Posted on 02/14/2008 6:25:05 AM PST by reaganaut1
About six months after my son was born, he and I were sitting on a blanket at the park with a close friend and her daughter. It was a sunny summer weekend, and other parents and their kids picnicked nearby—mothers munching berries and lounging on the grass, fathers tossing balls with their giddy toddlers. My friend and I, who, in fits of self-empowerment, had conceived our babies with donor sperm because we hadn’t met Mr. Right yet, surveyed the idyllic scene.
“Ah, this is the dream,” I said, and we nodded in silence for a minute, then burst out laughing. In some ways, I meant it: we’d both dreamed of motherhood, and here we were, picnicking in the park with our children. But it was also decidedly not the dream. The dream, like that of our mothers and their mothers from time immemorial, was to fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
There are other threads than bash a candidate threads? For a while I thought we could rename FreeRepublic to BashTheOtherGuy. Hey, I wonder if that domain is taken...
Yep. You misunderstood.
I wanted (needed!) to have my own career in my 20’s and 30’s and THEN raise up a bunch of kids. I was out of the house and into the Army at 17 and I ADORE my parents; no problems there. :)
I know my own capabilities, and I give 100% to whatever I take on, so there was no WAY I could have had a time-consuming, exciting, adventure-filled, globe-trotting military career WHILE raising the next Generation. During those years I was promoted up the ladder to E-7, with the next step offered prior to retirement as a First Sergeant (E-8) of a medium-sized Transportation Company. (I was one of a handful of women in the entire company.) I also had my ‘Certificate of Eligibility’ to become a Warrant Officer, but my boss wouldn’t retire, LOL!
There’s no WAY that, as a woman and knowing my own shortcomings, I could’ve accomplished all of that AND have raised kids at the same time.
I know many men do this, but “raising children” to me, was always going to be primarily MY “job” and not my husband’s. He’d be the Head of the Household, but he wouldn’t have to tend to the daily skinned knees, loose tooth, broken arm, feeding, meal planning, play dates, the after-public-school-de-programmings, etc. *WINK*
Women that think they can have a high-powered career AND raise their own kids are fooling themselves and short-changing their children, IMHO. I’ve seen it happen many times over...especially with other women in the military. Everyone loses.
But, since you asked, that’s just one Conservative Female Veteran’s opinion. Your mileage may vary. :)
She ( and many other women) set their expectations on what they see on TV. Is that not totally insane? Sure men also set their sexual expectation on pornography but I think most guys know they are not going to want to marry a porn queen to raise their kids.
However it is an excellent lesson for those of us that are raising kids and even what we watch with our spouses. Regardless if you say, “ its just a tv show, that doesn't make me want to live it in real life” you cant get around the fact that there is a certain standard that is created in ones subconscious when the same themes are played out over and over again.
It does something that most people are not aware of.... it sets their intention. Very important but few talk about it. That is how many women in their late 30’s are in the situation they are today. They had seen over and over the ideal glamorized that they can have this exciting and fulfilling career that they spend all the time and energy during the week at and then think they have the focus to pour into a relationship.
If you base your intentionality of your happiness on fictional stories designed to come to a conclusion in 26 minutes then you are almost poisoning your expectations for your future rather than creating expectations that are based on real models of successful relationships.
Trust me, from personal experience I can tell you, most single women are every bit as picky nowadays about men's looks as the other way around.
It's tough out there if you are a single man and don't have a full head of hair and above-average looks.
I have another friend in her 40’s, never been married, no kids. She is very attractive and will ONLY date:
-guys who are MUCH younger
-guys who work out and are pumped up
-guys who have a certain look
She has dated MANY A-HOLES with the personality of a rock, and has stuck with them for a long time based on the sexual attraction. She wonders why she has never found THE ONE.
You sound like a jewel!
Women “usually” love a guy who can fix things.
“So you’re saying that you would marry a woman like the author of this column, bastard and all?
Have a great life as a doormat.”
So you are saying that kids should be punished for the deeds of adults?
You are low vermin.
Have a great life w your russian mail order wife....
Oh, I more or less have to fight her off with a stick already, and we want to get pregnant as soon as we get married, so that's not a factor!
I go by the same rule you do. I to try to read the articles before commenting. Too many people here don’t. You can tell by their stupid comments.
The article came across as very rude to men. No one’s perfect - hasn’t she ever considered that someone might be ‘settling’ for her?
Amen, Amen and AMEN!!!
Any woman who intentionally has a child where there will be no father around is the pinnacle of selfishness.
Nowhere did I say that the kids should be punished for the deeds of their parents.
What I did say, is that a woman who is like the writer of this column is NOT marriage material, and any man who marries a woman like her is a fool. He is not entering the marriage as an equal. He is always second to her and this child.
Is it the fault of the child? No.
If you desire to live like that, you are certainly welcome to it. Having been married to such a woman, and knowing exactly where relationships like this fall apart, I advise anyone considering entering a marriage under these terms, to look elsewhere for a person who is not this selfish. Not just walk away, but run.
It is not encumbent on me to save this child from the poor choices of a selfish parent.
I may very well be low vermin, but I speak the truth. I say the things that used to be generally understood, but in this de-balled culture I have been accused of being judgemental. Yep, I am a judgemental SOB and damned proud of it. I do attach a stigma to such women. I do pass judgement on their choices, and I am not affraid to call a whore, a whore. I consider women like the writer to be repugnant and are to be looked down upon, pointed at and derided for her selfishness.
I too am selfish. In fact my selfishness has afforded me a wonderful wife, and children who are ours.
You have clearly come to a battle of wits, unarmed. The writer of this column, is your basic run of the mill ditz who expects her spouse to be a doormat to her whims. You obviously enjoy being walked on and want to live in constant fear.
It's amazing how many people think that a man looking for a good woman should do what's "fair" or what's socially responsible. Screw that. It's each man's responsibility to find a woman that is the best possible choice for HIM. Who will make HIM happy. This one time, when he is choosing his future wife, he needs to focus exclusively on his own needs and making sure they are satisfied.
Trust me, nobody else in the world, least of all a woman who is like this writer, is worrying about your needs or wants. So you should worry about your own.
And this is the last chance you'll get. Once you're actually married to a woman like this writer, you'll find that everything about marriage, legal, financial, and emotional, will be about HER and HER kid. Your needs will be dead last, or even more likely, not even recognized. You will be just a provider, a mechanic, or whatever type of worker bee a woman like the writer and HER child happen to require at the moment.
So, take this one chance, to make sure that the woman you are looking for satisfies YOUR needs and wants.
So forget about what's politically correct or socially responsible. Be selfish. That's the best thing you can do for yourself, and for your future wife.
Good luck Doormat...you're going to need it.
I think you waited too long if you want children . Unless you find a non-American citizen.....like most guys. They will marry anyone!
So true! And there's always that ol'chestnut; "I can loose weight, you'll always be ugly."
I call that "Oral Sex". :^)
LOL! See! There's ways to keep the spark alive!
I say be careful with women who already have children. In my own family I’ve had two (female) cousins who remarried after getting divorced, did not have any more children and divorced their new husband within a year of their youngest child getting to 18.
And I knew them both quite well and thought their marriages were stable, and from the outside, they seemed quite loving towards their husbands. Both of my cousins come from families with 40+ year marriages, so it was not their background that is suspect (IMO).
In the end my cousins used their new husbands to raise and provide for their children from their earlier a-hole, abusive husbands. The kids of course bonded with their step-dads (now former), but the pain these good men went through pushed them close to the breaking point.
After I saw that, I stopped dating any women with children. YMMV.
I said REASONABLE. Not “gorgeous”.
There is plain, and there is ugly. Few people are totally ugly. (But I experienced that once as far as dating.)
And then there’s the story of my husband’s best friend (male).
He fell for a lady about 15 years older who already had children about 10 at the time. When he married her the kids were basically teens.
Let’s call him “Greg”. Greg was asked about his attraction to the lady (she IS a wonderful lady) and the practicality of it all, with 15 years separation and older kids and so on. Greg was “in his prime” at the time while the lady was around 40. Greg was asked about his desire for his own children, and if he could deal with the likelihood he’d never have any with this woman.
Greg brushed off any desire to have kids and said pollyanna-like that he’d be having a great relationship with the teen kids!
Well, he married the woman. The teen kids really didn’t care much for him. Let-down. Greg was getting older and not getting his “father” fix. Even though his wife WAS a great woman, she couldn’t fulfill his “needs”.
So, while I was getting married to his best friend, Greg was divorcing his wife of 10 years - because now he wanted kids.
He fooled himself with this “love” thing without being serious and thinking it through. Then married all gung-ho young, then divorced because his desires weren’t being met, which he could have predicted.
And now, HE is “older”. And he has fewer prospects. There’s a chance, but not much that some young-enough woman would marry him (he is attractive enough, too). If he marries “his age” now, he again risks not being able to have children.
So, at least for now, Greg and his ex-wife are alone. I think it’s sad what this foolishness did.
I appreciate your point and it is wise advice. My point to Keith_Brown is there is a significant difference with women who begat children in a marriage and a woman who begat a child because they wanted one, like buying a dog.
With any divorcee’ one needs to evaluate the circumstance of the previous marriage. Those children do not qualify as bastards.
With a woman who has a child and no marriage, one needs to see how that child came into existence. One is she got pregnant by “accident” as it were and decided to keep the child, or whether, like the writer of this column intended to get pregnant and remain a single woman.
In either case accidental or willful, such women are problematic, with the latter being downright dangerous to the men she is looking to ensnare into a marriage of convenience(for her) and servitude(to her). When the adoption process is complete and she now has a child support source, her mission is finished and said man is dispatched and his wages garnished to pay child support.
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