David Brooks has a question.

49 thoughts on David Brooks has a question.

1. I take it there’s no “win an Oscar, divorce the cheater, give it another shot with a hopefully better person later” option?

2. This is a lot less cute when you realize it’s not a hypothetical choice when it comes to having kids and/or a career, for lots of women. Men get both, and are rewarded professionally for it. Women can “choose,” and then get punished regardless of which path they take.

3. How nice that Mr. Marriage Rocks makes it all about Sandra Bullock’s life choices, and not… you know… the life choices of the cheating jerk husband who actually ruined the marriage.

4. I am, apparently, an idiot.

   I don’t understand why having a happy marriage (or even just romantic relationship) would be a bigger personal accomplishment than overcoming depression, learning a language fluently, learning to surf, or any other thing. The happiest person I know is my mother who lives alone with her dog pursuing her own interests.

5. Two things happened to me this morning. First, I woke up and went to class. Then came a bullshit hypothetical question from a meretricious jackass. So the philosophic question of the day is: Would you take that as a deal? Would you exchange passing Western III for the aggravation of dealing with a severely stupid and disingenuous douchebag?

   If you had to take more than three seconds to think about this question…

6. Brooks on marriage equality: “We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity…. It’s going to be up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage.”

7. Wow. Did they mention in the editorial the working definition of happiness? Because it matters. Petri-dish happy is different from contentment without stagnation…and listening to NPR in the car during my morning commute actually does not suck. Unlike underacheiving and the philosophy of lowered expectations.
   Also – how did Jesse James’ faithlessness become Sandra Bullock’s fault? And when did partnership automatically lead to cheating?

8. I’m with preying mantis. I’ll take the Oscar, thank you, and divorce the cheater. The reason why divorce was an advancement for women is because we no longer have to be stuck with anyone who causes us pain or harm.
   And the fact that the person you are married you can cause you pain or harm is the reason why the relationship between marriage and happiness is no less complicated than between success (or money) and happiness. If you agree with this article about Leo Tolstoy, it’s also an argument for marriage equality and a diverse family make-up:

   There are obvious, recurrent patterns in unhappy families […]; the stigmata of family unhappiness are drearily familiar and repetitive. On the other hand, there are happy families of every kind.

9. Wow, that quote from Ryan Fix is from this article.

   Of which the first paragraph is: “Anybody who has several sexual partners in a year is committing spiritual suicide. He or she is ripping the veil from all that is private and delicate in oneself, and pulverizing it in an assembly line of selfish sensations.”

   Seriously. My god, David Brooks.

10. 1. Brooks acknowledges that money does buy happiness, up until the point that the basics are provided for.

    2. He sets it up as a “philosophic question,” again acknowledging that in reality, it’s not always an either/or. In real life, you could win the Oscar and find relational fulfillment – but sometimes it’s revealing to think about what you would pick in the philosophical dilemma.

    3. The research he cites has to do with being part of a group, levels of social trust, and interpersonal relationships – not all specifically marriage. Many Americans do marry, and for a lot of them it’s their deepest interpersonal relationship, so in the philosophic dilemma he sets up it makes sense (ok, a little bit of sense) to use it as the example of an interpersonal relationship that would suck to have crumble.

    Jill, and others not in long-term relationships, would you really find winning an Oscar more fulfilling than having a long friendships or a good relationship with your family?

    4. Ama, I’ve done a few of the things you mention and I would say, absolutely, my long-term relationship with my fiance is a WAY bigger personal accomplishment than anything else. I honestly wish I could put in on my resume as the hardest, most fulfilling thing I’ve done so far.

    Obviously, the satisfaction gained from these types of relationships varies from person to person, and some people might find their professional accomplishments for fulfilling. But that doesn’t change the fact that, as Brooks points out, an increasingly large body of research shows that a lot of people do derive the most happiness in their lives from their interpersonal relationships.

    5. I am absolutely pro-gay marriage, pro-singleness, pro-variety of relationship types and pro-accomplishment-of-many-and-difficult-things-by-women. But that doesn’t mean I have to discount the real happiness people do find long-term relationships like marriage. I just don’t think Brooks is saying many of the things you accuse him of saying.

    1. Rita, I don’t think Brooks is saying many of the things you give him credit for saying.

11. It’s like he’s blaming the victim (Sandra) for her *completely unrelated* success (Oscar). So, our take home message is to not try to be successful at something we do because it might make our partner unfaithful. Got it.

12. I don’t want to start a flame war. But this?

    Ama, I’ve done a few of the things you mention and I would say, absolutely, my long-term relationship with my fiance is a WAY bigger personal accomplishment than anything else. I honestly wish I could put in on my resume as the hardest, most fulfilling thing I’ve done so far.

    This is crap. Being in a satisfying relationship is not a great personal achievement. I think attitudes like this reinforce the notion that people who aren’t in long-term relationships are doing something wrong and they should be working harder at it. Being in a relationship doesn’t make you special. It just makes you lucky.

    As someone who’s getting married this summer and is in a very fulfilling relationship, I can certainly for myself that it isn’t some great personal accomplishment. Mostly, it’s luck. Luck that I managed to find someone with whom I’m so compatible, that I happen to be attracted to and who is also attracted to me, who happens to share my language and most of my values and ideology.

    That’s luck. It’s not something I did.

13. I know nothing about who this guy is, but he definitely sounds like a real winner. My goodness. How can you believe marriage is the key to happiness and reason denying that to ANYONE?

14. I don’t agree with Brooks’ obsession with the institution of marriage, and I think his demonization of other kinds of partnerships is completely close-minded and sanctimonious. On the other hand, I think it’s a bit unfair to characterize Brooks as being insufficiently supportive of same-sex marriage. He deserves some credit for making such an unambiguous statement in support of gay marriage, given the platform he has as one of the country’s more popular and respected conservative pundits. Not only that, but he manages to make the argument from a clearly conservative perspective; if other right-wing writers could look at these issues without the taint of prejudice we could probably have a far more reasonable discourse.

    But yeah, a lot of what he says is completely nuts too, so there’s that.

15. Rita is absolutely right. I think some are being way to hearsh/misreading here. Brooks’ rather benign point – expressed within his claustrophobic, narrow confines of ‘marriage’ – is that relationships are more valuable than status or wealth. Pretty vanilla stuff.

    Ryan is also right – Brooks’ fuddy-duddy intro to that old column aside, he’s come out rather vocally in support of gay marriage.

    It’s kind of funny – every conservative site I read hates Brooks for his counsel against the right’s self-comforting lurch toward anti-intellectual populism. They think he’s a sellout looking for pats on the head from liberals. And every liberal site I read rags on him as being insufficiently liberal and generally being wishy-washy or obvious in his columns. Truly a man w/o an ideological country.

    Meanwhile, I find him a somewhat interesting (if flawed) columnist who seems like a nice guy and puts up an effort to pose interesting questions. Shrug.

16. fuddy-duddy intro

    seems like a nice guy

    Seriously? Just because the guy expresses one opinion that isn’t odious doesn’t mean he’s a good guy. I mean, he’s basically saying that people who have sex outside of marriage are bad people. Come on.

    I don’t hate him for being “insufficiently liberal.” I hate him for being a misogynist, intellectually dishonest asshole.

17. “He or she is ripping the veil from all that is private and delicate in oneself, and pulverizing it in an assembly line of selfish sensations.”

    …Am I the only one who thought “Well, hell, that sounds like a pretty good way to pass the time”?

18. m. leblanc, I agree, being in a relationship doesn’t make one “special”. And I agree, finding someone with whom I’m compatible and share values = luck, fate, providence, what-have-you.

    But staying with him? In a relationship that doesn’t follow the conservative gender roles we grew up with? In a relationship where we are consistently honest, patient, and compromising while following our individual career goals and aspirations? That’s work. And it’s good work, and work I don’t mind doing and I’m guessing you don’t mind it either. But it’s definitely a personal achievement.

    To bring myself more on topic, I think downplaying the difficulty of relationships (not just romantic ones; my relationship with my mother and best friend take work too) makes it easier to discount the value of the interpersonal work women are often held responsible for in relationships.

    Other commenters have noted the real hurdles women face (sometimes from people like Brooks) in trying to achieve career successes and having spouses, children, or other caretaking responsibilities. When we pretend that long-term relationships are not difficult and not valid loci of our focus, happiness, and fulfillment, we perpetuate Brooks’ either/or scenario – relationship or career success.

19. I tend to think of my happy long-term relationship as a blessing rather than an achievement. Achievements are supposed to be difficult. My relationship isn’t difficult at all. It’s easy and it makes everything else in my life easier.

20. I have some more problems with Brooks’s opinion:
    1) He seems to be equating work with money and praise, rather than how I think of my work, which is ultimately fulfilling. I love my job, I love helping people; I would do it even if I wasn’t being paid. Of course, I want to succeed, and I want recognition of my success, I think this is a basic human desire.
    2) He poses the question as a philosophical one. Well, maybe I missed something in my college Philosophy classes, because I seem to remember philosophical questions taking more than three seconds to answer. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re an idiot if you can find a definitive answer to a true philosophical question in three seconds or less. Maybe the word he’s looking for is “hypothetical?”

21. If I had to choose between a cheating partner and professional achievements, or a strong marriage and no professional achievements, I would choose…neither. Why can’t I have professional achievements and a loving partner? Or professional achievements and no partner at all? This isn’t an either-or kind of decision. At least it shouldn’t be.

22. I’d take the Oscar over the relationship: people die, or in this case, part ways- the Oscar doesn’t go away. This is part of why I don’t want to get married, even if I am ever in the economic position to do so: I’d rather be a full human being than half a person.
    I suspect David Brooks would believe that women ought to be happy to be half a person. Which just serves to demonstrate how out of touch he is.

23. Ugh. The major problem with the column is the implication that women need to choose, that a woman’s dazzling career success if incompatible with a happy relationship.

    And yeah, that is what he is getting at. This is the dude who wrote a column pooh poohing the drudgery of work as a young law associate compared to the glories of caring for a baby — and actually argued with a straight face that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. So part of his schtick is trying to persuade women that they are suckers for trying to succeed outside the kitchen and the nursery.

24. “Seriously? Just because the guy expresses one opinion that isn’t odious doesn’t mean he’s a good guy. I mean, he’s basically saying that people who have sex outside of marriage are bad people. Come on.”

    I might say that he’s more arguing that they are doing harm to themselves rather than he’s condemining them as “bad people,” but that’s splitting hairs. And we’re in agreement that we disagree with Brooks on that statement.

    But his is a conservative argument, and, if you expand the definitions beyond traditional marriage to “commitment,” it’s not a bad one. Sex with many random strangers may be fun or not, depending on one’s bent, but it’s not exactly controversial to state that it’s empty compared to what can be achieved in a loving, commited relationship. The conservative argument is only a matter of degree/variation on what is considered an acceptable conclusion by people of many ideological stripes. Everyone wants to be loved, which is the context from which he builds a conservative argument for marriage equality.

    And my larger point is, that people of all ideologies can’t seem to tolerate anyone who has opinions that deviate from their worldview. I get that blogs are primarily places to vent and attack things … but Brooks is a great example because he says a lot of vanilla things and gets excoriated for it by left and right.

    Hating or deriding David Brooks as some evil or irredeemably stupid tool of the patriarchy is just silly. And kind of intolerant, frankly, given the range of human beings who more aggressively and loudly deviate into controversial positions antithetical to the favored ones on this site.

    To wit:

    “I don’t hate him for being “insufficiently liberal.” I hate him for being a misogynist, intellectually dishonest asshole.”

    “hate” “misogynist” “asshole”

    Amazing to me that you can muster such strong feelings for … david brooks. Maybe go outside. Get some fresh air.

25. I choose c: professional success and a happy marriage. I don’t have to settle for only one of these things, so why should I? What is the point of this question?

26. Politicalguineapig, contrary to what you might have heard, people who are married are still full human beings. No, really, it’s true! I did not become “half a person” when I signed my name at the courthouse.

27. But more to the point, David Brooks makes sociologists cry.

28. Brooks is being offensive because he’s implying that there’s a causal connection between Sandra Bullock winning an Oscar and her husband cheating on her.

    Brooks can read and count. He knows that Bullock’s husband was a serial adulterer who was cheating on her long before she even made Blind Side. Yet he wants to insinuate that her success destroyed her marriage, as opposed to her husband’s cheating. He’s too chickenshit to come right out and air that prejudice because it doesn’t make sense or fit the facts of the case. He’s too invested in being the smart conservative.

29. I find most of my happiness when people aren’t bugging me.
    And to the surprise of David Brooks, that’s when I’m in the car and singing along with the radio. Or taking a brisk walk while the sun goes down in October. He’s obviously never sat on a hilltop by himself and watched a thunderstorm roll in from miles away.
    Can’t happiness just be as simple as that?

    The older I get the more I realize that happiness is made up of brief moments of peace and clarity.
    And oddly enough, they don’t happen at work or with partner, just myself and nature.
    I guess I’m a damn tree hugging hippy egg headed lilly livered liberal.
    Damn me and my damn happy sandals.

30. I tend to think of my happy long-term relationship as a blessing rather than an achievement.

    I agree with this statement and what Rita said. In my opinion, “achievement” and “blessing” can be similar. Like I could call getting into the graduate program I want both a blessing and an achievement. It would take time and energy to achieve, but I would feel blessed that I had the opportunity to follow my chosen path.
    So maybe some people are saying the same thing in different ways?

31. Anony Mouse: That’s great. And to be honest, I don’t regard my mom as half a person either.
    But I know at least one woman who happily twitters about her husband’s achievements and ‘their’ future plans. Not a word about what she’s doing or her career- if she even has one. That’s what I meant by ‘half a person.’ One should have interests outside of one’s significant other.

32. See, my problem with this kind of hypothetical is that by presenting a seemingly simple (normative) premise for choice, it totally obfuscates all the complex conditions that frame and constrain decisionmaking.

    So yes, as folks have said, it’s meaningless to talk about choosing between career and a “successful marriage” when marriage isn’t available to you. Or when your job opportunities are truncated from the get-go because your boss assumes, based on the fact that you present as a straight woman, that you will eventually choose your ‘marriage’ and family over your work. Or when you live in California right now and can’t find a job period, let alone one in which you might be able to win some prestigious award.

    Now, I do hear what folks are saying about the kernel of truth within the morass of privilege. It IS important to keep in mind that the loving relationships and communities that ground us, that sustain us, in whatever form they manifest, are far more important than fame or fortune.

    Putting a feminist spin on that Brooks argument, then, I’m reminded that it doesn’t actually do women as a caste much good when individuals or relatively small groups of women ascend in capitalist ranks, accruing more and more power. Given the spiritually disfiguring properties of capitalism, which does, in practice, pit time for loving relationships against time for making a living (particularly for women who are shouldered with a double shift, less pay for the same work, etc.), the real deal is that we need to be **organizing** for alternative spaces where livelihood and community/relationship cultivation can increasingly merge, and **challenging** the current system that forces us to choose between (a) joining clubs and dining with your friends, OR (b) making enough money to get your ill mother into a nursing home.

    I mean, how about rather than winning an Oscar, I would like to be able to live and support myself and contribute to my community as an artist. OUTside of a capitalist system that says that art is primarily valuable as a commodity — that WORKERS are primarily valuable if and when we sell our labor. Is an Oscar really that important? We need to rethink our whole notion of ‘accomplishment’ beyond the competitive individualist ethic central to capitalism.

33. And the gold star goes to Kloncke.

34. Rephrasing the question so that it makes sense given my life – would I rather win the Fields Medal and my wife (we are assuming gay marriage here) be emotionally cheating on me or be in a happy fulfilled marriage compatible with my orientation? Iiii think I’ll take the Fields Medal. And try to talk it out with my partner and divorce her if things don’t work out. Now, if the question were Fields Medal + alone and friendless or zero personal success and tons and tons of friends and important relationships, I’d go for the friendship. (Although it would be hard, because my planned career is very, very important to me.)

    A lot of people are rephrasing this as “your relationships with other people are more important than your success” but that is not what he said. He was talking about marriage. And one of the issues I have with the institution of marriage, in fact with the whole concept of romantic relationships, is the way it gets framed as the Single Most Important Relationship Ever and if you do not have one you will be Lonely Forever and all that shite – in other words, the extreme devaluing of friendships and familial relationships. This question to me is a perfect example – because I do not really *care* about never marrying or even never dating (and given my orientation it’s best not to get my heart set on it anyway) so given the choice between happy fulfilled romantic relationship and Fields Medal I will go HELL YEAH FIELDS MEDAL, but I do care about being friendless. Does he ask about that? No. It’s marriage all the way.

35. @Lindsay Beyerstein: could you explain a little more how you read Brook’s as implying that Bullock’s career success played a causal role in her husbands adultery? He juxtaposes two things that happened to Bullock. Do you believe that this textual arrangement implies a causal relationship? I think that, as others have argued, Brooks is posing a philosophical question that really doesn’t have a whole lot to do with Bullock, and has just somewhat unpleasantly used her situation as an introductory paragraph. I don’t see causation implied.

36. I would eleventy-million times over rather be “Academy Award Winner (me)” than Mrs. Some-guy’s-name-even-though-I-didn’t-change-it-but-no-one-ever-remembers. I don’t think it even took me ONE second to decide that.

    I guess that makes me a bad person.

37. Paul Davis: I think Lindsay’s implying that Brook’s using the stereotype of the fragile husband in this situation. Because husbands have to be the successful party or they’ll have to prove their manlihood by cheating.

38. Paul,

    David Brooks wrote his column in such a way as to retain “plausible deniability” (although I actually don’t think it is that plausible).

    But c’mon he is playing into all sorts of stereotypes about how high-achieving women necessarily have lousy family lives, and stereotypes that men are driven to cheat because their wives were not available enough or warm enough or what have you. (This is a columnist who has previously argued that, for women, real “power is in the kitchen” and that we women are naturally inclined to seek our power there. http://select.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/opinion/01brooks.html?_r=1 )

    The whole premise of Brooks’s “philosophical” premise is absurd (that one must choose between career success and a happy marriage) and highly gendered. Columnists like Brooks don’t generally wring their hands about the toll a successful man’s career might take on his family life. His framing is particularly galling here because there is no reason to assume that Bullock’s career had any bearing whatsoever on the breakdown of the marriage.

39. I don’t know Mr. Brooks or his, err, body of work, but from this sampling I would suspect he’s Exhibit A of what Briget Jones’s Diary characterizes as a “smug Married.”

40. “Sex with many random strangers may be fun or not, depending on one’s bent, but it’s not exactly controversial to state that it’s empty compared to what can be achieved in a loving, commited relationship.”

    Not exactly controversial, that is, if you’re viewing things from your own prism. The notion of romantic love is a very recent one in human history. It can be toweringly fulfulling being unattached and enjoying the loving relationships of friends and family. One’s sex life can be the occasional rendezvous that adds excitement and spice. But I’m supposed to feel there’s an emptiness to it all, even as people marvel at what a happy, vibrant person I am.

41. Flit,
    I know numerous people in committed, loving relationships who also have lots of sex with random people (not necessarily strangers). So yeah, put me firmly on Team “David Brooks is full of shit”.

42. hell, some of them even have loving, committed relationships with more that one person!!! Or with people of both sexes!!!! With or without that holy salve that is marriage!!!!!!!!

43. I shared this general critique with a Facebook pal who’d put up an approving link to the Brooks article.

    My pal pointed out that Brooks never actually said James cheated because of Bullock’s success. Okay, literally, that was not stated. But, I said, what the hell does this column mean if there’s no connection? Does Brooks have any point at all, if that’s not what he’s saying?

    I’m told this is a classic rhetorical technique called “implied thesis.” You put something out there, deniably, as Another Laurie said at #39. Readers want to understand you, so they elide and assume at the part where you don’t quite state the argument. And your work is done.

44. @catfood
    Ah, the old “If you knew John McCain had an interracial child out of wedlock would you vote for him” trick. I mean, they didn’t say that John McCain had a black baby, they just asked a completely hypothetical question out of curiosity.
    I also agree that if that isn’t the implication, that sucess for women comes at the hands of a stable marriage and they must choose, then the question seems out of place. Especially the language of “stuck with.” That really bothers me, why is she “stuck” with him? And why is the question asked specifically of people with husbands? I could not even imagine someone asking “Men, would you rather win and Oscar or be stuck with a cheating wife?”
    AND HOW DOES A HAPPY MARRIAGE FIT INTO NOT HAVING ANY PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENTS?!!!! Partnerships take work, and if you have a happy marriage it is an achievement and one that is constantly being worked on. And honestly, I seriously think in order to do the best you can on your job, for the most part you are going to need your partner (if you have one) to be supportive.

45. @AnotherLaurie: The whole premise of Brooks’s “philosophical” premise is absurd (that one must choose between career success and a happy marriage) and highly gendered. Columnists like Brooks don’t generally wring their hands about the toll a successful man’s career might take on his family life.

    I don’t think that his premise is absurd at all. I have many, many friends whose married lives (and non-married friendships) have been strained (and in some cases) broken by one or both partner’s perception of what is required to be successful in their careers. That doesn’t mean that conflict is inevitable, but its hardly a purely hypothetical, let alone absurd thing to wonder about.

    Given Brook’s general themes, I agree that you won’t find him handwringing too much about examples of men whose lose or diminish their marriages due to career issues, but I don’t agree that it doesn’t get writtten about (google turns up quite a few articles in national publications). But I continue to disagree with the notion that his column implicitly links Bullock’s successful career with the behaviour of her husband. I don’t deny that there are people who want to make that kind of linkage, I just don’t think that Brooks is attempting to do that.

    Don’t you ever play these games with your friends? “If you had to choose between X and Y ….” ? I think that its unfortunate that he took a real life situation as a starting point for a hypothetical, philosophical question. I also think its possible that Brooks does believe that the behaviour of Bullock’s husband is in some way related to her career. I just don’t think that his column is about that, or attempts to imply in any way that deserves to be called out. His column isn’t about Bullock, or the Oscar, or her lying cheating husband. Perhaps it should be, but to me, its about a much more abstract question: if you have to choose between career success and a good relationship, which makes more sense to choose. Right now, it would appear that Bullock doesn’t have this choice to make, so I hardly see how an examination of this question is really about her life and prior choices.

    I would like to be able to write a column in which I take a real life situation as a starting point for a philosophical discussion, and not have readers spend time speculating on how my column reflects certain beliefs I have about aspects of the real life situation that I don’t consider germane to my perspective in that discussion. I’m willing to grant Brooks that position too, even as I would hope that I would pick a better real life situation to get the ball rolling.

46. If I were writing the Brooks column, I would start by saying, “I was musing this morning about whether success or a happy marriage is more important. What would I do if I were forced to choose?”

    Instead he linked his musing to a real-life situation that bears absolutely no relation to his philosophical query — unless you accept that Sandra Bullock’s career had some bearing on the break-down of the marriage. I also detected quite a bit of schadenfreude in his pity for poor Ms. Bullock.

    As for the main point of the column, I strongly believe that success versus marriage is a false choice. Sure, people do let career issues interfere with their marriage, but it is never a black-and-white choice of being forced to choose one over the other. The problem is that women are still told that you cannot have both.

47. @AnotherLaurie: I absolutely agree with your observations about how to start such a column.

    I would note that I don’t think that Brooks’ column (or the interesting question) is about a choice between marriage and career, though this is undoubtedly a choice that many women are still unfortunately forced to make.

    I think its about the choices that have to be made about happy marriages and career success (probably defined as something beyond where you get if you just do only what is needed to keep your job). At least in the US, we live in a phenomenally work-centric culture that has extended the boundaries of the workplace dramatically over the last decade or two. Figuring out how to find the balance between a set of good relationships outside of work (including marriage) and the right level of involvement at work is something that an increasing number of people, men included, have to face on a daily basis.

48. Ha! I was just going to write a blog post about how I realized today it’s *me* who the radical right should fear when it comes to the destruction of the institution of marriage, not those pesky commitment-wanting gays…

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