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Now a lot of women like to proffer an illusion and say "Sure, in our family, the man is still the head of the household." However, so long as she has the power to throw him out, keep the house, and be awarded full custody of the kids---particularly that last---a man's status within the marriage is illusory.
Those who deny that fact are claiming to live in a vacuum. However, no one does live in a vacuum. For better or for worse, we all live in a society of laws which affect our transactions and interrelationships with one another.
For marriage to prosper, for the nuclear family, those laws have to change unambiguously. There is no other way.
Comments?

I think you stated the problem nuclear families face in today's society pretty well.
Society has reacted to the failed system of patriarchy. A system which failed due to the unfair, imbalance wihin the family due to the lack of giving the *one* status of equality that is necessary.

The equality of honor to both the female's role as well as the male's.

This failure will ALWAYS recur like a bad dream, no matter the system, because power is what it's all eventually seen to be about.

Now society has swung the power balance in the complete opposite direction. It is now the female who, to the greater extent, holds the power. Who "must be obeyed" or the system will come crashing down upon the hapless male.
This is simply a 360 degree turn.

Add to that the "me me me" mindset of today and you can bet that laws won't be changing soon, evolving perhaps, but no unambiguous changes.
We're seeing it already with the increase in pre-nuptial agreements.
If I were a guy you're darn right I'd have one signed! Cold - maybe so, but the girl has to understand it's the only course at present to obtain the legal natural balance a family needs for a stable environment. See it as, in itself, an act of love and commitment.

But it has to START with what you choose to term the "illusionary" statement that "in our family, the man is still the head of the household." Sorry, but it does. The woman has to be willing to be strong and not cave in to the goodies that the law would hand her. (Just as the man in previous system should have done.) At the moment, it IS about the individual's choices. To deny that is just as much living in a vacuum as the other.
Otherwise, you sit around and wait for society to find some new, inventive method of screwing things up.

"Society has reacted to the failed system of patriarchy. A system which failed due to the unfair, imbalance wihin the family due to the lack of giving the *one* status of equality that is necessary. The equality of honor to both the female's role as well as the male's. "

I disagree with both of those statements. The "failed system of patriarchy" is nothing of the sort. Look all over the world and you will find by far the vast majority of the populace lives within a patriarchy. Does this truly equate to a failure to you?
If you are referring to the current situation in this country, it came about not because of a 'failure of the patriarchy', but because the males in the generation of the NOW nags buckled to their complaints. The results are a continual decline in the numbers of the normal nuclear family, and an increasing number of children raised in a single-parent family. The resulting lack of valid role-models and valid instruction in acceptable societal behaviours in the affected generations are producing ever-increasing numbers of individuals whose only concern is for themselves, and view the opposite sex as little more than competition or potential victims. An attitude directly attributable to the active alienation and hostility the custodial parent invariably displays towards the absent one. This is the only thing the children see, and thus they learn to act in only that manner as they gather in the years.

As for the "equality of honor to both the female's role as well as the male's", males have always honored the female of the species, for the reasons I expressed in My previous posting on this matter.

"If I were a guy you're darn right I'd have one signed! Cold - maybe so, but the girl has to understand it's the only course at present to obtain the legal natural balance a family needs for a stable environment. See it as, in itself, an act of love and commitment."

In this we are in agreement. However, in harmony with the theme running throughout this thread, women must understand that they have only themselves to blame for so many males feeling it necessary to insist upon the female's signature on a legal document essentially stating that they will not attempt to gut him if the marriage fails. And they get offended?

That being said, those PNA's are only valid until too many males are using them, and the lawyers decide that they are losing money on the deal. Once that happens, the courts will begin invalidating them on a systematic basis, most judges being attorneys or ex-attorneys themselves.

"But it has to START with what you choose to term the "illusionary" statement that "in our family, the man is still the head of the household." Sorry, but it does. The woman has to be willing to be strong and not cave in to the goodies that the law would hand her"

*Sigh* If I actually believed that was going to happen, I would be much more enthusiastic about the prospect of matrimony. Unfortunately, it has not been My experience that women are willing to relinquish such a power; the lure of it is too strong.
Referring back to My previous post where I remenisced upon My experiences in a "FAMILY COURT", I rarely, rarely saw a woman who expressed any reluctance to do so. I really dislike mentioning it, but I too have an 'ex' who literally took everything from Me. I count Myself fortunate, however. She put the poor sod who came after Me as the next in a relationship with her in jail. I could see it happening from afar, and wanted to warn him, but he believed her rants concerning Me so...
In a little cell he sits.