows the mother's surname, and the woman follows the father's surname"? In fact, this is from the amount of inherited genetic material. As mentioned earlier, men theoretically get more genetic material from their mothers than their fathers, which is determined by the fact that the Y chromosome is shorter, carries less of its own gene load (and is in a degrading situation), and only the mother's mitochondrial DNA can be passed on to the son.
The daughter's two X chromosomes, one from the mother and one from the father, the X chromosome carries a greater genetic load than the Y chromosome, so the daughter inherits more genetic material from the father than the son inherits from the father. That is to say, the daughter can inherit more genes from the father than the son, if it is really from the perspective of the ancient people's "inheritance of the generation" thinking, then the son is not as qualified as the daughter to inherit the father's surname.
If the second child with the mother's surname is regarded as a strange phenomenon, and it is believed that the essence is still inheriting the grandfather's surname, then it may be better to regard the surname freedom as advocating that everyone dilute the surname and dilute the son to inherit the incense. Moreover, fundamentally, no matter who the child's surname is, it does not affect the genetic information passed down from the body, and this does not change in any way because of the mother's surname or the father's surname.