BTW My father and our family name is well-known in a certain local circle, and when we socialize in that context my husband is often referred to as Mr. Mylastname. He doesn’t bat an eye, just like I do when the reverse happens. It makes him chuckle, actually. See, he doesn’t define himself through his name either. Proud of his family and of his name, yes, but it does not define him.
Our actions, our words, those do define us however. Birdgirl, are you proud the definition your words are giving you in this discussion? Because my opinion and definition of you have nothing to do with your name right now, lemme tell you.
I agree. Birdgirl , while you did not attack anyone DIRECTLY, you did make a broad sweeping judgement…an inaccurate judgement. As someone who chose to <happily> take my husband’s name, being referred to as “brainwashed” got me a little torqued. The desire to delve “deeper” into a subject is all fine and well. But to try and rationalize a topic and simultaneously be insulting is just disrespectful and leaves yourself vulnerable to flaming.
I’ve enjoyed this topic, and yes, your tone should probably be overlooked. But we deal in the written word here and tone speaks volumes to many members on message boards everywhere.
One question: how is my name the same as who I am, my identity? If I decide to call myself Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged tomorrow, I’m still my mom’s daughter, my husband’s wife, still the weirdo at work to my cow-orkers, and I’m still me. How did taking my husband’s name change who I am? Just a point Birdgirl mentioned, that’s all.
“A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.” (I’m paraphrasing; don’t remember the line word for word, but it gets the point across.)
Eliminate “still” and you have the line right. Birdgirl, you can take your mom’s maiden name, but it’ll only solve the dilemma if you ignore the fact that that’s probably her dad’s last name, and so on and so forth generationally. I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m just saying for what you’re doing to make sense, you might have to acknowledge that name and identity are separate things.
The only thing I WOULD have a problem with is being called Mrs. HisFirstName HisLastName.
I would NOT want to be Mrs. Wedge Antilles-I’d want to be just Mrs. Antilles. Or Guin Antilles. Or whatever.
To me, the name change isn’t really a big deal-I don’t feel strongly about it one way or the other. Seriously. It’s a non-issue. Well, unless his name turns out to be something like Fartbugger or Buttcrunch or something.
Ok, for all the people who are driving me nuts by calling the name a woman has lived with all her life “her father’s name,” consider for a moment names like Baxter, Brewster, Danter, Gaveller, Koster, and Webster. Those can all be traced back to a women ancestor, since they mean “a woman who bakes, runs a tavern, sells things at market, etc.” Would you suggest that a groom with the surname Webster take his bride’s surname because Webster is really his great-great-grandmother’s name anyway?
Also, many immigrant families were assigned a new family name. My fiance’s great-grandparents and their children had their surname changed at Ellis Island. His surname started with his great-grandmother just as it started with his great-grandfather.
Yes, your name is part of your identity, or why else would so many men get angry at the thought that their wife might not take their name? Why else would so many men flatly refuse to give up the surname they were born with?
I married the first time at 22, convinced I would do whatever it takes to make it work. My husband and I both felt that the same last name was important - it indicated a committment to each other, the start of our family. All sorts of symbolic reasons to have the same last name.
Unfortunately, his last name sucked. As in sounded like a slang word for a part of the anatomy not mentioned in public.
If I wasn’t willing to take his last name, he was not eager to take mine. So, in true non-traditionalist manner, we chose a last name that had meaning to us but was not a name from either of our families.
Well, the name may have indicated a committment to each other, but symbolism is no substitute for the harsh reality of one person not making a committment - and a marriage really doesn’t work too well when your husband moves in with his girlfriend.
(He kept the new last name, which the girlfriend took upon marrying him. I kept it for a while and went back to my maiden name).
When I remarried I kept my maiden name. I was a little older and a little more established in my career. I recognized that the name was not an indication of the level of love or committment - and changing it twice (once to my married and back again to maiden) was a pain in the butt. I did have a lot of my identity tied up in my name - and I’d imagine that some women do have a lot of identity tied up in taking their husbands name (or getting rid of the name of an abusive stepfather, or taking the maiden name of their grandmother, or the other reasons women (and men) change their names). I’m also the “last of my line” My father is one of three boys - but there are no sons in my generation.
My children have their father’s last name (my son also carries his birthmother’s last name as a middle name). It isn’t inconvienent or confusing. I do not mind being addressed as Mrs. Husbandslastname and willingly accept mail addressed that way. I do use it as an excuse to avoid telemarketers.
My girlfriends are a bunch of raving card carrying feminists. Some have kept their maiden name. Some hyphenated (and in most cases, their husbands did as well). Some took their husband’s name upon marriage. The reasons each made the choice they did are a varied as the women themselves - some because they wanted the whole family to have one name. Some from respect of their traditional families, some because they had no love for their original family name (or their original family). Some kept their name because they felt it the “proper feminist” thing to do, some because they had their identity invested there, some because they had made some career impact. It is a matter of choice. In one of those odd correlations (with a very small sample size of my closest dozen girlfriends), the women who kept their names seem to be more likely to do the SAHM thing - not what I would have expected.
Just a nitpick: This number is often stated, but it is a misinterpretation. If the divorce rate is 50%, that does not mean 50% of all people will divorce. Here’s an example: Seven couples marry. Obviously, 14 people. However, one subsequently divorces, and marries again – seven times. The other 6 couples never divorce. That’s 7 divorces out of 14 people: 50%. But it is not true that half of the couples divorced. Only one did.
I’ve never run into a negative or disapproving attitude about not changing my last name - on an individual level. I’ve had conversations like this thread (and the opposite of this thread) that have made some fairly offensive leaps. But maybe that’s because I don’t read negativity into personal comments unless its pretty blunt:
i.e. “Oh, that’s right, you kept your last name.” I read no negativity in there, more of a statement. I also don’t read negativity in people who forget (even after told), or people who comment that I’m a non-traditionalist. Or that I’m a pain to track down in the phone book (I don’t keep a listing for myself, so you have to know his last name).
Now this on the other hand “Feminists like you who keep their last name are responsible for the fall of American society.” Yep, I’d read negativity in there. But no one has ever made that sort of comment directly to me about my last name.
I do know people who read negativity into the fact that their husband’s Great Aunt Martha sends their Christmas cards addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Husbandslastname. I’m more likely to chalk it up to Great Aunt Martha never really knowing my last name and not really remembering I kept it and figure “hey, I’m getting a Christmas card. It could be addressed to ‘my darling nephew and the bitch he married.’”
I do take umbrage at people who insinuate that taking your husband’s last name implies love and committment above keeping your last name. i.e. “I changed my name because I love my husband and I’m not ashamed to be married to him.” Like I don’t love mine? Like I’m ashamed of him? Like I’d bother to marry someone I didn’t love and was ashamed of? Justify changing (or not changing) your name however you wish, just be careful of the implications in what you say. So don’t say “I kept my last name because I had no reason to base my identity on who I was married to” either.
Allow me to preface this with a big ol’ IMHO and IME, and hope that I am not misreading what you wrote…
birdgirl, some thoughts on your comments:
This is really sad. I presume you are not married? Hopefully, if/when you marry, you will discover that your family, as it is created by you, is something of equal or greater value to the family you stemmed from, and that even more to the point, there is no dividing line between the two.
My heritage and family of origin is of immense value to me. My mother and my father, and my step-fathers and even my step-mothers (with whom I never lived for more than visitation periods), all contributed profoundly to who I am. I am proud of them, and glad to call myself a member of their family. My family remains, despite multiple parental divorces and remarriages. I was happy to invite six of my parents to my wedding, because they are all contributors to who I am. None of them is perfect, but all are human in ways I value.
In my parents’ lives, husbands and wives both have come and gone. But parenthood, even step-parenthood, those roots of family you so honor, is not so easily terminated. My fathers may not like one another, and not one of them is still married to my mom, but they all love me, and I love all of them. They are all my family. That sense is not tied to a name, it is tied to the individuals.
I find it sad that you appear to anticipate entering marriage expecting it to be less important to you than is your family of origin. It suggests that you will listen to your parents on how to solve your problems, instead of working with the person who is your chosen partner. It suggests that you plan to use your ‘old’ family rules and approaches to raise any child of yours, rather than work with your husband to form your own ideas and approaches - because, after all, your family is your family forever, and the husband-and-father is just someone who might not be around tomorrow. I know a lot of people who are in this state (many of them men), who place their family of origin above their current, at home, real life, growing family. The pain it causes is intense, and not something I’d recommend.
Is that what you meant? It certainly sounded like it. Your family is your family is your family, forever, but husbands come and go. Technically true, but a lot of kids die before they grow up, too, and we don’t make plans and decisions assuming that they are less valuable to us just because they might not survive. There is such a thing as a ‘working assumption’. In this case, a more positive one might be a good plan.
Case in point, me. When we were approaching marriage, we went through something called ‘clearness’ (Quaker tradition, making sure the couple is ‘clear’ to be married). It involved the two of us sitting down for tea with six people who proceeded to ask us the really hard questions about how we approached life together. One of the questions asked me was, ‘given your mother’s history of divorce, how do you feel about the permanence of marriage?’ My answer was along the lines of ‘you must approach it as permanent - bad things happen, and different bad things happened with my mom’s relationships. But they were all intended to be lifetime bonds. Fully. 100%’ She was making a family, herself. Moving forward, not hanging onto the past to the exclusion of the present, and certainly not hedging her bets against an eventual loss. Honoring the goodness of the family you come from does not have anything to do with whether - or how - you honor the family you build.
You’ve attached meaning to the name that other people have not. It represents for you the individual, and the family of origin. But ‘family’ doesn’t stop there - family includes those who married in, on both sides. Your family is not your mother and yourself and your siblings, it is also your father, who married into your mother’s family. Same on your father’s side. That process is profound, and I think your parents might well be surprised that you consider the act that created your own family of origin of less value than the family that was created by that act.
My family of origin is very important to me. By extension, my husband’s family is also important to me, because it informed who he is, too. But my family is more than just ‘what grew me’, it is what I grow, both in the relationship to my husband, and to my children, and even the relationship between my children and their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on both sides - steps and halfs included. The process of family is not just father/mother-child, but each generation flowing into the next.
I hope you discover this, yourself. Not valuing the family you create by marriage or partnership as both an extension of your own family-of-origin and as a primary focus of your energy on its own is just a truly sad proposition. JMHO.
This, it seems to me is why you are upset about this. I’ve known women who did this, even older ones. And it is, indeed, sad.
But perhaps, not being married, your perception is also skewed.
It is intensive work to build a family, even without kids. Doing so properly means that yes, you each give up something. If you do not see what the men are giving up, it is because we tend not to gossip about those things. Men have to grow to meet the middle, too, and change their shape, and give up their single identity, and release their priorities in favor of those that suit the family, not themselves. They give up freedom from responsibility for anyone other than themselves, just as women do. Not everything is lost, either way, and much is also gained. They keep one thing, traditionally. Their name. It isn’t much, given how much they, too, are ‘losing themselves’ when they marry.
Just looking at the traditional ‘male strengths’ that get lost … My husband has given up control over his finances - we decide things together. He does not have the option to go running off to visit friends any time he feels like it - he has to work with our schedule, just as I do. He cannot buy a car, or a house, without me included, by our choice. He cannot go out and date someone else. Heck, he can’t even just up and decide to switch channels when we’re watching tv. He is bounded, not free. By choice. Mutual. I, too, have ‘lost’ something. I don’t make my decisions utterly on my own anymore. I consider someone else’s schedule, priorities, and needs. I get the same consideration in return, but that still means I do not see my friends as often as before, and if asked if I can come out for lunch, I check with him because it might imact something we’ve planned together, or even something of his that we have assigned a higher priority. There is so much more to being married than I think you are seeing… I don’t think you can comment, accurately.
And yet - Do I hear you? Yes. I remember when my friends got married, and seemed to have given up their lives. It saddened me to see how little ‘fun’ they had anymore. It bothered me that they always had to check to see if it was okay to come out to play. It angered me that they had to check finances with their spouses before buying something. Their change in priorities seemed unnatural and traditionally determined, not free. And yet it is exactly what I do, and live, with freedom. That dismay was the perspective of someone who hasn’t been there.
Even more so, when one has kids. Oh, how my life revolves around my children. I get up at freakin 5:20 AM so I can get to work in time to leave in time to pick them up from daycare (while my husband makes the lunches and drops them off in the morning). I schedule my weekends around nap times and lunch and bedtime. I cannot remember things I want to buy myself, but my eye snaps instantly to a set of gel pens my son would love.
Wrong? An echo of commercial and legal and social subjegation? I think not. They are my children, and I am their mother, and there is value in my temporary ‘submergence’ and ‘service’ to their growing up into good adults. My husband does the same as I - notices things that suit their needs before his own, and provides, even at personal cost, loss of sleep, loss of time.
I do not forget who I am, but who I am is less brilliantly colored - to the untrained eye - because I choose to give those colors to my children to play with. I still write, I expand my career, I serve my community, and I enjoy my family and friends. And I devote time I formerly spent reading mysteries to reading Harry Potter, aloud. And I devote time I used to spend window shopping to playing baseball in the yard. I spent five years being the nearly-sole parent in the evenings while my husband finished his degree. I went to prenatal appointments alone or with my older son rather than disrupt his day needlessly. And I am paid back for my sacrifices by the expansion of his career, one that his heart is fully in, and which provides him the range to explore his creativity. And in his re-gifting me time to write, by being the ‘sole’ parent in the evenings. I sacrifice and submerge myself daily, and lose nothing, and gain much.
The perception of submergence under the process is perception only. I will ‘re-emerge’, as my parents and in-laws have, still myself, still a member of my family, and also, along with my husband, whether we are still married or not, as the roots of someone else’s family-of-origin.
I am not the river at this stage of my life, I am the river banks. When I was the river, I could not see who would want to be the banks, and watch life flowing on away from them, mostly stationary and unable to pick a new direction at a moment’s notice. It seemed painfully constrained, a loss of freedom nobody would willingly choose unless they were coerced into it by the tyrrany of culture.
Now, I have a different perspective, and I have no regrets that my freedom is ‘gone’ and my individuality appears (from the outside) to be lost. Neither is true, they just are sufficiently different processes that it is hard to understand until you get there.
As for the article linked (salon one):
You liked the article, but you dismiss this as a valid reason for choosing to use the father’s name? I suspect the same issue is true at marriage - it is a way of having a sense of unity, and an indication of trust that the union is permanent. Not that you have to do this to acheive that unity, only that by choosing to change their name, many women are feeling just this. Habit and cultural history mean that it will be more common for women to do so than for men. But I know men who changed their names, too. Because it is habit does not necessarily make it wrong.
Another good point from the article in question. Just because it happens to be traditional, doesn’t mean it isn’t feminist. Again, the process has more to do with it than the outcome.
And for those looking for a cite on the name-comes-from-oppression thing, the same article, again:
Back to the article again:
Again, this reflects my comment about tradition - a connection to the past, and to the future, is valuable to many people.
Do women still submerge themselves in their marriages until they are lost? Yes. Not all of them took their husband’s name, either. Nor do all women who take their hubands name lose their identity. You’ve noticed a correlation, but it seems that the symbolism of the name change has been artificially attached to the process that really wounds your heart. Changing the name, or not, is not the problem, it is a loss of respect, dignity, individuality, and sense of identity that you seem to be mourning. Just because a name change, to you, symbolizes the loss, does not mean it accurately reflects it. And I think that you are mis-identifying some ‘losses’, too, just as I did when I was not yet married.
You wanted to know why women change their names, still. That, IMHO, has been answered. You may not like the answers, but there they are.
Wow. Yay, hedra. And tanookie, too; you are both far more articulate than I am!
Birdgirl:
You’re not? What is your definition of a feminist, exactly? I like that old quote: “I have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” - Rebecca West, 1913. It’s all about choosing your own life, IMO. I would certainly say that I am a feminist, and I am a stay-at-home Mormon mommy (not exactly a Dworkinist, if that’s a word).
You’re not? What is your definition of a feminist, exactly? I like that old quote: “I have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” - Rebecca West, 1913. It’s all about choosing your own life, IMO. I would certainly say that I am a feminist, and I am a stay-at-home Mormon mommy (not exactly a Dworkinist, if that’s a word).