Posted on 07/05/2005 5:31:57 AM PDT by Bon mots
Is marriage, as a social institution, doomed? As recently as 50 years ago, it was the norm for people to get married and have children. But now, at least in the west, we are seeing record numbers of people divorcing, leaving marriage until later in life or not getting married at all. In Britain, I was amazed to learn the other day, the proportion of children born outside marriage has shot up from 9 per cent to 42 per cent since 1976. In France, the proportion is 44 per cent, in Sweden, it is 56 per cent and even in the US, with its religious emphasis on family values, it is 35 per cent.
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I suppose we must blame the rise of selfish individualism. People are a lot less willing to sacrifice their independent lifestyle and become part of a couple or family unit than they once were. And if they do marry, the importance they place on their right to a happy life leaves them disinclined to stick around for long once the initial euphoria has worn off.
I wonder, though, if there is another possible explanation: that, frankly, a lot of women do not like men very much, and vice versa? And that, given the choice, a lot of women and men would prefer an adequate supply of casual nookie to a lifelong relationship with a member of the opposite sex?
Choice, after all, is a very recent phenomenon. For most of human history, men and women married not because they particularly liked one another but out of practical necessity: men needed women to cook and clean for them while women needed men to bring home the bacon. It is only in very recent times that women have won legal independence and access to economic self-sufficiency - and only recently, too, that men have been liberated from dependency on women by ready meals and take-away food, automatic washing machines and domestic cleaning services.
During the times of mutual dependency, women were economically, legally and politically subservient to men. This had a number of repercussions. One was that, lacking control over their own lives, women could justifiably hold their husbands responsible for everything, resulting in what men around the world will recognise as the first law of matrimony: "It's all your fault." Second, while men ruled the world, women ruled within the home - often firmly, resulting in the age-old image of the nagging wife and hen-pecked husband. And third, understandably resenting their subjugation outside the home, women took pleasure in characterising their oppressors as selfish, insensitive, lazy, lying, feckless, incompetent scumbags.
Fair enough. But in the last 30 years, relations between men and women have undergone a greater change than at any time in human history. Women have not reached full equality yet, but they are getting close. And now the economic necessity for getting hitched has died out, marriage is on the rocks.
What can be done to save it? My interest in this was provoked by an article I read online last week by Stephanie Coontz, an author of books on American family life. In The Chronicle of Higher Education, she said an important principle was that "husbands have to respond positively to their wives' request for change" - for example, addressing the anomaly that women tend to do the larger share of the housework.
So, husbands have to change. Does this sound familiar? Of course it does, because it is another repetition of the first law of matrimony: "It's all your fault."
I could quibble with Ms Coontz's worries about the uneven split in the male/female workload. In the US, according to the latest time-use survey from the bureau of labour statistics, employed women spend on average an hour a day more than employed men on housework and childcare; but employed men spend an hour a day longer doing paid work. While this may be an imperfect arrangement, it hardly seems a glaring injustice.
But my point is this. Yes, men must change; indeed, they are changing, which is why we hear so much about new men and metrosexuals and divorced fathers fighting for custody of their children. But are women so perfect, or so sanctified by thousands of years of oppression, that they cannot be asked to change even the tiniest bit, too?
If economic necessity is not going to bring and keep men and women together in marriage, then we are going to have to rely on mutual affection and respect. And there is not going to be much of that about as long as women - assisted by television sitcoms and media portrayals in general - carry on stereotyping men as selfish, insensitive, lazy, lying, feckless, incompetent scumbags, even if some of them are.
So, my timorous suggestion is that it is time for women to shrug off the legacy of oppression and consider changing their approach to men and marriage. First, with power comes responsibility, which means it is now all women's fault as much as men's and, hence, the end of the blame and complain game. Second, if women are to share power in the world, men must share power in the home, which means that they get an equal say in important decisions about soft furnishings.
Most of all, it is time for the negative stereotyping to go. I know women will say: "But it's true!" If so, then marriage certainly is doomed.
But whose fault is that? If you treat all men as selfish, insensitive, lazy, lying, feckless, incompetent scumbags, you should not be surprised if that is what they turn out to be.
If you don't change a few diapers, there won't be anybody there to change yours.
Wise words.
"fem·i·nism (fm-nzm) KEY NOUN: Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. The movement organized around this belief. "
This is a complete and accurate statement on the subject.
It's also poorly written.
If American women (not all mind you) would stop acting like promisuous, selfish, self-righteous, tom boys, maybe men would stop treating them like that. (Just turning around the same stereotypical remark)
not at all :-P
It'll never happen. FWIW, I prefer the Christian model. Men, love your wives as Christ loves the Chruch. What did Christ do? He sacrificed his own life so that the Church may be established. Men, love your wives like that.
Women, obey your husbands as unto the Lord. As believers, we are to try as best we can to live the life God wants for us and obey His commandments. Women, obey your husbands like that.
Now, obviously, this is somewhat a generalization. You wouldn't ask a woman to stay with a battering husband or one who is addicted to drugs, etc. It helps to have two people committed to Christ so that the loving and obeying is easier to do during the tough times because you are honoring God even when you don't "feel like" being good to your spouse.
But this is the ideal God has given us and part of the problem with marriage today is not just that we are selfish but that we also enter into it for the wrong reasons. Something needs to make your spouse "loveable" even on the days when he/she is a major pain in the neck. The answer to that is to love them for the position they hold just as God loves His own not for how we behave but because of who we are in Christ.
Without that context, I don't see how as many marriages survive as they do.
I'm not judging you. I don't know if you cannot make time for a child or won't make time for a child. I don't know anything about your circumstances.
Becky
Excuse the misunderstandings, but I have been preached at by many that I must go forth and multiply. I get real sick of it. But I do not feel selfish or shallow in any way!
Thank you, I do, too. As for being happy, it is not a question of happy. Life is stressful and I have had lots of dissapointments, that is all. I have to trod far.
LOL...alot of people who shouldn't have kids don't realize they shouldn't:)
Becky
Social planning now eh comrade?
Male sluts need to stop whining about the female sluts dumping them and start acting like men.
I take a lot of heat from the women in my life (and a few of the men) by only dating younger women, usually between the ages of 23-28. The woman I am dating now is in her early 30s but we met when she was 29, so I grandfathered her in.
I'm 37 - I don't find women my age very attractive at all. The ones that are still available tend to be still available for a very legitimate reason: they don't radiate the kind of energy that appeals to me.
True. Remember Lester "Zero Sum" Thurow? Whatever happened to that MIT genius?
Men screw up the marriage....not women. Women are programmed and capable of living alone.....men aren't. They always want the 'wife' and the 'single life' ---never grow up. Don't blame women...It's mens fault.
Other than a few Freeper women on here, MOST women in our age group want their needs all met while not feeling any sense of obligation to meeting the mans' needs. In fact, mens' needs are often diminshed and made to seem insignificant and laughed at.
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