Tag Archives: tradition

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Montessori a matrilineal magnet

A few weeks ago we got the student directory for my son’s public Montessori school. Thumbing through it I started noticing something: Parents and children with different last names. Lots of them.

I started counting. There were almost 300 families listed. By the time I got to “Z” I’d tallied that 21 percent had a last name difference between at least one parent and a child. Most of those did appear to be the most familiar scenario: A mother keeping a maiden name while the child shared the father’s last name.

But within that were another 4 percent who had something else. Either the child had a hyphenated combination of the parents’ two last names or shared the mother’s last name. (Interestingly, founder Maria Montessori did the latter with her own son more than 100 years ago.) There was even another family who appeared to have done what we have – given one parent’s name to each child.

Solid statistics on last name choices are hard to come by, but in general the data shows that less than 10 percent of women keep their names after marriage. The percent who give a child their name is negligible. I was already a Montessori fan for the progress my son’s made there. Now to have discovered a place that attracts progressives in terms of names, too,  makes me feel I’ve finally found a tribe.

– Funky drop cap courtesy of Daily Drop Cap.

 

 

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Back on my soapbox

Traverse City’s community weekly has a profile this week on a local lawyer, Enrico Schaefer, who specializes in Internet law. In telling his background, it contains this sentence about his marriage:

” ‘In an act of love that few husbands would even consider, Enrico also took Nan’s last name to carry on her family name. “She’s one of seven sisters, so her family line was likely coming to an end,” he notes.’

I’m heartened by Mr. Schaefer’s decision – who now doubles to two the number of matrilineal men I’ve come across in my life. But the context of the sentence riles me: “In an act of love.” It implies that not taking a spouse’s name must be the opposite of an act of love — an act of rejection, of selfishness, of lack of commitment to the marriage.

Hogwash.

Taking or keeping a name is a personal preference. Multiple factors come into play: Fairness, as Schaefer notes, and genealogic continuity. Tradition. Career or professional status. Religious beliefs. Age. Educational attainment. Whether or not the couple plans to have children. Marital history, especially important if there are already children from past relationships.

But not love.

What do you think?

Image credit: Me. Takin’ names boots, Zany Consignment Boutique.

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Sharing last name no indication of father-child bond

Lesson No. 1 in journalism school: Never assume. There’s even an acronym for what happens to you (and your editor, usually the one who’ll really hammer it home): It makes an ass of u and me.

Assumptions run rampant when it comes to last name choices. In late October, Detroit News editorial page editor Nolan Finley’s column inspired me to write my first-ever letter to an editor. The column was over a Detroit-area father, Steven father_childNicholson, charged with the horrifying crimes of killing his own two toddlers. Finley wrote of the coverage of Nicholson’s case:

“It gives his name along with those of the children, Jonathon Sanderlin and Ella Stafford, and their ages, 13 months and 15 months, respectively. One father, two children, three different names. Nicholson impregnated two women at roughly the same time, married neither one, and provided precious little parenting to either child.”

I wrote Finley objecting to the piece’s implication that because parents and children don’t share last names, the parents are unmarried, irresponsible, uninvolved, or even harmful. Never heard back from him, but his column today– unfortunately– vindicates me. This one is about another accused father, John Skelton, a downstate man who was the last to see his three sons before their mother reported them missing when he failed to return them to her custody after Thanksgiving. Skelton has been charged with kidnapping, and authorities have said they are not optimistic that the boys will be found safe.

Yet all five of the Skelton family members – father, mother, three sons — share a last name.  So what are we to make of it?  Nothing. Judging family relationships based on last name uniformity, or lack thereof, does exactly what I learned back in journalism school.

I wish Finley could read this Traverse City Record-Eagle story about Greg and Jacqueline Baker and their son Geoffrey Pierick, age 5. Greg and Jacqueline married earlier this year so that Greg could adopt Geoffrey, who is keeping Jacqueline’s maiden name. (The adoption was part of an annual group adoption ceremony held the day before Thanksgiving, hence the story.) One family, two last names. Yet Greg Baker epitomizes the kind of father that both Nicholson and Skelton’s children – all children – deserve. How could that be?

The answer is we’re living in the 21st century, thankfully, where families can choose whatever name(s) feels right for them. Maybe in the 22nd, we’ll be at a place where they can do so without fear of baseless judgments, too.