Some ‘BroDads’ are up in arms about women not changing their surnames

“This is grounds for not getting married, in my opinion.”

That was one of hundreds of pieces of advice given to a groom who posted in a very large Facebook dad’s group about a dilemma with his fiancé, for the offence of not wishing to change her surname.

Bro-dads of Facebook are most displeased with the idea a woman does not take her husband’s surname when they marry.Credit:Stocksy

The groom admitted to being “pissed about it” and turned to his 90,000+ social media “BroDads” (their word) for advice. “Or am I overthinking it?” he wondered.

While some of the hordes of commenters said that the groom was indeed overthinking the whole name-changing thing and pointed out that his fiancé is his partner, not his property, other men doubled down.

“All hell beak loose if you don’t take my mthrfkn name,” (sic) wrote another, which was accompanied by a smiley face emoji.

Another responded that the bride’s stance on maintaining her name was, “feminist bullisheeeettt you the man tell her she boutta be mrs … and she needs to get over it” (sic…obviously).

Some of the other arguments relied on assumptions about male ownership, property and terms of the matrimonial transaction. They wouldn't have been out of place in a gentleman's club 150 years ago. Or a present-day cattle yard.

While most of us would reject the overt sexism of the brodads, the statistics show we end up in the same place when it comes to who changes their surname after marriage.

A woman who chooses to keep her surname after marriage is still an anomaly. Statistics from 2016 show that upwards of 80 per cent of women in Australia take their husband’s name after marriage.

Ask men and women about the rationale behind name changing/retaining decisions and you’ll get a variety of responses, many along the lines of “it’s a personal choice”.

While the reasoning of “personal choice” sounds nicer than many of the “arguments” of the Facebook brodads, it hardly stands up to scrutiny.

“If it was a personal choice, we would not see it skew 90 per cent (in the US) in one way,” says sociologist Dr Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer from Portland State University, who is studying how a woman's surname choice in marriage affects how others perceive her.

“If it was just individuals making personal choices, we might see men taking women's names at equal rates that women are taking men's or them creating new names,” Dr Fitzgibbons Shafer says.

And as someone who is married to, and has two children with, a woman who didn’t change her name, the number of inconveniences is zero.

Convenience is often raised as a reason women change their names (and BroDads want them to). But again, if this were true, why aren’t more men opting to take their wife's name?

And as someone who has been married for a decade to, and had two children, with a woman who didn’t change her name, I can report that the number of inconveniences that have arisen due to not sharing the same surname as my wife is between zero and none.

As abrasive as the Facebook comments are, they plainly illustrate that one of the most significant factor in women changing their name is male power. Whether we care to admit to or not, surname choice is about a man’s capacity to claim a key part of a woman’s identity.

And research shows that the less power and status a man has in his life, the more likely he is to want to exert his dominance over his wife by insisting she change her name to his.

Dr Fitzgibbons Shafer found that men with lower education, and therefore less earning power, regard women who keep their own last name or opt for a hyphenated name as less committed than women who take their husband’s name.

“They're more likely to endorse these very strong belief that women should be in the home barefoot and pregnant, or that women should be punished if they don't take their husbands last names,” says Dr Fitzgibbons Shafer.

Dr Fitzgibbons Shafer also found that such men also think that a man would be justified in divorcing a wife who had previously slighted him by refusing to take his last name if she did something as small as stay late at the office to get a promotion.

“They're much more likely to endorse these beliefs as an attempted power grab. They're very protective of the power that they have over women, because they’re not as powerful as other men in society.”

That’s not to say that men with higher levels of education are necessarily more progressive. It’s just that they’re comfortable with their place in the world, so aren’t challenged by a woman’s decision to keep or change her name.

“They don't have to be forceful about getting anything because, well, they bring all the money into the household”, says Dr Fitzgibbons Shafer.

When it comes to a woman’s decision to keep or change her surname after marriage, we might like to think we’re acting from free choice. In reality, many of us are just playing out our gender roles — and the in-built power imbalances they entail.

Christopher Scanlon is  a Melbourne academic and co-author of the young-adult series The Chess Raven Chronicles under the pen name Violet Grace.

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