An interesting essay in The Atlantic on love and marriage from a woman's perspective.
Most of my closest friends have always been women -- when I got married, the attendants on my side were my brother and two groomsmaids. And many of my women friends have been (or are) unmarried considerably longer than they might have liked; this was for all the right reasons, but it still made them somewhat unhappy. So I've thought a lot about such matters, thought obviously without the intensity stemming from direct personal concern (men face a different set of problems related to marriage), and the essay seemed to me to capture a good deal of truth.
In any case, I'm not sure the essay is right, I'm sure that it doesn't tell the whole story, and I am pretty sure that nothing in it is particularly original. But it strikes me as refreshingly candid as to one set of circumstances that are worth a good deal of thinking (even though it necessarily slights other circumstances). And there is one item that I thought was very well put (though I stress again that, like all statements on this subject, it can't describe everyone's experience equally):
Marriage isn't a passion-fest; it's more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.
I've heard, I probably read it in another article, a great many people establish this infrastructure first, then have children- I suppose a few of them actually labor under the misconception that they didn't "settle" for anything.
People place the blame for high divorce rates on everything except the obvious. When you marry for love, you get divorced when the marriage no longer works. When you marry for economic and social security reasons, then you are more likely to stay in it, because your expectations are lower.
Love? That's what affairs are for!
If "Jennifer" is her friend's real name, I wonder how much Jennifer appreciates this bit of info being shared with the world, because if Jennifer's friends see this essay they are all likely to know immediately whom Jennifer was talking about . . .
jackpot.
A little bit, but not in so many words. Although she does admit it is more unlikely that a guy will want to date or marry her now that she has a kid. It sounds like her kid spends most of the time in daycare anyways and that would not likely change even if she was married.
My big surprise with these women is that so many of them seem to think that they are that great and deserve a man who meets every one of their dream criteria. The author seems to have realized that is not a realistic expectation.
So glad I am already married and not dating any of these women.
socialistDemocrat, I'd say that women "settling" for economic reasons is a great way to reduce the size of our current federal government.I always laugh when I read studies about how people with more economic stability or wealth are more likely to stay married. Didn't it ever occur to anyone that people who make good life choices just might A) stay married and B) make good financial decisions? Meh, what would I know, I'm young and naive.
Unlike love, herpes is forever.
Classy terminology, rlb. At least the child won't have you for a parent.
Classy terminology, rlb. At least the child won't have you for a parent.<<
RLB's point is that child, by definition, is a bastard and because of the woman's selfish, intentional choice will be deprived of having a father. Which point don't you understand?
I agree with this fully. Modern culture has veered away dramatically from this ancient conception of marriage. Today the notion exists that a marriage has gone awry simply because the elation and ecstasy of the early years are no longer present. At the very least, people have been conditioned to feel a creeping unease in their marriage if they fail to live up to the alleged "ideal" of marital love as a perpetual immersion in unmitigated bliss. This is pernicious nonsense, and it has contributed significantly to the instability of marriage today.
Love is not an emotion; it is an act of the will. As stated more fully by Aquinas, love is to will the good of the other, for the sake of the other.
1. "bastard" may have once been a technical term, but now it is a term of derision. Using it on the child insults the child, and the mother.
2. The implicit assumption that one should aways stay together for the sake of the child. Some relationships are a lor worse together than they are apart.
3. The contempt at the woman, while understandable, seems pretty knee-jerk. He didn't read the article, but he as much as says she's a bad mother. Painting all single mothers as bad is a pretty broad, and, dare I say it, mysogynistic, brush.
Some sort of prediction market could be used to establish partner valuations before marriage. The partner with the higher valuation is, in some sense, settling for the partner with the lower valuation.
Perhaps divorces could be prevented by giving couples information about their valuations. Couples with widely varying valuations could be discouraged from marrying (if in fact wide variance in such valuations increases divorce risk).
Wugong's point, that you obviously didn't understand, is that not having a father is sometimes (and perhaps even frequently) better than having one, particularly one that is abusive, racist, misogynist, or likely to instill other unpleasant 'values'.
Also, note that although being a single parent is considerably rougher than raising a child as a pair, children of single parents seem to grow up and become productive members of society just fine.
Love motivates me to put her ahead of myself, to cherish her and look for ways to be kind. The giddiness just makes me goofy.
Ever been to the inner city lately? Here is the census report (PDF) on children with single parents. They are more likely to end up poor, will likely have less of an education, more likely to end up in prison, etc. It is also statistically worse off for the children if the parents were never married then if they were divorced. Nearly 60% of children living with single mothers are at or below the poverty line. The author is an abberation in that she is an educated carreer woman in her 30's who went with a sperm donor.
While many children of single parents end up ok, it is putting a child at a distinct disadvantage to grow up without both parents, which most of the time means without a father. In this author's case not only will her child not have a father, it will likely never even know who he was.
At the end of the article she declares that she would in theory settle for a guy except that the dating pool she faces in her forties has dwindled and "due to gender politics [whatever that means], the few available men tend to require far more of a concession than those who were single when we were younger."
As the scholar of the family Stephanie Coontz has said, the problem with marrying for love and passion is that it ups our expectations to the point where they much more frequently cannot be met. As much as our higher divorce rate is about the increased ability of women to leave relationships they are unhappy with, it's also about lowering the threshold of "unhappiness" well below where it was historically. The idealization of marriage as passion fest can explain that.
I heartily recommend Coontz's Marriage, A History.
This may be true on average, but not as a *rule*.
And then reality set in. It turns out that husbands can be pretty handy. They can provide a stable home environment for raising your children, share the burden (time, effort and money) of raising those kids, be your best friend, protector and staunchest ally. Love you even when you're old and wrinkled. God forbid that he does all these things but isn't Prince Charming.
The author sadly realizes, too late, that marriage is about more than sex, passion and romance. Her grandparents knew that, her mom knew it. Generations of Moms have known this and handed down that collected wisdom. But the baby boomers (and their kids) knew better; or thought they knew better. And their arrogance has led to this - a generation of lonely, unhappy women struggling to raise kids by themselves, and a generation of kids without Dads being raised at the Day Care center and growing up too fast as they try to provide to their Moms the emotional support that they ought to be getting from their husbands.
Mathematics can help us determine how many tries before we “settle.” The solution to the well-studied secretary problem (also called the marriage problem, or fussy suitor problem) provides an optimal stopping rule, to help Lori avoid spinsterhood. Let’s say that Lori wants to find the best guy out of a group of size “n.” The optimal stopping rule says: skip the first n/e (e is approximately 2.71), then settle for the next person who is better than the first n/e guys she dates. This rule will get the best of the lot with a probability of 37%. Now Lori can’t date the whole of Manhattan. Let’s say she wants to find the best guy out of a group of 100. She should then date 37 guys and settle for the next who comes along that's better than any of the 37.
Second, even marriages that don't start out with the feeling of settling eventually transition to that point. No matter how strong the passion is at first, once the kids start coming, the relationship inevitably shifts to the mundane business of being a family. Those who can't make the transition fuel our country's 38% divorce rate. Those who decided to settle at the outset actually have a leg up.
Gen X women were raised to abhor the values that power the urge to settle, and now they are realizing what a mistake that was.
What, not a single sex change among them? How pedestrian of you, and you in L.A. as well.
According to him, arranged marriages work out better than courtships, as they allow dispassionate but motivated decision-makers (the parents) to actually weigh the pros and cons, rather than have both decision-makers be emotionally involved.
Good discussion started yesterday on Instapundit's wife's web site "Ask, Dr. Helen." http://pajamasmedia.com/2008/02/ask_dr_helen_8.php
As my grandmother says, there are no illegitimate children, just illegitimate parents.
I have a 29-year-old son. He has known forever that I would NEVER, ABSOLUTELY NEVER under any circumstances, accept as a "pretend grandchild" the child of some other man.
A couple of years ago, it was clear that he had adopted my standard when he said that he would NEVER marry a woman who had a child by another man. I asked, "How about if she had been widowed?" ... His answer was simple: "I don't care what her story is."
The woman who wrote the Atlantic piece made her own selfish choices; let her deal with them without the pity that she seeks in her article. She created a child who would forever have no access to the financial, familial, or emotional support of a father. If that isn't selfish and intentionally abusive, what is?
Any man who would opt to form a life with that woman would be either (1) resigning himself to never having children, or (2) damning his own future children to reduced paternal support and assistance because he would be taking on the task of "pretend father" to the child whose father is an unknown.
The actions and attitudes of the woman author disgust me.
My parents divorced when I was young and my Mother remarried a wonderful fellow who loves me and cares for me as one of his own children. And while I only have one Dad, my step-dad is a wonderful figure in my life, whose family has taken me in as any other grand child or nephew.
While I understand why men find it HARD to marry a woman who has children by another man, to say it should be never done or that such a grandparent is "fake" places biology over emotions. Love is love, no matter what form it comes in or from whom.
What Zombie Richard Feynman and Zed said should answer your question. Bastard is not a neutral descriptive term.
But what the author has failed to grasp is the the world has passed her by. The legal system in a mighty struggle for 'equality of the sexes' has so damaged the family court systems that the legalities of failure are now part of the equation. Why buy it at a possible high risk of losing half of what you own, when rent or lease is an option? Nor are there any shortage of lessees to go around. The American woman also has to realize that they now complete globally as about 5% of men now are marrying foreign. Foreign women know what a good deal American Men are that American Woman have failed to grasp.
The ironies are that American Women aren't bad though they are painted as such in many corners. It's a fact that only a small segment are. Most of the AW that marry stay so for quite long times. They are out of the pool. So what is left are the whores, the self absorbed, the flakes, the golddiggers and the bitches. Yet Hollywood paints this as 'success' at one level or another. Only these arch-typical women will be the last with gold around their finger.
I honestly think that you may be the worst person in the world. I do, however, respect the fact that you are entirely upfront and honest about your attitudes. It is not surprising at all that your son has been infected by your poisonous views. I re-read your post 3 times, hoping to find some evidence of sarcasm, or that you were speaking tongue-in-cheek. Nope . . . that was the real you. Please excuse me; I need to take a shower now.
Young women have all sorts of requirements that they demand from a man but after 40 all you need is a job and a hard on.
Also, I guess it hinges on (1) her idea of settling having to do too much with really trivial sounding things and then the vague notion of love, rather than a more profound discussion of what a true connection depends on, and (2) her assumption of a desperation to have children.
Some of her points were good, but a lot of it left me in wild disagreement.
But, I may feel differently in 5 years - which is her point. I must admit that the pool is shrinking.
How about instilling in your son the warped mindset that a woman who has a child could never be good enough for him because the child would be a "pretend grandchild" to you and your son would be a "pretend father"?
The things parents teach their kids. Ugh.
Yes...it doesn't tell the whole story. I met my wife in my mid-20s while I was still a student. My wife (who is the same age as I am) was just beginning her career. She was friends with several single women, and I was friends with several single men. Given that both sets of friends were well-educated, had similar interests, and were at similar stages in life, we thought that perhaps some of them would hit it off. So, we held several parties in which we invited both sets of friends. Some of my male friends were interested in some of her female friends - there was some dating. However, her friends always found a reason why my friends weren't "good enough."
Almost 10 years have passed since my wife and I first met. Most of her friends are still single, and within the past few years, many of them have asked about (or have contacted) my friends. Of course, most of my friends are now committed, engaged, or married while my unmarried friends friends are dating younger women.
A couple of my wife's older friends are in the process of "settling" for men that aren't exactly catches (and that is being charitable). My wife has lamented that her friends didn't show more interest in decent men (such as my friends) in their younger years.
It's always the baby boomers with you guys, isn't it? If it weren't for the 60s, we would all be living the perfect glorious life that culminated in the 50s, right?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the idea of marrying for love, not for economic security didn't begin until somewhere in the 19th century. (Ever read Jane Austen? try a few books, and you'll see that it didn't start with the boomers). But even then, women knew that economic security came before love. It was merely the *ideal* to marry for both reasons.
Divorce hit record highs in the 20s, then fell again during the depression and war. The 50s seemed perfect, only because the far more people were actually getting married than divorced, and you still needed that economic security.
"Free love, abortions, divorce, the ERA, sexual discrimination laws"
Are you seriously suggesting that we repeal our sexual discriminationn laws? The ERA was never enacted nationally, but most states have one. Should that be repeated as well, so that men can fire women for no other reason that being a woman? Abortions have occured since women have been giving birth, so I can't see how that has affected much.
I have yet to see anyone suggest that we tighten up the divorce laws. in fact, whenever it's been up for a popular vote, as in Chile or Ireland, the people voted overwhelmingly to allow for easier divorce.
Free love? When you can explain that one, we'll get a response to you.
A long-term, stable marriage is one of the best things for the psyche. One of the worst things is to get divorced or to be unhappily married. The single life is in the middle. Marrying the wrong person does come with its own set of problems - those that are significantly more substantial than having a "boring" life or a single life. For many women, the challenge is to find someone who will not make us profoundly and deeply unhappy. Or, heck, even those who don't initiate a gag reflex. One of my best friends threw up after the latest guy kissed her.
As for Ms. Gottlieb, re: her most recent date:
Well, pardon me here, but why not take a non-handsome, non-traditionally successful man who is actually nice to the waiter? I mean, if you're 40 and haven't figured out that the guys who are jerks to the waitstaff aren't marriage material, let alone boyfriend material....
Or maybe I'll feel different once I'm forty. Maybe "full of agape" won't be one of my criteria at that point. ;)
And is "no name" really serious that even widowed women with children should forever be scorned by other men? So Jane and Bob have a kid in their early 20s; Bob goes off to fight in Iraq and is killed there; no man should ever marry Jane? Sure glad the vast majority of the country doesn't feel that way.
- AnneS
This is stated much better than the author stated it. (And that could be love - you can fall in love at that point. Trouble is, for some of us, getting all of that in one person is tough.)
As someone pointed out, the author was "looking for love with a checklist" and was totally selfish and ugly about it.
The person you marry isn't there for you as a prop and a tool. You should selfishly love them, but love, as someone said is about wanting the best for them for their sake -- you selfishly love but love is unselfish.
This author has no idea what love is.
President Clinton signed into a law the Defense of Marriage Act, and several states have already enacted their own Marriage Protection Acts. Soon, every state will have one, and then marriage will be perfect for everyone! Spouses won't cheat or abuse each other, all will be best parents to their kids, and there will be no reasons for divorce at all.
It's a very simple solution to a complex problem. Finally!
I am glad, almost every day, that both of my stepfamilies do not feel that way. There are not words to express what both of my "bonus parents and grandparents" have added to my life. I am also eternally grateful for various "family" members with no genetic relation; cousins who are step-second-cousins, technically; and my half-siblings.
It's not like there is a limited amount of affection, caring, and agape to go around. Familial ties are far from a zero-sum game; in fact, it's more of an self-sustaining cycle.
Your loss.
That is a money quote ;)
Hhhh... Gender politics? That's not it. The pickiness (aka "unwillingness to make concessions" ) of older daters is simple to explain. The less picky people got married, and in quite a few cases, stayed married.
It looks like Lori Gottlieb is still picky. But now the flaw she sees in the dating pool is they are too picky!
Zarkov, the secretary problem assumes every secretary applying will accept a job if it's offered.
That doesn't happen when dating. It also assumes there is no cost to defer the decision. If someone really sets a goal of marrying and decides to 'interview candidates' by dating in any normal sense, they probably need to go out on at least 6 dates spread over 6 weeks, and be dating more or less exclusively. In your hypothetical with 100 candicates, the woman will spend more than four years just to 'interview' the first 37 that will be rejected in order to apply the rule! After that, she need to date until she finds one whose better than every single one of the first 37. Then, there is at least a 37% chance the best one was in the first batch. To discover that, she needs to spend 8 more years dating the remaining 73. By now, she's spent 12 years!
The wikipedia article about this problem notes that people don't apply this 'optimal' rule even when buying gas. Well.... no wonder! If you were on the highway, driving on a vacation, you'd often might run out of gas before you filled the car. If you're just trying to get groceries bought, you'd spend all Saturday morning shopping for gas. What a drag.
Couple of my lifelong friends knew only one biological parent because their fathers didn't come back from WWII. One was reared entirely by his mother. Anybody taunting them with "pretend grandchild" these days would be cruisin' for a serious bruisin'.
Apparently I hit a nerve, eh? I'm pretty familiar with Jane Austen (my daughter loves it). Jane Austen was romantic fiction. Young people have forever dreamed of finding their Prince or Princess and riding off into the sunset to live happily ever after. It's similar to Snow White and Cinderella in that they are all fairy tales; people used to read those stories and understand that it would be great if dreams came true, but it's immature and irresponsible to plan your life around a fairy tale.
I don't advocate rolling back the progress we have made in equality for women, but I do fault those who pressed those reforms for making false promises to the young women of that generation. The women's liberation movement was anti-man and it tried to de-legitimize traditional notions of marriage and family. Suddenly, it was no longer good enough to want to marry a good man and be a good wife and mother. Instead, the prevailing wisdom was that a modern woman should try to "have it all." Be sexually liberated, delay marriage and children until your career is established, then try to be wife, mom, and career professional all at the same time. Certainly some women pulled that off, but many more became miserable trying to do all of those things well, or were made to feel inferior if they chose one path over the other.
As for free love, the idea that women should feel free to be sexually active has done much more harm than good. It has broken the traditional link between sexual relations and commitment and child bearing. Sex used to mean children, and smart girls didn't have children until they were ready (i.e., married). Once the link was broken between sex and kids (and sex and marriage), women were encouraged to make themselves available to men for sex without strings, and men came to expect women to offer them sex without strings. Once men started getting "the milk for free" as they say, it created a major disincentive to marry. Women who aren't willing to freely offer sex without commitment find themselves at a serious competitive disadvantage in the dating marketplace. When I was young and single this all seemed like a great idea. As a father of a young lady, I know that it is a pernicious development.
No, there was no sarcasm whatever in my words.
Folks who benefit and have benefited from having step-relatives support them in one way or another will argue that it's "good" for a man to take on some other man's child as his own.
"Good" for whom? Yes, it's to the financial benefit of the child who gains from the step-family. It absolutely is NOT to the financial benefit of the man foolish enough to have taken such a step.
Adoption? To be blunt, if I'm the one left to pass out my largess as I near my demise, if I had a choice between leaving it to a genetic grandchild or to a child that one of my children had adopted, it wouldn't take me a second to tell the lawyer how to write the will. My husband's opinion on the subject is even stronger than mine. In his words, "I want my genes passed on!"
"Fertility problems"? Not every couple is able to have children. So what? AND, back to the article that drew all of these posts, was there some reason that woman did not adopt one of those many parentless children? She did what she did out of the pure and selfish motive of passing on her own genes. If you can accept what she did as "understandable," then surely my choices are no less understandable and no more ugly: The efforts of my life will go to me and mine. If there are no "mine" to give it to, it will go to a charity of my choice. And I would go so far as to write a will to give more to a child who had produced his/her own children, and less to a child who had married someone with children from someone else, because I don't want my money used to help support someone else's child.
I do NOT want the mess of "steppies" in my children and grandchildren! That may sound awful and ugly, but that that's my choice, and I raised all of my children to see such situations as undesirable.
And, no, there is no limited amount of affection. There is, however, a limited amount of financial resources, of time in the day, and of physical strength. What I have will go for me and mine, and not for the likes of the child born to the woman who wrote the article.
I'm outspoken with my opinion. What that woman did was rob her son of a father, a paternal grandmother, a paternal grandfather, and all paternal relatives. And she did it all for the reproduction of her own genes.
She did it to her son; now it's her problem.
More than one major religion would say that what she did was immmoral. If you can't think of any such religions, go ask the Pope what he thinks of such behavior.
Huxley,
In context, I think "gender politics" means that decent available guys in their forties are often running around with women in their twenties and early thirties, meaning that there's a lot of competition for the good older guys, and the author thinks being a single mother in her forties gives her a disadvantage in competing for the good ones, leaving onloy the less good ones available.
My father died when I was very young and my mother later married a wonderful man who has always treated me as his son (I usually forget that technically, I am not). Thank God most people do not share your bizarrely idiotic beliefs about "family values." May your son (assuming he continues to share your rancid ideas) die childless and put an end to your pathetic bloodline.
So, woman marries a firefighter, they have a baby together. One day firefighter gives his life to rescue two small children from a burning house. No matter how wonderful the woman was as a person, your son would never marry her just because she originally had a baby with a person as worthy of the word "man" as any male can be?
Weird view. Good thing there are a lot of men who are wiser than that.
What a distortion of what really happened! In case you forgot, Bretty Freidan wrote a book, The Feminist Mystique, which became a best seller. Why? Because so many women were actually unhappy living the life that you describe as perfect for them. Just being a happy homemaker, wife and mother may be the gold ring for some women, but it certainly isn't for all. What the 'women's lib' movement did was open the opportunities for women to choose.
Sure, some women can't handle it all -- they can't play all the roles they would like. The point is that they now have a choice, whereas in years past they did not.
No, The women's lib movement didn't 'delegitimize' the role of housewife and mother -- many women had figured it out well on their own.
Now, perhaps there was an assumption that ALL women should have a career, and all women could handle all roles easily. And this was played up by the media in movies and tv. But as you note, that's just fantasy land, right?
Well, it is awful and ugly, but as stated above, your choice is your loss.
I married a woman who already had a child, so I guess I'm pretty well qualified to speak on this subject. I adopted that child shortly after we married. Then we had two more. That was more than 20 years ago, and regardless of the "financial burden," it has been more than worth it. This was the best thing I have ever done. I have gotten far more from my children (and my wife) than I could ever give back to them. My parents love and enjoy the company of all of their grandchildren (two of whom are adopted). They see each of them as bringing more joy to their lives. You just don't know what you are going to be missing.
Noname, I venture to guess that your grandchildren will see through you just as my cousins and I see through our similarly selfish and small-minded grandmother. Have fun enjoying their absence from your life in your old age.
when my parents divorced and my father remarried a woman with children, it turns out he did us both a great favor; I love her and every one of my stepsiblings, and there is nothing "pretend" about the bond I feel to them. I have never begrudged them any resources they got from our (nowhere-close-to-wealthy) family, including my dad. Your post seems close to sociopathic; I'm sorry your son seems to share your attitude.
Now Lori can’t date the whole of Manhattan. Let’s say she wants to find the best guy out of a group of 100. She should then date 37 guys and settle for the next who comes along that's better than any of the 37.
-as long as she doesn't tell her mate about the 37. Remember the movie 'Clerks?'
Wow. There is so much made up stuff in your post, I really don't know where to begin. If what you say is true, then we would see a decline in marriage rates from the 60s to now. In fact, they have not fallen.
I just make one more comment. According to Dan Savage, the sex advice columnist, the most common reason for divorce in the US is sexual incompatibility. He also has stated that one of the most common requests he gets is from a man or a woman who 'saved' themselves for marriage. After several years of marriage, one of them has grown so bored with the sex life that they ask Dan how can they experience what sex is like with another person, if only to learn more, without having to cheat? In other words, they want to fool around because they didn't have the chance when they were single and still could.
The happiest couples, according to Dan, are the ones who are sexually experienced when they get married. They know what to do, are happy to experiement, and can teach the other partner techniques and practices that they have learned make them happy.
So in other words, sexual liberation, or free love, as you call it, is neither good nor bad, it's whether it's used well.
So you taught your son not to take any actions that are not for his financial benefit? Not all that surprising. Based on your other comments as well, you do seem quite obsessed with money.
Raised as a catholic myself, I well recall a song that I used to sing in Sunday school. It was entitled, "They will Know We are Christians by Our Love."
Guess noname skipped class on those days.....
I don't know if this is occurring with her friends but one barrier I see in my fiance's friends and other girls is the insistence that men come and find them. Every (involuntarily) single guy I know puts in a sizeable amount of effort looking for dates on websites, going to activities they might meet women at or otherwise stepping out of their comfort zone to find dates. However, many girls seem to sigh about not having a boyfriend and dream that their prince charming will come show up at their door if they never go out. Partially this does have to do with a certain misconception/fairytailization of love where the man comes to sweep the woman off of her feet just like in the movies. This sort of passive role for woman can work in more traditional societies but in a society where we treat women as independent self-reliant creatures it is necessery to act like that to get dates (what might be appropriate male chivalry in an earlier age would be offensive and over the top to many women now).
However, I think the author's real problem is much simpler and deeper than this. Quite frankly the author doesn't want a husband she wants a live in nanny and she has confused the notion of equality with that of expecting guys to be equal partners in the work when the benefits are primarily hers. I mean the whole piece is basically a refrain about her willingness to put childcare help/convience above any romantic goals. Unsurprisingly if you put a low priority on romance in your life you will be less likely to achieve it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with caring more about raising kids than romantic love but why would you think that the world owes you a man when his interests and concerns are clearly secondary to your reproductive desires? Yes, many married couples have kids but there is every difference in the world between marrying someone and deciding to have kids together and trying to find some sucker who will do some of your work. It's not that complicated if you don't really want to have sex, are more interested in a man as a status symbol than a lover and prioritize help with the kids don't get married find another single mother to live with and share child rearing responsibilities.
The whole situation with nearly all women getting married is actually fairly recent. Back in Victorian times there were plenty of women who lived together as spinsters, likely many who prefered it.
Ohh and I don't doubt that arranged marriages can work well (though often family does have some sense of who to pick) but this is because other people aren't thought of as an option. The problem with the settling business is that your awareness of settling pollutes the whole deal.
By the end of the 90s, it became clear that gays might actually have the chance to get married. Eventually, we got that only in Mass, and now several other states have allowed civil unions. But other countries, such as Spain, Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands offer full same sex marriage.
In response, conservative had to come up with a theory of family life that would prevent us from getting married. So they came up with this theory that sex is all about procreation, and marriage is all about having kids. Maggie Gallagher has written about this on the VC and other places. She suggests that once you separate marriage from having children *as a result of that marriage*, then the notion of child bearing and child rearing is severed from marriage. Once that is severed, then people will no longer have children, and civilization will end.
I'm serious. That's her position. Now, it's awful silly, but it is used to prevent gays from marrying, because obviously two gay men or two lesbians cannot produce children on their own, but either must adopt, or in the case of the two lesbians, one must get the sperm from someone outside the marriage. In either case, according to Gallagher, the children are 'severed' from the marriage, and therefore, the family that they created isn't a real family.
Once young people see this, they will stop having children.
Now, of course, there is no evidence to support this. But nonetheless, it has gained credence in recent years.
What has that to do with noname and others? Because noname buys into this argument. Adopted children aren't her "real" children, and therefore are less deserving of love and resources. OC laments that sex isn't just for procreation anymore, and that people might actually have sex just for the fun of it.
My point? Gay bashing or tyring to deny gays rights like marriage doesn't just hurt gays. It hurts you as well.
Dude, I say verily unto you: don't worry, if you make it to 40 without getting married, you are in for a treat.
At 26 you are still on the receiving end of picky women. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. But by the time you hit 40, the worm hasn't just turned, he's cut backflips. Imus is almost right. Actually, all you need to do is have a job, not be a violent ex-felon, and live someplace other than with your Mom.
And even if you can manage only two out of those three, you'll still probably do okay.
Seriously, hang in there, you have only 14 years until you reach the promised land.
The geeks shall inherit the earth.
Sure, some women can't handle it all -- they can't play all the roles they would like. The point is that they now have a choice, whereas in years past they did not."
Just keep in mind Randy, that much of the reason men don't marry now is because of laws that damn near make men criminals in a divorce proceeding. Go do a scan on 'divorce domestic violence' in google to understand that DV is now a legal tactic unreleated to whether you beat your wife or not.
Were I 20 now I would never consider marriage. it is too risky.
For those living in step-family situations, that's your choice. I've made mine. And I'll go this far: If ever I have any doubts about the paternity of a child supposedly born to one of my sons, I will not hesitate to have DNA testing done. So long as my husband and I are alive, such testing could be done without even informing anyone else, and all that would be needed would be spit from inside the baby's wife.
My blood? Kid gets a nice trust fund. Not my blood, then it's not my son's blood, and I would inform my son immediately.
Go back and read the article that began all of these posts: That woman was so selfish about wanting a perpetuation of her own blood that she went out of her way to have a child out of wedlock and a child who was robbed of every bit of his paternity.
It is a reality of biology to want to look out for your own. And it's a smart man who can and does reach out and claim his own children.
You have your families; I have mine. I will not accept "steppies."
Also men over 40 have a lot of dating options, even if they have children of their own. Divorced men usually don't have custody of their children, which makes a difference. The fact that she had her self inseminated would be a huge red flag to any man. It just shows that it's all about her.
Excuse me? Yes, she is selfish, yes she wants a nanny, yes there would be no room for a living breathing man. But what the hell do you mean that she wants a wife? Is that all a wife is to you? A nanny?
There would be no room for a living breathing woman, either.
In their twenties, women have the power. They have more suitors competing against each other and the pick of the best men. They defer marriage hoping for even better choices.
But they age, get less physically attractive and less able to have kids. Power shifts. And they don't recognize it until too late. This dynamic is behind the dropping birth-rate. She'll have very likely just the one kid.
The solution is simple: a change in the culture making women more aware of the limited time frame to select the best mate (at the peak of their attractiveness) and the recognition that despite their improved economic and social status, selection must include long-term compatibility and commitment rather than just passion and status/power/wealth.
Because single mothers divorced or unmarried have a lot of problems finding an optimal mate. It's a better strategy to compromise on looks/passion for stability/loyalty and remain married than divorced, lonely, and with children missing a father. Children without fathers have lots of problems compared to their peers with the biological father in the home: girls have earlier sexual activity, higher teen pregnancy, and more abusive relationships while boys engage in more criminal activity and drug and alcohol abuse.
That doesn't mean a sacrifice in love and affection, merely a recognition that people are by definition imperfect, and a "dream" man is merely a dream.
Also, talk about your overinvolved and narcissistic in-laws. Poor, poor daughters-in-law. Your sons are going to have a hard time finding a wife whose not eitheer a total doormat or a goldigger (assuming her claims to vast wealth are true), unless he agrees to limit all contact with you and your husband to Christmas and funerals.
And the author is . . . correct.
And any guy in his 40's has watched a raft of his friends get "cleaned out" by the totally biased (IAAL) Woman's Court System. They know that marriage is more hassle than it's likely to be worth. The author proves those smart guys are correct too.
The women are the losers here.
Well maybe, but if he is saddled with alimony and child support. he may have a lot of options but little financial discretion to act on them.
In a earlier time that was what a nosy mother was all about! :)
But it’s worth noting that there is much evidence, mostly from evolutionary psychology, that stepchildren are at risk for a host of unpleasant outcomes (viz., abuse), particularly if they’re female.
More generally, parents who have non-biological (e.g., stepchildren or adopted children) are much more likely to do nasty things to their children than parents who have biological children.
See, e.g., http://psych.mcmaster.ca/dalywilson/ep&mc1996.pdf
Well, ya got me there!
Personally, I would make divorce even easier. Go ahead and get married. If you don't have kids, you can get divorced in the first five years no problem. This gives you plenty of time to figure out if you are compatible, and if you get divorced, no one is really hurt -- you can both just move. But if you have kids in those first five years, then I would strip the couple of everything they have and put it in trust for the kids. That should be a good incentive to wait for that period of time before you really screw up the family.
After five years, you can have the regular divorce laws that we have now.
People in bad marriages should have the right to get out cleanly and easily, if there are no kids. If there are kids, then they should be the priority. To me, this is simple -- all religions should encourage delayed childbirth until the couple knows that they can make it.
Of course, I realize this doens't help those who are married a long time, but hey, I can't solve everyone's problems!
I agree that deliberate single motherhood is a foolish response to the problem of singleness. But, its a much more scary negotiation for women than it is for men.
I suspect that something similar may account for the fact that the majority of divorces are initiated by women. During the marriage things change affecting the relative desirableness of the parties happen - he gets fat, bald, has an affair, etc. Some of these things are foreseeable, but many are not foreseen. If a woman would not have married him if she had known then what she knows now, the natural reaction is to feel cheated and want a divorce.
Thoughts anyone?
By the way, is my daughter a bastard child not eligible for the gifts many volokh readers would bestow? Harsh.
I imagine the next steps in the thought process: "And if that doesn't work, I'll get my hands on a dirty diaper! She won't get away with this."
A lot to look forward to in that family.
RLB's point is that child, by definition, is a bastard...
That can't be RLB's point, because Lori Gottlieb's child, by definition, is a child. You are the bastard.
Unfortunately for them, men on their level have their own plans and they aren't looking for a woman's plan to fit into, they are looking for a woman for thier plan.
So the men on their level are marrying secretaries and younger women, and their best choice is to find a blue collar guy, or an older professional guy who is semi-retired, or a struggling artist who needs support and will have dinner ready. A woman judge I met at a bar function said that what she really needed was a wife. A guy who would have dinner ready, pick up the kids, etc.
Um. Note to women: if you aren't marrying superman, you aren't necessarily settling either.
Women have really accepted the premises of romance novels. That's dumb.
Even worse is the level of deception she advocates. She suggests women completely misrepresent themselves and do whatever it take to get the marriage sealed, and then deal with the fallout later. After all, if it doesn't workout, she can always get a divorce with generous child support later on.
And then she wonders why men don't seem as interested in settling as she does. It's because we have to deal with the constant insecurity of worrying whether the women we meet are real people or just facades intended to lure us into a divorce trap.
No. That's me.
Still, when I read this sort of thing, I just can't fet over how lucky I am that I have my wife. I'd better get off of the computer now and go tell her that.
Here I thought you were going to chide me for the redundant "bastard child." I'm a bit annoyed that you try to turn my concern for the child around like this, though.
Reminds me of an old joke.
Married couples go through three stages of sex. Mad sex. Ritual sex. Hallway sex.
Mad sex is full of passion and happens everywhwere and any place.
Ritual sex is when you do it every Saturday night because your supposed to do it and its the only open time.
Hallway sex is when, after several years of marriage, you both pass in the hallway, look at each other and say EFF U!
Very true.
Now, if anyone is in the Virginia area and up for a margarita, I can regale you with tales of all the interesting ways I've been dumped after turning a guy down for sex. On the way to the train station, with him yelling, "You could have at least given me a blow job!" as I stepped out of the car - totally classy. While lying in his arms, five minutes after he said, "[If you got pregnant,] just have an abortion", because, obviously, I'm going to kill my unborn child because some prat can't be in a relationships without getting laid. After getting a speech about how he's going to regret not taking advantage of his sexual peak, so he really, really needs to have sex in the next like, two weeks. Or screw the relationship part - how 'bout trying to convince a man that he ought to at least know you before trying to get you into bed? Then you're left telling him to please relieve himself with a cow, because, remarkably, you aren't interested.
Women in their 20s have the power? HA! Only if willing to sell their souls....
Yes. Demeaning, too... I would like to think that I've gotten to be a better, stronger, and kinder person as I've gotten older. Many women, presumably, feel the same way. Odd - and quite sad - to have looks trump that, considering that everyone will get old anyway.
/rant
Women in their 20s have the power? HA! Only if willing to sell their souls....
Um. It's not your souls men want you to sell.
The solution to all of these problems is for 40-year-old women to date 20-year-old men. :)
Second, as other comments have already said, this women doesn't seem to have a realistic view of any part of the real world beyond her own nose, and seems to lack the ability to see the world from anyone else's perspective. Such as her child, or any man unfortunate enough to marry her.
And last, but not least, not only is it painfully obvious that she has never been in love with man, or ever known true sexual passion with a man, I wonder if she's ever had sex. There is nothing worse than bad sex, and once you've had good sex you are never going want to settle for less. And if you've ever been lucky enough to experience great sex? Real passion?
She has no clue what she's talking about.
She's a snob, too. I make $100,000 a year and I wouldn't look down my nose at a mechanic, or a plumber, or a handyman. She's looking to settle? I pity the poor guy she settles for. She'll make him miserable.
As a 41 year old guy looking to have a family, I don't date women older than 33 or so. It's not that women my age can't be attractive or funny. It's just that I would like to have children, and after a woman turns 35 it gets progressively more difficult to impossible.
I'm truly sorry to hear women my age aren't happy with their choices in life, but my sympathy is tempered by the knowledge these same women, like the author, were holding out for a rock star or at the very least tall-dark-handsome-funny-and-rich 15 years ago and wouldn't have given me the time of day.
These sorry fellows pay for her dinners, fix her flats, mover her furniture, provide a ready shoulder for her to cry on when she's feeling down, and generally make her life much more pleasant and entertaining.
But she's not interested in any of them romantically. Indeed, she calls them "friends", or simply leaves the status of their association undefined. But she always does and says things they could interpret to mean if they just did that one big romantic thing, were just a bit funnier, or were just a little more willing to cater to her every desire, the story would have a nice fairytale ending. Of course the reality is somewhat humiliating and painful.
What you're experiencing, at least in some cases, is the sure-fire strategy they've hit on for making sure it doesn't happen again.
Isn't dating fun?
At 44 I found myself suddenly single (widowed) -- they haven't exactly been beating a path to my door. In two weeks it will be a year, and I won't be wearing a wedding ring, I'll see what happens then. (The email link above works.)
I'm in software, so I'm only employed some of the time. My only condition is I can't see marrying someone with children of her own. I've got three kids who if they weren't already messed up from having a sickly mother are now pretty well messed up from having a dead mother. Once they were born they, and not I, became the most important people in my life, and I intend to keep it that way, without spreading myself much thinner. But I figure there are enough women who never got around to having children, maybe who don't like pregnancy and babies and toddlers, who wouldn't mind being part of the lives of three generally decent kids who, if she plays her cards right, will look after her in her old age and carry on if not her genes, her memory. I realize it's not symmetric; I'm not ready for the Brady Bunch thing.
As for Mom, I also lost my father this year, and during the family discussion of where she would live she turned down living with me, saying "Hi, I'm in my 40s, I've got 3 kids, no job, and I live with my mother, would you go out with me?" wasn't a great line. (I pointed out that even leaving off "and I live with my mother" there were other deficiencies.)
I've had a lot of time to reflect on a good marriage. Passion was nice, but we barely missed the sex the last few years. I liked knowing that there was someone out there who had my back, and I had hers. I liked being able to share the joy and sorrow of our children. I liked the simple act of sharing a bed.
While lying in his arms, five minutes after he said, "[If you got pregnant,] just have an abortion", because, obviously, I'm going to kill my unborn child because some prat can't be in a relationships without getting laid.
That reminded me of a fond memory, the time when I was on the verge of the moment of maximum excitation and she looked up at me and said ever-so-sweetly "If I get pregnant, will you marry me?" Her "gotcha!" grin as I did a spit-take while my brain was shifting gears helped me realize that here was someone who could stimulate my mind as well as my body, and as Ron White says, "You can't fix stupid." (I figure I had the last laugh, because I married her and she wasn't even pregnant.) That twisted sense of humor got us through a lot.
Yes your "value" as a marriage partner declines as you get older. Women in their Twenties DO have the power because they are at their maximum attractiveness, maximum ability to conceive a child (which rapidly and exponentially declines in their thirties), and have the fewest problems in childbirth, birth defects, etc. Statistically speaking compared to their older peers.
This is simple biology and any complaints are best addressed to God or Evolution, take your pick. A man interested in a family will maximize his opportunity by picking a younger partner. While you might be a "better and stronger person" that won't help you conceive a child, much less take care of several young ones. Gottlieb at 25 would have much more energy to care for her son than Gottlieb at 42. Biology as it always does, trumps fuzzy ideas.
As such your "value on the marriage marketplace" is a "niche" value -- one for men not looking for a family or who already have all the family they need/want (generally older men).
A woman in her twenties will draw attention from not only her peers but men in their thirties with more money, power, social status, etc.
She has the most suitors, and can pick and choose. Delaying merely means she has fewer suitors to choose from, and they display the oafish behavior you describe.
Women need more education to maximize their selection, understanding they can't have it all, and not choosing is just another way of being single.
Speaking as a dude whose father married a woman with a bastard girl already in tow, I've asked my father several times whether he loves her less than all the other children (f