Oh, she's the feminist in the family

[brdgt]

According to this article in the Chicago Tribune, I am a member of a very small group of women and a group that is getting smaller by the decade. Only 2% of women use only their birth name after marriage.

It's an ok piece, I do like how they point out how hard it has been for women to even have the right to not change their name after marriage:
"Until the 1960s, some states prevented women from voting using their own names. One of them was Alabama. In 1972, a woman named Wendy Forbush tried unsuccessfully to get a driver's license using her birth name. The court ruled that Forbush had to use her husband's name or legally change her name to her birth name. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately sided with Forbush."
Check out the Lucy Stone League for more info on name changing laws.

Oh, I found the article through the Ms. Magazine blog. You can read the "letters to the editor" that the article inspired here.

Some other points that Ms. brought up were interesting, like how politicians wives are pressured to change their names. I noticed recently how both John Kerry and Howard Dean's wives are now hyphenated, when they were previously listed with no sign of the Kerry or Dean family name. What do expect in politics, I know, but it still gets my feathers ruffled! One commentor made a compelling case that women are taught to be the peacemakers, thus they give in and take the husband's name.

Comments

[semiauto.livejournal.com]

ive thought about doing that. i really like my last name..it's unusual, dificult to pronounce and spell, and has a strong connection to my heritage (it's very scotch-irish sounding). on my dad's side of the family, all of the grandchildren are female, so my last name will be "lost" (assuming my sister gets married and changes her name :) my cousins are married already and have changed theirs). also, i think my first name would sound kind of silly with my boyfriend's last name haha. ive wondered about children, though. how do people usually handle that, i wonder?

children

[brdgt.livejournal.com]

Personally I don't care if my children have my husband's name or my own. I don't think I would give them a combined or hyphenated one though. It's not that I have to pass on my name, it's that I want to keep my name because it means something to my identity. I guess when it comes to children I don't see the name issue as an "ownership" one?

I know a lot of women who decided to change their name so that they had the same name as their children, which I always thought was kind of weird - like they're not going to know that you're their mommy?

[seriousleopold.livejournal.com]

I read that article, also. I was really surprised that the number of women who keep their birth name was so low. And even more surprised that that number is dropping. I know quite a few women who didn't change their name, including many in my own family.

[brdgt.livejournal.com]

Isn't it bizarre? I heard a statistic that only 75% of women changed their name in the 1970s! I was very happy last year when one of our couple friends got married and she didn't change her name - the non-name changers outnumbered the name changers in our peer group!

[blue-lotus.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I have decided that I will never change my name. It's very rare, and I love it.

I also think of it as a trademark, since I publish under that name.