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To you, I do; to your name I don't |
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Written by asap
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Wednesday, 14 February 2007 |
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Since I got married six months ago, my parents have taken to addressing my mail with different combinations of my and my husband’s last names: Madigan, White, Madigan-White, White Madigan, Mr. and Mrs. Jason White.
“I don’t even know what your name is,” my dad complains.
Trouble is, I don’t either.
I assumed I’d find clarity on the issue once I said “I do,” but it’s proven an entirely befuddling decision.
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FAIR MAIDENS
I find comfort in knowing I’m not alone. A recent search on www.indiebride.com, a Web site for “the independent-minded bride,” turned up over 8,000 posts on the subject “changing your name.”
The number of women who keep their maiden names upon marriage has grown substantially over the past 30 years, according to Claudia Goldin, a Harvard University Economics professor who has studied patterns of surname retention.
By examining data sets taken from the New York Times wedding announcements, Massachusetts birth records and Harvard University alumni records, Goldin found that the number of college-educated women in the United States who kept their name climbed from 2 percent to 4 percent in the mid-1970s to just below 20 percent in 2001.
Goldin said the jump largely stems from the women’s movement in the ’70s, which also was around the time when the average age of first marriages rose. “Many of the choices women have today are legacies of that period,” she said.
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SURNAME? SURE, MAN
But the majority of women still assume the last names of their husbands, according to Goldin. Some want it to identify as a family unit; others like their spouse’s name -- or dislike their own.
For some women, changing their name is a matter of custom or convention, according to indiebride.com editor Lori Leibovich. “I think, as with a lot of things that happen around a wedding, tradition is the default,” she said.
Leibovich said she is among the “standard-issue feminists that feel their identity is separate from their partners”’ and want to keep their own names intact.
For Leigh Henry, 35, the decision to keep her name when she married Justin Harclerode in 2003 wasn’t political.
“I certainly wasn’t trying to make any sort of statement by keeping my name, it’s just that that’s who I am,” she said. “I’d been Leigh Henry for 33 years, and the thought of being something or someone else was just uncomfortable.”
Henry, who works at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C., said her husband did not have strong feelings on the matter. “If he had really wanted me to change my name -- if it had been important to him -- I would have done it,” she said.
That was one reason Virginia-resident Holly Brock Amaya, 32, decided to add her husband’s name to hers after being married for nearly two years. (Brock is her maiden name.)
“I just thought, ’I’ll get to it when I get to it.’ I didn’t think it was something that would ultimately change anything,” she said. But she said she realizes, in hindsight, it was something her husband thought to be very special. He was so excited when she surprised him with her new driver’s license that he bought her a leather jacket.
Their three children also share the last name Amaya, something the couple considered less complicated.
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ANOTHER SOLUTIOMPROMISE
Leibovich also noted that some women choose to conflate their name with their husband’s to create something unique.
New York Times reporter Jodi Rudoren (formerly Wilgoren) did just that when she married Gary (formerly) Ruderman. She explained in a Times article last winter that the name is “a made-up moniker, but it is made up of our commitment to equality, with a nod to family history and a dash of out-of-the-box creativity. Most important, it is a name we share and will share with our potential offspring. To me there is no sound so sweet.”
Seems like a fair compromise to me. Maybe I should consider “Mrs. Whadigan?”
At least it’d be original.
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asap contributor Erin Madigan is an online editor for the Associated Press. If she does decide to change her name, she insists that her husband accompany her to the Social Security Office and all other bureaucratic institutions she’ll have to visit. | Only registered users can write comments.
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