A shared name has only one available route once the other is foreclosed

The argument

Proponents of this explanation argue that the question is usually asked the wrong way round. Where a couple want a single family surname, there are two ways to arrive at one, and the persistence of the practice is better explained by what happens to the second option than by anything about the first. On this account the husband taking his wife's surname is not weighed and rejected but is not seriously raised, and once it is off the table her change is a residual rather than a choice. Supporters locate the reason for that foreclosure in expectations about men. They argue that a man who takes his wife's surname is treated as having given something up, and faces ridicule framed around status and independence, so the option carries a cost for him that the reverse arrangement does not carry for her. Advocates stress that the asymmetry does not require individual husbands to refuse: it is enough that the possibility is understood by both parties to be unavailable, which means it never becomes a negotiation. Proponents conclude that explanations focused on what women think or fear are addressing the wrong party. If the shared-name goal is held jointly and only one route to it is socially passable, then the decision is substantially determined before she makes it, and her stated reasons will describe the route rather than the reason the other route was closed. Supporters argue this is why the practice can persist among couples who regard themselves as equal partners: nothing in the arrangement requires either of them to believe in hierarchy, only to live in a setting where one of the two symmetrical options costs more.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics argue that many couples do discuss both options, and that the account cannot explain the women who change their surnames while married to men who offered to change theirs. They also note that a growing number of couples adopt neither route, using both names or a new one, which suggests the alternatives are not as closed as the argument requires. A further objection is that attributing the outcome entirely to male unwillingness removes women from the explanation of their own decisions.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Most couples do not frame the question as a choice between two symmetrical routes, so the alternative is not foreclosed so much as never framed. [Rejecting P2] Ridicule directed at men who change their surnames is uneven and, in many settings, mild or absent. [Rejecting P3] Options understood to be unconventional are negotiated all the time within marriages, so unavailability does not follow from unconventionality. [Rejecting C] Couples who combine or invent surnames show that a third route is open, which the residual account does not predict.