I read an interesting article today about brides keeping their maiden name being a trend that is on the rise.
When I think back to childhood and how huge it was for girls to play with Barbie dolls and make up pretend scenarios that were played out, sometimes for hours, with friends and sisters, one of those scenarios was about Barbie getting married.
It was a fun and dreamy game to play, and Barbie would sometimes then move to the mountains or an island or some other place that was considered to be very cool and 'oh so exotic' back in the 60's.
The one thing I don't ever recall doing is having Barbie keep her maiden name, she would now be Mrs. Ken *insert last name HERE*, and then live happily ever after on said mountain or island.
When I married in the early 70's I took my new husband's last name. The thought of keeping my maiden name would have been unheard of to me, and so I became Diane Cayton... his last name.
Five years later divorce would change my life. I had a daughter and so to me it felt the appropriate thing to do would be to keep my married last name so that she and I would not need to explain to people why our last names were different. It seemed the right thing to do.
My maiden name had been a part of my life and who I was for nineteen years, the age I married and gave it up, but I would not marry again until I was 53 years old, so I had the last name of Cayton for thirty four years when I married my current love, and it was the name that everyone knew me by.
So, I chose to keep the previous married last name and hyphenate it with my new husband's name tacked onto the end.
No one knew me by my maiden name since 1973, and now it was 2007, so to have taken it back would feel very foreign to me. I was no longer that girl.
Trends come and go not only when it comes to weddings, but how women choose to be seen as in the world once they do marry. Have they worked before... are they a professional.... do they need their own identity/name separate from their husband, would it be a hassle for any reason to give up their maiden name?
In some cases, Yes! It would be.
So yes, trends may come and they may go throughout the decades, but I am all for a woman retaining whatever name she has prior to marriage. I've never been seen as a traditional gal, so if this is a problem for the man she has chosen, tell him to get over it.
HERE is the link to the article if you would like to read it.
My daughters are all of marrying age (and two of them are, in fact, married). They dropped their maiden names, as have all of their married friends except one.
ReplyDeleteI think that has been the case for the last 20 years in business...I know loads of women who kept their maiden names..My sister for one and they've been married for thirty years..(Both taught in the same school..)
ReplyDeleteI left my maiden name when I married my husband . . .
ReplyDeleteNever thought any different about it . . . It was the thing to do.
We were married almost twenty years when he died an early sudden death.
I was single for seventeen years and remarried.
I was the person with my former husbands name.
I remain that person with that name.
Sometimes I hyphenate that name with my husband of today just for the fun of it.
Name changes confuse the postman/woman.
Sometimes the mail arrives to my mister using my last name . . .
We enjoy a giggle or two over that . . .