I have mixed feelings about David Brooks, the erstwhile conservative columnist for the New York Times. And I have mixed feelings about his column this morning about Sonia Sotomayor. Brooks, noting the oft-retold story of Sotomayor’s rise from humble origins to a Supreme Court nomination:
It’s the upward mobility story — about a person who worked hard and contributes profoundly to society, but who also sacrificed things along the way.
As you read the profiles, you can almost draw a map of her relationships during each stage in her life. In some areas, her relationships are thick and fulfilling, but in others, there are blank spaces….
As an adult, the profiles describe her as upbeat and social, leading walks to Brooklyn, hosting poker parties, serving as godmother to many children. Yet over the years, she has been remarkably honest about the costs of her workaholism.
Her marriage broke up after two years. She was quoted as saying, “I cannot attribute that divorce to work, but certainly the fact that I was leaving my home at 7 and getting back at 10 o’clock was not of assistance in recognizing the problems developing in my marriage.”
Later, during a swearing-in ceremony in 1998, she referred to her then-fiancé, “The professional success I had achieved before Peter did nothing to bring me genuine personal happiness.” She addressed him, saying that he had filled “voids of emptiness that existed before you. … You have altered my life so profoundly that many of my closest friends forget just how emotionally withdrawn I was before I met you.”
That relationship ended after eight years, and her biographers paint a picture of a life now that is frantically busy, fulfilling and often aloof. “You make play dates with her months and months in advance because of her schedule,” a friend of hers told The Times.
Brooks’ point is a fair one: we live in a closer approximation of a meritocracy than at any time before, where a Latina from the Bronx can, through hard work and brains, rise to the top. This is a good thing. But as we have opened the doors of the Ivy League universities to the Obamas and the Sotomayors, we’ve also created a culture of exhausting workaholism which leaves little room for balance or enduring intimate relationships. When only a member of the male WASP elite could get into Harvard and climb to a Supreme Court nomination, the chances were good he would have a wife who sublimated her own ambitions to his. (In a not-so-distant past, he would probably be able to afford servants, too.) Men of that world surely worked hard, but it was the labor of others that allowed them to enjoy leisure, marry, and have children while climbing into the rarified air at the very top of the social ladder. As the sons and daughters of the lower middle class have, like Sonia, made it to the top, they have found it far more challenging to “have it all”. The old saying that a woman of color would have to “work twice as hard and be twice as good to be taken half as seriously” still carries the sting of truth, and Brooks points out the cost of this.
Where I take issue with Brooks is with his suggestion that this burden falls equally on men and women:
This isn’t the old story of a career woman trying to balance work and family. This is the story of pressures that affect men as well as women (men are just more likely to make fools of themselves in response, as the news of the last few years indicates). It’s the story of people in a meritocracy that gets more purified and competitive by the year, with the time demands growing more and more insistent.
His parenthetical point is well taken, but it seems false to suggest that men have the same trouble striking a work-life balance, or finding partners who will be patient with their workaholism. Think of Sotomayor’s fellow baby boomer and fellow first-generation Ivy League lawyer, Barack Obama. The Supreme Court nominee edited the Yale Law Journal; the president of the United States was president of the Harvard Law Review. Both were pioneers. Barack Obama married a woman with a marvelous education, and that woman chose, in the end, to sublimate her career to his. In the end, the future president did not have to choose between his public ambitions and his private longings. By all accounts a devoted husband and a wonderful father, Barack Obama is not unlike other men of his and Sotomayor’s generation: hardworking, tremendously ambitious, and able to find a brilliant and devoted wife who, despite her own considerable professional achievements will, when the chips are down, put her aspirations aside to support her spouse.
Despite what Brooks suggests, it’s a hell of a lot easier for a Barack Obama to find a Michelle than it is for a Sonia Sotomayor to find an equivalent “Miguel.” There are many reasons for this, not least that we continue to live in a culture in which culturally-imposed gender roles tend to exert an exasperatingly powerful influence on the private lives of those of us who ought to know better. Men who give up career opportunities to support their wives’ ambitions are more numerous than they once were, but they still face mockery from many quarters; women who have children but do not make what society judges as sufficient sacrifices to prioritize them are shamed as bad mothers. Put simply, the Sonia Sotomayors of the world are forced to make choices that men from similarly disadvantaged backgrounds are not.
I wrote a post about these choices a few years ago (with a follow-up here). I quoted the famous Yeats poem about choice:
The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.
In his column today, David Brooks moves dangerously close to a patronizing pity for Sotomayor as he rues the hard choices she has had to make; she has, it seems, chosen the “perfection of the work” at the cost of, at least, a romantic relationship. (She has, it ought to be noted, a veritable army of kith and kin who adore her.) But the thing that Brooks misses is that in a very real way, the choice is always much more stark for women. Time and again, men have found women willing and able to sacrifice everything so that the man might enjoy professional success while having a family. Far fewer women have found men similarly able and inclined to make that sacrifice. That “heavenly mansion” of fulfillment in every aspect of life can indeed be had when others are willing to channel their own ambitions into yours.
When my marriage ended in 1992, I was left with a 4 year old child, little education, little work experience and an ex spouse I knew would not pay child support. I created a career out of thin air and hard, hard work. 60-70 hour work weeks as I moved up the IT ladder (not an easy thing for a woman to do other than in programming in those days). I’m a systems engineer, and I’m paying my son’s college tuition out of pocket. I’m proud of that. And lonely. I’ve dated, in fact had long term relationships with men who did similar work…but in the end it always came down to whose needs were more important. If my pager interrupted the film a man wanted to see, that was somehow a much worse “sin” than when his did. When dinner wasn’t on the table, or, worse, when I wasnt home, but called and said something had crashed and I might not *be* home at all…somehow this was a much worse imposition on a man than when the situation was reversed. Somehow…it was as though I was doing this to him on purpose, that it was a personal affront, whereas when he had a problem at work, I was just to understand that hey, these things happen.
My first responsibility was to my child. He’s 22 now. Once he’s through school he’ll be moving on to create a new life for himself, and I’ll be both happy and proud.
But I’m alone. Because I couldnt find a way to balance a demanding career I *needed* (and why do I feel that I have to justify this?) in order to support my son, raising a child, and having a romantic relationship with a man.
Now, I’m nearing 51, recently diagnosed with MS and facing a very uncertain future without benefit of a partner. You are quite right Hugo, it’s still different for women than it is for men.
The thing that enrages me the most is that I think there would be a LOT more men out there both willing and able to sublimate their careers to their wives’ if they had been brought up to think of it as a legitimate choice, and if they didn’t face such derision for making it. Seriously, any married guys reading this: If your wife said, “I’ll take the full-time, breadwinner career role if you stay at home, keep up the house, and mind the kids” — would you take it? Not all would, but I think many more would, if they thought they could. If they didn’t have to face being mocked for “not being a man” and having their masculinity called into question.
There are tons of guys out there, I wager, who aren’t thrilled about being expected to work themselves to the bone to provide for their families for the rest of their lives, and I know there are many women out there who would love to have a full-time career with the knowledge that their spouse was supporting them and minding the home and kids. Heck, my cousin is Mormon and she and her husband are just as attached to gender roles as any religious couple, and even her husband expressed how awesome it would be for his wife to work so he could care for the kids at home.
I wish fervently that this was a more considered option, for both women and men.
My deepest condolences to you, Broce. You are a very admirable woman, and an inspiration to girls like me. I hope things work out well for you.
Ruthie expressed my sentiments beautifully. While women are often unfairly expected to sublimate, men are perhaps more often told they must be the breadwinners. A SAHM will be applauded by society for “having a priorities in order,” but the man who decides that he, too, wants out of the rat race is told he’d better get his butt to work — and work HARDER now than ever before, because he’s now got a wife and KIDS to support (and word is they’d like a swimming pool).
He’s just using a lot of high falutin’ language to tell the same old story about how women having careers ruins them. God forbid someone be happy single.
Thanks, Emm. Maybe it’s a generational thing, Amanda, I’m 51, and I’ve been single most of my life. Yeah, it’s possible to be happy without a relationship, but connection to another person, the sort of intimate emotional connection in a romantic relationship, is a really nice thing to have. I miss it, even if I can keep myself busy on my own.
I admit I’m incredibly independent and that’s been an issue with some men - they all think they want an independent partner till they have one. They think independent means “wont make any demands on me” but they don’t consider the other side of the coin - that this also means the demands they can make on the woman are limited too. Perhaps, as I said above, some of this is generational, and the young people between my son’s age and yours, Amanda, will get the hang of equality in a relationship and in the home better than my generation did. I hope so.
You’re on target again, Hugo. If Sotomayor did have a stay-at-home “Miguel”, imagine the right-wing jokes that would ensue, all the stereotypes about feminists emasculating their spouses, etc. I mean, Bill Clinton was the ultimate alpha male and you still got the jokes about Hillary hen-pecking him.
Neither Sotomayor nor Obama are part of the Baby Boom Generation. Instead, both are members of Generation Jones (born 1954-1965, between the Boomers and Generation X). Google Generation Jones, and you’ll see it’s gotten a ton of media attention, and many top commentators from many top publications and networks (Washington Post, Time magazine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) now specifically use this term. In fact, the Associated Press’ annual Trend Report chose the Rise of Generation Jones as the #1 trend of 2009.
It is important to distinguish between the post-WWII demographic boom in births vs. the cultural generations born during that era. Generations are a function of the common formative experiences of its members, not the fertility rates of its parents. Many experts now believe it breaks down more or less this way:
DEMOGRAPHIC boom in babies: 1946-1964
Baby Boom GENERATION: 1942-1953
Generation Jones: 1954-1965
Generation X: 1966-1978
This page is a good overview of recent stuff about GenJones:
http://generationjones.com/2009latest.html
His parenthetical point is well taken, but it seems false to suggest that men have the same trouble striking a work-life balance, or finding partners who will be patient with their workaholism.
Men have just as much trouble as women in striking a work-life balance. Our stories simply aren’t made into Lifetime movies, and there is less cultural sympathy for our situation, in large part because of the very real “suck it up” expectation that is part and parcel of patriarchy.
I’m just thinking about this in comparison to Sandra Tsing Loh’s article in the Atlantic discussed here a few weeks ago. Reading that article, Ms. Loh and her social circle seemed to have husbands who had been doing less outside the home and taking more responsibility for the home and children. They seemed dissatisfied (clearly in Ms. Loh’s case, as her “commitment to monogamy came unglued”). It’s something of conventional wisdom that men are ok marrying down while women expect to marry up (or, at least, at the same level). Granted, conventional wisdom is often less wise than it is conventional, but I wonder how desirable less-aggressive, stay-at-home types of men really are to very many women over the long-term. Your case in point, Broce, you described your LTRs as being with men who did “similar work”. As easy as it may be to lay the burden on the impersonal and nebulous culprit of “culturally-imposed gender roles”, I wonder to what extent working women are themselves perpetuators of the same.
Granted, the dating market open to people working 60+ hour work weeks is limited. Who do you wind up spending most of your waking life with? People from work doing the same thing you’re doing.
Hugo,
fair point.
This post defiantly raise an issue of gender equity where little progress has been made. But I wonder if there isn’t another piece of the puzzle. Maybe it isn’t just that we go about obeying theses gender roles which we are socialized into from our infancy, but that our own cultural expectations about gender have built a system in which over working ourselves reinforces the system. This system traditionally ask/expects that men will be the bread-winners, no matter what sacrifices they must make, and women to raise children take care of a one of the precious spaces in our culture: the home, and emotionally support their husbands. When a system expects such duties of us we become defined by our work, rather than allowing who we truly are to define our work. I think that part of winning this battle is telling ourselves that we will not be defined by our work, but that our work will reflect who we are.
I should point out that I don’t mean to take gender out of the equation, but simply want to suggest that trying to think like this might help change the situation.
I think Tom makes an excellent point. Women enforce their own gender expectations on men through their dating preferences. I’m extremely skeptical of the idea that there’s as much demand for un- or under-employed potential SAHDs as there is for un- or under-employed potential SAHMs (though if someone has concrete data suggesting otherwise I’d love to see it). The fact that men are compelled (or feel compelled) to work themselves to death at a rate eight times greater than women provides some evidence that, for men, employment is a prerequisite to having a family, which is far less true for women. Or, to put it simply, men are also forced to make choices that women from similarly disadvantaged backgrounds are not.
I worry about this a lot.
I have both a very healthy ambition (fairly typical for 0.5 immigrants) and a sure knowledge that if it comes to a choice between the well being of people I love and anything else, anything else loses. Of course, the assholishness of a non supportive spouse (who chose me knowing what I wanted from my life) is not quite their ‘well being’ but these things can get strangely tricky in real life.
Sometimes I think I worry too much, after all my bf is a good person… so why worry he would not be supportive or fair? Then I think about society and statistics… and I worry some more. Even if I can rely on a lack of obstacles from a spouse… is that good enough? I know I would/will provide support if my spouse had ambitions, must I accept that few men know how to return that support?
I don’t know that things are as bleak as some are portraying them to be re: men not being willing to stay at home with kids or supporting their wives’ careers in other ways. I personally know at least 6 dads who are or were at home when their kids were little, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of them being ridiculed. (I know, that doesn’t mean it has never happened.) In most if not all of these families, the wives were earning more than their husbands, so it made sense for the husbands to stay at home with the kids. One of the dads has even started a small daycare operation. I don’t think he wants to do that forever, but it’s what makes sense for his family right now.
Victoria,
I think the biggest worry men have is that they will no longer be desirable in such a situation, not a real man. Tom/ballgame are right in that respect. They may be happy doing it, but they feel at some point their wife/girlfriend will look upwards - in a way that’s the similar to the stay-at-home wife dynamic, who is at some point simply not as exciting as a woman from, say, Buenos Aires. I do think though, that women will - in most cases - be happier than men with the parenting role (just my experience).
In a way - if you want to change that (as opposed to merely note it) you’d have to uncouple male attractivity (for women) from achievement in the way that female attractivity (for men) is largely uncoupled from achievement (or male female achievement more attractive for men). I don’t think either is going to happen in our lifetime, if ever.
Broce, you described your LTRs as being with men who did “similar work”. As easy as it may be to lay the burden on the impersonal and nebulous culprit of “culturally-imposed gender roles”, I wonder to what extent working women are themselves perpetuators of the same.
Granted, the dating market open to people working 60+ hour work weeks is limited. Who do you wind up spending most of your waking life with? People from work doing the same thing you’re doing.
Tom, you’ve answered your own question here. When you are working 60 hours a week and raising a child with no assistance, your dating options are limited to the people you meet in your working life. In the past I’d dated men from all kinds of backgrounds, those who were both more and less “successful” than I was. It doesnt matter a damn to me, I can earn my own money. But working the hours I do tends to limit my options, and in the last 15 years, *all* the men I’ve dated have also worked in IT.
It’s handy to simply blame women’s dating choices, but men also do plenty of gender policing. I know that my husband has never been asked ‘who wears the pants in your family anyway’ regarding his family choices by a woman.
SamSeaborn,
Glad to know about your experience but I know that I would not be happier in a parenting role though I recognize that my ability to reduce that role to less then 50% is slim to none. Since it’s my life it’s my preferences that I’m concerned with. My attraction to a man and my choices in who to date has never been about what kind of work they do and any man that knows me well enough to be in a long term relationship with me would not be worried about me losing attraction to him for that reason or if he was his worry would be irrational and not based on his knowledge of my personality. Personally, I think think men worry more about it being weird then no longer being desirable. If someone has professed themselves willing to support you indefinitely it’s pretty silly to think they don’t desire you. I can not personally change society, though I am doing my best to do my little part. For the moment I’m stuck with what is, and that kind of sucks.
It is true that a stay at home parent who has nothing going on in their live other then the home and kids is frequently not as interesting and exciting. Those are also frequently deeply unhappy (how can you be blind to the many many women who have been/are unhappy in this position?) however those are not the only roles for a supportive, primary child caring spouse. It’s also a role that only makes sense for a couple of years so the desirability argument doesn’t make as much sense since you’re only suffering the theoretical drop in attractiveness for a couple of years. The real drop is in your earning potential.
Michele Obama is not spending her time cleaning and being with the kids (only). She’s spending a lot of her time being a First Lady and supporting Barack. Many other STAHM that I know do various things with their time that are interesting and creative even though they do not have the time available or the opportunity to do full time work. That kind of man would be easy to respect for me and find interesting and exciting and I bet he’d be more fulfilled. (Can you imagine a man writing what I wrote above? Concern over the fulfillment of his STAH wife?)
I do think it’s true that men don’t necessarily think it’s important to respect the women they date and marry, just love. While women think it is important to respect the man they choose. Also, men think it’s crucial to be respected and women do not. I think this is a lot of the reason women file for divorce more often. The solution is not diminishing the expectation of respect towards men but raising it towards women. No one can be happy in a long term relationship with someone they don’t respect (or consistently treat them well even if they love them) and no one can be happy when their intimate partner doesn’t respect them.
Gigi,
I know, it does happen. I just worry about the odds. Also real support isn’t only about staying at home and I believe strongly that men just have so much less training and expectation of knowing how to be supportive that often even with great guys the best you can hope with is a lack of opposition and someone to listen to your rants. I’d like some encouragement, but I’m not betting on finding it.
Sorry! Oops.
Broce, you are head and shoulders above most other men and women for your strength, courage and convictions. You are definitely made from old stock, which unfortunately many these days don’t have a clue about.
On the topic of the Sonia Sotomayor, did anyone else get the impression that she was well versed in the democrats questions? She seemed to breeze trough them so eloquently and easily, as if she had time to think through her answers in advance, while on the republican questions, she stumbled, hemmed, hawed and back tracked on most of them.
Her answer on self defense was so far removed from being on focus it was actually a bit scary.
I try to be evenly biased and vote for the most qualified, however I must confess, both parties scare the daylights out of me these days.
Mythago: apples and oranges. Dating choices come into play when a potential relationship that might lead to the man being primarily in the supportive role to a working spouse would start. Your situation as you describe it implies that your husband is already a SAHD, that you’ve collectively made that choice. Does the gender policing you imply imperil your relationship at this point or prevent it from being started?
And I’ve heard plenty of young women, in their college years, the point at which most successful people still have a social circle not primarily centered around their professional lives, complain that a bf is “not ambitious enough”. The ideal future SAHD is probably not reading Dr. Spock or working on his souffle in his 20s. He might very well be that guy spending his time on Xbox rather than doing the studying that would allow his future earning potential to be higher than his possible future partner. The ongoing implosion of the American manufacturing and construction sectors and the long-term trend of more women than men pursuing higher education means that finding men with relatively less earning potential than their potential mates shouldn’t be that hard.
One issue that I’ve heard consistently is that being a SAHDs is isolating. They still comprise a small minority of parents, and while there are groups for them now, they tend to lose their former male friends from work, with whom they have little in common, while being shunned by SAHMs.
Tom,
Being a SAHP is isolating. Something feminists have been saying for decades. Or do you not pay attention to that kind of thing unless it impacts men?
Victoria, based on what I’ve read, the current situation is worse for SAHDs. I agree that being a SAHM can be isolating too, though probably far less than it once was 40 years ago in the Feminine Mystique era. SAHDs get shunned by SAHMs when trying to set up playdates or other joint activities, and SAHDS are still a small minority of SAHPs in general (around 140,000 out of more than 5 million total in the whole country).
Tom,
I think you’re right and I don’t disagree with anything you wrote in the last comment. I just think it’s funny you would bring up this problem without any reference to the 40 years or so of many many more women (millions instead of thousands) being in this unfortunate isolating position and working hard on making it better. I’d also say that it is still more isolating then it should be.
I don’t mean to make it a competition and I strongly hope that the situation gets better for SAHDs. I’m glad someone is concerned about it.
Victoria,
“Glad to know about your experience”
Well, in this case, that’s the best I can offer…
“My attraction to a man and my choices in who to date has never been about what kind of work they do and any man that knows me well enough to be in a long term relationship with me would not be worried about me losing attraction to him for that reason…”
Well, that’s you, and I wasn’t talking about your attraction but general male fears with respect to women in general. Maybe it is hard for women to get - and we’ve been discussing it over and over in the last couple of months on a number of threads - to which extent this desirability issue is important to men, because we hardly ever get this. F**k, I mean I’m over 30 and it was only last year that a woman called me “hot” and last week that another one told me “there’s something about you”. And even though I’ve had issues I’ve never been unsuccessful with (and thus probably undesirable to) women. This is an element that is practically absent from the male experience, and it’s one that is - I assume from not just a small amount of feminist literature - a very common, and sometimes annoyingly common part of the female experience.
“or if he was his worry would be irrational and not based on his knowledge of my personality.”
It’s difficult to be rational with fear.
“It is true that a stay at home parent who has nothing going on in their live other then the home and kids is frequently not as interesting and exciting. Those are also frequently deeply unhappy (how can you be blind to the many many women who have been/are unhappy in this position?)”
I’m not, I think I explicitly mentioned the similarity above.
“The real drop is in your earning potential.”
Call it privilege but that’s never been a concern for me.
“Michele Obama is not spending her time cleaning and being with the kids (only). She’s spending a lot of her time being a First Lady and supporting Barack.”
Yeah, but she’s not a STAHM. She’s got an office and staff, and an inofficial policy agenda. And the ear of the President. She’s probably his closest advisor.
“That kind of man would be easy to respect for me and find interesting and exciting and I bet he’d be more fulfilled. (Can you imagine a man writing what I wrote above? Concern over the fulfillment of his STAH wife?)”
Absolutely, I remember my dad unsuccessfully trying to help my mum to get a life outside of our home. I think your assumption that a man would not be interested in helping his wife be happy if she isn’t is a tad bit unfair.
“I do think it’s true that men don’t necessarily think it’s important to respect the women they date and marry, just love.”
Whooaa… stop. Maybe I don’t understand. But how can I love someone I don’t respect?
“Also, men think it’s crucial to be respected and women do not.”
Not in my experience.
SamSeaborn,
Man interested in helping his wife be happy - I don’t think men aren’t interested in this, of course half way decent people care about the happiness of people they love. I think most men don’t think about it prior to marriage even if they want/expect their future wife to be the primary caregiver (as most men do). Certainly I’ve never heard a man comment on this concern.
Michelle isn’t a SAHM it’s true, but most women who are primary caregivers aren’t SAHMs. Michelle is the primary care giver and Michelle has laid aside her personal career and previous ambitions (who knows what her current ambitions are) for Barack’s career. She spends a lot of time supporting him. It’s hard to find a man like that. That’s what the post is about. Not necessarily SAHPhood.
Respect - it was a generalization. However just yesterday I was reading some male columnist bolivating about how women don’t understand that when a man doesn’t feel respected he doesn’t feel loved etc. etc. Which just about made me boil with rage. I have heard women talk (multiple times) about how important it is for them to be able to respect the man they choose. I’ve never heard a woman talk about how important it is for her that the man she is with respects her. Discussion of the need to respect women only comes up in the context of abuse (physical or emotional or sexual). That isn’t right, to truly feel loved a person needs a lot more respect then that necessary to be perceived as human and not worthy of abuse.
Love and respect are absolutely different emotions. It is perfectly possible to love and pity someone and not respect them in very important ways.
I said you were blind to the unhappiness of SAHMs because you said you think women are more likely to be happy in that role then men - if women are miserable in it(often)… that seems a strange assertion.
Voctoria,
“I have heard women talk (multiple times) about how important it is for them to be able to respect the man they choose.”
Definitions of respect - I think women and men aren’t necessarily talking about the same thing even when using the same terminology.
I’m thinking that, for men, respect is the status thing - and I’m happy you heard it from women, not men. And I think this goes really hand in hand with the desirability issue: Will she respect me (the man) if she is President and I’m planting seeds? Or for women: Would they be able to respect and desire a man who would happily do the gardening stuff - maybe not that easily, if you believe the women you heard this from.
“Love and respect are absolutely different emotions. It is perfectly possible to love and pity someone and not respect them in very important ways.”
Not sure, I’ll have to think about this.
“I said you were blind to the unhappiness of SAHMs because you said you think women are more likely to be happy in that role then men - if women are miserable in it(often)… that seems a strange assertion.”
I said I think they can deal with the parenting role better, less ordinary misery if you will - which, btw, is probably the same you referred to with the respect issue.
It’s not a question of ‘handily blaming’ anyone, mythago, it’s just pointing out that both men and women enforce gender expectations on both men and women. The OP implied that only women face stark choices due to their gender — which is demonstrably false — or that women’s choices are ‘more stark’, which appears to be an opinion driven more by ideology than by an objective assessment of the situations facing each gender.
Well, that’s great, and I do believe that feminism has been instrumental in introducing greater flexibility in gender role expectations for some men. But that’s different than saying gender expectations for men are gone. Men in some LTRs may be able to assume a more domestic role than in the past, but I still suspect that unemployed single men will face a vastly harsher reality trying to be taken seriously as dating prospects by women than unemployed single women face in dating men. In fact, IIRC I’ve even seen ostensibly feminist commenters use the “he’s probably unemployed and living in his parents’ basement” as a sneering putdown; I can’t recall ever seeing the reverse (i.e. “SHE’S probably unemployed and living in HER parents’ basement”).
I tend to disagree, Victoria. Or, to put it differently, I’ve seen and heard too many women and men use the term “weird” as a synonym for “undesirable”.
The sad truth is that even people we’re closest to may at times say things they think they’re expected to say, or things they want to be true but aren’t really true (which they may not always be aware of), or things that are true at the time they say them but then they later have a change of heart. So, no, I don’t agree that concerns about this are automatically irrational, even if in individual cases those concerns ultimately turn out to be unfounded.
This comment appears to me to undercut your other point that I just quoted, no?
Of course I can. I agree with SamSeaborn’s response to this.
Sam,
You’re reading what you think into what I wrote. Respect and money (or status) aren’t the same thing. I actually think a lot of men read this one wrong. They think all they need for respect is money and that isn’t so. Most women I know, accomplished women earning good money, need to respect the men they are with and they have high standards but those standards aren’t about money.
A painter who’s work she thinks is brilliant but brings in no money, a writer who does well but makes less then her, a construction contractor who builds beautiful buildings, all of those might well get a lot of respect, and yes a gardener too. What is valued is competency, having overcome some kind of obstacles in the past, and good character. A childish dismissal of the importance of money in life is a red flag more because it’s stupid then anything else.
Money does matter, to all human beings living in this world and it impacts relationships in complex ways but everyone I know knows someone rich that they don’t respect.
It is true that women are inclined to assume that a man who makes a better living is more worthy of respect, our society teaches us that and men have the same presupposition that they play out in their interactions with other men. It’s a presupposition that’s much weaker for women (unfortunately because women generally make less money). It’s a bad damaging presupposition both because it overvalues money and because it perpetuates the patriarchy and the damaging models for masculinity and femininity that Hugo often blogs about. Feminism is certainly against this and if it was more widespread it would be less prevalent.
I’m now stopping writing on the respect tangent.
Victoria,
“You’re reading what you think into what I wrote.”
Well, that’s inevitable in every communication. You do the same. Everyone does.
Btw, I didn’t ever use the term money. I used status and achievement for respect, which I think will be quite compatible with what you say about the reasons for respect. I know a lot of men who don’t have money but have status/respect. Status is formalised respect on a majority-agreed-upon/inherited socio-economic ladder.
“It’s a bad damaging presupposition both because it overvalues money and because it perpetuates the patriarchy and the damaging models for masculinity and femininity that Hugo often blogs about.”
I agree, and I suppose all men commenting here will agree.
“Feminism is certainly against this and if it was more widespread it would be less prevalent.”
Feminism is both overrated and underrated as a social force, in my opinion. I don’t think we’re merely up against “powerful social norms” but fundamental (well, essential) human optimization interests, both women and men. We may both struggle with this and desire a world different from the one we live in, but that will not make reality change magically. Feminism can help in some respects, but it is - taking a sum of all threads and positions within feminism - also not without its problems, for women and for men (not surprising given the marxist origins of much of today’s academic feminism).
I dunno SamSeaborn, we can speculate about the essential human optimization all we like but that speculation comes down to - we don’t know.
We do know that there are women alive today (and in the past) who want certain thing our society thinks they shouldn’t want and puts up obstacles against them getting. So why don’t we set up a society were these women don’t have to face these obstacles. If society is still unequal then, we can talk essential qualities.
You do realize that those essential optimization arguments were made the exact same way to deny women the right to vote, be a lawyer, have a bank account, have an abortion?
It has been disproved as absurd and oppressive and wrong, how about you give it a hundred years before you dig up the same argument? By then you’d have a valid claim that things have changed so much that it makes sense.
For now why don’t we focus on what we do know?
Victoria,
“For now why don’t we focus on what we do know?”
I didn’t want to get into a serious nature/nurture debate, that would indeed get us nowhere. And I really don’t want to deny anyone anything, to the contrary. I was just saying in reply to your supposition that more feminism would be helpful that I’m not so sure about it and that some elements of feminism are not without its problems. As you say we’re largely stuck with the world we live in. We can attempt to change things, and we do, carefully, to allow for more freedom and create more justice, but whatever we do will have unintended consequences that may contradict the very objectives of more fairness and freedom we tried to achieve.
Regarding respect, one issue that can come up with stay at home dads and husbands (though obviously was the case first with housewives) is lack of appreciation. Especially today, it’s entirely possible for a woman to have very little familiarity with what goes into taking care of the kids and keeping house, if her family situation does have her as the primary breadwinner most of the time. I guess the shoe may be on the other foot sometimes, but that lack of appreciation does come across as lack of respect. Also, and this extends beyond stay at home men, women more often it seems have expectations and standards regarding both childcare and household tasks that they are unwilling or unable to let go of, even if they’ve never been the sole or primary caretaker of either. Hectoring someone on a consistent basis about one is doing everything somehow “wrong”, when that is what one is spending most of one’s day doing, is disrespectful too.
@ballgame
Although it’s true that the stereotype of the wanker who lives in mom’s basement/plays Xbox/eats Cheetos, etc. is gendered very male, I can tell you that unemployment in a single woman is held HEAVILY against her by single men on dating boards. There’s no stereotype, just recoiling.
Tom, you appear to be getting a lot of grief from your wife, but kindly don’t dump your resentment on everyone who pees sitting down. Believe it or not, men can have unrealistic expectations of what goes into taking care of the kids and keeping house (as many SAHM friends have complained to me over the years), have unrealistic standards, and relentlessly criticize their partners for doing things ‘wrong’.
Sam, it’s a little disingenuous to slip in an argument about “fundamental (well, essential) human optimization interests” as a given and then insist we mustn’t discuss whether this is a sound idea because you don’t care to get into a nature/nurture debate, while again hinting darkly about “unintended consequences”. It makes you sound as though you want everyone to believe certain things are unalterably true yet refuse to discuss whether they are, in fact, true.
ballgame, as I’m sure you are aware, extensively discussing women’s dating choices without discussing same-sex policing of gender norms is very much suggesting, if not out and out saying, that the primary or sole reason men don’t do X is because women will scorn them.
Mythaho,
“It makes you sound as though you want everyone to believe certain things are unalterably true yet refuse to discuss whether they are, in fact, true.”
No, it makes me sound like someone who believes that certain things are indeed essential, but who doesn’t want to impose that belief on people he assumes will not be willing to accept what he accepts as proof thereof, just as he doesn’t accept the mere statement of “socialisation” as proof of “nurture”. Moreover, “embodiment” is such a complex thing that both nature and nurture aren’t able to cut it on their own. I’m not insisting on a caricatured version of nature, yet I often have the impression not just a few feminists (including Hugo) seem to insist on a caricatured version of nurture (sometimes necessarily so, because it’s a necessary axiom for some arguments to make a bit of sense). In the end, it will be very hard to discern nature from nurture, so there will likely always be an element of faith in our personal opinion and differing experiences with respect to this matter. My saying that I believe a discussion on this will not get us anywhere is a recognition of the possibility of disagreement while subtly hinting at my belief that there is something else at play. If you are interested in a discussion about the relative importance of nature, nurture, and psychology in human bahviour, I’m more than happy to have that discussion with you. I just thought this wasn’t really the place for it.
Broce, you are head and shoulders above most other men and women for your strength, courage and convictions. You are definitely made from old stock, which unfortunately many these days don’t have a clue about.
Thank you. I just see it as doing what needs to be done. Yes, I do come from old stock, and meeting one’s responsibilities is pretty much a given in that environment. I had a child; the fact that my ex husband chose to abdicate his responsibility meant I had to take on both his and mine in regard to my son. Since he decided not to meet his responsibilities to our son, *someone* had to pick up the slack, so it obviously devolved to me to do so. What I wanted didnt enter into the picture - my son’s needs clearly had to come first. Frankly, I think that’s the way most parents operate, or should.
I do not think SAHMs get anymore respect from their partners than SAHDs do. I think the difference tends to come from men’s cultural expectations that they will get the majority of their ego stroking from what they do for work, and since they are working in the home they want to get that from their wives. Women are much less accustomed to getting their ego strokes from the work they do, and tend to notice less if they are SAHMs that they aren’t getting that stroking from their partners. It isnt a question of gender disrespect so much as it is that the *work* involved in being a SAHP and keeping a home is not respected in our society regardless of who it is that’s doing that work.
Everything that Broce just said about respect and ego stroking for SAHMs and SAHPs. Everyone tends to ignore the invisible work of taking care of people and things. It’s a human tendency and a sad one. Women will put up with the lack of appreciation longer because of socialization, but no one likes the lack.
Mythago, first of all, if you would please, kindly refrain from presumptions regarding the particulars of my personal life based on what I am discussing here. They are neither accurate, appropriate, nor on point.
Secondly, we’ve been over the issues of divergent expectations regarding housework standards before, on this very blog.
Thirdly, the fact that SAHMs can and do face unrealistic standards from their husbands or male partners does not make it impossible that SAHDs can face unrealistic standards as well when they are the primary caretakers of house and home. Believe it or not, the fact that women do face some issues does not mean that men will never face the same issue. However, the topic at the moment is SAHDs, not SAHMs.
Tom,
No one has said of implied that SAHDs can’t face unrealistic standards. Where are you getting that? Everyone here agrees that they do.
We’re saying SAHMs face them too and on average it might well be worse because of the stereotype of women as cleaner. Of course it will vary by individuals.
The topic is not SAHDs. The topic of the post are caregiving and supportive spouses, most of whom aren’t even SAHPs. The subtopic of the discussion are SAHPs. You seem to want to focus exclusively on SAHDs to say things no one is disagreeing with.
I don’t understand why we’d split SAHPs into Moms and Dads when discussing the difficulties in staying at home full time except to note that Dads get more open flack for it and have fewer other Dads around. Otherwise it’s all the same problems really.
Tom, in your own post you talk about SAHMs (sorry - “housewives”). Seems a little odd that you then attribute all the negative treatment of SAHDs solely to women, and insist that SAHMs have no relevance to your point. I apologize for misreading your comments as referring to your own situation.
As for the guy in his 20s playing on the Xbox, I doubt that’s really a sign of Future Househusband of America skills; would you also think that a woman in her 20s devoted to clubbing, fashion and celebrity gossip is an “ideal future SAHM”? I sure wouldn’t.
I’ve heard plenty of young men say that they love the idea of being home all day while their wife brings home the bacon. Some of them are, and are indeed great SAHD material. Some of them turn out not to like the idea so much (and this is an area where that gender policing comes in).
I don’t think that what one does in one’s spare time when one doesn’t yet have children is any decent indication of what type of parent one should be. Should people be borrowing their friends’ kids in order to prove themselves?
bmmg, I was responding to Tom’s suggestion that the ‘unambitious’ fellow who devotes his time to besting Left 4 Dead is likely better househusband material than his classmate who actually studies.
Some of them turn out not to like the idea so much (and this is an area where that gender policing comes in).
Snerk , and some of them like it too much. Myth, I used to get annoyed with all those advice columns telling women to “lower their standards” when evaluating the contributions of the hubster to daily home maintenance. Now, not so much.The BH is now retired (temporarily, I’m sure) and is in the process of discovering bigger, better and more time-consuming ways to handle the minuscule requirements of the empty-nested homestead. Please take my word that it is hilarious.
Victoria — “I’ve never heard a woman talk about how important it is for her that the man she is with respects her.”
Well, come on over to my house. I do that. Or anyway, I’ve done it. I seem to be well-situated now with respect to respect.
ahunt, I utterly take your word for it. I find similar hilarity in the heavily-marketed version of outdoor grilling.