The study of baby naming is valuable for understanding how gender inequality is reproduced in families. Often treated as an event, baby naming also represents an important social and cultural process that can reveal gendered dynamics in couple decision-making. Baby naming, which represents a highly visible and symbolic family milestone, is a strategic site in which to examine how couple identities are constructed—for self, partner, and others—through the naming process and through stories parents tell of how they named the baby. Drawing on 46 interviews with U.S. Mexican-origin heterosexual parents, we expose tensions that result when practices do not align with a desired (egalitarian) couple identity and detail the ensuing cognitive, emotion, and narrative labor that parents—primarily women—perform to reconcile inconsistencies. We introduce the concept of couple identity work, or the work involved in creating and projecting a desired impression of a relationship for multiple audiences, to provide a theoretical framework for these gendered dynamics. We show how couple identity work is enacted—and power expressed—through men’s and women’s strategies of action/inaction and storytelling, and how this work reproduces and obscures gendered power and inequality in the intimate context of baby naming.

中文翻译：

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夫妻身份工作：夫妻合作、性别不平等和命名权力

对婴儿命名的研究对于理解性别不平等如何在家庭中重现很有价值。婴儿命名通常被视为一件事件，它也代表了一个重要的社会和文化过程，可以揭示夫妻决策中的性别动态。婴儿命名代表着一个高度可见且具有象征意义的家庭里程碑，是一个战略网站，通过命名过程以及父母讲述他们如何命名婴儿的故事，可以检查夫妻身份是如何构建的（自我、伴侣和他人） 。根据对美国墨西哥裔异性恋父母的 46 次采访，我们揭露了当做法与理想的（平等主义）夫妻身份不一致时所产生的紧张局势，并详细介绍了父母（主要是女性）为和解而进行的认知、情感和叙事劳动不一致。我们引入了夫妻身份工作的概念，或者涉及为多个受众创造和投射期望的关系印象的工作，为这些性别动态提供理论框架。我们展示了夫妻身份工作是如何通过男性和女性的作为/不作为和讲故事的策略来制定和表达权力的，以及这项工作如何在婴儿命名的亲密背景下再现和掩盖性别权力和不平等。