In Undergrad my roommate and I were talking one afternoon
(as we did many, many wonderfully lazy afternoons) and realized we had no idea how
our parents got engaged. We called them to find out. To our great
disappointment both of our parents had very unexciting stories. Her parents
were watching TV and “decided” to get engaged. My parents were on a walk. They
both made very gender equal, seriously mutual decisions and they both picked out their own rings. As members of
generation-Notebook we were horrified.
Luckily, my own engagement was exactly what I wanted. Quiet, cute and a total surprise. The
fact that we are getting married isn’t a surprise to me, I’ve always known that
he’s the one, but the timing was. I had NO clue we were “there” yet or that he
had any kind of plan percolating. Now, despite being a self-coined member of "generation-Notebook" (and I'm quite sure Allie took Noah's last name) I am pretty adamant about the name change debate. I am not going to take his last name. I'm not going to hyphenate. I'm not even going to think about it. My mom
didn’t take my dad’s last name and its been something I've always honoured and respected. My mom’s best friend’s kids even took HER last name
instead of her common-law husband’s. I was raised by feminists and I am a
feminist. I have never considered taking
someone else’s name. I certainly never doodled Mrs. Timberlake or Mrs. Hanson in my
notebook as a young girl. It's always been a non-issue for me. Even my younger brother asked me tentatively "are you going to take his last name?" with hope that I wouldn't in order to remain true to myself and they way that we were raised.
When my boyfriend’s brother got married two years ago we
discussed how his sister-in-law took their last name. My boyfriend said something offhand
like: “I’m pretty traditional about that”. In a fleeting moment of attempted male dominance he reverted back into a caveman before my very eyes. I looked him in the eye and simply
said “well, you’ll have to marry someone else then”. I was serious. I know; I
am a cold hearted bitch sometimes. I kind of love it. And obviously, so
does he. He proposed knowing that the last name issue is a deal breaker
for me and is something that he has decided he can live with. He even said it somewhat proudly to his friends the other night. I realize I'm making him sound like a bit of an old fashioned ass here and he's not. He's kind and loving and very accepting. However, it's a reality that many men still think we should take their last name. Whether it's their romantic side coming out, an attachment to old traditions or simple=y their neanderthal brains coming into play; it's something many women will have to deal with when they say they want to keep their last name. But here's the thing: if I said I'll take his last name I’d be changing me and I wouldn’t want to be that woman
or wife.
All that said; it’s still a personal
choice. And yes, while I judged the girls on facebook that got married
straight out of high school and changed their last names on social media faster
than they could get out of their wedding dresses, I can accept that changing their last name is a choice
many women make and one that many women would adamantly defend! I realize that not everyone's mother is a feminist. And just like I'm not willing to change my stance I don't expect other women to change theirs. I actually recently saw a cute wedding picture on Pinterest that said : “he stole my heart
so I stole his last name”. I can understand the logic; you love this person so much and want to be able to have a mailbox that says "The Bakers". You don't want to have two last names that are so long they don't even fit on your passport like me (I have mom & dad's last names). You want your last name to be the same as your kid's. You don't want to constantly have to correct people at the bank or the airport. I get it.
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| Source: Pinterest |
Buuuut, if you need more information to make your decision you've come to the right place! I've scoured the internet for interesting tidbits on the subject. For example, I found Lucy Stone. I credit my not knowing who she is to the fact that in Canada we have many of our own badass early feminists (Nelly McClung, Charlotte Whitton etc.).
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| Lucy Stone Source: Pinterest |
Lucy Stone, born in 1818, dedicated her life to improving life for American women through a dedication to the Women's National Loyal League, American Equal Rights Association and as President of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association. She was also an abolitionist who fought against slavery with her parents from a young age and worked with the American Anti-Slavery Society later in life. She pursued higher education against her parent's wishes and after a lot of a hard work and dedication (in a very unequal Academic arena) became the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a bachelor's degree. In 1850, she organized the first national Women's Rights Convention. When she married Henry Blackwell in 1855, Stone was the first woman to keep her maiden name after marriage and proclaimed their wedding: "a wife should no more take her husband's name than he should hers, my name is my identity and must not be lost". They had a daughter in 1857 named her Alice Stone Blackwell. Biography.com sums of her life powerfully by stating: "while Stone did live to see the end of slavery, she died 30 years before
women were finally permitted to vote (August 1920), on October 18,
1893, in Dorchester, Massachusetts". (Biography) Heartbreaking, inspiring and a very powerful argument for keeping your maiden name.
What else did I find on the internet about women keeping their own last name? I'll tell you! I found a bunch of conflicting statistics, some idiot men's comments on the subject and all in all no conclusive answer about the current trends in keeping/changing last names.
PS Mag has an article on the subject (written by a man) with some interesting statistics from around the world. Interestingly, the author doesn't associate women keeping their last name with a resurgence of feminism in the twenty first century:
PS Mag has an article on the subject (written by a man) with some interesting statistics from around the world. Interestingly, the author doesn't associate women keeping their last name with a resurgence of feminism in the twenty first century:
"but while some 35 percent
of American women in their 20s and 30s are now choosing to keep their
own names, that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with a
“resurgence of feminism,” interesting as that would be. While retaining
one’s maiden name upon marriage has historically been pretty closely
affiliated with feminism, it’s also a sign that, for a lot of women,
adult identity is now already established well before getting wed" - PS Mag
I find it interesting how Daniel Luzer separates having an "adult identity" from feminism, when to me women having an identity whether it be sexual, physical, spiritual, financial or otherwise, is directly correlated to the roots of feminism. Isn't having an identity exactly what Lucy Stone was talking about when she said "my name is my identity and must not be lost"? He also uses the term "low-level feminists" which I find problematic but I also know the "F"-word has a bad rap with a lot of women. The article surmises that overall the older the bride and the better her job the more likely she is to keep her last name.
Apparently keeping your last name raises a whole bunch of issues after the wedding. Banks, insurance and relatives all start automatically changing your last name for you. Yikes. There's even a wikihow about how to tell people you're keeping your name.
Interestingly, Womens Health Magazine has stats that say "more than one in four brides want to keep or at least hyphenate their last names, according to a new survey from WeddingDays.co.uk, a UK wedding directory." The magazine then did some research from an American standpoint that said "just 8 percent of married women have decided to keep their last names (while about 6 percent either hyphenate or modify their last names in some other way), according to a 2011 survey from The Knot". The actual statistics have gone from 23% in the 90s to 18% in 2000.
Mens Health Magazine did their own poll and found that 63.3 percent of Men’s Health followers said they would be upset if their wives kept their maiden names. I've selected some of the quotations that they published in the article for your reading pleasure:
“Hyphenation is a direct “f*ck you” to a man’s masculinity… it elevates his father-in-law’s manhood over his own.” —Anonymous respondent, via a SurveyMonkey poll
“It sounds like she’s trying to hang onto her “single person” identity and not identify with the fact that she’s married now.” —Anonymous respondent, via a SurveyMonkey poll
Oh, but it gets better: 96.3 percent of Men’s Health followers said they wouldn’t take a woman’s last name if she asked them to.
“My name is part of who I am.” —Anonymous respondent, via a SurveyMonkey poll
COUGH, COUGH. Um hello? Just a LITTLE bit hypocritical.
Obviously, in this day and age if you read any comments section under any article you see a broad spectrum of opinions ranging from right to left and I've strategically selected the most idiotic and offensive ones I could find for the sake of this blog post. But still.
The Daily Mail found that "the proportion of women who opt to hold on to their maiden name is highest among those in their 20s" and that "Rachel Thwaites from the University of York, said that the statistics showed younger women were increasingly identifying themselves as feminists".
But it's not just about being a feminist. It's about education, employment and careers too. I want the name on my Master's degree to be my current last name. I worked hard for that piece of paper! When I publish my first book I want it to have that same name on it.
The Globe & Mail writer Wendy Leung quotes research from The Netherlands that found "women who take their partner's name are regarded as more caring but less intelligent, less competent and less ambitious, researchers from the Netherlands discovered". Leung also found that "in a four-part study titled "What's in a Name?", social psychologists at Tilburg University found that Dutch women who adopted their partner's name actually possessed different characteristics than those who kept their own, supporting previous U.S. research".
The last snippit of information/findings I will share with you comes from Facebook, a questionable source in terms of reliability, but interesting nonetheless. The Huffinton Post states "in partnership with The Daily Beast, Facebook looked at the names of 14 million married females, ranging in age from 20 to 79 who are currently active on Facebook and married in the United States, according to a report on The Daily Beast Thursday. Facebook determined that of that group, 65 percent of women in their 20s and 30s changed their names".
Well, that's all I've got. Think about it. Comment. Tweet us. What do you think? If you changed your last name we want to hear from you too!
Gotta book it; JEM.
Interestingly, Womens Health Magazine has stats that say "more than one in four brides want to keep or at least hyphenate their last names, according to a new survey from WeddingDays.co.uk, a UK wedding directory." The magazine then did some research from an American standpoint that said "just 8 percent of married women have decided to keep their last names (while about 6 percent either hyphenate or modify their last names in some other way), according to a 2011 survey from The Knot". The actual statistics have gone from 23% in the 90s to 18% in 2000.
Mens Health Magazine did their own poll and found that 63.3 percent of Men’s Health followers said they would be upset if their wives kept their maiden names. I've selected some of the quotations that they published in the article for your reading pleasure:
“Hyphenation is a direct “f*ck you” to a man’s masculinity… it elevates his father-in-law’s manhood over his own.” —Anonymous respondent, via a SurveyMonkey poll
“It sounds like she’s trying to hang onto her “single person” identity and not identify with the fact that she’s married now.” —Anonymous respondent, via a SurveyMonkey poll
Oh, but it gets better: 96.3 percent of Men’s Health followers said they wouldn’t take a woman’s last name if she asked them to.
“My name is part of who I am.” —Anonymous respondent, via a SurveyMonkey poll
COUGH, COUGH. Um hello? Just a LITTLE bit hypocritical.
Obviously, in this day and age if you read any comments section under any article you see a broad spectrum of opinions ranging from right to left and I've strategically selected the most idiotic and offensive ones I could find for the sake of this blog post. But still.
The Daily Mail found that "the proportion of women who opt to hold on to their maiden name is highest among those in their 20s" and that "Rachel Thwaites from the University of York, said that the statistics showed younger women were increasingly identifying themselves as feminists".
But it's not just about being a feminist. It's about education, employment and careers too. I want the name on my Master's degree to be my current last name. I worked hard for that piece of paper! When I publish my first book I want it to have that same name on it.
The Globe & Mail writer Wendy Leung quotes research from The Netherlands that found "women who take their partner's name are regarded as more caring but less intelligent, less competent and less ambitious, researchers from the Netherlands discovered". Leung also found that "in a four-part study titled "What's in a Name?", social psychologists at Tilburg University found that Dutch women who adopted their partner's name actually possessed different characteristics than those who kept their own, supporting previous U.S. research".
The last snippit of information/findings I will share with you comes from Facebook, a questionable source in terms of reliability, but interesting nonetheless. The Huffinton Post states "in partnership with The Daily Beast, Facebook looked at the names of 14 million married females, ranging in age from 20 to 79 who are currently active on Facebook and married in the United States, according to a report on The Daily Beast Thursday. Facebook determined that of that group, 65 percent of women in their 20s and 30s changed their names".
Well, that's all I've got. Think about it. Comment. Tweet us. What do you think? If you changed your last name we want to hear from you too!
Gotta book it; JEM.
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