Ask youself this: how would your fiance react if YOUR mother moved in? It sounds like it's her (and her family's) way or the highway!
Problems with the future (maybe) in-law (serious question)
- Thread starter integrare
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What Drew said.
Son, I don't know if you realise it, but you've been "shot at and hit". What I mean by that is that you are the casualty here. Stand your ground, otherwise put on the collar and bark on command. Things may work out yet, because life is a partnership when married and in this case it's not. Your MIL is calling the tune and controling you and fiance, and this is just the begining. This is where the relationship ends or heals.
Many of us have been down this bumpy road before. Good Luck.
Many of us have been down this bumpy road before. Good Luck.
Remember theres more than one fish in the sea. If she is showing her teeth and nails and you two are not even married just think what it could be like if you do get married to her. I'm a firm believer that no one shows their true self until after marriage. One tends to be on their best behavior as a suitor when dating. I'm not knocking your choice in women but, if you marry this one do yourself a favor and stock up on asprin, alcohol, and a straight jacket.
itegrare, You did the right the right thing!!! Now the real issue is what are you going to do when your girlfriend decides she was stupid to leave you and wants to return? She will be back and from the sound of it you need to keep away from her and here family!! I can see the future grief that is in store for you if you take her back! Move on and enjoy some time to yourself as you get ready to go back to school! Their are plenty of fishin the sea and she was being very unreasonable to expect you to take her mother and brother in under the circumstances!!
What Drew said
I went through several relationships before I married at 28. Best thing I ever did. All of the other relationships would have been wrong for me. Best advice: dump her and cultivate patience. The right one for you is out there, wait for her to appear
I went through several relationships before I married at 28. Best thing I ever did. All of the other relationships would have been wrong for me. Best advice: dump her and cultivate patience. The right one for you is out there, wait for her to appear
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Why do I get the impression that most of us, at one time or another, have belonged to Moe, Larry, and Curly's "Amalgamated Women Haters - Local 6&7/8"
Article from www.nomarriage.com: I think it rings true.
Why men should not marry.
All the older guys I know, guys that are 55 and older are telling me the same story; don't do it. It just turns to crap no matter what you do. They'd rather be independent. At best it's a tedious bore. At worst a living **** with financial ruin thrown in for good measure. The problem is that when you're young, you just naturally fall into this mind set where your whole self image is based on how women regard you, and so you spend all your money and energy trying to make yourself acceptable to them. Then later in life the shine wears off and you finally realize that you've wasted yourself on a bunch of crap.
Children - "the ultimate human experience"
I couldn't even begin to list all of the older folks i know from work or through my family with kids they either don't get along with, are disappointed in, or are so distant as to not even be a factor in each other's lives.
I'm really skeptical about the idea of children as "the ultimate blessing." How many friends do you have with little or no meaningful contact or relationships with their parents?
I would wager the statistic for happy child/parent relations would be as bad, if not worse, than the marriage numbers. Who wants to deal with TWO bitter, unfulfilling relationships?!
Marriage is a sham for men. There is no benefit. If you are about to get married, think it over. Don't let your **** do your thinking for you. Don't let your punch-drunk I'm in love euphoria put you on auto-pilot. You will wake up in a **** of a hangover staring at this woman who will control your life.
A few years ago I went through a major depression over this until I started talking to all the older guys I knew...and they all said the same thing; "don't do it, it's ****. Even when it's not bad, it's ****". You end up being closely tied to an old woman. Think about that. I can go to Europe or the south seas tomorrow. If I was married I wouldn't have the money and I'd have to ask HER permission. Don't get married unless you are absolutely religiously in love with her. Like carry her sick aged body to the toilet and wipe her *** and be happy to do it kind of love.
What I'm saying is that human beings are nasty weak treacherous creatures that are for the most part totally untrustworthy. Experience is my basis for this statement, both mine and others who I know or who have written reliable histories. If you can find a woman to be your companion who is not treacherous, a deceitful little actress, a sly whore or a manipulative nag or a shrieking hag, then you are among the lucky few. Congratulations. I hope your luck continues to hold out.
Ok, assume that you will end up divorced and won't see your kids and lose half of your assets, how different is that from being married?
Most married guys I know are working their asses off to pay bills, rarely to get to spend time with their families, mediocre or no sex life, and have wives that spend as much of their money as absolutely possible.
My problem with marriage isn't a fear of divorce; it is that the whole thing sucks divorce or not.
What security is there for men in marriage?
If I cheat on my wife, she gets half my ****.
If she cheats on me, she still gets half my ****.
Why the **** should i get married?
**** it man, it's easy to get depressed about not being married when we live in a society that constantly feeds us the image of the happy couple. It's one big lie. The happiest person alive is someone who isn't a prisoner dependent on another human being... We only have 80 or so years on this rock to achieve true freedom
Very few marriages last nowadays, and even guys older than me are telling me not to even think about it... It's a grossly overrated source of happiness. And for the 80% that do go through divorce, it will financially ruin you for life. Period. You can take your best 10 earning years from say, 35 to 45 and take all the wealth you would have accumulated and flush it down the toilet. Because it will go to her and her lawyer. If it happens naturally and it's good then great, good luck. But the worst thing is to force it, to make gross exertions and ignore all sorts of red lights going off just to be hooked up and "normal". Get some hobbies. Relax. Hang out. Enjoy. Take life as it comes.
As men, we all know that a woman's primary objective is to marry. After years of experience I've discovered their most commonly used strategy. here it is:
1. Girl pressures guy for marriage.
2. Guy delays.
3. Girl gradually starts destroying guy's self-esteem and eliminating his friends.
4. Guy becomes too weak and too much of a loser to find something better than what he has.
5. Girl starts to limit sex. In effect controlling the only good thing in the guy's life.
6. Guy is in despair. Capitulates to marriage.
Then 5-10 years later the guy is an empty shell of his former self. Girl is a ruthless manipulating machine. Girl divorces loser husband. Girl takes 80% of guy's stuff because the guy is too brain dead to find a good lawyer. Girl lives happily ever after. Guy becomes bald alcoholic who dies of heart attack at 45 years old.
Why men should not marry.
All the older guys I know, guys that are 55 and older are telling me the same story; don't do it. It just turns to crap no matter what you do. They'd rather be independent. At best it's a tedious bore. At worst a living **** with financial ruin thrown in for good measure. The problem is that when you're young, you just naturally fall into this mind set where your whole self image is based on how women regard you, and so you spend all your money and energy trying to make yourself acceptable to them. Then later in life the shine wears off and you finally realize that you've wasted yourself on a bunch of crap.
Children - "the ultimate human experience"
I couldn't even begin to list all of the older folks i know from work or through my family with kids they either don't get along with, are disappointed in, or are so distant as to not even be a factor in each other's lives.
I'm really skeptical about the idea of children as "the ultimate blessing." How many friends do you have with little or no meaningful contact or relationships with their parents?
I would wager the statistic for happy child/parent relations would be as bad, if not worse, than the marriage numbers. Who wants to deal with TWO bitter, unfulfilling relationships?!
Marriage is a sham for men. There is no benefit. If you are about to get married, think it over. Don't let your **** do your thinking for you. Don't let your punch-drunk I'm in love euphoria put you on auto-pilot. You will wake up in a **** of a hangover staring at this woman who will control your life.
A few years ago I went through a major depression over this until I started talking to all the older guys I knew...and they all said the same thing; "don't do it, it's ****. Even when it's not bad, it's ****". You end up being closely tied to an old woman. Think about that. I can go to Europe or the south seas tomorrow. If I was married I wouldn't have the money and I'd have to ask HER permission. Don't get married unless you are absolutely religiously in love with her. Like carry her sick aged body to the toilet and wipe her *** and be happy to do it kind of love.
What I'm saying is that human beings are nasty weak treacherous creatures that are for the most part totally untrustworthy. Experience is my basis for this statement, both mine and others who I know or who have written reliable histories. If you can find a woman to be your companion who is not treacherous, a deceitful little actress, a sly whore or a manipulative nag or a shrieking hag, then you are among the lucky few. Congratulations. I hope your luck continues to hold out.
Ok, assume that you will end up divorced and won't see your kids and lose half of your assets, how different is that from being married?
Most married guys I know are working their asses off to pay bills, rarely to get to spend time with their families, mediocre or no sex life, and have wives that spend as much of their money as absolutely possible.
My problem with marriage isn't a fear of divorce; it is that the whole thing sucks divorce or not.
What security is there for men in marriage?
If I cheat on my wife, she gets half my ****.
If she cheats on me, she still gets half my ****.
Why the **** should i get married?
**** it man, it's easy to get depressed about not being married when we live in a society that constantly feeds us the image of the happy couple. It's one big lie. The happiest person alive is someone who isn't a prisoner dependent on another human being... We only have 80 or so years on this rock to achieve true freedom
Very few marriages last nowadays, and even guys older than me are telling me not to even think about it... It's a grossly overrated source of happiness. And for the 80% that do go through divorce, it will financially ruin you for life. Period. You can take your best 10 earning years from say, 35 to 45 and take all the wealth you would have accumulated and flush it down the toilet. Because it will go to her and her lawyer. If it happens naturally and it's good then great, good luck. But the worst thing is to force it, to make gross exertions and ignore all sorts of red lights going off just to be hooked up and "normal". Get some hobbies. Relax. Hang out. Enjoy. Take life as it comes.
As men, we all know that a woman's primary objective is to marry. After years of experience I've discovered their most commonly used strategy. here it is:
1. Girl pressures guy for marriage.
2. Guy delays.
3. Girl gradually starts destroying guy's self-esteem and eliminating his friends.
4. Guy becomes too weak and too much of a loser to find something better than what he has.
5. Girl starts to limit sex. In effect controlling the only good thing in the guy's life.
6. Guy is in despair. Capitulates to marriage.
Then 5-10 years later the guy is an empty shell of his former self. Girl is a ruthless manipulating machine. Girl divorces loser husband. Girl takes 80% of guy's stuff because the guy is too brain dead to find a good lawyer. Girl lives happily ever after. Guy becomes bald alcoholic who dies of heart attack at 45 years old.
Whom not to marry from www.nomarriage.com:
Whom not to marry.
# Be Selfish Now
It's amazing how many people think that a guy looking for a good woman should do what's "fair" or what's socially responsible. **** that. It's each guy's responsibility to find a woman that's the best possible choice for HIM. Who will make HIM happy. This one time, when he's choosing his future wife, he needs to focus exclusively on his own needs and making sure they are satisfied.
Trust us, nobody else in the world, least of all your wife, is worrying about your needs or wants. So you should worry about your own.
And this is the last chance you'll get. Once you're actually married, you'll find that everything about marriage, legal, financial, and emotional, will be about HER and the kids. Your needs will be dead last, or even more likely, not even recognized. You will be just a provider, a mechanic, or whatever type of worker bee the woman and children happen to require at the moment.
So, take this one chance, young man, to make sure that the woman you are looking for satisfies YOUR needs and wants.
So forget about what's politically correct or socially responsible. Be selfish. That's the best thing you can do for yourself, and for your future wife.
# Look for Wifely Qualities, Not Just Girlfriend Qualities. Women have been encouraged to chase relentlessly after personal fulfillment...being well-educated, physically fit, interesting, and financially secure. All these things are really great, and make for a wife who is nice to be around. BUT there are a whole other set of qualities that modern women have ignored...and even, avoided. These are the skills and habits that make them a good wife.
Of course, many people pooh-pooh this idea...many people think that marriage just "happens" when two people love each other. Au contrair. A happy marriage takes skill. There are a whole set of attitudes and habits that each partner needs to bring.
The "wifely" skills are those that the woman needs to have, or learn darned quick, if she's going to make you happy. In fact, the woman's "wifely" skills are probably the most important single factor in the success of the marriage. The woman, with her better emotional strength, and her vastly superior ability to track and manage the health of the relationship, is the key to long term success.
Of course, in the past 50 years, women have disavowed those wifely skills, as well as their natural responsibility for the relationship. No wonder that so many marriages are miserable, and the rate of divorce is sky-high!
So here's a practical tip for all you intrepid wife-hunters. Remember that the qualities that make a woman a good wife may be quite different from those that make her a good girlfriend. As the saying goes "American women are great for easy casual sex, but make terrible wives".
Don't assume that a woman, just because she's a hot girlfriend, will make a good wife for you. When you're really (really!) serious about finding a wife and mate, prove your seriousness by changing your aim. Look for a woman who may *not* make a great girlfriend, but *will* make a fantastic wife!
# What are good wifey skills?
Cooking, cleaning, mothering, nurturing, wants kids, loves kids, loyal, trustworthy.
What is important is that the wife does not have a real negative attitude towards doing those things. Any trace of snobbery at doing traditional female tasks is a bad sign of a princess.
Marrige is a case where both partners need to give up something to get somthing different and greater in return. If anyone is selfish about the realtionship then it won't work.
And a marrige except for a few cases needs someone to be a provider, and someone to be a domestic.
# No woman with strong feminist leanings will EVER be happy with the breakdown of tasks in the household. They will ALWAYS be preoccupied with fairness and feel they are being taken advantage of. They never realize that a marriage is letting your guard down and mutually trusting the other person!
# Also, not with one who has a drunk daddy. Always check out the mom today to see your honey tomorrow. Is mom fat?
# Never Marry a Woman Who has the Same Career Ambitions in a Similar Industry as You Do.
If you're not that agressive about your career, it's ok to marry a woman who is.
If you are agressive about your career, then it's not OK to marry a woman who is also agressive about her career...
unless it's a career in an industry that is very different from yours.
Basically, marriage doesn't work all that well when you have two driven, ambitious people. Clashing egos for 40 years...uh-uh. Ain't gonna work.
# I would rephrase "success in career" as just some sort of success in an organization, with the definition of success left broad. so as opposed to just being a party girl who's irresponsible and can't hold a job for more than six months (and usually just sees work as a means to party), you'd want a chick who has managed to be successful in a job or as a volunteer in an organization or as an artist or whatever. Just SOMETHING that requires some level of fiscal responsibility, organizational skills, professional interpersonal skills along with taking the "good and the bad" for some higher goal. Not someone who walks away as soon as some level of disomfort approaches, or is afrait to persue ANY goal.
# Never marry a woman whose father took off or was abusive to her mother UNLESS she got the right lesson from it ... the right lesson being that responsible men are to be adored and valued and their eccentricities and (mild, occasional) irresponsibilities tolerated. You need to have clear evidence that she took the right lesson -- if not, you're going to have a nightmare marriage dominated by her suspicion, paranoia, and total inability to please.
# Never marry a woman who, while you are dating, is even SLIGHTLY open to other men's flirtation, who even occasionally tells you she's going out clubbing with the girls, who has any significant relationship with an ex (unless you know the ex, are included whenever your girl sees the ex socially, and can personally validate that it is purely "just friends" and trust that with your gut.) Marriagable women are totally loyal and have NO interest whatsoever in any other man or any interest whatsoever in having any other man pay them attention.
# Never marry a woman who complains about your appearance, or even cares to much about it, beyond a "you aren't going to go to my mother's house in that wrinkly shirt." Let's face it: you're going to working hard to support her and the kids, and if you pack on some lbs or go gray, you don't want to worry about her deciding that it merits her having an affair.
# Never marry a woman who is sexually demanding in terms of your performance, who withholds sex on a regular basis on the grounds of headache or disinclination, or thinks she has a "right" to anything in particular sexually -- who, for example, will refuse you sex or make you keep doing things in bed on the grounds that you didn't get her off the last time. You are going to get older and fatter and her libido is going to go off a cliff as she gets older and has kids. If she is even slightly hard to deal with sexually now (in terms of giving it up, or in terms of demanding things from you now) she is going to be IMPOSSIBLE to deal with five years after marriage. You WILL have a marriage which is nearly sexless.
# Never marry a woman who's habitually late. If she can't get there on time when she's single, she'll never be there on time to pick up your kids from daycare or baseball practice. It will never get better.
Can be generalized to "all bad habits will persist and worsen."
# Here is one of the most important tips: ignore what women say, and watch what they do. Your post reminded me of a female co-worker of mine who used to say she'd never date anyone from work. I liked her, so I waited till I quit to ask her out...whereupon, of course, I discovered she'd been ******* the guy in the cube next to her for months.
# Anyone in therapy. She is getting 50 minutes a week of 'how to hate men' brainwashing. And it's expensive as **** and you'll be expected to pay for it.
Whom not to marry.
# Be Selfish Now
It's amazing how many people think that a guy looking for a good woman should do what's "fair" or what's socially responsible. **** that. It's each guy's responsibility to find a woman that's the best possible choice for HIM. Who will make HIM happy. This one time, when he's choosing his future wife, he needs to focus exclusively on his own needs and making sure they are satisfied.
Trust us, nobody else in the world, least of all your wife, is worrying about your needs or wants. So you should worry about your own.
And this is the last chance you'll get. Once you're actually married, you'll find that everything about marriage, legal, financial, and emotional, will be about HER and the kids. Your needs will be dead last, or even more likely, not even recognized. You will be just a provider, a mechanic, or whatever type of worker bee the woman and children happen to require at the moment.
So, take this one chance, young man, to make sure that the woman you are looking for satisfies YOUR needs and wants.
So forget about what's politically correct or socially responsible. Be selfish. That's the best thing you can do for yourself, and for your future wife.
# Look for Wifely Qualities, Not Just Girlfriend Qualities. Women have been encouraged to chase relentlessly after personal fulfillment...being well-educated, physically fit, interesting, and financially secure. All these things are really great, and make for a wife who is nice to be around. BUT there are a whole other set of qualities that modern women have ignored...and even, avoided. These are the skills and habits that make them a good wife.
Of course, many people pooh-pooh this idea...many people think that marriage just "happens" when two people love each other. Au contrair. A happy marriage takes skill. There are a whole set of attitudes and habits that each partner needs to bring.
The "wifely" skills are those that the woman needs to have, or learn darned quick, if she's going to make you happy. In fact, the woman's "wifely" skills are probably the most important single factor in the success of the marriage. The woman, with her better emotional strength, and her vastly superior ability to track and manage the health of the relationship, is the key to long term success.
Of course, in the past 50 years, women have disavowed those wifely skills, as well as their natural responsibility for the relationship. No wonder that so many marriages are miserable, and the rate of divorce is sky-high!
So here's a practical tip for all you intrepid wife-hunters. Remember that the qualities that make a woman a good wife may be quite different from those that make her a good girlfriend. As the saying goes "American women are great for easy casual sex, but make terrible wives".
Don't assume that a woman, just because she's a hot girlfriend, will make a good wife for you. When you're really (really!) serious about finding a wife and mate, prove your seriousness by changing your aim. Look for a woman who may *not* make a great girlfriend, but *will* make a fantastic wife!
# What are good wifey skills?
Cooking, cleaning, mothering, nurturing, wants kids, loves kids, loyal, trustworthy.
What is important is that the wife does not have a real negative attitude towards doing those things. Any trace of snobbery at doing traditional female tasks is a bad sign of a princess.
Marrige is a case where both partners need to give up something to get somthing different and greater in return. If anyone is selfish about the realtionship then it won't work.
And a marrige except for a few cases needs someone to be a provider, and someone to be a domestic.
# No woman with strong feminist leanings will EVER be happy with the breakdown of tasks in the household. They will ALWAYS be preoccupied with fairness and feel they are being taken advantage of. They never realize that a marriage is letting your guard down and mutually trusting the other person!
# Also, not with one who has a drunk daddy. Always check out the mom today to see your honey tomorrow. Is mom fat?
# Never Marry a Woman Who has the Same Career Ambitions in a Similar Industry as You Do.
If you're not that agressive about your career, it's ok to marry a woman who is.
If you are agressive about your career, then it's not OK to marry a woman who is also agressive about her career...
unless it's a career in an industry that is very different from yours.
Basically, marriage doesn't work all that well when you have two driven, ambitious people. Clashing egos for 40 years...uh-uh. Ain't gonna work.
# I would rephrase "success in career" as just some sort of success in an organization, with the definition of success left broad. so as opposed to just being a party girl who's irresponsible and can't hold a job for more than six months (and usually just sees work as a means to party), you'd want a chick who has managed to be successful in a job or as a volunteer in an organization or as an artist or whatever. Just SOMETHING that requires some level of fiscal responsibility, organizational skills, professional interpersonal skills along with taking the "good and the bad" for some higher goal. Not someone who walks away as soon as some level of disomfort approaches, or is afrait to persue ANY goal.
# Never marry a woman whose father took off or was abusive to her mother UNLESS she got the right lesson from it ... the right lesson being that responsible men are to be adored and valued and their eccentricities and (mild, occasional) irresponsibilities tolerated. You need to have clear evidence that she took the right lesson -- if not, you're going to have a nightmare marriage dominated by her suspicion, paranoia, and total inability to please.
# Never marry a woman who, while you are dating, is even SLIGHTLY open to other men's flirtation, who even occasionally tells you she's going out clubbing with the girls, who has any significant relationship with an ex (unless you know the ex, are included whenever your girl sees the ex socially, and can personally validate that it is purely "just friends" and trust that with your gut.) Marriagable women are totally loyal and have NO interest whatsoever in any other man or any interest whatsoever in having any other man pay them attention.
# Never marry a woman who complains about your appearance, or even cares to much about it, beyond a "you aren't going to go to my mother's house in that wrinkly shirt." Let's face it: you're going to working hard to support her and the kids, and if you pack on some lbs or go gray, you don't want to worry about her deciding that it merits her having an affair.
# Never marry a woman who is sexually demanding in terms of your performance, who withholds sex on a regular basis on the grounds of headache or disinclination, or thinks she has a "right" to anything in particular sexually -- who, for example, will refuse you sex or make you keep doing things in bed on the grounds that you didn't get her off the last time. You are going to get older and fatter and her libido is going to go off a cliff as she gets older and has kids. If she is even slightly hard to deal with sexually now (in terms of giving it up, or in terms of demanding things from you now) she is going to be IMPOSSIBLE to deal with five years after marriage. You WILL have a marriage which is nearly sexless.
# Never marry a woman who's habitually late. If she can't get there on time when she's single, she'll never be there on time to pick up your kids from daycare or baseball practice. It will never get better.
Can be generalized to "all bad habits will persist and worsen."
# Here is one of the most important tips: ignore what women say, and watch what they do. Your post reminded me of a female co-worker of mine who used to say she'd never date anyone from work. I liked her, so I waited till I quit to ask her out...whereupon, of course, I discovered she'd been ******* the guy in the cube next to her for months.
# Anyone in therapy. She is getting 50 minutes a week of 'how to hate men' brainwashing. And it's expensive as **** and you'll be expected to pay for it.
Another enlightening article from www.nomarriage.com:
Why marriage no longer makes sense.
Traditional marriage balances different privileges and obligations for men and women. Modern woman wants all the benefits of "equality" without any of the responsibilities.
Traditional Western culture balanced special privileges for women with special obligations, and the same for men.
Equality states that no one get special privileges, and that responsibilities and rights should be equally shared.
Either system is balanced and fair. The problem with modern Western culture is that many women want only the positives from both systems:
They want special privileges from the traditional system (men paying, being "gentlemen" by using special deferential manners and language to women, being the main breadwinner, etc) but not the old-fashioned obligations (being modest and ladylike, being a housewife, etc).
They want the positives of equality (rights, equal access to work and education, etc) without the responsibilities (paying your own way financially a full 50% for life, taking risks with no safety net, and taking your lumps without complaint like men do...not expecting to be protected or sheltered from harsh reality, etc).
You can't take only the good from both systems...you have to take the bad with the good in any balance you strike. When women try to have their cake and eat it in this way, the bad doesn't disappear...it gets paid by men, and this is why the current culture is one of exploitation by selfish hypocritical women...and it's why men are tired of the inequity.
If American women chose one system or the other and took their full share of the bad with the good there would be no problem. But current American culture discourages women being looked at critically, instead projecting all blame unjustly onto men; and so the inequity is rationalized away.
This is why other cultures which haven't got this ****ed up as far as gender relations go, start to look attractive. The women there expect to give as well as get.
Why marriage no longer makes sense.
Traditional marriage balances different privileges and obligations for men and women. Modern woman wants all the benefits of "equality" without any of the responsibilities.
Traditional Western culture balanced special privileges for women with special obligations, and the same for men.
Equality states that no one get special privileges, and that responsibilities and rights should be equally shared.
Either system is balanced and fair. The problem with modern Western culture is that many women want only the positives from both systems:
They want special privileges from the traditional system (men paying, being "gentlemen" by using special deferential manners and language to women, being the main breadwinner, etc) but not the old-fashioned obligations (being modest and ladylike, being a housewife, etc).
They want the positives of equality (rights, equal access to work and education, etc) without the responsibilities (paying your own way financially a full 50% for life, taking risks with no safety net, and taking your lumps without complaint like men do...not expecting to be protected or sheltered from harsh reality, etc).
You can't take only the good from both systems...you have to take the bad with the good in any balance you strike. When women try to have their cake and eat it in this way, the bad doesn't disappear...it gets paid by men, and this is why the current culture is one of exploitation by selfish hypocritical women...and it's why men are tired of the inequity.
If American women chose one system or the other and took their full share of the bad with the good there would be no problem. But current American culture discourages women being looked at critically, instead projecting all blame unjustly onto men; and so the inequity is rationalized away.
This is why other cultures which haven't got this ****ed up as far as gender relations go, start to look attractive. The women there expect to give as well as get.
The Marriage Strike
By Matthew Weeks
For those of you who know me in real life, this will not come as a surprise, but I have no designs on ever getting married. Now, it appears I am not alone in my disposition.
"Why Men Won't Commit: Exploring Young Men's Attitudes About Sex, Dating and Marriage," a study released by researchers Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, concludes that men are, indeed, more apprehensive about getting married than before.
"The median age of first marriage for men has reached 27, the oldest age in our nation's history," Mr. Popenoe remarked in the Washington Times. "If this trend of men waiting to marry continues, it is likely to clash with the timing of marriage and childbearing for the many young women who hope to marry and bear children before they begin to face problems associated with declining fertility," he continued. You know this is a collegiate study when an examination of a trend that is affecting men is used to fret about the state of women.
The study contains several possible explanations for this phenomenon, based on interviews with 60 single men, 25 to 33, who live in four parts of the country. While that level of measurement certainly is not statistically significant enough to reflect any kind of a national trend, responses generally revolved around the possibilities of suffering huge losses if the marriage ends in divorce. ("An ex-wife will take you for all you've got" and "men have more to lose financially than women" were common
refrains, the study reports.)
To humor the study's results for a few minutes, let's examine whether or not these young men's concerns are justified. If we accept the old feminist argument that marriage is slavery for women, then it is undeniable that -- given the current state of the nation's family courts -- divorce is slavery for men.
Take a hypothetical husband who marries and has two children. There is a 50 percent likelihood that this marriage will end in divorce within eight years, and if it does, the odds are 2-1 it will be the wife who initiates the divorce. It may not matter that the man was a decent husband. The reality of the situation is that few divorces are initiated over abuse or because the man has already abandoned the family. Nor is adultery cited as a factor by divorcing women appreciably more than by divorcing men.
The new trend that has taken hold of the court system is what as known as the "no fault" divorce, in which the filing party needs only to cite their general discontent with the marriage in order to be granted a hearing. Women initiate these unilateral divorces-on-demand 3 times as often as men.
While the courts may grant the former spouses joint legal custody, the odds are nearly 40 to 1 of the wife winning physical custody. Overnight, the husband, accustomed to seeing his kids every day and being an integral part of their lives, will now be lucky if he is allowed to see them even one day out of the week.
Once the couple is divorced, odds are at least even that the wife will interfere with the husband's visitation rights. Three-quarters of divorced men surveyed say their ex-wives have interfered with their visitation, and 40 percent of mothers studied admitted that they had done so, and that they had generally acted out of spite or in order to punish their exes.
Then, of course, there is the issue of financial losses due to court-imposed payments. In the end (99 times out of 100), the wife will keep most of the couple's assets and --if they jointly own one -- the house. The husband will need to set up a new residence and pay at least a third of his take-home pay to his ex in child support, on top of whatever alimony payments the courts impose upon him. These can run as high as another third of his income. (Add the cost of taxes to that and the man gets to keep exactly 13% of his take-home pay -- he'd better pray that's enough to keep him alive.)
But as bad as all of this is, it would still make our hypothetical man one of the lucky ones. After all, he could be one of those fathers who cannot see his children at all because his ex has made a false accusation of domestic violence, child abuse, or child molestation. Or a father who can only see his own children under supervised visitation or in nightmarish visitation centers where dads are treated like criminals.
He could be one of those fathers whose ex has moved their children hundreds or thousands of miles away, in violation of court orders, which courts often do not enforce. He could be one of those fathers who tears up his life and career again and again in order to follow his children, only to have his ex-wife continually move them.
He could be one of the fathers who has lost his job, seen his income drop, or suffered a disabling injury, only to have child support arrearages and interest pile up to create a mountain of debt which he could never hope to pay off. Or a father who is forced to pay 70 percent or 80 percent of his income in child support because the court has imputed an unrealistic income to him. Or a dad who suffers from one of the child support enforcement system's endless and difficult to correct errors, or who is jailed because he cannot keep up with his payments. Or a dad who reaches old age impoverished because he lost everything he had in a divorce when he was middle-aged and did not have the time and the opportunity to earn it back. Our imaginary man might consider himself lucky if he knew what his life could have been.
Over five million divorced men in America are currently experiencing the situation I just outlined. Without a doubt, their stories and experiences are heard by unmarried men. Can anyone truly blame the men for having apprehension? They stand to gain little and lose everything they've worked for in their entire lives should they "take the plunge", so to speak.
So ladies, if you have a problem with this, speak to your feminist brethren. This is the legacy which they have left behind. By erasing the stigma of premarital sex and encouraging physical liberation, they have eliminated one of the most powerful incentives in history for men to tie the knot. By advocating government as a surrogate husband in the case of single motherhood, they have eliminated the disincentive for women to file for divorce. And through decades of litigious activism, they have given rise to the bloated and intrusive family court system and stacked it so egregiously against the men of this country that it now appears they are subconsciously engaging in what could be called a "marriage strike", preferring to play the odds rather than assume a massively disproportionate amount of risk.
As for the men, make no mistake, they are slowly beginning to realize that the power is now in their favor. They have more and more perfectly legitimate reasons for remaining unmarried every day. Given a choice between not marrying one's lady friend -- assuming no risk whatsoever and still having the historical benefits of marriage (sex, companionship, etc.) available to them, or marrying the woman and having a 50-50 chance of their lives being utterly destroyed should the woman so much as be "unhappy" with the marriage, the decision is a no-brainer. What women perceive as a "fear of commitment" is really nothing more than a pragmatic assessment of the odds facing men in the prospect of a marriage.
Therefore, the trends evident in this study are not much of a surprise. I would wager that if the study were conducted nationally, similar results would be produced. Of course, such a study would invariably seek to address the grievances of the dejected single women of the country. My advice to them would be simple: offer to sign a prenuptial agreement that outlines the exact terms of a possible divorce: how assets would be divided, how any alimony and child support would be handled, and other vital elements that may be causing apprehension. And don't be insulted if your potential mate asks you to sign one, or if he desires terms that will be equitable to him. No matter how strong your love may be for one another, the demand for eligible bachelors willing to commit to marriage is currently exceeding the supply, and if you won't sign it, odds are that there's another woman out there who will.
NOTE: Statistics in this article (and, in effect, much of its text) are drawn from Glenn Sacks and Diana Thompson's Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed of 7/5/2002 entitled: "A Marriage Strike Emerges as Men Decide Not to Risk Loss"
By Matthew Weeks
For those of you who know me in real life, this will not come as a surprise, but I have no designs on ever getting married. Now, it appears I am not alone in my disposition.
"Why Men Won't Commit: Exploring Young Men's Attitudes About Sex, Dating and Marriage," a study released by researchers Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, concludes that men are, indeed, more apprehensive about getting married than before.
"The median age of first marriage for men has reached 27, the oldest age in our nation's history," Mr. Popenoe remarked in the Washington Times. "If this trend of men waiting to marry continues, it is likely to clash with the timing of marriage and childbearing for the many young women who hope to marry and bear children before they begin to face problems associated with declining fertility," he continued. You know this is a collegiate study when an examination of a trend that is affecting men is used to fret about the state of women.
The study contains several possible explanations for this phenomenon, based on interviews with 60 single men, 25 to 33, who live in four parts of the country. While that level of measurement certainly is not statistically significant enough to reflect any kind of a national trend, responses generally revolved around the possibilities of suffering huge losses if the marriage ends in divorce. ("An ex-wife will take you for all you've got" and "men have more to lose financially than women" were common
refrains, the study reports.)
To humor the study's results for a few minutes, let's examine whether or not these young men's concerns are justified. If we accept the old feminist argument that marriage is slavery for women, then it is undeniable that -- given the current state of the nation's family courts -- divorce is slavery for men.
Take a hypothetical husband who marries and has two children. There is a 50 percent likelihood that this marriage will end in divorce within eight years, and if it does, the odds are 2-1 it will be the wife who initiates the divorce. It may not matter that the man was a decent husband. The reality of the situation is that few divorces are initiated over abuse or because the man has already abandoned the family. Nor is adultery cited as a factor by divorcing women appreciably more than by divorcing men.
The new trend that has taken hold of the court system is what as known as the "no fault" divorce, in which the filing party needs only to cite their general discontent with the marriage in order to be granted a hearing. Women initiate these unilateral divorces-on-demand 3 times as often as men.
While the courts may grant the former spouses joint legal custody, the odds are nearly 40 to 1 of the wife winning physical custody. Overnight, the husband, accustomed to seeing his kids every day and being an integral part of their lives, will now be lucky if he is allowed to see them even one day out of the week.
Once the couple is divorced, odds are at least even that the wife will interfere with the husband's visitation rights. Three-quarters of divorced men surveyed say their ex-wives have interfered with their visitation, and 40 percent of mothers studied admitted that they had done so, and that they had generally acted out of spite or in order to punish their exes.
Then, of course, there is the issue of financial losses due to court-imposed payments. In the end (99 times out of 100), the wife will keep most of the couple's assets and --if they jointly own one -- the house. The husband will need to set up a new residence and pay at least a third of his take-home pay to his ex in child support, on top of whatever alimony payments the courts impose upon him. These can run as high as another third of his income. (Add the cost of taxes to that and the man gets to keep exactly 13% of his take-home pay -- he'd better pray that's enough to keep him alive.)
But as bad as all of this is, it would still make our hypothetical man one of the lucky ones. After all, he could be one of those fathers who cannot see his children at all because his ex has made a false accusation of domestic violence, child abuse, or child molestation. Or a father who can only see his own children under supervised visitation or in nightmarish visitation centers where dads are treated like criminals.
He could be one of those fathers whose ex has moved their children hundreds or thousands of miles away, in violation of court orders, which courts often do not enforce. He could be one of those fathers who tears up his life and career again and again in order to follow his children, only to have his ex-wife continually move them.
He could be one of the fathers who has lost his job, seen his income drop, or suffered a disabling injury, only to have child support arrearages and interest pile up to create a mountain of debt which he could never hope to pay off. Or a father who is forced to pay 70 percent or 80 percent of his income in child support because the court has imputed an unrealistic income to him. Or a dad who suffers from one of the child support enforcement system's endless and difficult to correct errors, or who is jailed because he cannot keep up with his payments. Or a dad who reaches old age impoverished because he lost everything he had in a divorce when he was middle-aged and did not have the time and the opportunity to earn it back. Our imaginary man might consider himself lucky if he knew what his life could have been.
Over five million divorced men in America are currently experiencing the situation I just outlined. Without a doubt, their stories and experiences are heard by unmarried men. Can anyone truly blame the men for having apprehension? They stand to gain little and lose everything they've worked for in their entire lives should they "take the plunge", so to speak.
So ladies, if you have a problem with this, speak to your feminist brethren. This is the legacy which they have left behind. By erasing the stigma of premarital sex and encouraging physical liberation, they have eliminated one of the most powerful incentives in history for men to tie the knot. By advocating government as a surrogate husband in the case of single motherhood, they have eliminated the disincentive for women to file for divorce. And through decades of litigious activism, they have given rise to the bloated and intrusive family court system and stacked it so egregiously against the men of this country that it now appears they are subconsciously engaging in what could be called a "marriage strike", preferring to play the odds rather than assume a massively disproportionate amount of risk.
As for the men, make no mistake, they are slowly beginning to realize that the power is now in their favor. They have more and more perfectly legitimate reasons for remaining unmarried every day. Given a choice between not marrying one's lady friend -- assuming no risk whatsoever and still having the historical benefits of marriage (sex, companionship, etc.) available to them, or marrying the woman and having a 50-50 chance of their lives being utterly destroyed should the woman so much as be "unhappy" with the marriage, the decision is a no-brainer. What women perceive as a "fear of commitment" is really nothing more than a pragmatic assessment of the odds facing men in the prospect of a marriage.
Therefore, the trends evident in this study are not much of a surprise. I would wager that if the study were conducted nationally, similar results would be produced. Of course, such a study would invariably seek to address the grievances of the dejected single women of the country. My advice to them would be simple: offer to sign a prenuptial agreement that outlines the exact terms of a possible divorce: how assets would be divided, how any alimony and child support would be handled, and other vital elements that may be causing apprehension. And don't be insulted if your potential mate asks you to sign one, or if he desires terms that will be equitable to him. No matter how strong your love may be for one another, the demand for eligible bachelors willing to commit to marriage is currently exceeding the supply, and if you won't sign it, odds are that there's another woman out there who will.
NOTE: Statistics in this article (and, in effect, much of its text) are drawn from Glenn Sacks and Diana Thompson's Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed of 7/5/2002 entitled: "A Marriage Strike Emerges as Men Decide Not to Risk Loss"
The weird thing with mothers-in-laws is that sometimes they are more attractive and more pleasing overall than their daughters. Now, I am not a very old guy, in my mid 20s, but I have seen plenty of relationships ultimately fail because the guy in the relationship preferred spending time with the 40-something-year-old mother-in-law than they did with the daughter, a situation that never seems to work out.
Tends to happen with guys who lacked a good motherly figure in their life. But it is a very real and pertinent phenomenon. Especially since those middle-age women have money, housing (or at least appear to), do not have the desire to become baby factories, and tend to be more emotionally stable overall.
Tends to happen with guys who lacked a good motherly figure in their life. But it is a very real and pertinent phenomenon. Especially since those middle-age women have money, housing (or at least appear to), do not have the desire to become baby factories, and tend to be more emotionally stable overall.
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2002
- Messages
- 39,793
Not only is Dan a member ...he's the president.
Now wrap your brains around this..
************************************
Men and Marriage
By George Gilder
Pelcan Publishing Co., Gretna 1986, USA
[Ten years ago, Lipschutz warned of an extremist political reaction as the inevitable response to radical feminism. I asserted that it would be male driven, fascist, right wing, not left wing. Later I found the idea on p187 of Margaret Mead, Male and Female, pub. Penguin 1950/1964. I have now found the same assertion in Gilder 1986. Some of the mechanism is explained well in Gilder.]
p110/113
Fascism is the political counterpoint of the social breakdown of monogamy into the disorders of polygyny, homosexuality, and female-headed families. The release of large numbers of young men from the bonds and discipline of marriage and family always leads to a threat to social stability. The punk rockers and soccer riots of mid-eighties Britain reflect the loss of male roles through high tax rates and resulting levels of joblessness. The breakdown of law and order and the demoralization of the courts and police in U.S. cities suggests the utter impotence of the superstructure of government when the infrastructures of sexual discipline collapse.
Without a stable family order, in which adult men civilize the young men, terror necessarily rules. No array of daycare centers, police powers, social welfare agencies, psychiatric or drug clinics, special schools and prisons can have any significant effect. William Tucker's fine new book Vigilante vividly shows the imbecile bathos into which our legal system has already fallen as a result of the decline of the stark mandate of justice into the weasels and waffles of social liberation.
At a time when millions of young men are slipping beyond the reach of democratic institutions - indeed, outside the social order itself - the drive to emasculate our politics threatens the foundations of democracy itself. Democracy is not so secure a system that in a serious crisis it can easily survive the loss of the instinctual appeal of male leadership. A state oin which the police and other governmental authorities are heavily in female hands would not last a week. The very emergence of such a state would itself signify either the massive estrangement of men from politics or the degeneration of democracy into some court-ruled system of quotas.
It is part of [Phyllis] Schlafly's genius to have persistently linked the concerns of family with the reform of education, the conservative revival of our politics, and the rehabilitation of our military. From her concern with the national defense to her defense of the nation's families, she espouses a fully coherent vision of the American predicament. A society of families both constrains male aggressions and channels them toward the protection and support of family and society.
With the breakdown of families, the economy also declines, as the long term efforts of male providers give way to short term and predatory economic behaviour. An emasculated state neither can defend itself against male outlaws and exploiters, muggers and terrorists, hijackers and assassins, nor can it achieve the economic growth to finance the welfare programs and police efforts required by a culture in chaos. As in the ghetto, the defection of men from family responsibilities leaves the women helpless to handle their teenaged boys and the police impotent to control them. The youth bully and terrorize the women and the weak.
Similarly in the international arena, an emasculated politics is incapable of sustaining an effective national defense. Rather than defending society, the young men attack it and exalt foreign potentates and desperadoes. Again the captivation of ghetto and other youth by Third World thugs and enemies of America illustrates the contempt that an emasculated politics and economics earns from its young men - and young women as well.
By joining the two issues of national defense and family defense, Phyllis Schlafly has tapped the energies that spring from the eloquent assertion of any long suppressed, evaded, and fragmented set of primal truths. All politics is on one level sexual politics. Defending the sexual constitution, she is clearly America's leading exponent and protector of democracy and capitalism.
The best sign of the continuing health of American society is the regular emergence of political leaders in unexpected places who are willing to commit themselves to a new defense of the values of civilization. Under perpetual assault from the forces of decadence and decline, protectionism and sloth, the American system still summons new tides of resistance and revitalization.
….
Just as the nuclear families of Western Europe unleashed the energies of the industrial revolution, so the new miracles of modern technology are created and sustained by the moral discipline and spiritual incandescence of a culture of churches and families. In families, men and women routinely make long term commitments and sacrifices that are inexplicable and indefensible within the compass of secular hedonistic values. Modern society, no less that any pervious civilization, rests on the accumulated moral and spiritual capital embodied in the rock of ages.
P151/154
Sweden
Most feminist proposals seem designed to establish the working mother as the social norm by making it impossible for most male providers to support their families alone. The feminist attack on the social security system for giving housewives a right to the husband's benefits after he dies; the subsidies for day care; the affirmative-action quotas for women who pursue careers outside the home - all such measures seek to establish the careerist woman as the national standard and incapacitate the woman who tries to care for her own children.
Allan Carlson has explained how a similar policy worked in Sweden. Until 1965, Swedes spurned a quarter-century of feminist indoctrination and followed a social pattern similar to the U.S. Only a quarter of mothers of children under seven entered the work force and more than half of them held part-time jobs. Over the years, however, the Swedish socialists, under pressure from feminists led by Alva Myrdal, managed slowly to destroy the essential supports of the nuclear family. The entire present agenda of American feminism - from universal day care and family-planning programs to paternity leaves for fathers - was eventually enacted.
Carlson writes: "With the homemaker declared to be 'a dying race', legal changes removed the special protections afforded women in marriage. Changes in Swedish tax law essentially eliminated the joint return for a married couple, and have left all persons paying the same tax, whether alone, married but childless, or married with children …." Moreover, marginal Swedish income taxes were increased to nearly 100 per cent at modest income levels, making it all but impossible to support a family on one income by extra personal effort. "Swedish welfare policy was also altered to discourage maternal care of preschool children. Housing and tax benefits are effectively curtailed if families decide to care for their children and refuse to place them in day care centers [and their parents also lose] benefits such as free children's meals and diapers."
By 1986 these policies had failed to induce Swedish women to perform men's roles or men to assume an equal role with children. But according to Carlson, laws were proposed to "force men to shoulder their responsibilities" in the home. School officials were ordered to "redouble their efforts to challenge conventional stereotypes" that after fifty years of feminist indoctrination still orient Swedish schoolgirls toward "traditionally female roles." Women still earn less than men throughout the economy and are virtually absent from the higher echelons of the established multinational corporations that utterly dominate the Swedish private sector.
Nonetheless, the Swedish policy was dramatically successful in several important ways. By 1984 the official "poverty line" for a family of four in Sweden was approximately 40 per cent above the average annual wage. Therefore only the rich (chiefly families with sources of funds outside Sweden) could maintain a family on one income. The male role as principal provider was effectively abolished for most of the population. This policy, though, resulted not in more egalitarian marriages, but in the obsolescence of marriage itself.
Not only did tha rate of illegitimacy rise to over 40 per cent of all live births, but the marriage rate fell to the lowest level ever recorded in the world demographic data. Despite the world's most ambitious programs of sex education and family planning, despite the widespread issuance of free contraceptives, the abortion rate soared to a 1981 level just below the U.S. rate of 43 per cent of all live births. The Swedish people voted against the officially favored egalitarian marriage by mostly not marrying at all. The birthrate fell to a point 40 percent below the replacement rate required to maintain zero population growth. Despite one of the world's best-educated populations and some of the world's most resourceful large companies, the Swedish economy foundered. With the industrial world's highest tax rates came also a governmental deficit in the early 1980s some three times as high as America's huge shortfall as a share of GNP.
The United States is enacting many of the policies that brought sexual suicide to Sweden. Despite the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment and universal day care, the feminists are gaining their ends piecemeal. In particular, the decline in the value of the child deduction has shifted the tax burden massively onto families with children. Through court decisions in favor of comparable worth, through the infiltration of the schools by feminist texts and teachers, through the day-care tax credits and other subsidies for the two-earner family, and through the rapid erosion of the joint income-tax return and the housewife's right to social security, feminists are winning quietly by legal and legislative action what they cannot win in referenda.
The central lesson of the Swedish experience is the profound and irretrievable damage inflicted by a policy of driving mothers of small children out of the home and into the work force. Women in the home are not performing some optional role that can be more efficiently fulfilled by the welfare state. Women in the home are not "wasting" their human resources. The role of the mother is the paramount support of civilized human society. It is essential to the socialization both of men and of children. The maternal love and nurture of small children is an asset that can be replaced, if at all, only at vastly greater cost. Such attention is crucial to raising children into healthy and productive citizens. Moreover, the link of men through marriage to the support of particular children is crucial to male motivation and productivity.
The provider role of men not only gives the society the benefit of a lifetime of hard work oriented toward long term goals. It also channels and disciplines male energies and aggressions that otherwise turn against society. By contrast, full time work by mothers of small children comes out at serious twofold cost: first, the loss of the immeasurable social benefit of the mother's loving care for her child; second, the frequent loss of the husband's full-time concentration in his career. The tield of the mother's job to the economy or the man's help in the home only rarely can offset these costs of her employment. The society will pay the costs one way or another: not only through tremendous outlays for the day care but also through economic declines, population loss, juvenile delinquency, crime, mental illness, alcoholism, addiction, and divorce.
Together with the tragic breakdown of the American black family, the Swedish example should disabuse Americans of the illusion that it couldn't happen here. Family breakdown and demoralization can occur with frightening suddenness when government policy destroys the role of the male provider in the family. The alternative to traditional family roles is not a unisex family; it is sexual suicide.
************************************
Men and Marriage
By George Gilder
Pelcan Publishing Co., Gretna 1986, USA
[Ten years ago, Lipschutz warned of an extremist political reaction as the inevitable response to radical feminism. I asserted that it would be male driven, fascist, right wing, not left wing. Later I found the idea on p187 of Margaret Mead, Male and Female, pub. Penguin 1950/1964. I have now found the same assertion in Gilder 1986. Some of the mechanism is explained well in Gilder.]
p110/113
Fascism is the political counterpoint of the social breakdown of monogamy into the disorders of polygyny, homosexuality, and female-headed families. The release of large numbers of young men from the bonds and discipline of marriage and family always leads to a threat to social stability. The punk rockers and soccer riots of mid-eighties Britain reflect the loss of male roles through high tax rates and resulting levels of joblessness. The breakdown of law and order and the demoralization of the courts and police in U.S. cities suggests the utter impotence of the superstructure of government when the infrastructures of sexual discipline collapse.
Without a stable family order, in which adult men civilize the young men, terror necessarily rules. No array of daycare centers, police powers, social welfare agencies, psychiatric or drug clinics, special schools and prisons can have any significant effect. William Tucker's fine new book Vigilante vividly shows the imbecile bathos into which our legal system has already fallen as a result of the decline of the stark mandate of justice into the weasels and waffles of social liberation.
At a time when millions of young men are slipping beyond the reach of democratic institutions - indeed, outside the social order itself - the drive to emasculate our politics threatens the foundations of democracy itself. Democracy is not so secure a system that in a serious crisis it can easily survive the loss of the instinctual appeal of male leadership. A state oin which the police and other governmental authorities are heavily in female hands would not last a week. The very emergence of such a state would itself signify either the massive estrangement of men from politics or the degeneration of democracy into some court-ruled system of quotas.
It is part of [Phyllis] Schlafly's genius to have persistently linked the concerns of family with the reform of education, the conservative revival of our politics, and the rehabilitation of our military. From her concern with the national defense to her defense of the nation's families, she espouses a fully coherent vision of the American predicament. A society of families both constrains male aggressions and channels them toward the protection and support of family and society.
With the breakdown of families, the economy also declines, as the long term efforts of male providers give way to short term and predatory economic behaviour. An emasculated state neither can defend itself against male outlaws and exploiters, muggers and terrorists, hijackers and assassins, nor can it achieve the economic growth to finance the welfare programs and police efforts required by a culture in chaos. As in the ghetto, the defection of men from family responsibilities leaves the women helpless to handle their teenaged boys and the police impotent to control them. The youth bully and terrorize the women and the weak.
Similarly in the international arena, an emasculated politics is incapable of sustaining an effective national defense. Rather than defending society, the young men attack it and exalt foreign potentates and desperadoes. Again the captivation of ghetto and other youth by Third World thugs and enemies of America illustrates the contempt that an emasculated politics and economics earns from its young men - and young women as well.
By joining the two issues of national defense and family defense, Phyllis Schlafly has tapped the energies that spring from the eloquent assertion of any long suppressed, evaded, and fragmented set of primal truths. All politics is on one level sexual politics. Defending the sexual constitution, she is clearly America's leading exponent and protector of democracy and capitalism.
The best sign of the continuing health of American society is the regular emergence of political leaders in unexpected places who are willing to commit themselves to a new defense of the values of civilization. Under perpetual assault from the forces of decadence and decline, protectionism and sloth, the American system still summons new tides of resistance and revitalization.
….
Just as the nuclear families of Western Europe unleashed the energies of the industrial revolution, so the new miracles of modern technology are created and sustained by the moral discipline and spiritual incandescence of a culture of churches and families. In families, men and women routinely make long term commitments and sacrifices that are inexplicable and indefensible within the compass of secular hedonistic values. Modern society, no less that any pervious civilization, rests on the accumulated moral and spiritual capital embodied in the rock of ages.
P151/154
Sweden
Most feminist proposals seem designed to establish the working mother as the social norm by making it impossible for most male providers to support their families alone. The feminist attack on the social security system for giving housewives a right to the husband's benefits after he dies; the subsidies for day care; the affirmative-action quotas for women who pursue careers outside the home - all such measures seek to establish the careerist woman as the national standard and incapacitate the woman who tries to care for her own children.
Allan Carlson has explained how a similar policy worked in Sweden. Until 1965, Swedes spurned a quarter-century of feminist indoctrination and followed a social pattern similar to the U.S. Only a quarter of mothers of children under seven entered the work force and more than half of them held part-time jobs. Over the years, however, the Swedish socialists, under pressure from feminists led by Alva Myrdal, managed slowly to destroy the essential supports of the nuclear family. The entire present agenda of American feminism - from universal day care and family-planning programs to paternity leaves for fathers - was eventually enacted.
Carlson writes: "With the homemaker declared to be 'a dying race', legal changes removed the special protections afforded women in marriage. Changes in Swedish tax law essentially eliminated the joint return for a married couple, and have left all persons paying the same tax, whether alone, married but childless, or married with children …." Moreover, marginal Swedish income taxes were increased to nearly 100 per cent at modest income levels, making it all but impossible to support a family on one income by extra personal effort. "Swedish welfare policy was also altered to discourage maternal care of preschool children. Housing and tax benefits are effectively curtailed if families decide to care for their children and refuse to place them in day care centers [and their parents also lose] benefits such as free children's meals and diapers."
By 1986 these policies had failed to induce Swedish women to perform men's roles or men to assume an equal role with children. But according to Carlson, laws were proposed to "force men to shoulder their responsibilities" in the home. School officials were ordered to "redouble their efforts to challenge conventional stereotypes" that after fifty years of feminist indoctrination still orient Swedish schoolgirls toward "traditionally female roles." Women still earn less than men throughout the economy and are virtually absent from the higher echelons of the established multinational corporations that utterly dominate the Swedish private sector.
Nonetheless, the Swedish policy was dramatically successful in several important ways. By 1984 the official "poverty line" for a family of four in Sweden was approximately 40 per cent above the average annual wage. Therefore only the rich (chiefly families with sources of funds outside Sweden) could maintain a family on one income. The male role as principal provider was effectively abolished for most of the population. This policy, though, resulted not in more egalitarian marriages, but in the obsolescence of marriage itself.
Not only did tha rate of illegitimacy rise to over 40 per cent of all live births, but the marriage rate fell to the lowest level ever recorded in the world demographic data. Despite the world's most ambitious programs of sex education and family planning, despite the widespread issuance of free contraceptives, the abortion rate soared to a 1981 level just below the U.S. rate of 43 per cent of all live births. The Swedish people voted against the officially favored egalitarian marriage by mostly not marrying at all. The birthrate fell to a point 40 percent below the replacement rate required to maintain zero population growth. Despite one of the world's best-educated populations and some of the world's most resourceful large companies, the Swedish economy foundered. With the industrial world's highest tax rates came also a governmental deficit in the early 1980s some three times as high as America's huge shortfall as a share of GNP.
The United States is enacting many of the policies that brought sexual suicide to Sweden. Despite the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment and universal day care, the feminists are gaining their ends piecemeal. In particular, the decline in the value of the child deduction has shifted the tax burden massively onto families with children. Through court decisions in favor of comparable worth, through the infiltration of the schools by feminist texts and teachers, through the day-care tax credits and other subsidies for the two-earner family, and through the rapid erosion of the joint income-tax return and the housewife's right to social security, feminists are winning quietly by legal and legislative action what they cannot win in referenda.
The central lesson of the Swedish experience is the profound and irretrievable damage inflicted by a policy of driving mothers of small children out of the home and into the work force. Women in the home are not performing some optional role that can be more efficiently fulfilled by the welfare state. Women in the home are not "wasting" their human resources. The role of the mother is the paramount support of civilized human society. It is essential to the socialization both of men and of children. The maternal love and nurture of small children is an asset that can be replaced, if at all, only at vastly greater cost. Such attention is crucial to raising children into healthy and productive citizens. Moreover, the link of men through marriage to the support of particular children is crucial to male motivation and productivity.
The provider role of men not only gives the society the benefit of a lifetime of hard work oriented toward long term goals. It also channels and disciplines male energies and aggressions that otherwise turn against society. By contrast, full time work by mothers of small children comes out at serious twofold cost: first, the loss of the immeasurable social benefit of the mother's loving care for her child; second, the frequent loss of the husband's full-time concentration in his career. The tield of the mother's job to the economy or the man's help in the home only rarely can offset these costs of her employment. The society will pay the costs one way or another: not only through tremendous outlays for the day care but also through economic declines, population loss, juvenile delinquency, crime, mental illness, alcoholism, addiction, and divorce.
Together with the tragic breakdown of the American black family, the Swedish example should disabuse Americans of the illusion that it couldn't happen here. Family breakdown and demoralization can occur with frightening suddenness when government policy destroys the role of the male provider in the family. The alternative to traditional family roles is not a unisex family; it is sexual suicide.
Easy for us to give advice. Summary: I think what just occurred was "meant to be". I am pushing 60 and have seen a lot.
I have very little doubt that your fiance' and you would not have made it in the big game of life. I think you should thank the Lord that she decided to bolt before there were a couple of kids involved in and a financial life ending blood bath followed.
I belioeve you just recieved the best blessing in life you may ever get again. Learn from it and be thankful.
Another thought:
Compromise is the only way to survive decades of marriage. Believe me its very, very hard. (I have been married 37 years. Sounds like the gf would never last as your life's partner.
I have very little doubt that your fiance' and you would not have made it in the big game of life. I think you should thank the Lord that she decided to bolt before there were a couple of kids involved in and a financial life ending blood bath followed.
I belioeve you just recieved the best blessing in life you may ever get again. Learn from it and be thankful.
Another thought:
Compromise is the only way to survive decades of marriage. Believe me its very, very hard. (I have been married 37 years. Sounds like the gf would never last as your life's partner.
Gary:
You are right, Dan is obviously the president, and has unresolved "issues"
I don't think a woman exists that would meet the requirements of those articles
Al:
You are SO right, Compromise is the Key
Good marriages require work from BOTH participants.
You are right, Dan is obviously the president, and has unresolved "issues"
Al:
You are SO right, Compromise is the Key
Good marriages require work from BOTH participants.
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Maybe he just has more internal fortitude than the rest of us that eventually gave into the dark side of the force.
Most of us could not live on bread alone ...and really didn't want to forage on the spot market for the rest of our lives.
I think $300 a clip would put me well out ahead of where I'm at.
Most of us could not live on bread alone ...and really didn't want to forage on the spot market for the rest of our lives.
I think $300 a clip would put me well out ahead of where I'm at.
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