Japan annual births fall to new record low | Hacker News Reader

Japan annual births fall to new record low

apnews.com

7 pointsglimshe6 comments

1.15 fertility rate. Wow.

But, really, women seeing having to take the husband's name as a reason not to marry? I mean, sure, that's rather restrictive for no good reason. But from where I stand, if you're thinking of marrying someone, and having to change your name is your reason not to, you don't really want to marry them very much.

(Easy enough for me to say as a male. But would I have changed my name to marry my wife? Absolutely.)

Taking your partners name can be seen as embracing ‘traditional gender roles’, and can be an indicator of other ‘traditional’ views on gender equality and independence.

Additionally, without seeing how the polling was done, this option may be seen as better than more ‘selfish’ reasons.

Easy solution: just don't change your name! Our boys have my last name and our girls (if we'd had any) would have had my wife's last name. We didn't have girls so I don't have data on how that would've worked but seems line a no-brainer to me.

Having read about Japanese marriages, I assume that women are often thinking something like like: "There's no way I'm going to have the kind of marriage that involves changing my name. Another kind of marriage maybe BUT NOT THAT KIND."

If my assumption is wrong and they're instead thinking "I'd quite like that kind of marriage in general, but I'm not going to change my name", then there's an easy fix, as you suggest.

By law, married partners must share the same last name in Japan. It is rare, but possible for the man to change his name.

This is important for the official family register.

So not changing a name is literally not an option.

And in Japan, the land of paperwork, changing your name is a whole lot of paperwork and headaches.

you assume they're in a situation where they've selected a husband and the name change is the last hurdle. assume they're young and in the "developing a rough outline for how I want my life to go" phase instead. that's where considerations like this get made.

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