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In 1971, a group of women set about “smashing the nuclear family”. Buoyed by the Women’s Liberation Movement, they had become so enraged by the idea of men’s work and women’s work that, in a spirit of correction, they set up a commune. Here they explored new, non-sexist ways of living. They shared cooking, laundry, cleaning and childcare. Men were permitted, but only on condition that they assuage their male guilt through housework. They strove to eliminate patriarchal systems of oppression, and the most radical was to subvert the blatantly phallocentric ritual of surnames. “We questioned why we would use the surname of the father,” recalls Jo Robinson, commune pioneer, “then we thought, why should it even be the mother’s surname? Why can’t the child have its own name?” So they came up with an arbitrary surname: Wild. All the children born in the commune would bear the name Wild.
— My four Mums (via gauntlet)
