Posted on 08/10/2004 6:00:00 AM PDT by presidio9
SOMETIME while Hillary Clinton was switching her name from Hillary Rodham to Hillary Clinton and back again and back back again, an important threshold was crossed — people stopped caring. When Hillary initially kept her surname after marrying Bill, it was a blow against the patriarchy and for women’s liberation, but today such surname-keeping has lost its cachet.
In the 1990s the number of women keeping their maiden name upon marriage began to dip, according to a fascinating study published in The Journal of Economic Perspectives. This snapback to taking a husband’s surname is mostly an elite phenomenon, since among most people it never went out of style. Roughly 90 percent of women take their husband’s surname. It is among college-educated women that surname-keeping flowed and is now ebbing.
Surname-keeping took hold in the 1970s. Legal restrictions that forced women to take their husbands’ surnames began to be overturned or ignored. Women began to marry later and get more professional degrees, both of which made them more attached to their surnames. Ms. became popularized as a way to avoid the repression of Mrs. Keeping a surname was considered a way for a woman to keep her identity.
The number of women in The New York Times’ wedding announcements keeping their surnames was 2 percent in 1975 and had reached 20 percent by the mid-1980s, according to the Journal study. Then the trend stalled. Among women in the Harvard class of 1980, 44 percent retained their surname, but in the class of 1990, only 32 percent did. According to Massachusetts records, the percentage of surname-keepers among college graduates in that state was 23 percent in 1990, 20 percent in 1995 and 17 percent in 2000.
Why? The study’s authors write: “Perhaps some women who ‘kept’ their surnames in the 1980s, during the rapid increase in ‘keeping,’ did so because of peer pressure, and their counterparts today are freer to make their own choices. Perhaps surname-keeping seems less salient as a way of publicly supporting equality for women than it did in the late 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps a general drift to more conservative social values has made surname-keeping less attractive.”
Indeed, the decline in sur- name-keeping might mean that marriage is being taken slightly more seriously. “I think it will strengthen marriage,” says University of Virginia professor Steven Rhoads, author of “Taking Sex Differences Seriously.” “It’s a sign that someone intends it to be a unit, that this is a marriage, and it is for the duration.”
It certainly shows that, for whatever reason, younger women are moving beyond old feminist obsessions. Writing in the online magazine Slate, Katie Roiphe argues that “the maiden name is no longer a fraught political issue. These days, no one is shocked when an independent-minded woman takes her husband’s name, any more than one is shocked when she announces that she is staying at home with her kids.”
In the waning of a certain kind of self-conscious feminism, women are freer to make their own choices — including traditional ones.
Finally, there is simply the hassle factor. It can be difficult for a mother who doesn’t share her child’s last name to pick him up from school or travel with him. Hyphenation has its own perils. Writer Frederica Mathewes-Green reports receiving mail for people named Mathwas-Green, Mathers-Crein, Vatherwes-Green and Mebhews-Creen, among others. Her hyphenation won’t be carried on by any of her children, and she doesn’t regret it.
In an essay on the decline of feminism in the City Journal, Kay Hymowitz notes that feminist pioneer Patricia Ireland recently wrote that a woman taking her husband’s name “signifies the loss of her very existence as a person under the law.” Women who want to get on with their lives and with their marriages greet that kind of old-school feminist call-to-arms with a decidedly 21st century “ho-hum.”
Really? Maybe the man wishes the family to all have the same last name. I would think if your gonna start a family you would want you wife to have the same last name as you and your kids.
With all of the anti-French sentiment around hubby has jokingly said we should both start using my maiden name as opposed to his name......it's doubly difficult for me as both my first and last (his) names are French.....as are our daughter's.
I have a long, Polish surname and I did not take my husband's name (a short, British name) when I married for several reasons:
1. Logistics. I simply did not want to change my name on every piece of paper.
2. Convenience. I attended several high schools and several colleges and I want old friends to be able to find me in the future.
3. Pride. I am very proud of my Polish heritage and I carry the only remnant I have of it (my name) with respect to my Polish immigrant great-grandparents. They had only two sons, only one of which had children (my dad), and he only had daughters. So the name would essentially die with him. I realize that the name will now die with me, but at least it will last several decades longer than it would have been.
4. Uniqueness. I also have a very unique first name and, as far as I know, I'm the only one named what I am named in the world. I like this.
I don't love my husband any less because I didn't take his name. Our children will have his name. But I don't believe that taking your husband's name makes you any better (or worse) of a wife.
I really think having the same last name as everyone means very little in the scheme of things. Being a good parent is what counts.
My wife tried to hassle me on this issue because she has an ethnic name and wanted to keep it alive (as if this particular name was dying out). My motto was "good enough my Mom, good enough for you." I told her I would rather name my son "Pedro" than put up with a hyphenated last name. After the wedding she dropped the issue and decided she liked sticking with tradition.
I alway's refer to my friend's lovely bride like the old guy on "King of the Hill," as in:
Hey "Scott's Wife" how about another beer?
Of course, I always refer to him as Mr. (her last name).
I love my husband very much. I'm not one of those women who get offended if someone addresses me as Mrs. "my husband's name". I couldn't care less--in fact, I respond to that name if it ever comes up.
My wife took my last name, but she kept her maiden name as an additional middle name on her identification. It greatly decreases confusion when dealing with any sort of bureacuracy that knew her under her former name. Otherwise, she would have to carry proof that she is the same person that they knew.
Thank you!
If you're not willing to take the name, why take the man?
"I note with interest that it is those same women who criticized that are, six years later, unhappily unmarried."
Do you find a lot of your wife's friends or women in general try to undermine your marraige (assuming that you're happily married)?
"On the other side, I know one complete candyass who took his wife's name when he got married and his son has his wife's last name instead of his."
You've gotta be friggin kidding me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Candyass indeed!!!!!!
Well having the same name as your husband and children link you to them. You want your friends to find you, or you want to remain special because of your name. You want to make sure people recognize you as an individual.
How bout John Kerry-Heinz? Just right for a girly man?
" That shut her up and her face got red."
LOL, there is *NOTHING* better than a GOTCHA!!!!!!!!! ;)
Unless you gave your sons your wifes last name, the name would have died with her. Just like cwiz24.
No. Loving and caring for your children link you to them. If all I have to link me to my children is something as superficial as a name, then perhaps I need to work harder on establishing a bond. 'Cause it won't be based on a last name.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social aspects that directly effects Gen-Reagan/Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
>>>Ms. became popularized as a way to avoid the repression of Mrs. Keeping a surname was considered a way for a woman to keep her identity.<<<
FWIW: It wouldn't suprise me to learn that this was a complete lie and the avoidance of the repression of the title Mrs actually is the real reason, but.....I understood (way back when) that the creation of the title Ms was to have a suitable title for an adult woman who wasn't married -- Miss being too infantile and Mrs not applying. I have no problem with that, but, like most of the pretty good ideas coming out of that weird time, the title Ms seems to have morphed into something else (sort of like civil rights morphed into special rights or like giving women more sexual freedom, which we were told was supposed to make the marriage bed more enjoyable, morphed into fornication/adultery free-for-all). Instead, Ms seems to have morphed into exactly what the article claims.
Disclaimer: No one despises what feminism has done to women, marriage, and families more than I.
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You can use any name you want. If you love your kids great! I would assume any woman would love their kids, its your husband I would worry about. Most women love their kids, most women don't love their husbands and you can tell by the way they disrespect them.
I find that my wife's former friends don't "get" my wife.
They don't seem to realize that she really enjoys being a mom and a homemaker.
When we were first married she was working the 90-hour weeks of a NYC insurance company attorney. She was proud that she was doing well but she hated the job.
She doesn't have much contact with her unmarried friends anymore - she'd rather meet her married friends and their kids in the afternoon to see the latest exhibition at the Met and go to lunch afterward. Her unmarried friends prefer to meet for drinks at nightclubs at 11 PM.
They don't exactly undermine the marriage directly - they will come out to visit occasionally and talk about "how suburbanized" we've become, how much they would miss the city if they moved to suburbia, about the incredibly fun things that my wife "missed" last week when they went out, etc.
I pay them no mind. We've never been happier.
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