50% Of Adults Believe Women Should Be Required By Law To Do This Once They’re Married, Says Research
kudla | Shutterstock Even though attitudes around marriage and gender roles have changed a lot over the years, some traditional expectations still stick around. Conversations about women's rights, equality, and identity still tend to bring out surprisingly strong opinions, especially when it comes to marriage and family traditions.
Case in point? Research also uncovered lingering beliefs about what marriage "should" look like and whether a woman keeping her own last name says something about her commitment to the relationship.
A study found that 50% of adults in the US believe a woman should be required by law to take her husband's name after marriage
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Emily Shafer, the researcher in charge of this 2017 study, uncovered even more dismaying beliefs in the course of her research, which, to be honest, isn't that much of a shocker given its context.
Namely, she discovered that people really, honestly think, as in, years after we fought for our rights to vote and wear pants and work, gals, that when a woman gets married, she needs to change her last name to signify to the world that she's prioritizing her family and marriage above herself.
I wish I were kidding, but no: Apparently, a woman being proud of her last name and her identity is just too much: Many polled men who hadn't completed much education (which is the least surprising part of this study) even went so far as to suggest that when a lady won't take her husband's last name, it's because she's actually not committed to the marriage.
According to the same, those same men felt that they would be completely justified in filing for divorce if their wives worked too much
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Let's take a little look at the history of taking your spouse's name. The only reason women started taking their husbands' names wasn't that it was sweet, a sign of merging into one family, or even to make credit applications less confusing.
No, it was because women were basically one step above cattle, often used only as a means of producing heirs and little else. In fact, women were just being sold from their fathers to their new husbands, and it was basically a way to put a stamp of ownership on their new baby-maker.
In the modern era, you see more professional women keeping their names or hyphenating them. Some women even make their middle name their former maiden name. And I cannot state this enough: that is perfectly fine.
There is no financial, legal, or necessary reason for a woman to take her husband's name after getting married in this day and age
It's a choice that should be between a woman and her husband, and it's time for America to get with the program and remember that women aren't property.
Keeping your last name does not devalue the commitment that you made to your spouse, and women are allowed to work, vote, wear pants, curse, spit, and be as professional or domestic as they want, because even if men won't acknowledge it, it doesn't change the fact that we are their equals and deserve our rights.
Even if that right is just to keep our last names as they are because we're proud of the woman who grew up with that name.
Merethe Najjar is a professional writer, editor, and award-winning fiction author from Atlanta, Georgia. She has had multiple publications featured in The Aviator Magazine, Infinite Press, Yahoo, BRIDES, and others.
