Of course, some couples are dealing with the issue of names by hyphenating their last names, for ample, Maxwell-Brown. Though I appreciate this attempt at a non-sexist solution to names, I think it is an inadequate solution. Hyphenating names will not provide a solution to the other sexist custom regarding names in our culture--giving all the offspring of a marital union the father's surname. Giving a hyphenated surname to he children is an admirable attempt at resolving sexist naming customs, but it is doomed to failure for logistical reasons—it will not work beyond one generation. What happens when Mary Maxwell-Brown marries another marries another child of a liberated marriage, George Beechwood-Green? Hyphenated names are nothing more than a token concession to equality which does not help bring about the fundamental change that is needed in regards to naming customs.

It is extremely important that workable alternatives to naming all children of a marital union the father's surname be developed. I think comments like "It's too much of a hassle", or "We can't come up with a workable idea", is a real cop-out. Naming all children after their fathers is sexist and demeaning to women. It is based on the idea that paternity is all that is of relevance; a woman just provides a uterus for a man to plant his allimportant seed within. This is certainly a strange way to look at things when one compares the connection a woman has to a child--nurturing it within her body for nine months and birthing it--compared to a man's participation! However, I am not a reverse sexist and am not interested in replacing a patriarchal system with a matriarchal one (the human race has already been through matriarchal societies). I am excited about creating an egalitarian society where the value and importance of both sexes is respected.

A child is created by his/her mother and father, and it is silly and fruitless to argue the importance of one over the other, because all arguments lead back to the simple fact that a child cannot be born without both a male and female contribution--sperm and egg. It is therefore important that the customs for naming children within a society do not reflect the connection of one parent to the child, while ignoring the other parent's relationship to the child.

So what's a liberated couple to do? One possible way to deal with the issue of names is for both partners to retain their own names after marriage and to name the female offspring after the mother and the male offspring after the father. This is a workable solution and I have met some couples who are doing it, and are quite happy with it. Other couples I've met decided to name the first born child after one parent, and the second born child after the other parent. I have also met couples that made up a new name for themselves upon marriage that had nothing to do with their former names, and planned to name their children this new surname.

However, what my partner and I came up with is to give each of our children their own individual names first, middle and last. I came up with this idea one day when I was thinking about the fact that Native Americans (until they had white culture forced upon them) did not pass surnames onto their children. Every Native American child was given his/her own, unique name at birth. Thus, there are no "Nancy Sitting Bulls" or "Black Elk Juniors"! The idea of children having their own names makes a lot of sense to me: I don't want to view my children as appendages to myself any more than I want women to be viewed as appendages to men.

What is also exciting about the idea of giving children their own last names is that you can make up beautiful, meaningful names. My partner and I have enjoyed looking through baby books for surnames. We've found some inspiring ones: Alexander--helper of humankind and Woodward-keeper of the forest; the possibilities are endless.

My partner and I have been given some negative feedback about our idea of giving all of our children their own names. People have told us that our children will be traumatized because they do not have the same names as their parents or their siblings. I find this reasoning ridiculous in light of the number of children who do not have the same name as their parents or siblings due to divorce and remarriage.

Let me move on now to another aspect of traditional marriage rituals that is subtly sexist: the bride being "given away" by her father to her husband. This symbolic act is derogatory to women because it reinforces the false concept that a woman is a dependent who will be supported by her husband. The concept of a wife's dependency is created through a false and sexist frame of reference--the total discounting and negation of the value of women's work by our society. The idea that husbands "support" their wives is an absurd notion. If one were to add up the number of hours a full-time homemaker works in a family that includes children, it becomes quickly obvious that it is she who carries far more of the workload of the family. A typical homemaker works as many as eighty-four hours a week, fifty-two weeks a year, no paid vacation or holidays. As anyone who has done house work or child-care can attest to, a housewife's job is just as difficult as a job outside the home. So, the notion that a woman is a "dependent" who is supported by her husband is a sexist and absurd way of looking at things. A husband and wife are a team which splits the work that is necessary for their family's survival. It is of course also true that, nowadays, the majority of wives also work outside the home. So in many cases husbands do not support their wives, even in purely economic terms.

The most obvious way to eliminate the sexist custom of the bride being "given away" by the father to the husband is for both the bride and the groom to walk down the aisle themselves. However, another option is for the bride to walk down the aisle with both her parents, and the groom walk down the aisle with both of his parents. There is something to be said for having the parents walk down the aisle to the spouse. Marriage redefines one's most primary bond to be to one's spouse, not one's parents. Therefore, I think adapting the "give away the bride" custom into a "give away the child" could help symbolize the legal and psychological separation between parents and adult children which happens at the time of marriage.