TY - JOUR
T1 - North American Women’s Marital Surname Change
T2 - Practices, Law, and Patrilineal Descent Reckoning
AU - MacEacheron, Melanie
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Springer International Publishing.
PY - 2016/6
Y1 - 2016/6
N2 - As of time of writing, women’s choice to not undergo marital surname change has been legal for all purposes across the U.S.A. for 30–40 years. The options of surname retention and hyphenation should also have been salient in Canada for this amount of time. This article reviews and contextualizes women’s marital surname retention/change options, practice, and history within these jurisdictions, relating it to children’s receipt of a maternal and/or paternal surname. It also reviews and contextualizes each primary, quantitative finding from all peer-reviewed articles published concerning the topic. The primary goal of this article is to provide evidence that the ultimate purpose of the practice is to enhance patrilineal descent reckoning—the tracing of familial origins predominantly or solely via the male line (Murdock 1949)—in order to, in turn, enhance wives’ recruitment of husbands’ and in-laws’ investment to themselves and to the children of their marriages.
AB - As of time of writing, women’s choice to not undergo marital surname change has been legal for all purposes across the U.S.A. for 30–40 years. The options of surname retention and hyphenation should also have been salient in Canada for this amount of time. This article reviews and contextualizes women’s marital surname retention/change options, practice, and history within these jurisdictions, relating it to children’s receipt of a maternal and/or paternal surname. It also reviews and contextualizes each primary, quantitative finding from all peer-reviewed articles published concerning the topic. The primary goal of this article is to provide evidence that the ultimate purpose of the practice is to enhance patrilineal descent reckoning—the tracing of familial origins predominantly or solely via the male line (Murdock 1949)—in order to, in turn, enhance wives’ recruitment of husbands’ and in-laws’ investment to themselves and to the children of their marriages.
KW - Children
KW - Intergenerational transmission
KW - Marriage
KW - Patrilineal descent reckoning
KW - Social trends/social change
KW - Surnames
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85030708926&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85030708926&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s40806-016-0045-9
DO - 10.1007/s40806-016-0045-9
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85030708926
SN - 2198-9885
VL - 2
SP - 149
EP - 161
JO - Evolutionary Psychological Science
JF - Evolutionary Psychological Science
IS - 2
ER -