Marital name change: plans and attitudes of college students

The present research examines attitudes of a sample of 258 Midwestern college students toward marital name change. Students rated their agreement with a series of 22 statements about marital name change. Findings indicate thai women planning to marry at a later age and expecting nontraditional work roles after the birth of their first child were less likely than other women to want to change their last name to that of their spouse. Overall, female respondents identified more situations as appropriate for a woman to keep her birth name than did males. Women's marital name change plans were not correlated with tolerance toward marital name change practices. Both background and intervening variables were found to affect male and female respondent's tolerance of name change practices.