Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep, 222 | Should a Wife take her Husband's Last Name?

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Ep, 222 | Should a Wife take her Husband's Last Name? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  And like if it old, it must have meant just oppressive, patriarchal, archaic and bad when it's like you do realize there was loving, gentle, compassionate, wise people back then who fought for justice, equality, all these different things.
• 0:17
  What's up, guys? Welcome to another 5-Minute Fatherhood. So should a wife take her husband's last name? This is a conversation that I know is going to erupt in this next generation, and I read a very well-thought-out article on this topic, and I wanted to quote a few things and just give you guys some reflections about this, okay? Because I think that this is a topic that actually...
• 0:44
  It's interesting. There's two ways to have this conversation, and I really want to kind of tease out the two ways. So let me read to you guys. So the article is subtitled, The Archaic Tradition of Assuming a Woman Will Take Her Husband's Name Needs to Stop. Okay, and this is some of the things that he wrote. Unless a guy is willing to make that nontraditional trend-setting last name leap, in other words, if the guy is willing to take his wife's last name, which I hope will become increasingly popular,
• 1:13
  His public identity largely remains the same as it did before marriage, patriarchally higher than his wife. And that, my friends, I would argue, is overlooking a game-changing chance to enter into marriage with a powerful advertisement of equality and commitment. So, guys, one of the things that's happening in our culture is that we are living—
• 1:35
  surrounded by the antiques of a multi-generational society. And what was interesting to me about reading this article is that there was not a single mention of the impact of this last name conversation, what it would have on the descendants of this family.
• 1:51
  which would have been the first question 100 years ago. So we see everything, you guys, through the lens of the individual. And the argument that he's making here, from the perspective of the individual, has a lot of strength to it. I mean, as an individual, why are you asking your wife to give up her last name so that you can keep yours? If marriage is nothing more than sort of a romantic thing,
• 2:15
  commitment to each other as individuals, it is a weird, archaic tradition for her to have to lose a part of her individual identity, her past, and adopt something from your individual identity and your past, right? That's a weird exchange. And it's understandable why the culture is having this conversation. I think that they're going to have this conversation. But what I want to do is make sure that we interject a second topic into the conversation, which is
• 2:41
  We are advocating, you guys, that we consider or think about families multigenerationally. And that is part of what it means to think about who we are as a family. And I do think that the wife's family line and her last name should be honored and celebrated as part of that story.
• 3:01
  How do we do that? I don't know. I don't know the best way to do that. But one of the things that was really concerning to me about the article, and I think that is concerning to me about the conversation, is that it's not being had in the context of how do we preserve and celebrate our multigenerational heritage, and how do we make sure that our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren –
• 3:22
  feel the continuity of their ancestry, of their root structure. And so whatever we can do to really encourage that to flourish and deepen, I'm excited about that conversation. And I don't know that we should necessarily feel like we have to hold to any particular traditions. This is not biblical, by the way, you guys. Last names, this is nothing the Bible doesn't talk about this. This is definitely a cultural tradition. All cultural traditions should be up for discussion.
• 3:50
  But I think that the thing that we need to make sure is we're inserting into the discussion the whole picture. And part of that picture for us as dads that are trying to develop and establish multigenerational family teams is how are we making sure that we are preserving a story for our future grandchildren and great-grandchildren. So that's a part of the conversation I think needs to be inserted. But, yeah, Jeff, what are your thoughts about this one?
• 4:13
  Yeah, no, I agree. And I feel like, yeah, it's at the base level. It's basically just a kind of a competition of generational vision versus peak individuality. And I do think it's subtly a supporting and kind of forcing the hand of...
• 4:28
  of seeing marriage as the fulfillment of just kind of, um, two loves facing, you know, facing each other eye to eye rather than like shoulder to shoulder looking out over the next 500 years, you know? And so to me, that's just like an interesting thing, an interesting picture, a way to think about it. But I agree. I don't feel like there's a huge dog in the fight. Uh, I think it actually is a fun conversation, fun discussion. Uh,
• 4:47
  And given the individual values that I think we should hold as followers of Jesus, I do believe that it's actually like a really valid point and kind of almost one I support. But we're not individualized people. We're not individualized humans. That's not what we are living in. We're living in a communal structure that God clearly wants to work through teams, through tribes, through the larger scale, through the family of God. And then that is like, yeah. So I just think it's... And one thing I don't like too is I really get frustrated whenever an article just kind of... It's very much a straw man that almost everyone accepts. Yeah.
• 5:17
  of just like archaic and like, if it old, it must've meant just oppressive, patriarchal, archaic and bad. When it's like, you do realize there was loving, gentle, compassionate, wise, um, yeah, people back then who fought for justice, equality, you know, all these different things. It's like, you almost don't realize by this, you're self cannibalizing yourself because you're basically just setting up a system that in a thousand years, no matter what you do today, if they believe what you actually believe, if they believe the ethos of what you believe, they'll basically just say we, today we are all evil and horrible and wrong. Yeah.
• 5:47
  It's like you don't really, you know, like you're just setting up this terrible like hamster wheel system. Now, of course, is there parts of history in the past that are evil, oppressive, wicked and needed to be torn down? Of course. Of course. But that's also I think we don't even we don't go into the nuance of that discussion of outside of those things. There was actually people that were not idiots. There were people that were not dumb. There were people that were not just, you know, not every single person was just this monster. So yeah.
• 6:10
  Yeah, that's a whole other discussion for another day. But I think this stuff kind of takes that like in one sentence and moves on. And I'm like, no, stop. Like, what? I don't assume that, you know? So, but good discussion. I think it's super fascinating. This one, if you guys are listening, let us know online what you think about this one.
• 6:25
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