Q&A Forum - October 2007 (The best of Elise)

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Society continues to evolve when it comes to the male/female relationship. It used to be that 99% of all married women took on the last name of their husbands. Then with the feminist movement came the practice of a married woman keeping her maiden name, a sign of her equality and independence. The problem with this is that a lot of couples like for the world to know that they are married and they like to show their covenant for each other by sharing the same name. So even amongst feminists, the practice of the woman keeping the last name of her parents never caught on with the frequency that some predicted. At the height of the feminist movement no more than 15 to 20% of married women chose to keep the last names of their birth.

The next step in the evolution of male/female relations is beginning to occur and that will be for the man to take on the last name of the female. This will be a slow process that will probably take generations to become commonplace but I suspect that we will be witnessing enough couples doing this in the present that it will force societal institutions to prepare for it.