Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones

It's possible this topic is not quite as small as myDailyVent intends to encompass, but it is a subject I feel compelled to vent about nonetheless. I've lately become increasingly outraged by the fact that society expects me to change my name when I get married someday, yet would never expect my husband to do so. What's more, over 90% of women apparently change their names when they get married, and almost nobody I know bats an eyelash at this phenomenon! I feel like I am living in the Twilight Zone.

In this day and age, it makes absolutely no sense for a grown woman to feel obligated to go through the hassle of changing her last name when she marries, while men can simply sail along and maintain the very same identities they have enjoyed since they were born. Oh, I know what you are thinking: what about the children? Well, I say, what about them? If we all decided to stop this archaic practice, surely we would figure out some way to identify members of the same family, and not in a way that requires women who wish to hold on to their names -- and, if you think like I do, who they are -- to also have a different last name from their own children. Perhaps when people marry, the norm could be to create a new, hybrid last name, so that marriage would not only represent a shared partnership between two people, but signify a change in identity as well for both participants.

I could go on, but my point is really a simple one. Just because something has been the norm for a long time doesn't mean it is necessarily correct. And I say, there is no time like the present for a change on this one.