I hear about these stories about the mothers picking up the children from school, but I also know various women who didn't go patriarchal and have children and, well, their children never seemed to get sucked up into some cosmic vortex into which children with different last names from their mothers end up. Surely if that ends up being a problem, it's a problem once. I don't have kids, but I was married for six years (to a man, while most people thought I was female) and the only time that me having a different last name from my spouse was an issue was one time, while applying for car insurance. (We didn't end up going with that car insurance company.)
Plus, if you're really a feminist and it's really that important to you for your whole family to have the same last name, you could always, I don't know, have everyone take the woman's last name.
Re: Socially easier
I hear about these stories about the mothers picking up the children from school, but I also know various women who didn't go patriarchal and have children and, well, their children never seemed to get sucked up into some cosmic vortex into which children with different last names from their mothers end up. Surely if that ends up being a problem, it's a problem once. I don't have kids, but I was married for six years (to a man, while most people thought I was female) and the only time that me having a different last name from my spouse was an issue was one time, while applying for car insurance. (We didn't end up going with that car insurance company.)
Plus, if you're really a feminist and it's really that important to you for your whole family to have the same last name, you could always, I don't know, have everyone take the woman's last name.