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.”
"buy" should have been "but"--d'oh
Does he have a "kick me" sign on his back too? Just for good measure.
That's what I did -- and you couldn't find anyone more thrilled with being a Mrs. than me.
My other pet peeve is when adults ask that our children call them "Miss Patty" or "Mr. Pete." I tell them that we are a "Mr and Mrs" family and that we are teaching our children to show respect to adults by using their surnames. I do not bow to the inevitable petty protest that: "Mrs. So-and-so is my mother-in-law."
We've converted our immediate section of the street and are on to the rest of the neighborhood!
That would be your mind Alex.
I don't quite understand why you think I feel threatened. I will say this, you have used two classic liberal responses.
1. Perhaps you feel threatened in your masculinity.
2. Gosh you really are threatened
Come on woman you can do better than that.
Oh, I hate that--that is me too!
Oh...didn't know. Thanks for the info! Maybe I'll try her...You seem to enjoy her?
I used these liberal responses as a tongue-in-cheek response to you, who assumed I didn't change my name for feminist reasons (which is not the case). You started the theme, I just ran with it.
Take a joke.
Although as I've gotten older and necessarily more jaded and less idealistic, I've come to realize that a good quantity of what she said was unworkable fantasy and some parts are simply BS.
Yet at its worst, it's still a good deal better than Marx at his best.
men of all ages are referred to as a "Mister".....rarely see or hear of "master" which is supposedly used for young boys....
Hey, I'm of proud Polish heritage as well, however I'd have to go back to my grandmother's maiden name to touch on the ethnic Polish name.
I didn't mean that taking your husband's last name was goose-stepping. All my friends did, as did my mother, and her mother, ad nauseum. I referred to "goose-stepping" as a metaphor for those conservatives who need a checklist for what they believe in. Just because I happen to stray on this one point does not make me any less of a conservative. I believe we use the terms "kool-aid drinkers" or "knee-jerk liberals" to refer to the same type of idea I'm referring to on the other side of the political spectrum. And, no, I'm not implying that you are either of those things. We're all kindreds here, whether we all completely agree on every issue or not. Because we all don't agree, that's what makes FR so interesting and, farnkly, addictive.
I haven't heard anyone use "master" in years, probably it's un-PC? But I read in an etiquette column recently that you use "master" up to about age 7 or something, and "mister" after age 12, and from ages 7 to 12, no title at all for a boy. I may be misstating the ages, but it was a weird complicated rule that I'd never heard of....
wow....
I guess Faith Hill is a real creep then, huh...of course she did take her FIRST husband's name....
In Quebec a woman cannot take her husband's name for formal documents. On medical records, income tax forms, etc., a woman MUST use her maiden name.
Yes, except a woman cannot be Mrs. "her first name" "her husband's last name". You are only Mrs. "your husband's names". Despite much that you see to the contrary, Mrs. Barbara Smith is incorrect. She would be Mrs. John Smith and Ms. Barbara Smith. Mrs. technically means "wife of...". The only time that you might be Mrs. Barbara Smith would be if you were a widow.
For all you men who think it's a WOMEN's LIBBER thing: I married at 37. By that time, I had become quite attached to my last name. I love my family and I love my Father. I had been in the professional world, and was known by that name. It's always weird when you call a colleague up and they tell you now that they're going by a different name. So I kept my name. Two years later, I legally changed it to my husband's name as an anniversary gift. When I did it, he appreciated it more, because he knew how strongly I felt about it. But to this day, I still use my maiden name SOMETIMES and my married name SOMETIMES. It's very confusing, but I just can't help it.
Actually, it's master up until 13. I got married recently and did a little etiquette research on this names thing. The kids loved getting their own invitations with master printed on them They thought they were royalty or something. I think miss is used a little longer for girls though. I can't imagine calling a 13-year-old girl "Ms."!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.