After work today, I met my husband and daughter at the park and on first look I thought she’d left the house wearing only a shirt! When I asked where her pants were she assured me that she had shorts on under the shirt (which barely covered her bottom).

She knew I wasn’t pleased, though, and on the way home we talked about the need for wearing something on the bottom that’s longer than the top; but, she still had to get in a couple of comments about how her outfit was “stylish” and I wasn’t letting her be “stylish.”

Parent challenge of the day … how to tell a seven-year-old the difference between stylish, sexy and slutty?

The timing was interesting as earlier in the day I’d read a post on GamePolitics.com about a report out of the UK by Dr. Linda Papadpoulos (”glamorous psychologist forever popping up on daytime television“) in which they said she noted: “High street stores sell video games where the player can beat up prostitutes with bats and steal from them in order to facilitate game progression,” leading to the following “clear” message to girls that this type of media portrays, as interpreted by the doctor, “… young girls should do whatever it takes to be desired. For boys the message is just as clear: be hyper-masculine and relate to girls as objects.”

Games were actually only a portion of the media examined. Dr. Papadopoulos talks about the impacts of the Internet in this video.

One of the key recommendations in the report included ensuring that music videos featuring sexual posing or sexually suggestive lyrics are broadcast only after the “watershed” (which means 9:00 p.m until 5:30 a.m.).

Here in the U.S., I know sexual content can be found on our television at earlier hours than that. “Two and a Half Men” on at 8:00 p.m. in my time zone, for example, has plotlines that frequently revolve around the character Charlie’s womanizing sex life.

We do our best to avoid these shows (thank goodness my girl and I both like Food Network), but it’s impossible for me to shield her from sexual themes and images all the time.

So, how do you discuss what is appropriately stylish for a nearly tween girl to wear?

I love Lucy.

Not that Lucy. The eponymous ditzy redhead character portrayed by Lucille Ball could hardly be more different than the Lucy I’m talking about: Lucy Stone, the first recorded American woman to retain her own name after marriage.

Actually, I don’t really love this Lucy, who died 116 years ago today.

Lucy Stone, the first American woman to use a maiden name after marriage. Image: Wikipedia

Rather,  as another married woman who’s demurred from adopting a husband’s name, I hold an abiding respect and appreciation for her. And as name pioneers go, I flatter myself as a kind of 21st century cousin.

When my daughter was born a year ago, my husband and I gave her my last name. Her four-year-old brother, meanwhile, has his last name. They each have the other parent’s last name as their middle moniker. So we parents, Cari Noga and Mike Henderson, have as offspring Owen Noga Henderson and Audrey Henderson Noga.

It’s different, to be sure. We’ve fielded some flak over it, mostly well-meaning inquiries about whether we’d considered that this might confuse the kids – and, to my ears, implying that’s exactly what we’d be doing.

Au contraire, I say. Indeed, it deviates from the U.S. norm. But if the kids are raised with this as their norm, there’s no place to sow confusion.  That question is also cloaked in the patriarchal stereotypes we’re trying to shrug off. No one objected that our son would be confused because he and I didn’t share a name. So why should our daughter feel confused about not sharing one with her dad?

After a year of living with it and writing about it (my personal blog explores the anomaly of having two kids with the same, married parents but different last names. OK, and a cute-kid picture now and then. I’m only human.) I’m ready to take the next step: advocacy for name choice equality. As this Salon article from 2000 puts it, why should a baby get the father’s last name? At the very least, can we think about why it’s the automatic choice for almost everyone? Other than that it’s expected and easy, there’s no real reason.

Admittedly, it’s uphill trudging. The most generous estimates I’ve seen say that only 10 percent of American women keep their names upon marrying, making for a small pool to persuade.  But the importance of the advocacy piece was reinforced for me this summer.

In August, researchers from Indiana University and the University of Utah presented to the American Sociological Association their findings that 71 percent of Americans they surveyed believe it’s better for women to change their surname upon marriage. In addition, fully half supported government regulation requiring name change. (See UPI piece and Times of India story.)

“It was a little shocking to see,” said Laura Hamilton, one of the study authors and a Ph.D candidate at Indiana. (Read more about the study, “Mapping Gender Attitudes with Views Toward Marital Name Change” and my interview with Hamilton on my personal blog.)

Shocking, indeed, are such value judgments about what should be a woman’s private, individual choice. It’s also evidence how hard it is, even 116 years after Lucy Stone, to swim against the tide.

But, like Nemo, I’ll just keep swimming. After all, while patriarchal tradition has prevailed the last few centuries in most of the Western world, it isn’t this way everywhere. When I first broached this idea to my husband, he started doing genealogical research and found that ancient Scots – a dominant strain in his ancestry – gave daughters their mothers’ names, while sons received their fathers’. Some Native American tribes and Jewish denominations, to name some found right here in the U.S.A., practice matrilineal traditions, where one’s lineage is traced through the mother.

Let me talk about my husband’s reaction to the idea more. He’s an open-minded guy, but I wondered if this would just be too far out there.
Initially, he did hesitate, because he wanted our kids to share a last name. But I asked him to keep thinking about it. As he did, I got more invested in the idea for what I think it teaches both our kids.

We’re providing a crystal clear, living lesson of what we believe about family: Mom and dad are equally important influences in their lives.

So, from my cyber-soapbox, I make my pitch to you. Think about it a matrilineal name. Talk about it with your husband. (Or, husbands, with your wives.) Block out tradition, the questions from family members, all the white noise that obscures what really matters. Then, just do it.