name changing and engagement rings

This is an old article, but it is intersting.

At some point the author says:

"Interestingly, over the past 10 years fewer and fewer women have kept their maiden names. According to a recent study by Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin, based on Massachusetts birth records, the number of college-educated women in their 30s keeping their name has dropped from 23 percent in 1990 to 17 percent in 2000.* Goldin suggests that this may be because we are moving toward a more conservative view of marriage. Perhaps. But it may also be that the maiden name is no longer a fraught political issue. These days, no one is shocked when an independent-minded woman takes her husband's name, any more than one is shocked when she announces that she is staying at home with her kids. Today, the decision is one of convenience, of a kind of luxury—which name do you like the sound of? What do you feel like doing? The politics are almost incidental. Our fundamental independence is not so imperiled that we need to keep our names. The statement has, thanks to a more dogmatic generation, been made. Now we dabble in the traditional. We cobble together names. At this point—apologies to Lucy Stone, and her pioneering work in name keeping—our attitude is: Whatever works."

I find this way of thinking very unfortunate. The idea that we are past the point that feminism is only a matter of taste, is not only untrue, but also backwards. Just because we are not obliged to change our last names it doesn't make the matter unimportant. True, if this was the law, it would be a very different matter altogether and we, as women, would have to put effort and energy to change that law.

But principles matters as well. My last name is a part of my identity. I don't dwell on the fact that my last name is my father's (as opposed to my mom's), but I have lived with it for the past 30 years and it is mine now. I find it insulting to change my last name because it's what my spouse wants, or because it is convenient. It would be also convenient if I married a rich man when I was 20 years old and I never worked. It would also be convenient if I lived off of my parents money, or got my rich boyfriends to buy me expensive gifts. But i find all of those an insult to my personality and independence. And I do not choose to do something for the mere fact that's convenient.

The author also mentions "These days, no one is shocked ...when she announces that she is staying at home with her kids. "

When in the history people were shocked at the idea of a stay at home mom? Is this what we are championing for women these days? That the days of fighting for your rights is over, so now you can sit back and relax and roll back to your role as a traditional mother and wife, and never worry about the unequal sex laws.

Good thing that women who do not think that way are plenty.

This was a comment from one reader that I found close to what I think:

"Don't give me the argument that everyone in your family should have one name. In that case, why doesn't the man change it? To the poster who talks about diamond rings -- I agree; it's hypocritical to live off your husband's wealth but pretend to be liberated. In my ideal world, women would not be changing their names, there would be no diamond rings on engagement (or both the man and the woman would wear rings bought for each other), there would be no down-on-one-knee proposals (not even for the sake of traditions), and there would be equal division of labor between the sexes in the home and the workplace. I wish that the progressive, smart, and educated women of our generation would start putting their feet down about these things. "