Not Going To The Chapel Quite So Much

24 thoughts on Not Going To The Chapel Quite So Much

1. She’s already scheduling the interviews and writing her column.

2. Dawn Eden will find this information to be a source of despair, since it just means more women are giving it away for free and diluting the market value of her chastity

   That’s about as close to a sure thing as you can get.

3. ARe they counting children?

4. That article is terrific! The testimonials are my favorite part, especially of women who have gotten divorced and are all Chaka Khanin’ it up.

5. I liked this quote:

   “Although we can help people ‘do’ marriage better, it is simply delusional to construct social policy or make personal life decisions on the basis that you can count on people spending most of their adult lives in marriage,” said Professor Coontz.

   I’ve never understood why so much social policy and political attention is focused on marriage, when to me it seems nearly irrelevant to the big issues of what keeps people happy and healthy.

6. twf:

   I’ve never understood why so much social policy and political attention is focused on marriage, when to me it seems nearly irrelevant to the big issues of what keeps people happy and healthy.

   YES. Or even what keeps them housed, employed and sober, which is what the administration’s ‘Promoting Responsible Fatherhood’ initiative thinks that marriage classes will do!

7. I’ve never understood why so much social policy and political attention is focused on marriage, when to me it seems nearly irrelevant to the big issues of what keeps people happy and healthy.

   I think it’s because people took the strange demographic bump of the 1950s, where the average age at first marriage suddenly plummeted by 2 years, a little too seriously. They assumed that getting married at a young age had become the norm, when in fact the average age started rising again almost immediately: by 1980, we’d reached the same age (22.0) as in 1890.

   So much for the 1950s being comparable to any other period in history.

   (Stats here: http://tinyurl.com/yykmsc)

   It very much amuses me that I managed to completely blow the curve last year by getting married for the first time at 37. 🙂

8. Not to pick, but technically what the article is saying is that more than half of US women are not living with a spouse. More than half are still married. (If I understood the numbers on page 2 right, about 46% of women are single.)

   That being said, I really did appreciate the not-scary tone of the article. No statistics about terrorists or stories about sad women wanting husbands but not being able to find them – the line about women being “more likely to delay” remarriage than men after divorce really jumped out at me.

9. I agree with twf on thinking it problematic that marriage is advocated in the first place…especially by the government, researchers, and journalists, who consider themselves objective or balanced and also, for conservative politicians, not that concerned with legislating people’s personal affairs. A bit of irony.

   Actually, I think the article is full of loaded and inherently conservative assumptions. Underneath the seemingly liberal concession that women who don’t marry can be satisfied is the view that ‘most’ women will ‘eventually’ become married. So, don’t fear any big shift in the short order, the article assures its readers. Also, and this is very problematic to me, the author does not mention people for whom marriage is not an option (most lesbians) and people, including an increasing number of people, who don’t believe in marriage for whatever reason. When the article mentions women, it means only a certain of woman; when it mentions marriage, it only means a certain type of union. Why not specify that its point of address is heterosexual women and heterosexual marriage? (Because, if the article were about lesbian women and lesbian unions, it would certainly do so.) Even better, why not challenge its own very heteronormative assumptions about women?

10. When the article mentions women, it means only a certain of woman; when it mentions marriage, it only means a certain type of union. Why not specify that its point of address is heterosexual women and heterosexual marriage?

    Because if they did that, the numbers would suddenly be a lot less useful for scaremongering, because you’d find out that a chunk of those women are living with partners but are not allowed to legally marry outside of Massachusetts, which would reduce the number of women overall.

    It would be interesting for a study to try and figure out how many lesbians used to submit to social pressure and marry men, but I have no idea how you could even determine that. Maybe by looking at women who married in the 1940s and 1950s who are still alive?

11. The bit that really confirms the underlying conservatism for me is this:

    “For better or worse, women are less dependent on men or the institution of marriage,” Dr. Frey said. “Younger women understand this better, and are preparing to live longer parts of their lives alone or with nonmarried partners.

    For better or worse women are less dependent on men? What?

12. Single at 41, have turned down quite a few relationships that could have turned into marriage — two by some very wealthy men. I do not want that in my life. I like my own life. I just remarked to my roommate last night on how wonderful it is to pursue my own interests and hobbies without having to worry about the crap you get fmo a guy who’s worried that he’s competing with the fact that you actually have a life.

    And I don’t want to hear about how “not all men are like that.” Enough in my age cohort are that, plainly, we’re ALL turning the whole mess down. Marriage just means more work — more housework with someone who won’t pull their own weight, more cooking work, my hobbies will get scrutinized and belittled, my career will be assumed to be the one that can suffer or be back-burnered, plus I have to make myself sexually available to the guy 24/7 or else there’s a “problem.” What a pain in the ass the whole thing is.

    And again, it’s plain as day that lots and lots and lots and LOTS of women are finding the same thing. I’ve had my time with a guy who swore up and down that he loved “smart women” who, as the relationship wore on, fond himself damned threatened by the fact that I was simply not behaving like wife material as things progressed. Initially, it was “I like you because you’re not like other women,” then it became “why can’t you be more like other women?”

    My space is my own, my money is my own, I make my own investment decisions, I clean up after myself, I cook for myself, I do ONE person’s laundry, and I sleep on MY side of the bed, blissfully unannoyed.

13. Well, while all this is good news, among the class of girls my daughters hung with the following was found, now that she’s 20 and her friends, mostly from poor families, have stayed in town.

    Out of 22 girls she knew is junior high and high school:

    15 had children before 21 years of age, with one of these having two children by different fathers.
    3 had children before 17
    1 had a child at 15

    One had an abortion 14
    One had an abortion at 15
    One had a miscarriage at 16

    None have any desire for college. Only one is getting any kind of skills training (cosmetology).
    All of the ones who’ve had children want to get married, but as yet are not.
    One still sees the father of her child, the others broke off the relationships soon after.
    Seven still live at home.
    Two are already married, both to the fathers of their children.
    The fathers were all older than the mothers, the greatest age disparity at five years.

    So, there it is, seems from this small grouping, that females among the lower economic/social strata still feel pressured to believe in the mythology of motherhood and marriage and the key to their happiness and well being.

    All of the ones who’ve had children want to get married

14. Marriage just means more work — more housework with someone who won’t pull their own weight, more cooking work, my hobbies will get scrutinized and belittled, my career will be assumed to be the one that can suffer or be back-burnered. What a pain in the ass the whole thing is.

    Yep, you are correct on all counts. But a man in 2007 could have posted these words and it would have made just as much sense.

15. Marksman, you can honestly assume that your career will be backburnered? Or are you just trying to play tit-for-tat here? You can assume that should you want kids, the argument will be made that your salary won’t cover the childcare, so it’s actually MORE EXPENSIVE for you to work? You can assume that thanks to a massive pay inequity, your takehome will be smaller and that if anyone’s expected to quit, it’s you? Really?

    You can assume that you’ll have to do the second shift of housework? You can assume that while your load of housework will go up, your spouse’s will go down? Really?

    Or are you just playing tit-for-tat?

16. I have a different take all together. I believe that as we have more freedom we find it harder to compromise. I know in my case (divorced 13 years) I have very mixed feeling about creating a single household with my current SO. I love him, have the best time of my life with him, but when you share space you always have to come to compromises, for some reason after 13 + years of having my own home where everything is my way I find that the idea of giving up (compromising) even over small things bothers me. Now historically all give was from the wife/woman, I can honestly say I don’t think my guy feels this way, but none the less we would have to make compromises in order to live together.

17. This was a bit surprising considering the massive power of the wedding industry and the pressue to get married. My beau and I plan on getting married evnetually, but we feel there is really no rush. We both just finished graduate school and started jobs, that is our main focus at the moment 🙂

18. I think that, as marriage becomes less of a big deal, weddings become a bigger one. Most women these days live with their husband before they get married. Hell, a lot of them have mortgages together before they get married. Most couples are a little older, employed, paying for the wedding themselves, etc. It’s a chance for a big party and for a woman to play dress up in fancy clothes. I’ve known women in longterm relationships, some with children, who delayed marriage to their partners not because they didn’t want to get married, but because they couldn’t afford the fancy wedding they really wanted, and weren’t willing to settle for less. But they were effectively married to their common-law partners.

19. Or are you just playing tit-for-tat?

    I don’t play games. I say what I think, and either you agree or you don’t.

    But if you don’t believe that there are men out in the world right now who’ve had their privacy, finances, careers, and independence compromised as a direct result of getting married, then I don’t know what else to say.

20. Marksman, I think the key point here is that a woman is far more likely to be *expected* to compromise her privacy/finances/career/independence than a man. Yes, there are men whose lives have been altered for the worse by the compromises inherent in marriage, but statistically speaking a woman is a lot more likely to experience this phenomenon.

    I do think that’s changing to some extent, to the point where I know several professional women whose husbands’ careers take a back seat and where the husband is the one making most of the compromises. But it’s still unusual enough to be noteworthy, while a married woman switching to part-time work or because of the kids, or resigning her job because her husband’s job is being relocated to another city, that’s pretty common still.

    One interesting thing I’ve found is that in the past five years, new Canadian parents have been eligible for an entire year of parental leave, with Employment Insurance covering a significant fraction of their pay. Mostly, it’s women who take the whole year, but there are men who take the last few months. In stereotypically non-masculine professions, there seems to be more willingness/desire to be a stay-at-home-dad for a good chunk of time.

    When I worked in health care, I knew two male nurses who took six months’ leave starting when their babies were six months’ old, and their wives returned to work. However, that could be a function of heterosexual men who go into nursing as a career maybe being less worried about being perceived as ‘macho’, and/or of nursing having been a female-dominated profession for so long that there’s a long tradition of flexibility regarding nurses who have small children. A male nurse who asks for several months off for paternity leave is probably going to get a better reception than a male lawyer or executive or engineer.

    In fact, I recently temped at an engineering firm once where one of the most talented engineers was poached away by another firm while I was there. Water cooler gossip had it that he’d asked for several months of paternity leave the year before, so his wife could go back to work in September (she worked at a college and starting up again at the beginning of the school year made sense for her). Being a smallish firm, they weren’t obligated to accomodate his request (I think businesses with fewer than 50 employees are exempt under many circumstances), and the partners apparently not only turned him down, but actively ridiculed him.

    And a year later he took a position at a competing firm with more family-friendly policies, and apparently one of the perks of the new job was that he would be able to work from home one day per week. According to the permanent clerical staff member who filled me in on all the gossip, they’d lost several female technical staff members over the past few years, all of them having left either when they had small children, or when they were planning to start families. Looked to me like their employee retention problem was finally extending itself to male technical staff, because young-ish men these days are more likely to want to be highly involved parents, and willing to ask their employers for flexible hours, etc.

    The question of course becomes which compromises are healthy ones, and which are destructive. I mean, if the industry standard in Profession X is to work 65 hours a week, it’s going to be rather difficult for both husband and wife to do so and have kids. And it’s more likely for a woman to give up her job altogether, or switch to very-part-time than it is for a man to do so. Which means her career is compromised. But maybe they’d both be happier (as parents and in their marriage) if they were both working, say, 45 hours a week.

21. So, there it is, seems from this small grouping, that females among the lower economic/social strata still feel pressured to believe in the mythology of motherhood and marriage and the key to their happiness and well being.

    I got married at 18. Had my first child at 21 (would have been sooner if not for issues with my uteruii, we never used protection), my second at 23. At the time, when I met my future husband (I was 16), I was always told by other men how ugly and horrible I was. I figured I couldn’t find anything better. I am from a small town, and a poor family. I have no job, was planning on going to collage but my husband talked me out of it.

    I am now 24, and he’s 29. I do work on the internet, commisions type stuff, that he considers a ‘hobby’ since I get paid maybe 1000 dollars a year (something I hope to improve as my name becomes more common in the writing industry). I consider myself smarter than him, but anytime I correct him on something it begins a huge fight. He does NO housework or childcare at all. Not even taking out the trash. Bitches when I use ‘his’ money for smokes or soda. Does things such as say we are too broke to go out to dinner, and then turns around and buys himself a 300 dollar rifle. Oh, and I couldn’t live on my own, having never had a job, two children I would fight tooth and nail to not be raised by him alone, and no education. Also, I can’t drive.

    So yeah, I can totally see why people aren’t getting married.

22. If you want out, can you start taking driving lessons? And getting some formal training so a future job you get isn’t at Wal-Mart and paying minimum wage? I mean, if he’s that much of a jerk, I’m sure both you and the kids would be better off without him in the longterm. Sticking out an unhappy marriage for a few years when you have an end goal (finish skills training, find a decently paying job, THEN file for divorce) is a far cry from sticking it out with no end in sight.

    I apologise if this sounds patronising. I’m sure you’ve already thought of all this stuff for yourself. I just wanted to reiterate that while none of your options here are very good, there are some less bad options. Just speaking for myself, when I’m unhappy I tend to get bogged down in depression to the point where even imagining ways to change the current miserable circumstances is difficult.

    My mom did a similar thing when she wanted out of an abusive marriage (and it sounds like your husband is emotionally abusive, even if he doesn’t hit you). She knew two years before the divorce that she wanted a divorce, but she didn’t tell my dad that was the reason she’d decided to requalify so she could go back to work at the job she’d had before she was a SAHM.

    And I know another woman who was in a similar situation to yours, married very young, no post-secondary education, who trained as a paralegal, and left her husband shortly after getting her first job. The snag, of course, is that your kids are very young, whereas my siblings and I were in school when she went back to school herself. And presumably if your husband likes the status quo, he wouldn’t be willing to pay for babysitting so you can spend “his” money on tuition for skills you shouldn’t even want, because he wants you at home forever. Correspondence or web-based courses you can do from home?

    On the bright side, while your current options are all very problematic, at least you haven’t internalised your husband’s views of your ability and/or worth as a person. It took my mom a long time to realise that no, she actually wasn’t incompetent and helpless, nor were any and all marital problems (a problem being defined not as her husband’s abuse, but her provoking of it) all her fault. She’d just heard the false message for so long that she’d started believing it. Knowing the guy is a rotten human being and being sure you and the kids would be much happier if the circumstances change in the future so it’s possible for you to leave, those things are big. You haven’t bought into his worldview. That’s a victory right there.

23. Notsomeone, if it makes you feel any better, some very educated women end up with men who pull this exact same BS. My first husband would complain if I ordered something too expensive at a restaruant and then go out and buy a boat the next day. It’s not about anything other than control. I finally could not take it and kicked him out, but I had to be very wiley about it. There is a website out there that matches up women with children as roomates (I’ll try to find it). Maybe you could trade child care responsibilities while you both try to improve your educations and work part time. Live on a bus line and near the school your kids will attend so you don’t have the expense of a car you can’t afford yet, and your kids can easily get home and let themselves in when they are old enough. You and your roomate could try to work opposite shifts so there would be someone around more often. Computer classes are a really good idea for you – Florida schools are heavily into these programs (try Jacksonville state) and you can finish your degree that way before moving on to some specialized training. Think about health care where there is a huge shortage and employers pay for you to go to school/have a lot of classses on site. That way you will most certainly have a job when you are done, you can start in a tech position, and you can be around a lot of people who can mentor you and help build your confidence. Plus you can get health insurance for you and the kids. You can work weird shifts to address your child care stuff. If I can kick out my zillionare husband you can do this. If you have to, send him on a hunting trip and be gone when he gets home. Call legal services and have a plan to keep him from trying to use the kids to get you back and maybe get some support payments in the future (but don’t count on ever seeing a dime).

24. My first husband would complain if I ordered something too expensive at a restaruant and then go out and buy a boat the next day.>>>
    When my wife asked about buying something, I’d ask “can we pay our bills?” and the answer was always yes, so I’d say “Then why should I care?” We’re not out on the street yet. 🙂

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