To think women taking their husband’s name doesn’t have to be sexist?

[RealNavyEagle]

I know it’s a traditional thing and some people see it as outdated or patriarchal but I actually think there’s something quite nice about a whole family sharing the same name. It doesn’t feel like “losing my identity” to me, just part of building a shared one.

AIBU to think it’s not automatically a regressive choice and that it can just be a personal one?

Of course families can choose whatever approach they like to this.

Weird how few men you see taking their wife’s surname though 🤔 Heterosexual marriage is a patriarchal institution for sure 😂

DP and I aren’t married, and DD has both our surnames. Luckily they worked well
double-barrelled!

The thing I have always wondered about double-barrelled surnames (and perhaps someone who was born with one then married can answer this) is what do you do when you have one and then get married and want to double barrel?? Do you only take part of it? And how do you decide which?!

It's particularly interesting when espoused by women who didn't keep their own names anyway, and thus aren't actually qualified to speak about the experience of being a woman in a society who goes against that particular norm.

Mine still does that to this day. It's been 18 years. After that length of time, and having been asked several times by DH to stop doing this, it's obviously deliberate.

It's quite surprising the concerted effort some women will go to to put others back in what they view as our box. The most fundamental level of basic civility is to address people by their actual name.

Yes. She can make whatever choice she wishes. That includes choosing to make a sexist choice. Whether something is chosen by a woman or not has nothing to do with the definition of sexism.

It all depends how you view marriage, name changing etc. You view it's as a woman disappearing for example. A lot of women dont view it like that. You view it as a concern for women and a lot of women dont. You view changing your surname as discarding your identity, a lot of women dont view their surname as their identity. You can be upset by these things but not every women views these things in the same way.

But not everyone views it as a sexist choice I guess that's where the main difference of opinion lies.

I've heard since the day we married several variations on the theme of 'disrespect' to my husband (who is proud of my independence and the fact that I have an identity beyond my personal relationships, as any loving partner should be) - of 'always having to be "different"', of being 'one of those bra-burners', or an expectation that I will justify my outlandishness in daring to express a personal preference of identity. And on a lower level of everyday sexism there are algorithms 😀 The 'Mrs' title (which I've never used) is another sticking point. In this day and age it becomes particularly apparent when you book a hotel or travel, or make a larger purchase like a house, car or sofa.

The pushback is constant - and it quite surprised me. When I married, in 2008, I confidently anticipated that no one would give a monkeys what women chose to call ourselves, and that even if they knew my name was my own family name, they wouldn't care.

My car dealer receptionist (a woman) took real offence when I politely asked her to amend my title on her records as 'Ms'. Of course, she made a point by amending it to 'Miss' (which I mind less, somewhat). Nonetheless, it's always this very subtle effort to make women know our 'place' (invisible).

It's tedious, especially after this length of time but I do think scenarios like the above have got worse and not better with time. As to why feminism is moving backward and misogyny is hugely gaining in social currency, that's a point for another thread.

Marriage is just an expensive piece of paper also outdated a women gets married looses her identity and then has kids so gives up work to do rely on husband for every penny but if this is your lifestyle choices then who r we to judge

This is not a situation I remotely recognise. My marriage certainly looks nothing like that.

Whatever happened to that old stereotype of the New Man? Since the noughties he seems to have more-or-less disappeared. The men women complain about on this site more cloesly resemble the 70s variety.

I'm not sure I agree with that- marriage offers a woman financial protection in a world that is (regretfully) still geared towards contexts and structures that favour men. When such things stop being the case, only then can marriage just be an expensive piece of paper.

Interesting choice of words here.

Does she "suffer"? Probably not. But that's a pretty strong word. To me the word "suffer" implies physical or emotional pain. But can there be negative consequences for her? Yes, absolutely. If she's achieved anything under her previous name, got qualifications, won awards, published anything, that's all now under a different name. She now shares a surname with her in laws, who she might not even like that much, rather than with her own family who raised her. She's now using a name which the world only considers her to be entitled to use as long as she is still married to her husband, so if she gets divorced she either has to go through all the hassle of changing her name again (and then potentially have a different name to her children) or she'll have to explain herself to busybodies who want to know why she's still using her married name when she's no longer married. And at a most basic level, changing your name is a lot of faff. It costs time and sometimes money to do (early renewal of passports etc).

As for "wishing" to take her husband's name, I think that's also quite a strong word. I'm in my late 30s and I grew up assuming that I would change my name when I got married. I never assumed anything else until I actually got married and then for some reason it didn't feel right. By that point I was in my early 30s and I'd lived with my name for over 3 decades, all my previous achievements were in that name, and I'd moved country which meant that my name also felt inextricably linked with my national origin as well. Changing my name at that point would have felt like completely rejecting the person I'd been up until the age of 31 and starting again with a new identity, which wasn't what I wanted. But I don't believe many women think that hard about it. A great many women do it just because it's the done thing and they don't question it. Some do it because they can't wait to signal to the world that they have unlocked the great life achievement of finding a husband. (The days of Pride and Prejudice are not all that far behind us.) And some do it even when they don't want to because their husband and prospective in laws and even sometimes their own family put pressure on them to do it. My own mum took a very long time to accept that I hadn't changed my name, first sending me stuff addressed to my husband's name, then our names hyphenated, and then finally dropping it when she realised she was the only person doing that. Without wanting to draw overly extreme comparisons, this wouldn't be the only misogynistic practice in the world which is perpetuated by older women who did it (or had it done to them) themselves and don't want to acknowledge that it is something which is not done for women's benefit.

Yeah. I celebrate Christmas even though I'm an atheist. I have friends who support and in some cases fundraise for the conservatives, even though I'm a labour voter, and I changed my name when I got married, even though I'm a feminist, and keep the name I was born with for work.
Life is full of little decisions that we make for ourselves, which have bog-all to do with anyone else. I find it best to just leave folk to crack-on if they're not hurting anyone, and hope that they do me the same courtesy.

Agree with you. I don't think many married posters would recognise themselves in the previous poster's statement- all of my married friends with children work for starters!

It’s hard to argue that these choices and feelings are not affected by societal pressures or influences that are not the same for men though.

Far fewer men seem to shrug off their names as ‘it’s just a name’.

Of course women must make their own decision for their own reasons.

All we are saying is that the climate in which this decision is made is affected by a patriarchal system and tradition.

We can acknowledge that and still make our own decision.

Some of our decisions will be divergent from the status quo and therefore add in some small way to changing it, some will be in line with the status quo, which is fine. But doesn’t happen to contribute to change. And not everyone has to contribute to change either every step they take.

People get very defensive in these threads.

The pushback is constant - and it quite surprised me

Yes I often get an eye roll when I ask my name to be put down as "Ms" and I'm not even married. This is why it's not a neutral decision for women to become "Mrs Hisname" on marriage. It makes it harder for the minority of women who want to push back against these patriarchal traditions.

This is not to say that I'm perfect. I shave my legs which I'm well aware is because of shitty female beauty standards and makes things harder for women who don't conform. I'm self aware enough to realise that.

I completely agree with this. And we see it in about 5000 ways every day. My favourite one being the regular outrage that chores that tend to be dominated by women are outsourced - eg cleaning "oh, I'd be too embarassed to admit I couldn't keep my house clean" - vs chores that tend to be dominated by men - eg gutter cleaning "we got the gutter men in today - such a relief".

I think that in the society we live in, even the most die hard feminists may well regularly make choices that are intrinsically sexist or support a sexist overall approach. I know that's true for me. I did not take DH's name. My children do have his name however. I gave them his name knowing full well that this was NOT a feminist choice but it was a choice I made for my own reasons.

My dad walked me down the aisle. I did that because it was "tradition" and I knew perfectly well it was ridiculous but I deep down wanted it, and I knew he did. I actually regret that one a little - I wish I had asked both my parents to walk me down the aisle.

So I think doing things that are supporting a sexist approach doesn't mean we should all be beaten up and be accused of being sexist or whatever, but I do think we should be honest with ourselves about what is happening and the choices we make.

I wouldn't say women who choose to take their husbands names suffer. In fact there are some clear benefits to swimming with the sexist tide there, particularly when they use Mrs as well.

There are women who feel they've benefitted from changing their names, and I can see how that would be true. There is, conversely, a particular type of sexism only experienced by women who keep their own names and/or use Ms.

I think it's simply personal choice - I was excited to take my husband's surname and still love it, even though I also like my maiden name.
My sister has said that when she marries, she's keeping our maiden name.

Neither decision is wrong.

You do whatever you want. There's no convention.

You can keep your whole name, keep half of your name and combine it with your spouse's name (I guess you'd keep whichever half you like better) or take your new spouse's name in its entirety.

It’s taken a while for anyone to come up with this particular “gotcha”! The answer is-you have to keep adding names even unto the fourth generation…... Oh , actually bo. You can do whatever you like. Stick to your own name. Choose one. Use both. Make up a new name….Whatever you want.

Yes, I don't think there can be many other aspects of human behaviour that have so many people swearing blind that they couldn't possibly have been influenced by anything, that their choice was made entirely a vacuum. Apparently women in certain societies getting married are uniquely free of outside influence!

Well I'm married and have kids, I earn twice as much as my husband and work full time. I don't really need the piece of paper and if I got divorced I would probably end up worse off financially than if I had never got married.

Mumsnet seems to be full of unmarried women who have children with their partners, are stay at home mums or work very part time, doing all this unpaid labour for the benefit of a man who won't even formalise their relationship, and end up with absolutely nothing when the relationship ends.

Certainly if you do plan to spend your days doing unpaid childcare and housework, and leave the paid employment up to your partner, you're better off getting married.

If a woman feels it's to her disadvantage she doesnt need to change her surname. Its changing with every generation.

I also agree with whoever said the pushback is constant. My word, I've been married for nearly 20 years. I have lost count of the number of comments, eye rolls etc when I have put down Ms or used my own name. Hell, not just me. When we first got married, a number of people in DH's life gave HIM a hard time because I did not take his name.

I have had to explain my decision about 100 times. I've had to go back and get names corrected multiple times, every time with a definite sense that I am being a bit silly from the other person.

But mostly, what really shocked me was the response when we first got married. I was really really surprised at how many people were genuinely horrified and made really unpleasant, sarcastic, rude comments to me and DH in those first few months. And the number who would say, joKINgly, 'haha, well, I'll just call you Mrs DH name anyway."

And don't even get me started on the people who suddenly couldn't remember my name. DH's name is foreign and BEFORE marriage, no one could remember it. Bizarrely, post marriage.... "oh Mage, I can't remember so many times, I'll just call you DHName".