You hear a lot of people running around wringing their hands and talking about the 50% divorce rate. What’s little understood is that number is way out of date—due in large part to a lot of feminist cultural reforms, the divorce rate has been creeping down for a long time now. Now it’s at the lowest rate it’s been since the 70s.
The story of ever-increasing divorce is a powerful narrative. It is also wrong. In fact, the divorce rate has been falling continuously over the past quarter-century, and is now at its lowest level since 1970. While marriage rates are also declining, those marriages that do occur are increasingly more stable. For instance, marriages that began in the 1990s were more likely to celebrate a 10th anniversary than those that started in the 1980s, which, in turn, were also more likely to last than marriages that began back in the 1970s.
The mythology about feminism causing divorce goes like this: Marriage was fine as long as women knew their place. Then women’s liberation came in and suddenly wives started rebelling against their god-given roles, causing divorce left and right. The divorce rate has remained high because people—women especially—are more concerned with their own happiness rather than living in pre-ordained roles. Divorce will only go down if people set aside living for themselves and start living for institutions. (Why people should live for institutions, instead of institutions should exist for people is not explained.)
The reality: A flood of patriarchalism in the mid-century (the time that conservatives long for when they talk about “traditional” values) led to a situation where the age of marriage went down and number of children went up—two huge factors in setting up strain on marriages that can cause them to implode. Under political pressure from people desperate to get out of bad marriages (and the emerging women’s liberation movement), divorce laws were liberalized, creating an alarming bump in the divorce rate as people who’d been constrained for awhile got out.
Meanwhile, because of many factors, including feminism, people began minimizing the risk factors for divorce in their own lives. They married later in life. Liberalized contraception and abortion laws made it easier for people to marry for love and not out of necessity. Single motherhood became more socially acceptable, again giving reason for people to avoid making bad marriages in the first place. Women got more education—less education for women, the higher possibility of divorce. People began to reduce the number of children in a family to a more manageable size, reducing financial stress and just the sheer chaos and fighting at home. Because people believe marriage is for making them happy, not that they belong to marriage, they put more work into making a marriage that suits them instead of just getting married and trying to bend themselves to the institution.
Even that dreaded female promiscuity you hear so much about has helped lower the divorce rate. Like most things worth doing, romance takes practice. Few of us luck out right off the bat and have all the skills that it takes to pick the right person, much less get along with him. The conservative attitude towards marriage—that it’s best with no practice going in—makes no sense. It’s like saying that the best way to go to college is to avoid getting through regular school. Relationships are a learn by doing thing, a lot like driving. I’d also add a plug in here for the kind of promiscuity that scares people even more, the casual sex kind. I find that being monogamous is a lot less stifling if you’ve had an opportunity to play around in the past and get it out of your system. The idea that there’s value in a little adventure during youth has been considered true enough for men to create a hoary old cliche about wild oats—there’s no reason to think women would be any less curious or despair any less for the fun they didn’t have because they married too young.
The scholarship is mounting that demonstrates that far from breaking up families, feminism has managed to spare the subsequent generations from miseries that were far more certain in a prior era. Of course, I’m not so naive as to think that reactionaries will bend to evidence and modify their complaints about feminism—they’ll just blithely keep blaming feminists for problems feminism helps solve, damn the evidence—but I do hope that the mounting evidence leads people to see the truth and make better decisions for themselves accordingly.
116 Responses to “I burned my bra and saved my marriage”
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Yup…the results are in…the better educated and older women are at the time of their first marriage, the less the liklihood of divorce.
Whodathunk?
I’d like to point out that among people who never got married, the divorce rate stands at 0%.
The numbers don’t lie, people.
I’m sure any minute now we’ll be inundated by male posters telling us all about how our conclusions are wrong.
I can’t help but wonder why so many male posters hang out and basically troll feminist blogs like this one. What is the psychology behind it? Do they have to make sure we don’t get too “uppity” or “shrill”? Do they have to make sure to inform us that all of our conclusions about everything are off because they don’t fit some aberrant .1% experience they’ve had? Is the thought of women having a safe place to talk about their issues so threatening that they can’t let it exist unmolested?
Uh…yeah! Where do we get off thinking we really have a say in our lives? AGency? Girls don’t need no stinking agency!
If we don’t need to get married young (as a virgin) and stay for the kids, then marriage might become something that men have to earn instead of a birthright.
And that’s just fucked up. Men deserve the pussy because their MEN MEN MEN MEN.
And the pussy has no bizness thinkin’. Get into that kitchen and back me a pie!
Ugh. Pretending to be a man hurt my brain. That’s “Agency?” and “they’re”.
It’s just incredibly striking to me how no matter what’s being talked about they have to show up and somehow make it all about them (but what about the MENZ!?!).
Like women don’t have their perspective minimized enough as it is in everyday life. I wish any guy who couldn’t come here and be supportive and/or listen and keep their damn mouth shut would just…go away.
Hmmmm….
I dunno if we can expect much in the way of negative response from the guys.
If in fact, divorce rates are declining and marriages are happier and more stable today because women are waiting and are better educated, seems to me that the men figure largely in the success equation.
It is a win-win. Who can bitch about that?
But…but…if women actually get an education and learn to support themselves, then…then…they won’t be threatened with dire poverty if they divorce! And then…they won’t be able to guilt trip their husbands into staying with them! And they might even leave the marriage themselves! And what about the CHILDREN!!!
“The Totalled Woman” everyone, “The Totaled Woman.”
Also Caren, “bake” instead of “back”- but goodness knows, I’ve had my share of typos!
Speaking of baking pies, my husband of 15 years next month not only took care of his rather grouchy sick wife this weekend but baked a homemade apple pie for later on tonight. Think I’ll keep him forever…
Excellent synopsis, Amanda. Many times in reading it, I caught myself nodding along with your examples.
Yeah, sorry ahunt…that was more of a general comment and pretty much off-topic.
Seems like they manage to find their way into every thread and tell us wimmenz why we’re wrong about fill-in-the-blank. I just don’t understand their need to do it, I guess. It’s also annoying and disheartening to have to deal with them.
For some reason clicking through to comments turns on a mishmash of music and voices. I suspect it has to do with the misucplustv ad. Since it also slows my browser to a crawl (Firefox), it’s deeply annoying to say the least. I understand the need to have ads for revenue, but this is the kind of thing that drives readers away. I’ll gladly chip in money if it’s what’s needed to get rid of this obnoxious feature.
I’d say many men are clued into this. Even some men seeking to make excuses for some rapists are on a different place on the scale from those who deny that happier women=happier marriages. The people who are resisting the facts are those who genuine, anti-choice, Republican-voting conservatives, who have a capitalist self-interest in continuing to exploit women for free labor. I think everyone else is on board with two incomes, later marriage, etc.
And Lo! on posting my comment, both the irritating sound and the musicplustv ad are gone. Praise the Great Cat!
togolosh, if you use firefox, just get adblock. never deal w/ ads again.
“The people who are resisting the facts are those who genuine, anti-choice, Republican-voting conservatives, who have a capitalist self-interest in continuing to exploit women for free labor.”
Free labor? You have room, board, transportation, loads of clothes and jewelry, vacations, kids to pay for, medical, along with all the outdoor work and auto maintenace that you still have to do anyway.
It would be far cheaper just to hire a few servants than it would be to have a wife with her “free labor.” If you’re lucky you get meals and laundry. It’s a terrible financial deal for the man.
I’m sure any minute now we’ll be inundated by male posters telling us all about how our conclusions are wrong.
I won’t be one of them. Actually, I’ll say that my experience mirrors the data–married at 20, and as a virgin, divorced by 26, right about the time I left the fundamentalist church I’d been raised in and my ex-wife left the closet. I’m now nearly 39, have been in a non-married monogamous relationship for 7 years, and learned a lot about myself and relationships in the 6 years between my divorce and meeting Amy. Practice a while, learn from your fuckups–and I made more than my share, some of which I’m still working off the karmic boot-in-the-ass for–and you just might wind up in a solid relationship.
Actually, Seroj, some economist totalled up the value of the services that an average housewife provided yearly and discovered it would cost something like $150,000 if it were all contracted out. You’ve ignored childcare, cleaning, nursing care (who do you think takes care of the husband when he gets sick?), secretarial, time management, food planning and purchasing, and overall household management. Not to mention chauffeuring service> And I’ve just scratched the surface.
If you really think that running a household is simply a few meals and laundry, I have to conclude:
a) you’re very young and/or a single male, living like a slob
b) you have no children
c) someone else is still picking up after you
d) you’re never taken care of babies or small children, have you?
Not to worry, Sheesh…rural, married at 18, and these days, we seem to like each other in ways we did not…oh so long ago.
But I do not recommend it. Both of my DILs are selfstarters who got their business in order before hitchin’ up with our boys.
And yes, there is indeed a tendency towards masculine panic, when women dare to put their personal wellbeing ahead of the entire fucking world, but somehow, the notion of happy women in marriage resonates with the average guy…cuz the benefits to himself and community are so obvious.
It would be hilarious if there were some guy bitching.
I mean…what the hell?
Oh shit…spoke too soon.
Free labor? You have room, board, transportation, loads of clothes and jewelry, vacations, kids to pay for, medical, along with all the outdoor work and auto maintenace that you still have to do anyway.
I like how “loads of clothes and jewelry” (that old chestnut) and “kids to pay for” (like that’s burden solely placed upon husbands by wives) get to be on this list.
Seroj, your list is out of date. Read up on the stats - “entrepreneurial” moms and wives are IN! That means that wives and mothers get to join the workforce and pay their share of vacations, house bills, and personal items… and they also get to cover childcare, domestic duties, sexual services, and so forth.
Anyway, the details are negligible - they change from marriage to marriage. But if you enter a union with the understanding that one member will be the financial support and the other member will provide the labor (intentional pun on birth, there) and no employment contract is provided to protect the interests of either party, what is that other than exploitation?
Lighten up, tsz, I was kidding, of course.
But the $150,000 is bogus, because almost nobody could afford to “hire” a wife. And, those who could afford a spare $150k/year could also afford a nanny and a maid, thus making their wife less valuable.
Great news. Too bad that it will take a few years for the mainstream to catch on. If they ever do. This kind of information makes it difficult to scare people into voting Republican, after all.
Well, I thought I was off-topic earlier, but seroj proves in less than 20 posts that I was right on target…
Why? Why the fuck do they have to come do it? On every single fucking thread?
Careful Seroj…you had me going. Bad, bad!
Seriously, I do believe that the decline in overall marriage rates reflects the greater choices women enjoy today. And this is not about “unmarriagability”…but rather… profound and enduring commitments to “other stuff.”
The never-married women my age who grace my life are invariably accomplished, and yes, usually involved in very longterm relationships…but their passions lie outside of the familial and domestic…and the world is a better place because they have chosen their passions.
The generally conservative “freakout” over the failure of gifted women to choose traditional routes invariably comes down to “if the best and brightest women take a pass…the best and the brightest will not be passed on.”
No shit. I’ve listened to this ancient George Gilder POV for years, and whenever I ask: “what’s in it for gifted women?” the response is dead silence. No one can envision a world where women can have both their “passions” and traditional family life.
So I lift my coffee cup to the women who pursue their heart’s callings. The world will survive and maybe change because of them.
Because they’re afraid. Because they know that they are an oh-so-slowly dying breed, and much like the religious right, they talk louder to seem like there are more of them than there are. Because they have to change and why should they have to change, they’re not bad guys, they want to do right, but right keeps chaaaaanging, and the change keeps suggesting that they, yes, red-blooded, p*ssy-loving American males, might have some issues that the darned feminists were right about.
Or it could be that like conservatism, for some, patriarchy can never fail. It can only be failed. Can’t figure out how patriarchy is being failed by lowered divorce rates that have a fairly strong correlation to increased agency for women, but I’m sure someone will have a reason. Oh yes.
That rape thread is just a clusterfuck. Damn. I’ve been puttering around putting my two cents in there and I finally did–in short, I have no idea how the common rape situations of an unwilling and/or unable “partner” can possibly be any sort of a turn-on. In fact, for me it’s a deal killer. I just don’t get it. (And for those who don’t know, yup. I’m a man.)
On this, I’ve been saying for that the feminist movement comes not to destroy marriage/”families” but to save them. At the same time, it really needs to be recognized that the greatest threat to marriage/”families” comes from the Religious Right.
It seems obvious that there’s a growing number of divorces caused by economic factors, which are getting worse and worse. So is this data at odds? Not at all. Actually, it just means that feminist ideals are doing a REALLY GOOD JOB to help create stable, satisfying (for both parties) couplings.
Free labor? You have room, board, transportation, loads of clothes and jewelry, vacations, kids to pay for, medical, along with all the outdoor work and auto maintenace that you still have to do anyway.
Even if Seroj were right, I still could not possibly hope for this deal. A guy who can fix my car AND buy me loads of clothes and jewelry and vacations? We should all be so lucky.
In real life, shit costs money, and if the woman is out there earning it or at home trying to figure out how to save it, either way it’s only the precious fortunate few who get the free ride, and let me pause for a second to shed a tear for their affluent husbands.
I do know a guy who had servants growing up. He was an Indian who grew up in Africa, where a servant cost at most $2 a day. Here, we’re talking $6.50 an hour for a woman who will never, ever do your baseboards. It’s not a great deal.
Free labor? You have room, board, transportation, loads of clothes and jewelry, vacations, kids to pay for, medical, along with all the outdoor work and auto maintenace that you still have to do anyway.
Okay, unbelievably cheap, underpaid labor. If you think being a housewife is such a great deal, put up or shut up. Quit your job and live as someone’s maid/nanny without any salary of your own. Hurry up! Go! Go! Time’s a-wasting. There’s plenty of overworked women out there who are happy to give you a place to sleep and pay for your food if you’ll take all their housework duties off their hands. Why waste time bickering on the internet and get to work!
tzs,
To be fair, “some economist” was really lawyers and insurers. The insurance industry was trying to sell more life insurance. They figured out if they tallied up the economic worth of replacing a housewife, they’d get her and her husband on board to buy life insurance on her.
Lawyers have used the calculation, too, during divorces and wrongful death suits.
As usual, translating real life into dollars doesn’t really work.
Amanda,
My husband and I are coming up on two years in a few weeks. I like to think we have a feminist marriage since we’re not confined by gender roles or restrictive institutions. We live our combined life as we choose. And that seems to work out pretty well.
Sheesh,
FWIW, I am one of the men who hangs out at Pandagon but not for “trolling” purposes. I like to hang out here sometimes because:
A. The writing is excellent.
B. The topics are thought provoking.
C. I learn things reading the posts and comments that I may not have known.
D. Although I’m a straight WM, I can also offer some perspectives of age and experiences on some of the topics,
E. It’s fun.
Can’t figure out how patriarchy is being failed by lowered divorce rates that have a fairly strong correlation to increased agency for women, but I’m sure someone will have a reason. Oh yes.
Cuz dammit…the guys have to put out…in ways that are beneath them…as in daily unimportant and valueless crap…kidlet care and picking up after themselves, and cooking indoors. You know…the shit labor.
Puh-leeze. It is a dead horse, and folks need to stop beating the poor thing.
It seems like Ireland has gone through this whole cycle in only a decade since civil divorce was legalized. At last check the divorce rate is finally down, with rates near the bottom of other EU countries. Meanwhile, education access and the Celtic Tiger economy has led to later marriages and more careers for women.
Of course the doomsayers of society pitch this as if the society is collapsing because the Catholic church LOST the battle to keep divorce illegal.
along with all the outdoor work and auto maintenace that you still have to do anyway.
Just don’t let me near this loser’s car … something might get, um, broken?
But the $150,000 is bogus, because almost nobody could afford to “hire” a wife.
That would be the point, genius. Anybody can afford $150,000 dollars worth of labor when society is browbeating women into giving it to you for free.
Jesus, talk about missing the point.
Actually, Chet, I don’t think I missed the point. I just don’t think the $150k number makes much sense. If a man earns $30k/year and provides for a wife and two children, it’s hard to see how the wife “earns” $150k a year for splitting duties with him.
The obvious point is that a stay at home mother earns about half of whatever her husband brings home. If he’s poor, then so is she. If he’s rich then so is she.
It’s more an economics issue than a feminist issue.
Well no…because the unpaid, crucial labor of women is a serious economic AND feminist issue.
How about this compromise — the Value of the labor is a feminist issue, but how much Money you get for it is a function of how much money the working spouse earns?
*watches in bemusement as people repeatedly try to point out the point of the thread to seroj while he engages in the traditional male troll tactic of derailing the thread and causing disturbance in what should be a feminist safe space by quibbling over a tangentially related component of it*
Every…single…fucking…thread…
If a man earns $30k/year and provides for a wife and two children, it’s hard to see how the wife “earns” $150k a year for splitting duties with him.
She doesn’t earn it, that’s the point. She doesn’t earn anything. She does it for free. Is browbeaten into doing so.
On the other hand, if anybody but a wife was being paid to perform that same labor at average market salaries, it would come to $150,000.
Do you get it yet? That’s not what women earn by being wives. That’s what the market values their labor at, in any context except marriage.
Seriously what’s complicated about this for you? How did you get the hilariously stupid idea that housewives were making $150,000 a year just being wives?
How ’bout this, Seroj…women cease doing the unpaid labor altogether…
…and watch how fast folks get a clue.
“How ’bout this, Seroj…women cease doing the unpaid labor altogether…”
How would this work, ahunt, assuming two people are married and have children together?
Assuming one spouse stays home with the children, what is your ideal solution?
Oh, there will be men who bitch about how feminists do marriage. This is because they’re the modern day equivalent of Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice and they feel that women having agency robs them of the hot wife they’re entitled to. It’s just so horribly unfair that men have to bathe and be interesting rather than having women clamoring to wed them because our other option is poverty. And this is why there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Mr. Collins was in Emma, not Pride and Prejudice.
Um, wrong. Mr. Collins is the cousin of Elizabeth, who wants to marry her. He ends up marrying her friend Charlotte instead. Emma marries Mr. Knightly, and flirts with Mr. Frank Churchill and Mr. Elton.
Mr. Collins was in Emma, not Pride and Prejudice.
No, Mr. Collins is in Pride and Prejudice. In the most recent film version he was played by Tom Hollander.
How is it that you manage to be so completely wrong about everything, Seroj? Who the fuck is this guy?
Oh, that’s right. I confused Mr. Elton and Mr. Collins. Similar roles, no?
I guess I should have seen the movie like Chet…
No, dear, he was not. Mr. Elliott is from Emma, but Mr. Collins is from P&P. Look it up.
Assuming one spouse stays home with the children, what is your ideal solution?
Nooooo…women have decided they’re not going to do that anymore.
What now?
“Nooooo…women have decided they’re not going to do that anymore. What now? ”
That’s what I’m asking. What now?
That’s what I’m asking. What now?
You’re a fucking moron. No, seriously. I know a lot of the time people’s friends are too polite to tell you what you need to hear, so let me be the stranger who lets you in on the truth. You’re too goddamn dumb to pour piss from a boot, with directions on the heel.
What now is men pick up 50% of the unpaid labor at home (including shit work). That is what feminists are suggesting, but the menz (or at least the ones who want to maintain patriarchy) do not seem to like that idea.
Seroj ignored my point. Does that mean I’m troll proof? : D
but the menz (or at least the ones who want to maintain patriarchy)
I’m fine with “teh menz” being understood to refer to the guys who whine in order to maintain patriarchy.
It probably depends largely on what generation you come from, Nothip. I’m guessing that most women under 40 don’t live as if it were 1940.
I think you’d find little if any disagreement with your demand from most men these days. In my case, I’m lucky to get away with only 50%…
“if you enter a union with the understanding that one member will be the financial support and the other member will provide the labor (intentional pun on birth, there) and no employment contract is provided to protect the interests of either party, what is that other than exploitation? ”
I can think of a few things that do protect the interests of either party: the right to divorce, joint custody, and community property.
seroj, you’re somewhat right.
My mother was quite demoralized to discover the state of divorce law where she is. No-fault divorce requires the agreement of both parties (and Dad is not likely to agree). Otherwise, you prove fault. If you don’t proove fault to the liking of the judge, you’ll still get your divorce, but your marital property is divvied up by the judge, usually in favor of the party not instigating the divorce.
Which would translate to my mother likely walking off from a 52 year marriage with little-to-nothing. She’s decided to stay instead, despite having loathed the man for several decades now. Doesn’t seem like there’s much protecting her interest.
Unfortunately, the statistics say otherwise. Many men refuse to do housework or childcare to a meaningful level.
http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2007/03/14/getting-more-return-on-your-wifely-investment/#comments
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/courses/knowbody/f04/web2/sansell.html
Tapetum, every state has its own divorce laws. Where I live there is only no-fault divorce, and its a pretty standard deal: 50-50 property split, mother usually gets the kids under joint custody, father pays child support.
I’m down with this post (I learned a new thing!), apart from reservations about the bit about the “old cliche about wild oats”. From the armchair, I think this cliche is kinda BS in the case of men, and so I’m equally suspicious about its generalization to the case of women.
If there’s empirical evidence of a causal connection between premarital promiscuity and marital success, I’ll yield to that. But first I’d like to see it.
At the very least, I don’t think I could take seriously anyone who said they felt “despair” because they’d missed a chance to sow them oats.
ooh, look! A derailment!
This thread sure turned into Seroj’s Wankterpiece Theatre awful quick.
seroj - September 30, 2007 at 11:01 pm
“I guess I should have seen the movie like Chet…”
Or you could have read the books. Or maybe asked someone to read them to you.
I’m not such a big fan of that study that shows that stay-at-home-parents should earn huge quantities of money. I think it could be done more realistically. It’s heavily weighted by “CEO” being one of the job descriptions. If, instead of using the average salary of a CEO, they used the average salary of a CEO with less than five employees, they’d get closer to a true value and our arguments would carry more weight due to being more realistic.
If my husband were to die, I would have to replace him with daycare and a maid. And my life would get suckier, and I’d have to do a little more housework myself. But it wouldn’t cost me $150000.
Wow, seroj sure wound, in the watch or crank sense, you guys up.
Surely this is part of the POINT of being a troll: making you waste your energies on his ilk, when you could be doing something more productive. Isn’t it something like “constant pressure, constantly applied” (Lenin?), or in USArmy speak “degrade, deny, or destroy”? Seroj would be in the ‘degrade’ portion of that doctrine.
It’s not like you’re going to educate him. The one benefit you might get is practicing your reflexes, similar to using a batting cage.
++++
As to the actual monetary outlay, I think Dr. Confused has it best.
At the risk of being called a concern troll… well before Seroj showed up people were complaining about the troll to come.
Yes, do like the Icelandic women and strike.
If my husband were to die, I would have to replace him with daycare and a maid. And my life would get suckier, and I’d have to do a little more housework myself. But it wouldn’t cost me $150000.
Presumably because you’d ask the maid to multi-task for a single salary–not unreasonable–and that’s part of the problem with the example provided time and time again. It seems to presume paying various people for individual jobs instead of paying one person to do multiple jobs.
All of which is beside the point.
This is such a cool post. I’ve revised my opinion over the years from believing that feminism was against the family (and only said it was pro-woman), to believing feminism was pro-woman (but sometimes at the expense of the family), to now believing that because feminism is pro-woman, it is pro-family. In other words, because some of the people involved in families are women, if you improve the lives of women, you will improve the overall state of the family.
This only works if you don’t believe that men and women (or even parents and children, for that matter) are necessarily locked in a cosmic struggle for dominance such that if one party wins, the other one loses. But since I don’t like that adversarial model anyway, this post makes perfect sense to me–much like the post a while back about how sex should be enthusiastically participated in by both parties, and not just pursued by one party and grudgingly consented to by the other. So I am not at all surprised to hear that divorce rates are going down as women are getting more freedom in life.
Some days this blog makes me angry at the state of the world; other days, like today, it gives me hope. Rock on, equality!
(It also gave me an excuse to discuss feminism non-confrontationally with my mother. Thank you, Amanda. *grin*)
Actually, Chet, I don’t think I missed the point. I just don’t think the $150k number makes much sense. If a man earns $30k/year and provides for a wife and two children, it’s hard to see how the wife “earns” $150k a year for splitting duties with him.
Try locating and reading this or this - a university might have a copy, and Waring’s a pioneer on the topic. Also quite entertaining in person.
I think your last sentence doesn’t quite cover the problem. It’s not just that conservatives are happy to ignore or deny evidence (although they are). It’s that even if they accepted the evidence as true, they still wouldn’t be willing to give up their patriarchy because they think the things you described (female promiscuity, restricting numbers of children, later marriage, choosing for love, etc.) are inherent evils, and it doesn’t actually matter whether they increase happiness and wellbeing in the real world or not, because God says they’re bad, and if God ordains that you be miserable, then misery is a virtue.
Truely tragic.
That is a mostly accurate statement, although religious rarely sell the misery or suffering angle anymore. The current party line is more like God’s will MUST make you happy, and damn the facts to the contrary.
Instead of starting with the facts and coming to a conclusion based on the facts, religious conservatives start with the conclusion and find or make up facts to fit the conclusion.
If the Bible (or the Vatican in the case of Catholic conservatives) says something, then it MUST be true. For example, the Bible says promiscuity is wrong, therefore, promiscuity must be making people miserable. The Bible, as understood by many conservatives, has an order for the family where the wife submits to the husband, therefore this order MUST make for happy marriages and any other arraignment will lead to misery divorce.
This world view tells people that the Bible will make you happy, and if you are following it and are not happy, then there is something wrong with YOU.
It’s enough to make one mentally ill.
Seroj, let me give you some perspective from an actual stay-at-home mom. (Well, mostly — I’m also an adjunct faculty member art a local university.)
If I dropped dead tomorrow, my husband would have to hire:
1 - an accountant — I do the bills and budget, including the taxes yearly
2 - a nanny for our three kids — this includes all transport and scheduling of extracurriculars
3 - a maid — to cover laundry and cleaning
4 - a chef — to cover all shopping, meal planning and meal prep
5 - a social secretary — to keep track of the calendar and all social obligations and family events, including purchasing gifts, etc.
He covers auto maintenance, outdoor maintenance and most of the heavy lifting, in addition to remodeling chores in the house. He works full tome and goes to grad school at night (and thank fucking GOD he graduates this year, and can start helping with all of the above.)
What’s all of the above worth, if I were to tender my services on the free market? I’d argue quite a bit. right now I get room, board and health bennies. No jewelry except my wedding ring, no fancy clothes (I get to shop at Target), and no vacations.
This world view tells people that the Bible will make you happy, and if you are following it and are not happy, then there is something wrong with YOU.
It’s the old faith healer schtick, with happiness instead of a cure as the end claim. And yet people still fall for it all the time. Ever get the feeling that it’s only been because of blind luck that we’ve managed to survive this long as a species?
“It seems to presume paying various people for individual jobs instead of paying one person to do multiple jobs.”
Except that you’d still be asking the one person to do multiple jobs while being on-call 24/7/365. Generally if you want an employee to be available at any hour, any day of the week, regardless of previous plans, you need to pay them substantially more than you otherwise would.
Paying a full-time maid extra to do some light childcare is going to be cheaper than hiring a full-time maid and a full-time nanny. Paying the maid-nanny to be available at all hours for either role in the same way that a housewife is gets expensive but quick.
I keep wondering how much of the supposed “increase” in the US GDP from 1970 to, say, the mid-90s was due to the fact that “invisible” (at least to economic statistics) labor was getting outsourced from the home to the outside economy, showing up as an apparent increase. Think of the shift from people eating in (where mom cooks meals from scratch) to restauranting and junk food, for example.
As as to whether the inclusion of “CEO” in the equivalency pricing skews things drastically or not, I think that’s a bit of a moot point. (Although considering how little a lot of CEOs and middle managers actually do sometimes one wonders at the justification for *their* salaries. JAL discovered it could slash costs dramatically by getting rid of a layer of middle managers and having the secretaries handle the tasks instead–which they did just fine.)
The fact is, the standard SAHM (or working) housewife is providing a heck of a lot of uncompensated-for-labor into the economic system. Supposedly she’s doing it “for love” and we’re supposed to get all sentimental about this. There still in my opinion is a large smell of exploitation about this–too many women end up doing the “care-taker” tasks because “it’s expected of them” and they don’t dare say no because of financial insecurity and dependence on the breadwinner.
Unless that person is doing “women’s work!”
I was an In-Home Supportive Services care provider for a severely disabled person (the “Natasha” I mention from time to time) from early 1989 until she died in late ‘04. IHSS, by the way, got its start as a California program in the 1960s. People were staying home to take care of disabled people they cared about, therefore unable to hold down full-time or even part-time jobs, therefore they were quickly exhausting what savings they or the person they cared for might have had, and then perforce applying for welfare. At some point a confluence of perplexed bureacrats, early wave disability rights advocates, and legislative politicians recognized that it made sense for the state to pay these care providers some kind of wage for that work, and created a program of recipient-controlled personal service that was unique in this country for decades, at state/county expense with no Federal support for much of that time.
So how much did IHSS workers like me get paid? Well, Natasha was at the maximum level of the benefit, 283 hours a month of assessed need. And until the early 2000s, we got paid minimum wage for those hours. But in fact, especially in the latter half of the time I spent with her, I was on call 24/7. I would never have done it if it were an impersonal employee-boss relationship. But the fact that I was credited with working a 66-hour workweek made it possible for us to survive. For a couple years there I was actually paid a whopping 9.50 an hour and in theory I could have had medical benefits, if I could afford my share of the cost and jump through all the necessary bureaucratic hoops, which I never managed to do. (Schwarzenneger based his entire initial cost-cutting strategy on trying to slash disability services, including a plan to roll IHSS wages back to minimum and eliminate benefits completely as well as drive certain recipients off the programs entirely–but disabled people fought back.)
When we try to estimate what the market would pay for what a housewife does, we should bear in mind that the actual market prices currently prevailing for those services are surely depressed considerably by the fact that they compete with free wife labor. If it were a market unaffected by the presumption that certain people (women, stereotypically, though the IHSS law in its bureaucratic majesty enforced a miserly equality, paying a man taking care of a woman the same as a woman taking care of a man–but guess which pair is far more common in the program, plus of course women taking care of other women…) will do certain work cheap or free. A married disabled person could pay their spouse under IHSS–but the hours would have a big chunk deducted, on the theory that a spouse owes certain categories of care free. The hours would be slashed regardless of who actually got paid for the work.(Spouses, and families with minor disabled children, where the parents or older siblings were the care providers, were the categories of IHSS recipients Teh Governator tried to have expelled from the program completely, on the theory they should do it all for free, never mind that these kinds of situations were the very reason the program had been invented in the first place!)
Not all care providers would be expected to be on call 24/7 of course, but the only way to spread the burden would be to spread the hours and hence money among many care providers.
It’s clear that seroj is basically just an MRA who wants to make it clear to women that you can’t win. Be a housewife, you’re a leech (though you’re providing for FREE services that would cost more than a man could afford if he paid a FAIR WAGE for them, not that capitalizing the words will help seroj see what he refuses to see), but of course, get a job and make your own way and not be dependent on a man and you’re probably just a castrating bitch.
seroj, take a hint: this article is about more than your resentments at your wife you’ve set up in a no-win situation.
In the thread about rape, a lot of men were confused or pretending to be confused about what misogyny feels like. I read a book recently about abusers and it’s interesting how misogynists justify themselves to themselves. They don’t hate women, in their minds. Just the one they got is ‘defective”, probably because he gave her a standard to live up to that’s absolutely untenable, such as the leech vs. castrating bitch one. (Or from the video earlier, how dare she not know that asking him what he wanted for lunch right now was an unforgiveable sin!) Rapists aren’t thinking, “I hate all women,” but they have concocted a reason this particular bitch deserves to be punished. That’s what misogyny looks like.
Hell, I’d say casual sex can be good at any age, and isn’t necessarily something one needs to get out of one’s system by a certain point, though a relationship does change things.
Mr. Collins was in Emma, not Pride and Prejudice.
Okay, so you’re like wrong about everything.
The original post was about divorce, I know, but it has always struck me as equally blatantly obvious that women dying in childbirth sort of disrupts the family, too, especially if there are already a passel o’ kids around.
Recognizing that feminism = support for contraception = the ability to space children (and/or wait to start having them) = having a live mother for the children be a far more realistic possibility goes right along as yet another reason why feminism helps the modern family. The counter - marry young, no contraception, pump ‘em out as fast as God puts them there - is hardly anything resembling family values even if you buy into the BS that the only valid reason for marriage is making babies.
True, Linn, but in the context of marriages people want to last that are generally monogamous, you know.
Peter, if you look at some of the quiverfull families, it’s clear that the father’s back-up plan for if/when his wife’s body gives out in middle age from so much childbirth is to route the oldest girls into the role. Hell, most of them are already Junior Mothers to their siblings.
@ Mark Foxwell:
I know a family where the mother gets paid by the state (WI) to take care of her disabled son. When he turned 18 they had the option of putting him in a home for disabled people (presumably paid for by the state?) or getting paid to take care of him. I don’t know if they were getting paid when he was a minor or not.
But it seems like such a system could easily be translated into paying parents who stay home to take care of their young children.
I dunno if this is “off-topic” or not or whatever, but one thing to keep in mind when talking about the comparative “value” of labor is that the values you’re seeing are not at all accurate. The value is determined by the lowest price the buyer can get for it…not by the actual value-add of the labor.
Let’s just take for example child-care. Child-care, is near priceless. In a full-employment economy*, where the least “value-add” jobs are eliminated as they can not be afforded, Child-care for example would NOT be one of the first jobs to go. It would be REALLY far down the list. It’s not something you can replace with a robot, and you either have care for your kids, do it yourself or they die. Those are the options. Kinda stark isn’t it.
150k+ a year sounds about right when you take this into account.
*The problem is that a lot of assumptions are made about the labor economy (Better education resulting in better jobs resulting in better wages) only work in an economy where full-employment is hit from time to time. When this happens, wages start to go up of course, and the first jobs to be “eliminated” because you can’t hire someone at the wage less or equal to their “value-add”. Thusly the less truly valuable jobs either go to other countries, or eliminated in some manner.
Avoiding full-employment economies, if you ask me, is one of the most insidious weapons the patriarchy has. Maybe I’m wrong on that and feminist theory has nothing to do with this.
But I doubt it.
Hasn’t Hugo Chavez begun paying SAHM a living wage? Hmmm - more research for me.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:pg3CV4oTDDEJ:www.tidesfoundation.org/fileadmin/pdfs/GlobalChangeResource_1.pdf+Hugo+Chavez+payment+mom&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us&client=firefox-a
A link (but I have not evaluated my source well yet)
Anyone else got anything?
On topic: I would NEVER have married under the old system (forced births and unpaid labor). In fact, as an adolescent, young adult I was pretty sure I’d never marry anyway, but I’m many years into a great marriage.
Of course, choice for all parties instead of force or fear for half of the persons in marriages is better.
Just one male perspective that I haven’t seen in the comments, but more liberal divorce and reproductive laws also provided a way out for those of the penile persuasion who were also trapped in marriages. Remember that the stereotypical “had to get married because she got pregnant” woman was marrying a young man who, also stereotypically, was being forced into it as well.
Note that the “victim” of the shotgun wedding is traditionally the groom, with the bride’s family (and sometimes his) wielding the shotgun. That and the socially demanded sense of responsibility (because the only way to be a legitimate father was to marry, even if neither party was interested in it) put a lot of men, perhaps too immature for it at the time, into marriages they didn’t want and thus grew to hate because they couldn’t get out.
One other item of interest is that quite often when an acrimonious divorce happens the default assumption is that it’s the man’s fault. He’s a jerk, or a cheater, or whatever. It was the case in my brother’s marriage where I, and everyone else in my family, assumed right away it was his fault. Later, inevitably, we learned that it took two to tango badly and she had contributed to the breakup as well. My feeling now is that he was too immature for a long-lasting relationship, while she expected too much. It didn’t help that they never had the opportunity to actually live together before the marriage, thus some quirks tended to become a rude surprise.
That said, his second marriage (just a few months ago) shows the value of waiting. Not only did he live with her, they had two kids before deciding to finally tie the knot. Not only is he older, but he’s shown the responsibility in being a good father that gives me (and likely her) confidence he has the responsibility to handle marriage.
Well, Amanda, I agree that that’s worth keeping in mind.
I wonder what the stats are for longevity of “first serious relationship” as opposed to marriage. Quite possibly not changed that much — most people simply don’t marry the first person they get really serious about any more. But the resulting change in social expectations is a huge boon.
I remember once telling my boyfriend that, in the highly unlikely event that we married and I became a SAHW/SAHM, I would ask that in one way or another, he pay me a salary. It wouldn’t have to be made formal for tax purposes or whatever, but I would want personal control over half the household income, for savings and investments with my name on them.
He kinda squicked out when I said the words “pay me a salary.” Yet he agrees that’s the general shape that he’d want finances to take if we married, that money would be split equally, even if that meant one of us was subsidizing the other.
I don’t want to be “taken care of.” I love and trust my boyfriend, but I don’t trust anyone enough to let them have sole control over all my finances.
And that’s yet another feminist reform that would make a marriage stronger. Stress and arguments about money are hell on a relationship, and if I had to trust my husband to administer all of my financial and property affairs because I wasn’t allowed to own anything in my own name, that might just break the back of a marriage.
I have decided that the risks weren’t worth it, for boinking /men/ who doesn’t at least have the base minimum necessary, for being good in marriage and fatherhood. The 5% failure rate of oral conceptive is too high, and men can screw up condom usage, but not holding onto the base if it first when pulling out, for example.
I have also decided that it is also risky, to go into marriage, and/or parenthood, with someone I haven’t sleep with before, because sexual intimacy is a form of communication where one reveals how one is through behaviour. Is he selfish in bed? Is he bossy in bed? Does he just lie there?
In other words, I have decided, that sex with decent people is the way to go, that way, if an accident happens, it wouldn’t be DOOM…and having a relationship with people first, step by step, is better than the head plunge into white weddings.
“Collect the moments one by one, I guess that’s how the future’s done…” - Feist, “Mushaboom”
…and of course, always talk about intentions at the beginning, and all the way through when there is change. Relationships develop, and SOME friends with benefits do become devoted lovers later on, but never go into it expecting that, just prepare to deal with the possibility of it.
On the related side of things, guarding the pussygate won’t change how a man thinks about you, thinks about women, if he respects you, he’s not going to stop, if he did stop, he never respected you as his equal in the first place. So aim to avoid wasting time with the jerks. It’s part of a long term strategy of drying them out, if they can’t have children, they can’t pass it on, and every woman that rejects them, they get less practice out of relationships.
Snowe, sorry but Mr. Elliot is in Persuasion. Mr. Collins is in Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Elton is in Emma. Actually, they make an interesting comparison as players in the marriage market. Mr. Elliot has enough money and hope of future social prestige to consider marrying his cousin, Anne, whose father has so depleted the family resources by overspending they have to go live in Bath in an apartment and rent their estate to (shudder) a Naval officer. He is also personally charming and handsome, and he, along with most others, believes his older and impoverished cousin will JUMP at the chance to marry him. Mr. Collins (rightly) believes that his modest but comfortable situation as a minister will attract a woman of good family who has no other meanas of putting groceries on the table even though he is a complete ass. Mr. Elton hopes to increase his social class through marriage, but is forced to settle for someone with a few bucks but less prestige than the woman he originally courts, Emma. The Jane Austen heroines are heriones in part because they beat this incredibly unfair system where they can do NOTHING as gentlewomen to increase their marriageability from a financial standpoint. If the person they love has little money, they are SOL and the novels depict a lot of bad marriages, though Miss Austin is no dewy eyed idealist when it comes to the financial aspects of marriage either. She knew that lack of finances and large families put a huge strain on women, and a worse strain on women who were raised in better circumstances than those they eventually had to deal with as wives. Nor does she utterly condemn every marriage of convenience that comes her way. Society is imperfect, and those who make the best of it in an Austen novel are staying as true as they can to their hearts and pocketbooks (see e.g. her comment on the eventual marriage of Elinor when Edward finally got a little more money - a second living I think from a benefactor and also on the marriage of Fanny Price’s mother). Anyway, modern men who want to limit financial opportunities for women often do seem a lot like Mr. Collins to an Austen reader, because he was a traditionalist and certainly did not rate Charlotte Lucas. However, as we applaud for Anne and Elizabeth, let us say a prayer for Lydia, Col. Benwick’s cousin and her daughter, Mrs. Price, Maria Bertram, Mrs. Clay, and the many others who did not fare so well — in fact who were crushed by the system which permanently punished bad marital choices (even when coerced by male relatives) and the expression of female passion outside of duly sactified matrimony.
Re: Salary
In Japan, I don’t know if they do this anymore, but girls actually take ‘house economics’ class. Their husbands turn their entire salary over to them, and then the wives give them an allowance….
….BUT; the wife is managing the money, when she gets it, but her husband can still chose to withheld her paid from her…and in the case of my parents (Chinese), my mother was averse to spending money on herself, since it was her ‘boss’ my father’s money.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, when my mother explain that there is no disadvantage to being a housewife, and then justify how my father deserve some more advantage for being the breadwinner. Since I was 13, I have decided that I rather kill (run off and join a renegade army or form my own revolution), then to end up in a spot like her.
I would like a husband, but he must respect me and do his share, if not, I might as well get together with a woman who also want children, especially since I’m attracted to women as well. Though I’m /inclined/ towards the former especially since there is less hoopla to jump through in regards to children. I figured though, that if I marry a woman, I can carry the fetus with her egg, and she can carry the fetus with my egg. (…and we’ll both donate to fund single mothers overseas so they don’t have to give their babies up to orphanages)
Actually, the really unfair thing about Austen’s world is not just that you can’t increase your marrigability, but that you have to worry about it at all in connction with your ability to, you know, eat.
How embarassing. I meant Mr. Elton!
Keith, did you really just suggest that the men in shot gun marriages have it worse? Worse than, say, the women, who have all the problems he has, plus being pregnant and the attendant future?
Dude, we know that the patriarchy hurts men too, but um, they’re still the p in patriarchy.
Keith, you make a good point, and this is one of many situations where feminism benefits everyone. In a society where men control all wealth and the ability to earn it, there will be a fair amount of pressure on men to support women in situations where an older richer man (a girl’s father) will have to step up if a younger more powerful man does not (i.e. support both daughter and grandchild forever).
Oo, oo, I know!! (Raises hand.) I know this one ‘cuz I’ve had it explained to me. The thinking is: that whereas individuals are restricted to their individual lifespans of threescore years and ten, institutions can last for millennia, and are thereby enabled to deliver to individuals the experience of Belonging To Something Larger Than Themselves.
As to whether individuals really want or need the experience of Belonging To Something Larger Than Themselves…that’s the part that’s not explained.
Actually, the 50% divorce rate was never accurate, as it included all divorces. The divorce rate for first marriages was somewhere around 30%, while the divorce rate for any other marriages was much, much higher. As Samual Johnson said, “Second marriages are the triumph of hope over experience.”
Keith, did you really just suggest that the men in shot gun marriages have it worse? Worse than, say, the women, who have all the problems he has, plus being pregnant and the attendant future?
I read what Keith had to say carefully, and I just read it again. I didn’t get any of what you are saying that he said out of what he said in any way. I thought he was being very careful NOT to make any such competitive comparisons, and to simply state the truth here.
I took it as a “this really sucked for everyone involved” statement. That is quite anti-partriarchal in that it speaks the truth of “bad marriages result from ill-considered and hasty unions between very young people”. This directly counters the assumptions of “feminism ruined a good marriage by giving women ideas” or “feminism is ruining marriage because women can escape or not get married to begin with” because it points out that bad marriages are bad for everybody and are bad as a result of both women and men being incompatible and trapped.
so one idiot fucks up his Austen and now another one comes along and misspells Dr. Johnson’s first name. And I thought you people loved the past!
Another line of reasoning I hear for the “divorce is so common these days!” is that, well, once divorce was made legal, everyone decided to do it. People just decided to stop trying to make things work and would get a divorce at the drop of a hat (should they decide they didn’t like that hat dropping).
This seems like one of the worst arguments possible to me. So people in bad marriages should be forced to stay in them for the theoretical benefit of those irresponsibles who divorce impulsively? And why is it assumed that a marriage which can only be saved through legal coersion is worth saving to begin with–especially by those means?
I have seen some people argue that any and every marriage can be saved if people tried hard enough, but only online. I have never had the pleasure of meeting one of these people in person. I don’t know if they keep their opinions to themselves, if they are more reasonable offline, if they live in other areas of the United States/world, or if I’m just lucky.
For the record, I hate this analogy. You test drive a car, sure, but not a person; a person is not an object. I know what you are trying to say, but your argument works better without this comparison.(Every time I hit a key my cursor gets moved to the end of the post, while the view of the textbox gets moved to the top of the box. I’m using Firefox 2.0.0.7 and Windows XP.)
Sorry.
Still don’t have that HTML thing right. Fun tho.
Me too
To get back to the original topic for a moment, Amanda makes the claim that divorce rates are lower today than they were in the 70’s because of feminism. Is there anything else that supports her thesis? How about divorce rates based on areas of the country? The liberal, feminist Northeast of the US has a lower divorce rate than the conservative, religious South. The divorce rate in Texas is about 75% higher than Massachusetts. The reason for the lower divorce rate in liberal states is that women in the Northeast are more likely to be older and more educated when they marry.
9 of the 10 states with the lowest divorce rates were in the Northeast: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont
9 of the 10 states with the highest divorce rates were in the South: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas.
Clearly, feminism is family friendly.
I took it as a “this really sucked for everyone involved” statement. That is quite anti-partriarchal in that it speaks the truth of “bad marriages result from ill-considered and hasty unions between very young people”.
Precisely. And not just the married pair, but the families (on both sides) that can get dragged into a morass that could have been prevented had certain cultural assumptions not been forced on them.
It’s why I’m firmly of the belief that before people get married (for the “mutual attraction/love” reason, ignoring the other reasons for a contractual association) they should be required to spend time living together. It’s one thing for a couple to be all lovey-dovey when they see each other maybe a few times a week and stay over the odd evening. It’s quite another when they find out that she likes rearranging all his stuff to her organizational scheme, while he has no problem using the floor as a storage location for stacking things, so on and so forth. The premarital trial period not only shows if they are compatible, but what accommodations and realities both have to adjust to if they really want to spend a great deal of time together.
Keith, I lived with my first husband for a year and was with him for three. It’s not always the answer, though I do agree it can be revealing. With my second husband I was totally prepared for his total disorganization, but also realized he would “let” me organize it if I would “let” him deal with bills, our social schedule, and most outdoor projects.
Keith, I lived with my first husband for a year and was with him for three. It’s not always the answer, though I do agree it can be revealing.
Oh, sure, it’s not a universal. My parents had a more “traditional” type of pre-marriage period and they’ve been hooked up for 38 years and I’m thinking they’re in it for the long haul. Many of my family members didn’t do the living together thing. Even I fall into that category, although my wife of 10 months argues that given I spent several multiple-week long vacations at her place and she’d known me for 20 years before that sort-of counts. On the other hand, I mentioned my brother’s case where I suspect that had he actually not jumped the gun on the proposal (although to be fair I don’t know how mutual a decision that was) and they’d spent some time together it would have fallen apart for the same reason before the relationship formalized.
Like everything, there are always exceptions and variations, but on the whole I consider it more beneficial. Heck, even my mother agrees, and I’ve heard her state numerous times that shacking up before marriage is the way to go.
I love reading pandagon, especially your posts.
Amanda, I agree with most of your post, except the “wild oats” part. Hugo wrote a wonderful post here: http://hugoboy.typepad.com/hugo_schwyzer/2006/09/i_was_talking_w.html
with which I wholeheartedly agree.
I would like to hear your opinion about it.
On an unrelated topic - on your previous blog mousewords you sometimes wrote snarky reviews of MSN articles on dating & relationships. I really enjoyed laughing at them. It’s pity you stopped writing about them - they were better than anecdotes.
That’s what has Schwarzenegger and our other dear, dear “conservative” “friends” so very, very afraid of course.
“MAINSTREAM” PERSON: “It’s socialism, I tell ya! Next thing you know, every family’s getting a welfare check!”
ME: “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
I took great pride that I managed to land myself a “socialist” job right here in the good ol’ USA. I also refused to think of it as a typical capitalist “job” whereby I would properly regard myself as in it to maximize my income; I regarded it either as a (pathetically small) step into the socialist future in which people get taken care of on the assumption they are taking care of something useful, or alternatively as a sort of feudal/manorial throwback thing–Natasha being “my lady” whom I would serve with my every effort and she in turn would look out for me too.
In doing this, and because after all this particular “job” started out with her inviting me over to become her boyfriend with no plan for me to become a paid care provider, Adult Services and other bureacracies such as the Housing Authority sniffed at me for not being properly “professional,” and some schools of thought among disabled activists endorsed the concept as well that personal care provision should be thought of as a “job” during which I ought to efface myself as a person, being myself “on my own time.” And legally I was not supposed to be on call 24/7 either. But in fact that is what was required, and I took great comfort in other views from other disabled people and their advocates that what Natasha and I were doing was a good and beautiful thing, and felt very vindicated when I found out how the program originated, precisely to enable people who had a relationship of interpersonal caring to enable the one they cared about to live independently.
By greatly reducing the need for institutions, we care providers have been saving local, state, and Federal governments tremendous amounts of money. (And this would still be true if they paid us decently instead of strongarming us into accepting pitifully low wages and refusing to recognize the actual scope of what we generally did too. There is considerable margin for raising wages and benefits and still coming out ahead versus the tremendous costs of institutional “care.”)
And at least in principle, we greatly elevate the quality of life of disabled people, by providing for them to live their lives independently, at their own direction. Natasha valued that aspect of the program passionately. I think it clearly saves lives. When Natasha was diagnosed with Friedreich’s Ataxia back in the early ’60s, her parents were told she’d be dead within a decade or so, long before she could reach 30. This was based on statistics, and those statistics assumed that severely disabled people would of course simply be incarcerated in institutions. Which, Natasha always pointed out, was basically the same thing as a life sentence in prison for the crime of being disabled. Quite naturally, human beings who are told that their lives have no useful purpose and they are being kept on ice until they have the grace to die and get out of the way already tend not to thrive in captivity. This is true even if the institutions are nice and decently funded and provide for outings and the like; your life is still nothing but an extended nursery school session. Since in reality the cost-cutters will always go after programs to benefit those who have little political voice the reality of institutions tends to be far more Dickensian and the outcome is comparable to a concentration camp.
This is the only reason that Republicans and other such life-forms can pretend that personal care providers under the direction of the recipients themselves are a costly proposition–because under more authoritarian, “efficient” forms of care, the disabled don’t live as long. Year by year institutional “care” is clearly, by any measure, way more expensive–but there are far fewer years per person, you see. So it seems “smart” fiscally to resist community-based care, even when we can show how much cheaper it is per recipient-year.
Ironically, back in the 60s and early 70s, California’s move toward community-based care on several fronts, which put us decades ahead of most other states at the time, had strong bipartisan support; some of the key bits of legislation, such as the Lanterman Act which is the foundation of Developmental Disabilities services in this state, were authored by Republicans. Then they recognized the line-up between such programs and “Republican values” such as personal independence and responsibility and fiscal frugality. Also, they were moved by personal relationships with disabled people, for of course disability affects all classes.
Well, I didn’t mean this to be such a long sidebar on disability issues as such. Nor do I mean to suggest that IHSS or other such community-based programs are perfect, infallible, or even sufficient in every instance. But I do think they raise the questions that have been addressed in this thread about the value of work that often goes un or under paid.
This is the rationale of right-wing homeschooling (where the target college is Bob Jones or Liberty University), so they are consistent.
so one idiot fucks up his Austen and now another one comes along and misspells Dr. Johnson’s first name. And I thought you people loved the past!
Yeah, a typo completely negates the point.
BTW, I think the argument against no-fault divorce is more along the lines of “one person decides they want to get divorced and the other person has no say whatsoever.” In other words, you can be divorced just because your spouse decides to throw in the towel. In Texas, you can get divorced in about 2-3 months. That’s a pretty short amount of time to break up a family. And please don’t tell me about how unfair it is for one person to be unhappy in the marriage. If it only takes 3 mos to get divorced, that’s not a whole lot of time to reflect on the consequences (oops, there’s that word again!) of the divorce, especially where children are concerned.
Grammar RWA–of course, given the stupidity of some public schools as documented in other recent posts here, they do seem to kinda have a point!
(Not saying that abandoning public school is the answer in all cases–but I know people who’ve pulled their kids out to homeschool them or give them correspondence school, because of the social pressures and idiotic students-as-prisoners treatment in public schools. But that’s totally off-topic and nothing to do with whether people should sleep around nor not.
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I dunno, sharon, I kind of think that most people who get divorced don’t just wake up one morning and go, “Yay! I think I’ll initiate divorce proceedings today!” without any kind of pre-existing thought. Even if a divorce is easy to get, a person still knows their life will change dramatically if they stop being married. So I’d tend to think that people think about the consequences of divorce for longer than three months–say, for the many months or years beforehand when they’re deciding whether what’s wrong with their marriage is bad enough that it’s worth getting rid of the marriage.
“In other words, you can be divorced just because your spouse decides to throw in the towel.”
Clearly, it’s way better to remain legally tied to a spouse who has decided to throw in the towel.
You do realize that being married does not (legally or magically) oblige one to live under the same roof as their spouse, be responsible with money or property, do a lick of parenting, etc., right? And that if one person decides that they don’t want to be married to the point that they’re going down to the courthouse and demanding to not be married anymore, being told that they have to secure the consent of the spouse they want to divorce in order to dissolve the marriage is not going to somehow make them change their mind about wanting out?
I know people really cling to the idea of an obstacle and extra time making people in rocky relationships remember why they fell in love in the first place, or finding new reasons to stick together, but that’s pretty much just a fairytale. And for the handful of couples where they remember why they fell in love and don’t wind up remembering why they wanted the hell out of there six months after reconciling, there’s hundreds more whose misery is being compounded and prolonged. Not to mention that it’s kind of like the enthusiastic consent thing–if your partner desperately wants out of the marriage, what sort of person does it take to refuse to let them go? How often is that refusal both productive and legitimate?
Sharon, never been in a bad marriage, have you my dear? I accepted a totally unfair property settlement from my former husband because my state has a 2 year waiting period if you don’t agree on your property settlement. There were no kids. Essentially, I gave up any part of the business I worked a job so that he could start plus our second home. It was so bad my lawyer wrote a CYA letter. But here is the thing. During that whole time, I would not have been able to sell our house even though my ex had already relocated to another state, make investments even with money I was earning on my own because a court might give him an interest in it, do anything with our stock portfolio - get the picture? On the whole, moving on with life was worth it. Once it is over, it is in the best interests of society to get it over with as quickly and painlessly as possible. The time to save it would have been during the entire year when I begged my x to go to counseling and he would not hear of it, and I don’t need you or the state or anyone else to tell me I made a too hasty decision. Also, as a taxpayer, I am not interested in erecting expensive hoops we have to pay a judge or other bureacrat to make sure other people jump through on their way to getting divorced. I think the co-parenting classes my current husband and his x were forced to attend were fine because that is for the protection of the children involved, but that’s a far cry from some arbitrary waiting period just for giggles.