Despite widespread shifts toward gender egalitarianism in the United States over recent decades, the practice of giving children of different-sex parents their father's surname remains widespread. We investigate whether and how the patrilineal naming norm has changed, drawing on more than two million birth records from New Jersey between 2000 and 2021. We document a decline in the prevalence of patrilineal surnames—from 87 % to 80 %—and pronounced heterogeneity by parental nativity, union status, education, race/ethnicity, and the child's sex. The decline is especially pronounced among foreign-born and Hispanic parents, cohabiting couples, and parents with lower levels of education. By contrast, naming practices among U.S.-born parents remain remarkably stable, with patrilineal surnames consistently accounting for over 95 % of surnames, highlighting the persistence of gendered family scripts despite broader social change. Decomposition analysis reveals that most of the decline reflects changes in behavioral norms within specific subgroups, rather than shifts in population composition—most notably, the growing tendency among foreign-born Hispanic parents to retain the combined-surname tradition conventional in their countries of origin rather than adopt the single patrilineal convention prevalent in the United States. Taken together, these findings suggest that while the patrilineal surname norm remains dominant, it is beginning to erode in particular segments of the population, shaped by diverging family structures and cultural preferences.
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