Institutions and acquaintances assume a shared surname and impose the friction

The argument

Proponents of this explanation argue that the decisive pressure is not political but administrative and conversational. On their account the assumption of a shared married surname is built into the way third parties operate: forms offer a single family name, schools and clinics record households rather than individuals, and acquaintances address couples jointly. Advocates hold that none of this expresses a view about marriage at all, which is precisely why it is effective. Supporters describe the mechanism as the cost of being an exception. A woman who keeps her surname is not punished, but she does spend years correcting records, explaining relationships to officials, and establishing that she is connected to her own children and spouse in contexts where everyone else is taken at their word. Proponents argue that this is a real and recurring tax, and one that falls on nobody who follows the default. They add that it is paid at moments that are often stressful or urgent, such as travel, medical care or bereavement, which raises the weight attached to it. Advocates conclude that the practice persists because the default is doing the work, not because anyone is advocating for it. On this account women are responding rationally to an environment that makes one option smooth and the other effortful, and the explanation requires no appeal to internalised belief, fear of a label, or the preferences of husbands. Supporters hold that the convention would weaken quickly if institutions stopped assuming it, which they take as evidence that the assumption rather than the ideology is what sustains the practice.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics argue that this understates how much of the expectation is normative rather than merely practical, since the forms and conventions described were designed around an older view of marriage and still carry it. They also note that administrative friction is falling as records become individualised, yet the practice has not fallen at the same rate. A further objection is that the account cannot explain why the burden of smoothness is expected to be taken up by the wife rather than the husband.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Many institutions now record individuals rather than households, so the assumption is far less general than the argument needs. [Rejecting P2] Establishing a relationship is usually a one-off documentary matter rather than a lifelong correction. [Rejecting P3] Changing a surname also imposes a substantial administrative cost, which falls entirely on the person who changes. [Rejecting C] If smoothness were the reason, it would not be predictably the wife who supplies it, so the account leaves the asymmetry unexplained.