Your Name or Mine?

"What's Your Name?" by Amy A. Kass and Leon R. Kass, in First Things (Nov. 1995), Institute on Religion and Public Life, 156 Fifth Ave., Ste. 400, New York, N.Y. 10010.

As if modern marriage were not already sailing in troubled waters, Americans have added yet another small ripple by making it an open question whether a woman will take her husband's name. Mr. and Mrs. Kass, who both teach at the University of Chicago, have no doubt about their own view: "If marriage is, as we believe, a new estate, in fact changing the identities of both partners, there is good reason to have this changed identity reflected in some change of surname."

Individuals entering marriage who refuse to bear a common name, the authors contend, are, though perhaps not by intent, "symbolically holding them-selves back from the full meaning of the union." They also are creating "in advance a confused identity" for their future chil- dren. A "common name identifies the child securely within its nest of origin and rearing, and symbolically points to the ties of parental affection and responsibility that are needed for its healthy growth and well-being," the Kasses say.

How about a hyphenated or newly invented name? Hyphenated family names "are simply impractical beyond one or at most two generations," the authors point out. A totally new surname sunders all ties to the past.

But why should it be the woman who surrenders the surname? Because, the Kasses maintain, "the mother is the 'more natural' parent, that is, the parent by birth," while the father, whose role in the birth is "minuscule and invisible," is a parent "more by choice and agreement than by nature." In giving his surname to his bride, the husband is offering "a pledge of (among other things) loyal and responsible fatherhood for her children. A woman who refuses this gift is, whether she knows it or not, tacitly refusing the promised devotion or, worse, expressing her suspicions about her groom's trustworthiness as a husband and prospective father.

"Patrilineal surnames," the Kasses con-elude, "are, in truth, less a sign of paternal prerogative than of paternal duty and pro- fessed commitment, reinforced psychologically by gratifying the father's vanity in the perpetuation of his name and by offering this nominal incentive to do his duty both to mother and child."