Why do so many women still take their husbands name when they marry?

What is it about?

Why so many women still take their husbands name when they marry. Marital surname change is a striking example of the survival of tradition.How has a practice emerging from patriarchal history become embedded in an age of detraditionalisation and women’s emancipation. Is the tradition of women’s marital name change just some sort of inertia or drag, which will slowly disappear as modernity progresses, or does this tradition fulfil more contemporary roles? Are women and men just dupes to tradition, or alternatively do they use tradition to further their aims? We examine how different approaches – individualisation theory, new institutionalism, and bricolage – might tackle these questions. We find that while individualisation and new institutionalism offer partial explanations, bricolage offers a more adaptable viewpoint.This examination is set within a comparative analysis of marital surname change in Britain and Norway,

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Photo by Jeremy Wong Weddings on Unsplash

Photo by Jeremy Wong Weddings on Unsplash

Why is it important?

We need to re-evaluate the role of tradition in contemporary behaviour. And we need to assess the best way of doing this

Perspectives