When I married, I kept my own name. I may as well just have the date stamped my forehead. It's perhaps not as accurate a carbon dating method as being a certain age and being called Marian, or even John Paul, but it comes close, writes Breda O'Brien
Younger women don't worry about whether they should take their husbands' names or not. The same woman will sometimes use her own, sometimes his, and it is all "no big deal".
That causes feminists of a certain age to gnash their teeth at how quickly younger women begin to take for granted things which older women are still obsessed with.
The fact is, many younger women have much of what older women wanted, and what are the ungrateful hussies doing? They're saying that it's not all that it is cracked up to be, and they wish they had more choices, such as the choice of staying at home with small children.
Traditional, old-style feminists did the by-now obligatory rant about the Vatican document issued to bishops on the collaboration of men and women. However, old-style feminism is nearly as dated in young women's minds as anything that the Vatican might issue.
It is highly doubtful that too many young women will read the document for themselves, but little of it would cause them to froth at the mouth.
In fact, if you listen to some of them, they are saying quite similar things to the Vatican. The gender wars are not relevant any longer. Men are not the enemy. Oppression is not an automatic outcome of being female. Women should have the freedom to work in the home, or outside it, without having to suffer unbearable stress as a consequence.
Where might they part company with the Vatican? Well, procreation has been so thoroughly decoupled from sexual expression that the Vatican's insistence that the two should be intrinsically linked might strike them as quaint. However, the more thoughtful among them might look at where that decoupling (if you will pardon the pun) has brought us.
This week, we were told that the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) wants women to be able to take the second part of an abortion pill at home. It helpfully pointed out that foetal remains could be flushed down the lavatory.
It tells us a great deal that the BPAS could be certain that our sensibilities would be so blunted that we would not even flinch at that casual equation of human remains with human waste.
The Vatican may be seriously out of step in insisting that procreation be always linked to faithful love.
However, is it so great that we have decoupled procreation so effectively from any kind of respect, much less love, that the British feel able to sanction human cloning, with the sole object of harvesting stem cells from disposable embryos?
Reproduction has become a sterile commercial enterprise. Things that we were once told were unthinkable have now become acceptable. Inevitably, other assurances, such as that cloning to produce human beings for organ harvesting will never be allowed, will prove equally false in time.
Once fundamental respect for the smallest members of the human race is put aside, each new step becomes easier to rationalise.
If younger women are no longer looking to the Vatican for guidance, it is partly because the Vatican has often sounded as if it were talking about another species when it comes to women. It tends to idealise us, as patient, loving faithful people focused on service. The fact is, women are not a homogeneous group, any more than men.
Some women are more mystically inclined, more conscious of the interconnectedness of all things, and some are hard-headed, calculating and power-conscious.
Oddly, both the Church and feminists idealise women. Feminists have a neat trick of saying in the same breath that the world would be a better place if women were in charge, but that gender is a mere construct, with no roots in biology.
If our natures are all constructed, why would having women in charge make any difference? Of course, what old-style feminists really mean is that men should be constructed more like women.
The Church has lost credibility, not so much because of what it has written, but because of its practice. The pernicious nature of clericalism has often meant that clergy have acted as if they were the religious elite, and lay people mere foot-soldiers. If you listen to the language clergy sometimes use about involving lay people in the Church, it is clear that they think clerics are the real Church.
This kind of clericalism has resulted in some people perceiving that the real power resides in being a priest or bishop. The exclusion of women from priesthood is therefore perceived as an offence against justice, because it excludes them from decision-making.
One odd consequence is hearing avowed atheists, who dislike most of what the Church stands for, insisting that women should have equal opportunity to be part of the despised authority structure.
The perception that only priests and bishops have any influence is the Church's own fault. Theology speaks of the priesthood of all believers.
There is no theological bar to having women in positions of responsibility other than the priesthood. In American dioceses, women, especially religious sisters, are often administrators and chancellors. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has committed himself to having real representation of women in Dublin's Archdiocese. It will be interesting to see what emerges.
For most women, becoming a priest never crosses our minds. However, we often wonder how we will balance the many demands on us, and in this, the Vatican document is absolutely in touch with the realities of women's lives. Unfortunately, for many younger women the Church is no longer any kind of reference point.
It will take a great deal more than writings to persuade them that institutional religion has anything to offer them in their search for balance.
The bad news for old-style feminists is that they are equally irrelevant to many younger women. Despite its many flaws, the Church has proved adept over centuries at refocusing on what is essential in its beliefs, and re-presenting them for a new generation.
It remains to be seen whether 1970s feminism will show the same resilience.