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.
There is a solution, look outside America, market conditions should change that within a generation, that or they'll die off.
They're just heteroflexible.
Thank you for the Ad-hominem attack.
I must be right.
When someone resorts to childish name calling it means one of two things:
I rest my case then.
Your guess is right on the money.
Its the truth. Many many many women laugh at guys as soon as they voice their concerns pertaining to heartfelt issues. For example . . . many women chide the man for his relationship with his mother and how she may or may not act. At the same time, while her mother interferes etc etc, God forbid the man says something.
Its double standards and hypocrisy.
Thanks for passing on this painful story. I come from the opposite direction, having been raised in a loving "Ozzie and Harriet" family. Stories like yours help me to realize how good I had it.
The title looks OK. ... Women do need to change, but real discerning/leader men wouldn't get involved with women who aren't interested in personal change, and then perhaps the women would learn that to gain acceptance from men, it's much more than just dressing sexy and being good at ...those things.
It's funny how we each blame the other sex when it's such an individual thing. I have seen wimpy men, who sit around and whine about how bad women are, instead of just being a leader and doing the right thing regardless of whether 'women' follow. That's the only way to *find* a good woman, is to be a good man. And vice versa.
In the order of things, the men are to lead, and that means in relationships as well. Not all women, and maybe not even the individual man's wife, may follow, depending on her level of 'screwed-up-ness.' But just because one spouse is a jerk shouldn't stop anyone from getting themselves right. (applies to both male *and* female.)
Women tend to be more emotional and get screwed up that way from making clear relationship decisions; men tend to be led by their hormones and visual temptations and that screws them up that way, preventing them from making good partner decisions.
Both have their own individual hang-ups and differing degrees of sex-oriented-weaknesses that we need to learn to overcome in order to learn to see straight.
You can, due to the phenomenon of verbicide sometimes as well.
The basic point is to decide which definition we are talking about so that everyone can understand each other. Otherwise we may be agreeing violently, or agreeing disingenuously.
music is math -- good nick. My dad told me that music is math when I was a kid and it makes a lot of difference in sightreading.
Women clearly won't be sexually excited by a man they fully domesticate. That's not to say that they don't want a man to help out - they certainly do. But they will only be sexually and emotionally fulfilled by a genuinely masculine man, and the damn truth is that many men think the way to a woman's heart is to be agreeable and shed themselves of their sexual instincts.
All that gets you is her 'volunteering' you to pick her up at the airport in the rain at 2am, while the guy she is sleeping with is at home, dry and warm. :-)
Shacking up for a few months before deciding to get married would make marriages and families stronger, too. People don't appreciate what a pain in the ass living with someone can be.
I have a credit line at Madame Fong's Hospitality House out here in Nevada. Man, you are right!!! ;-)
You have a point - between Hugh Hefner and NOW - both men and women have been ill-served.
Nothing wrong with being prepared - education - my mother was widowed with 3 young children.
But the Ozzie and Harriet family (what did Ozzie do anyway?) should be the priority for raising children.
That's what I mean by verbicide. The definition of feminism has become something totally else in its application... the application is affecting the definition in everyone's mind regardless of what the dictionary says.
Recently we were accused of having an authority problem when we asked for definitions in a church meeting, so that we would be able to tell if we were talking about the same thing. It's amazing how people don't see the value in having common definitions. You see in every legal contract definitions set out from the beginning. There's a reason for that.
Has anybody else noticed that it's always the women who become unglued emotionally and begin personal attacks on threads like this?
Please read my posts on this thread. While you may not agree with them, they have been courteous and to the point, however misguided you feel my points may be.
I get the sense that if Conservatrix is not already a bitter, androphobic divorcee, she will some day be one.
Please refrain from name-calling. It makes us all look childish.
walden: Why the objection to a 10 year age difference?
Because if you demand that men wait til they're in their 30's to be married, 99% of them will become serial fornicators, which renders them much less likely to ever marry or to have a stable marriage if they do. The few over-30 men who do stay virgins til the wedding, are really messed up by it (speaking from experience.)
Women can wait, if they have to. But men NEEEEED sex and expecting them to wait til they're "old" (and to a hotblooded 18 year old, 30 is "old), is utterly unrealistic.
But they dont live alone. They live with cats.
Ask any prostitute in my hometown of Las Vegas and most will frankly tell you that there is one activity they offer that most of their clients insist upon. Married women won't do it, on balance, or won't do it anymore
It would be absurd to think that all (or most) of the men aren't treating them right. There are just some itches that aren't going to be scratched, son. ;-)
Pretty soon women will be in the recliners watching the Browns game and men will be fetching the cold beers...
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