More women are taking husbands’ names

New Hampshire Union Leader ^ | August 10, 2004 | RICH LOWRY

[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.”

[ArrogantBustard]

Odd as he may have been, Frank Zappa died while married to his only wife, and the mother of his children.

For hollywierd, that's a truly remarkable and commendable feat.

[Reeses]

Upon marriage, a lady's maiden name becomes her middle name.

And so on...

Maria Teresa Thiersten Simoes-Ferreira Heinz Kerry

[ShadowAce]

Where is this issue addressed in the Bible?

Ephesians 5:31
Mark 10:8
Matthew 19:5-6
Genesis 2:24

There are probably more, but that is what I came up with quickly

[cwiz24]

Just so you know--I'm not a women libbie. I can't think of any other related issue that I have "feminist" views on. In fact, I can't stand it when people assume all women are feminists. I simply like my name. Is that so wrong?

[Cooter]

Is his wife an only child? In Japan, the custom of a man using his wife's family name - if the wife is an only child - is sometimes observed.

[normy]

Perhaps you feel threatened in your masculinity?

Ha ha. Its good to know liberals aren't the only ones who use this argument when their own fails.

Why are you so adamant about keeping your Dads name? I could understand if your husband asked you to change your first name. The fact you want to keep your own is insulting to your husband and thats that. You have admited your selfish and we know you have a fear people willl think your husband rules you if you took his last name, which is an American custom.

[Centurion2000]

A woman that won't take your name when she marries is not worth marrying.

And a man that insists his wife takes his name isn't either

You may want to be weak and bow down to feminism and the PC police; I will not. It's worked for 5000 years, somehow I highly doubt that feminazi socialists of the 20th Century possessed enough wisdom to justify a change in tradition.

But you are welcome to it. If that makes me a chauvanist sexist, I'm proud to be one then.

[wideawake]

Is his wife an only child? In Japan, the custom of a man using his wife's family name - if the wife is an only child - is sometimes observed.

I believe she has brothers.

But I wouldn't be surprised if his motivation to take her name was that it was more "multicultural" to do so.

Thanks for the interesting tidbit.

[DietCoke]

"...even retention of their former surname as a middle nameS.."

i disagree as well. i have my maiden name (or initial) on my legal documents & driver's license, b/c I finally had a way to dump the middle name that I didn't like! (sue, blech).

[Equality 7-2521]

My wife honored me by taking my surname when we were married in February.

When she went to Navy boot camp in March, the Navy screwed up her paperwork (as they are prone to do) and had her enlisted with her maiden name. She complained early during boot camp, but was told by her RDCs that there wasn't anything that could be done. Her RDCs didn't know me!

First, I called the public affairs office to "inquire" about the problem, where I was rudely hung up on by some bureaucrat working the phone. Then I called the RTC Great Lakes CDO's office where I talked to an MA2 who was on watch. He wasn't much better, but at least he didn't hang up on me.

After banging my head into the wall twice, I decided to bring out the big guns. I sat down and typed up a nice letter detailing my wife's experience and mailed four copies: one to the CO of the RTC, one to my Congressman (the Honorable Donald Manzullo(R), Illinois), and one to each of my Senators (the Honorable Peter Fitzgerald(R) and the other-than-Honorable Dick Durbin(D)).

Mr. Manzullo contacted Captain Moran (RTC Great Lakes). Captain Moran interviewed my wife. The problem was fixed in three days.

[pepperdog]

"What really bugs me is having to figure out how to address envelopes to couples with different last names."

I've given up, I just use their first names and the address and hope it gets to them. Mrs PD

[Centurion2000]

A man that won't take his wife's name when he marries may not be worth marrying, either. Why is his name more valid than hers?

Because it's his. He may bend over backwards to provide for you and be a good husband and a father, the least a woman can do is take his name.

[cwiz24]

Gosh, you are really threatened, aren't you? So I can't speculate on your motivations, but you are free to speculate on mine?

I've already listed the reasons I wanted to keep my family name above. I'm not going to repeat myself. My husband is not insulted by it. Just because you would be means nothing to me.

Y'know, this thread didn't have to turn into an attack on me. We are allowed to have different opinions, you know. That's the nature of this website.

[cwiz24]

He may bend over backwards to provide for you and be a good husband and a father, the least a woman can do is take his name.
__________________________________________________________

Hate to break the news to you, but men aren't the only ones who provide for the family.

[Equality 7-2521]

Selfish is a good thing.

I don't say this in a negative way, because I agree wholeheartedly; buy you sound like a Randian.

[Xenalyte]

Bingo! :)

Not many of us around FR, but we are here and we will not be denied.

[cwiz24]

I have no opinion on Ayn Rand, but I do know that I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to read any of her books. I don't read fiction, anyways. Maybe I'll try again someday, though.

[cherry]

"Men who allow their wives to retain their maiden surnames"

allow???

ALLOW?

gee, I thought it was a choice....

[cupcakes]

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.”

_____

Just like a feminist, men only detract, they don't add.