I thought Adrienne's post on the name issue
as it pertains to marriage and children was incredibly interesting -
it's something that I've thought a lot about. I took my husband's last
name about three years after our wedding - basically because I finally
reached the conclusion that no, the whole Amy Fisher/Joey Buttofuoco
thing was never, never, ever, going to go away.
So, while I understand why
many readers, like Courtney, took their husbands' names "so that we
could both share a last name with our kids," my sympathies are
definitely more in alignment with women like Laura, who noted that she
kept her maiden name because she "just didn't see any reason to change
it."
The question of what to name the kids when both parents have
different last names is definitely a thorny one. I was impressed to
read that Miss Chris and Alisa gave their children their last names
instead of their husbands', which seemed to be what most women do in
this situation. Susannah's daughter has a hyphenated last name, which
may have been what inspired anonymous2 to object, "hyphenating the
children's names works for one generation, but then what happens when
Mary Smith-Jones grows up and marries John Murray Clark? Kids named
Smith-Jones-Murray-Clark?"
Well, anonymous2, I have the solution
- one which incorporates the names of both parents, creates both a
matriarchal and patriarchal line of descent, and restricts the number
of names any given child can have to two.
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