I’ve been noticing some Aussie newspapers have been featuring studies claiming there’s a recent shift in more people adopting traditional family practices. There’s apparently less people choosing to stay in ‘de facto’ relationships, women are choosing to give up career ambitions for full time motherhood, and claims that the number of women keeping their own name after marriage is dropping.
I get a feeling that the recent run of such articles is nothing more than a little cherry-picking to match the views of their largely conservative audience of the major newspapers.
Still, when I first started thinking about the ‘name change’ issue I was doing a bit of my own cherry-picking to support my previous belief that it should come down to the choice of the individual and nothing more.
But I keep coming back to one point – the main reason women take on their husbands surname is because it is traditional. Sounds very nice, doesn’t it? But this tradition is as warming in it’s origins as the tradition of slavery – the ownership of women being passed from one man to another. It comes from a time when women were seen as second class citizens, were denied basic rights and even considered genetically inferior to men.
To say we have ‘choice’ in the matter is also a bit deceptive. Unfortunately, social pressures make it very tough to exercise our ability to choose between options that are seemingly available to us.
A man may want to be a stay-at-home Dad but is too guilt-affected by the media’s narrow representation and definitions of ‘manhood’. A woman may want to keep her surname but may be overwhelmed by the raised eyebrows and constant comments of her immediate family and friends and simply ‘give in’ to avoid the hassle.
Social forecaster Bernard Salt says that modern women are ‘more secure in their independence’ and are choosing to change their name because they are ‘comfortable in the logistical smoothness that sees all family members having the same surname.’ This doesn’t seem like a reasonable justification to me. If it was really a ‘choice’, free from the assumptions of gender roles, there would be just as many men adopting their wives surnames.
I am a stay at home Dad slash writer. Reservoir Mum works full time as a researcher/academic and also runs her own business. Even though we are very happy with 
our lives, getting to this point was not without its battles. I faced the usual hurdles; among them was standing up against the ridiculous idea that I was less ‘manly’ because I wouldn’t be contributing financially for a while.
And Reservoir Mum encountered resistance in the early days that she was an inferior mother because she wasn’t staying home full time.
This pressure is not just the occasional bantering of family and friends but is constantly reinforced through media, product labeling, advertising, television programs and the like.
I know people who have wanted the same lifestyle that Reservoir Mum and I have but due to this pressure could simply not make the choice. These gender role expectations and pressures are still all around us and are very real in how they impact on the decisions individuals and families make.
So where does this leave me with the tradition of women taking on their husbands names? I’d like to say I’m okay with it, that it’s simply a matter of personal choice, but it seems to me that there’s still a level of inequality that makes pure choice unavailable to many people. I feel that, in many cases, there may be more coercion and relenting to social pressure in a woman’s decision to take on her husband’s surname.
When we see just as many men taking on women’s surnames, we’ll have a clear indication that gender role pressure is no longer impacting on the decision.
Not your usual style but excellent read all the same buddy
Hi RD great post as always. I know 2 men who combined their surnames with their wives which I thought was a good idea. When I got married at 25 my parents has been divorced for 22 years and my father largely absent so I wasn’t particularly attached to my surname as part of my identity and liked the idea of my husband and I becoming our own family unit. A little naive perhaps but it felt like a good reason at the time. I would be interested to know if others had different reasons for changing their names other than the pressure of tradition 🙂
One of my friends took his wife’s name when they married. Three years later his brother still isn’t speaking to him and his parents are only just now coming around to the idea. Even though they had many reasons for it – which shouldn’t matter, as it is their choice – in the end his family felt as though he’d ‘betrayed’ them by changing his name. I wonder if they’d have felt the same if he was female. It’s so sad how such a little thing can cause people such grief. As you say, it should be so simple, but it’s not.
I kept my name and haven’t had any problems with it, beyond a couple of people who insist on referring to me by my husband’s surname regardless (so much for choice…) but luckily (?) I’ve been called worse things and I don’t tend to get very frustrated about it (they probably suffer more frustration from having me genuinely not know they’re trying to talk to me, since they’re trying to get my attention using something that is not actually my name).
A friend ended up succumbing to her husband’s name a year into their marriage for logistical reasons, though. So yes. Not really a fully free choice.
The combined-name thing doesn’t get enough airtime in my book. Unfortunately not all names work well together (ours, for example) and according to friends of ours who did it you still get mutterings from the usual crowd. But at least the logistics should work out better in the long run.
Anyway – thoughtful piece. Well said.
We hyphenated our names together, so we both changed our names. I don’t know of many that have done it, and our children won’t be able to do Tue same thing or else they’ll have triple or even quadruple barrelled surnames, but it worked for us….
I wrote about it here: https://wp.me/p41okV-iz
Firstly I have to admit, I found your blog via “Yumi Stynes Eye”, it’s about colour. My BFF told me she had different colour eyes and so I went to my Google to check it out. For the record I am bookmarking your blog. So, I am like Seamus, my husband and I hyphenated our surnames together. It was my idea. Hubs came around to it after some soul searching. I let him choose which went first in order of the hyphenating. He chose mine, because he thought it flowed off the tongue better. Like Seamus, I’m not sure what our children will do, but I will be interested in their (& partner) decision making. My family didn’t mind so much when we announced it, Hubs family took it a little hard. I wanted to keep my name but Hubs preferred that we all (our future children at the time considered) held the same surname. Fair call.