The Name Game, part two

Name-changing is a complicated subject for couples of any stripe. But when you throw present or future kids into the mix, things get even messier. As a follow-up to my previous post on last names and marital partnerships, here's further food for thought!

While the traditional route is that a woman marries a man, takes his last name, and then gives his last name to their children, it's a lot more complicated today- especially when the mother (because, for the purposes of this discussion, we're assuming a male-female couple) chooses not to change her last name. What implications does that have for her children's last names? And, more importantly, what implications does that have for her parental rights and responsibilities?

There are so many options available these days, you'd think that people would hardly blink at last names. Many parents with different last names hyphenate their children's names- in which case there's a whole new debate to be had about whose name comes first- but many others pick one parent's name or even combine their last names into a whole new name. I grew up in a family where my sister and I were given our dad's last name, while our mom kept her own. This was pretty common for my friends whose parents had made similar choices regarding their own names- when the mother kept her name, the kids usually got his. A couple of my friends growing up had hyphenated names, but for the most part, many of us had only one. And, if I remember correctly, all of us had our father's last name.

The politics behind such a choice are obviously individual, but do play into a collective trend. For some, the choice has to do with the fact that the last name acts as a surrogate bond between the children and father for the bond created between children and mother by the process of pregnancy and childbirth. "I carried you for 40 weeks and then laboured for you, so this was his contribution," the argument seems to go. Of course, surrogacy and adoption don't really fall into this argument with any sort of neatness, and again the politics of last names brings us to the historical Western tendency to view women and children as the property of male heads of the household.

There's also a problem when children become older and travel with one parent at a time- whether the parents remain together or are separated. When I was about 11, my mom took my sister and me up to Montreal for a brief trip. In order to do this, she had to carry our birth certificates and a notarized document stating that she had our dad's permission to take us abroad. The reason for this, according to the border officials, was that mom's last name wasn't the same as ours. As she ranted later, our aunt- who had taken my dad's family name when she'd married my uncle- would have been able to take us across the border without anyone batting an eye. Nowadays, with heightened awareness about the risks of parental kidnapping, this reasoning may have been different. At the time, however, it was a reflection of the belief that all members of a family ought to share a last name. Similarly, mom generally had to go through a more rigorous process of proving herself to be our parent when she wanted to accomplish anything within our school district, simply because our last names didn't match.

These aren't necessarily challenges that will go away anytime soon, either. When the reverse happens- when children have their mother's last name but not their father's- there's certainly a kerfluffle not only because of the tendency to view the father as somehow weak or wrong, but also because of the social phobia we have about men with children that aren't obviously theirs. This is something I expect my cousin will face as her daughter grows up- she and her husband chose to assign their children's last name on the basis of the first child's assigned sex, and since their first child was assigned female, their kid(s) will have her last name. While her husband is a wonderful person and parent, I would not be surprised if he faces suspicion from institutions when he picks her up, takes her on father-daughter trips, or does anything- however innocently- that involves just him and her in public.

I would also expect that, unless she looks a lot like him as she grows up, the public assumption will be that she's his stepdaughter because their last names don't match. And I'd be willing to bet that, if she shared his last name but not her mother's, no one would assume that she was my cousin's stepdaughter.

I'm not sure what else to write on this topic, since a lot of it mirrors what was said previously. The social tendency to view women and their children as the property of a male partner is pretty deeply ingrained in our general cultural norms, even if it's not our conscious philosophy, and is reflected in the way we create expectations for individuals and treat those who defy them.

The Name Game (from Erica)

In the process of moving from the US to Germany, my partner and I have retained the services of a company who will pack our belongings, do all our paperwork, and ship the boxes to our new apartment (yes, I can do my own work, but before you judge me, note that this has been taking place while I've been finishing two master's degrees, job hunting, and planning a wedding). Both Nick and I have been communicating with the company via email, so they have both our (full) names, but when the movers called me a couple of days ago to confirm some details, they asked for "Mrs. T" (name changed for privacy). Let me be clear: my name is Ms. L. While I wasn't hugely aggravated at the time, I did give myself a status update on Facebook on the topic...and got a whole world of feedback. Some, like Emily, agreed that the assumption of my marital status and last name was aggravating at best. Others, like my future brother-in-law and an old acquaintance of Nick's, told me they'd been thinking of me as Erica T since they'd met me and I should get used to it.

Here's the thing: I don't WANT to change my name. My name is a point of pride. It's tricky to spell and pronounce correctly on the first try, in spite of only having four letters, and when you spend your lifetime correcting people who mess it up, it's hard to let go of that piece of identity. I've built a professional reputation on this name. My name is a statement about where I'm from and who I'm from. The odds of me letting something like a wedding change that are pretty damn low.

But all this got me thinking about our maintenance of the cultural norm that women change their last names when they get married. Historically, even before last names existed, a woman who got married left her family behind and became a member of her husband's family. The status of women as people or property notwithstanding, this was a trend that continued long after last names became fashionable. A woman getting married became either her husband's property or a fixture of his family, but either way was expected to leave behind many aspects of her old life and connections in favour of being absorbed into his. The changing of the name was the outward signifier of this intricate practice.

Of course, today this is somewhat different. Most women in our society aren't expected to abandon their old lives entirely, just because they get married, and the acquisition of in-laws isn't expected to change one's ties to her parents. However, the name game goes on, albeit differently than it used to. Many women use their "maiden names" as their new middle name, or hyphenate their last name with their husband's. Plenty others, of course, continue to choose to change their last names and leave their old ones behind. And there are many reasons for this- dislike of the old name, like of the new name, personal philosophies about families uniting and becoming one- but the fact remains that it's still primarily women who are expected to make these changes, both by their partners and by broader culture.

When Nick and I first addressed this question, I had a pretty clear idea of what changes I would be comfortable with. It was out of the question for me to change my last name entirely, but I thought the idea of hyphenating was great- if we both did it. From my point of view, we were both entering into this marriage and both choosing to make a life together, and thus if our last names were going to reflect that, then they should include both. Nick was open to this idea, but put off by the enormous amounts of paperwork involved, and we wound up deciding to keep our own names. I found it interesting, unsurprising, and frustrating that when we started this conversation, it was clear that his opinion- "You can do whatever you want with your name"- was informed by the fact that he unconsciously viewed the situation as MY responsibility and not HIS (or, for that matter, OURS). Name-changing, he was unwittingly stating, is a woman's responsibility.

There are so many complex factors that play into this that it's worth acknowledging the limits of my situation. For many couples, particularly same-sex, name-changing on the part of one or both partners can be a really important statement of togetherness in a society that prefers to invalidate same-sex relationships. Religious traditions, or desires to share one name, can influence name-changing, and even though their roots are strongly misogynist, the individuals who adhere to them are engaging in the practice for reasons that have nothing to do with notions of women-as-property-of-men. And let's not forget that some people hate their last names, hate their birth families, or hate having to spell and pronounce their last name every time they try to make a reservation. These are all valid reasons for wanting to make a change.

What I object to is that the practice, which should be an individual choice, is assumed of all women. I wouldn't be as riled up about it if 1) no one were assuming anything about my name, 2) no one were asking me about my last name or 3) they were asking Nick if he were planning to change his name as often as they were asking me. But the fact of the matter is that they aren't. People- friends, family, the Wedding Industrial Complex, and even my movers- are presuming that my name is subject to change as soon as I've said "I do." I want to see this assumption stop, not just about me, but about all women. When individuals get married, it shouldn't be a one-way name change by default. The decision to change your name affects your career, your relationships, and your interaction with government systems like social security. Presuming that this responsibility should fall on women without giving real thought to what that means is inconsiderate at best, and at worst, it perpetuates the underlying beliefs about women and men that started the practice in the first place.

Soon, I'll be doing a post on how this choice affects decisions about children, with stories from my mother and my cousins. It's too intricate to miss!