Maiden Names

You’ll have to come up with something better than the editorial (“Just a Slight Statistical Boo-Boo,” May 3) to explain away the statistical significance of the finding that 35% of California’s children are born to unwed mothers. Blaming it on an aberration created by including in the total babies born to married women who keep their maiden names is an explanation that does not stand up.

I have no better idea than the statisticians you berate as to what the exact percentage may be of women opting not to take their husbands’ surnames when they marry. However, the figure is likely less than 5%. Added to that is the ready observation that these women seem to be from better educated elements of the population that already tend to bear fewer children. This suggests that the effect of adding their offspring to those truly born out wedlock will not affect the percentage of births born to single parents by more than a few 10ths of 1%.

PATRICK HAYES

Dana Point

* What are these people thinking? I believe that a woman has a right to keep her maiden name and not be thrown into the pile of statistics when she has a child. Once again, the government is sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong.

Why do people automatically assume that children are going to grow up dysfunctional because their mothers have a different last name?

KRISTI CARRE

Westminster