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Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)
Do you think feminism has been a net positive or net negative for relationships?
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Anonymous
No one wants your life. PP rocks!!! |
Anonymous
DP. They're right though. The data showing married women were unhappier than single women was a mistake. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/4/18650969/married-women-miserable-fake-paul-dolan-happiness |
Anonymous
The data cited is from yougov you halfwit. Are you unfamiliar with slate.com? Hardly a publication of anti-woke propaganda. |
Anonymous
Men were not left out of the program, they were impacted in different ways. |
Anonymous
And article in Slate arguing the opposite of the "point" you're trying to make? Well done... |
Anonymous
SAHPs do important work. Not only do they provide work that would otherwise need to be paid for, but a good SAHP can provide all sorts of other important things for children that is not traditionally paid labor (socialization, moral guidance, love). So bizarre that you'd consider SAHPs a net negative. But yes, agree that some support for SAHPs would be great. And to be clear, I'm not one, but I think society would be better off with more of them. |
Anonymous
DP. I am a social scientist whose research focuses on this area, namely the impact of marriage, gestation, childbirth, and fecundity on various measures of women's quality of life. The two studies you have presented are not remotely representative of what research shows in this area. Perhaps the tide is turning and I do hope that things are changing, but the overwhelming wealth of evidence across dozens of nations over multiple decades (even before the feminist revolution and in societies that have not had a feminist revolution) shows that marriage is corrosive to women's subjective happiness and has a marked negative impact on numerous objective measures of mental health, physical health, productivity, life expectancy, and longevity. Child bearing is actually positively correlated to increased life expectancy and longevity when teased apart from marriage (although it's not clear if this might be because healthier women are also more likely to be fertile, as opposed to fertility making women healthier), but child bearing has long been the single biggest predictor of poverty in old age for women. I have no horse in this race, so please don't attack me. It's worth noting that virtually all of this research was done by male researchers who actually wanted to prove that marriage and child bearing are best for women and whose funding invariably comes from governments and nonprofits that seek to promote marriage and childbearing. But the data has been unambiguous no matter how researchers have tinkered with variables. Researchers have continued finding that marriage and child bearing--especially marriage--have significant and persistent negative ramifications for women, even as men benefit tremendously when rates of marriage and child bearing are high. |
Anonymous
DP. If you're trying to engage with the research and data in an honest way, then I encourage you to actually look up the studies and not rely on pundits engaged in advocacy. |
Anonymous
Another person who isn't a SAHP but thinks we need to acknowledge the importance of the work they do. And respecting that importance is part of how we get men to participate more. The more I discuss the deep value of a lot of parenting work with my DH, the more willing he is to do it. But when he perceives it as being "women's work" or frivolous, he avoids it. So for instance, he will not dust or vacuum. He just won't. I cannot get him to do it. When I've asked him to vacuum because I'm injured and physically can't do it (and even in that situation, I have to ask him to do it) he will complain and avoid it. He just doesn't think it's important. He won't admit it, but I think he just views it as beneath him because it's something he's only ever seen women do. And in UMC circles, a lot of people only ever see working class immigrant women performing those tasks, and this leads to even further devaluing. However, he will do drop off and pick up at school, and in fact sometimes fights me for the chance to do it. Part of this is because he sees other UMC men doing it. Part of it is because I told him what a great time that is with the kids, to talk to them about their days -- it winds up being a big opportunity for parenting and offering guidance or support. That task has been okayed by the powers that be as "important" because enough high status men do it to make other men feel like it matters. Again, it's subsconscious -- my DH would never admit that this is part of what influences his desire to participate. But we need to apply the same attitude towards other aspects of parenting and caring for homes. Stop seeing vacuuming, organizing closets, or checking to see if kids' clothes fit and ordering new ones the next size up if they don't, as meaningless. They aren't. It's part of how a household functions. The more we as a society (including women) put down these tasks as unimportant and beneath us, the more men also internalize that message and *really* don't want to participate. So when we put down SAHMs (and likewise when we demean the work of nannies, childcare workers, early childhood education teachers, housecleaners, etc.), all we do is continue to demean *essential* work, which will lead to men shirking these duties. When a job becomes perceived as valuable, men volunteer to do it. It's like magic. |
Anonymous
Isn't this type of bias attributable to so much of social science research? |
Anonymous
I think you are giving yourself way too much influence here. Maybe he just thinks vacuuming so frequently is stupid and needless and it's not that deep. |
Anonymous
100% Until SAHP are fairly compensated, they are NOT a benefit to society, they are a liability. |
Anonymous
He will not vacuum at all. At one point I was laid up after surgery and the house had not been vacuumed in weeks. We had little kids and a dog, the floor was disgusting. I had to beg him to vacuum before he agreed and even then he put it off an extra day because he hates it so much. Same with dusting. Has literally never dusted. I showed him once how dust in the kitchen becomes sticky and greasy, to try and show him why wiping down cabinets at least occasionally is useful and actually saves you effort in the long run and can extend the life of your cabinets. Still won't do it. It's women's work. I know many men like this. They will cook and grocery shop because of men like Anthony Bourdain and Alton Brown who helped to code these activities as masculine or at least gender neutral. They'll play with their kids, do drop off and pick up, coach kid's sports -- all activities that have been coded as sufficiently masculine. With some coaxing they will also change diapers and feed babies, those activities have been more recently converted to more gender neutral thanks to the rise of paternity leave and more UMC men taking it. But they really struggle with cleaning and parenting activities still coded as female (somewhat arbitrarily). Organizing is still very female coded, probably more than ever because the rise of organizing as a business is completely female dominated. Anything having to do with kids clothes or shoes gets female coded (even buying shoes and clothes for boys, somehow, as though men do not wear clothes and couldn't possibly understand the concept of sizing? so baffling). PTA's and school-related activities continue to be heavily female-coded, I suspect because schools remain very female-dominated workplaces so men shy away from them. It might be changing some but not much. Meanwhile women generally don't have issues doing traditionally male-coded activities like yard work, doing handy work around the house, getting the car fixed, handling money, etc. They may sometimes need more guidance on these activities if they grew up in gendered households where they were never taught how to do them, but there isn't a reluctance to do these things because they fear violating gender norms. The reason why is that collectively people value male-coded activities and assume they are important, and women have been encouraged to aspire to men's activities for many decades now, by moving into the working world. But female-coded activities continue to be viewed as "lower" and even emasculating, and most men will avoid activities or behaviors that are perceived as feminine because society deems femininity as inferior to masculinity. This is not a me thing, this is a documented phenomenon. |
Anonymous
Ok, now I know you're just having a laugh. |
Anonymous
Doesn't everyone have certain chores they hate? I don't mind vacuuming but I hate folding laundry. Sometimes it's just not that deep is right. The husband probably does some other chore the PP hates that he doesn't. |