Rite of Passage.
Let's talk shit about marriage.
In advance: Appy-polly-logies to those of y'all who have been there, done that, while I armchair critique sans experience. I sympathize that it must be heavily obnoxious to read my disjointed musings about a general Fact of Life(TM), but this will only take a moment ( Read more... )
In advance: Appy-polly-logies to those of y'all who have been there, done that, while I armchair critique sans experience. I sympathize that it must be heavily obnoxious to read my disjointed musings about a general Fact of Life(TM), but this will only take a moment ( Read more... )
A little elaboration of my personal dilemma, and then a response to a point of yours. Caffeine rather than alcohol has been my drug of the last few hours; ideas will, I hope, have more focus this time round.
Elaboration first: in France, family names can possess significance I haven't seen in anglophone cultures. Any family name beginning with 'de' ('Antoine de Caunes') is indicative of aristocratic lineage. Even today, such a name is prestigious, and immediately noticeable/attention-grabbing. Not many in France today have such a name - few French nobles survived the merciless (some would say justified) guillotinings of the 18th century.
Elaboration part two: in February my girlfriend's older sister and her boyfriend had a child out of wedlock. They gifted their baby daughter with the father's family name, 'de la Tourette'. As far as I know, there was no discussion, no dispute. It was simply assumed, at every step, that the child would take the father's aristocratic, door-opening name rather than that garden variety - though beautiful, with squiggles over the vowels - name of her mother.
My girlf was royally pissed at that. And so, for all this talk of keeping her family name alive - which is justified in its own right, true - I have to wonder how much of her reticence in naming our as-yet-unconceived child after me stems from a want to accuse, to blame. The name of my (hypothetical) child should not, I feel, be a tacit reprimand for my girlfriend's sister's misdeeds. It should not be chosen in order to prove a point to somebody who is, at best, on the periphery of our relationship.
Plus, at the age of 28, my girlfriend has only very recently learned which way to point those adorable exotic squiggles over her surname (she had to sneak a peek at her dad's driving licence to see how he'd written it). Considering, I have to doubt her professed strength of feeling concerning her family name.
And my response to the final point you make: the child's gestation is more difficult, more taxing, more intimate, more painful, for the mother than for the father. Of course. And yet this argument that the mother therefore has first choice of surname for the child - almost as a 'prize' for the months of hardship endured - implies that the ordeal of parenting finishes with the birth of the child. While the mother is ahead on points at the child's birthday, there follows 18+ years of nurturing, supporting, teaching, caring, guiding etc. which is - in theory - a 50/50 role, equal parts for ma and pa. Except for that very earliest portion of the child's life, I'd argue that the father's input is every bit as important as the mother's.
(In the 'textbook' upbringing, that is - we children of broken homes well know that children are capable of tolerating enormous variation on this classic formula without becoming animal torturers in adult life.)
So, being an enlightened 21st century male fully capable of wiping yellow shit from a baby's buttocks, is not my 'claim' on my unconceived child's name - nay, identity - as valid as his/her mother's?
Reply
It's as valid, yes -- particularly if your assertion of a 50/50 divide (of both nurturing and providing) is a genuine one. In addition, I wasn't meaning to assign birth with the conclusion of parenting, quite obviously, but that a mere acknowledgment of it's physical and intimate taxation on the mother isn't quite enough, at least not for me. Of course, hand-waving nay-saying on this issue from the general populace is of the "well, being rooted in misogyny isn't indicative of it's contemporary practice" variety. Yet once again my questioning is "then why perpetuate this?" Wouldn't the mere notion of the historical affiliation with women being both property values (exchanged from father to husband) and an Incubating Host disgust the considerate person to the core, even if your present intentions are in good faith? Again, the caveat is that my opinion is not "contemporary traditional marriage = laden with automatic misogyny", especially if it doesn't extend beyond the ceremony, but it certainly tells me something about people's priorities.
The priority, of course, also encompasses the perpetuation of women's fluidity. To be socialized with the mindset that your identity is adaptable, possibly altered more than once, possibly lost in yellowing paperwork, or in this case: her child's... well, it is certainly unsettling to contemplate. The knowledge about your partner's sister is interesting, however, so I can certainly grok why this would be an issue of contention.
Of course, other people have made plausible suggestions upthread: name-hyphening, for one, in conjunction with a name-dropping system (that is already well-established in other cultures) to weed out the problematic clunkyness and superfluity in the future generations. This, usually, gets hand-waved away also: naturally, Latinos and Icelandics are far too silly. It's something fascinating to consider, however.
Honestly, I wish people had more sensibility to drop the last names and create a separate one, if such a burning need of symbolism is desired. If maintaining a tattoo on your child is important to them, then both partners could either conjoin their surnames or simply create a new, polished one. I'm partial to this idea, and even find it considerably more symbolic than the mere "meshing detracting of the wife's identity with the husband". Perhaps it is an evasion on my part though -- discussions over 50/50 ordeals tend to always lead to an impasse. From my perspective, it is not only revealing as to who's "lineage" is more important to pass, but I find it remarkably "coincidental" that mothers will, 99% of the time, forfeit a part of her identity towards her child by "choice". Perhaps it doesn't hurt viscerally, particularly if they've been raised to kowtow to the inevitable. From a slightly immature standpoint, I can also see why people with badass surnames would be resistant to forfeit theirs -- but not just any name.
Anyhow, your situation appears to be a bit more nuanced than the average partnership, so I'll have to sleep on generating more feasible suggestions. After all, it's overall lack of importance in my life doesn't mean it isn't hugely important for you -- sometimes I need to remember these things.
Reply
True, I'm thinking more about this idea of 'identity-stamping'. Another solution: children with penises take my surname, children without take their mother's. Fair, no?
The matter isn't so important just now anyway. I have a year to think about it yet. Two, maxi.
Reply
Leave a comment