Cassar has been trying unsuccessfully for a year to get pregnant at the age of 41. She isn't happy with the prospect of being childless and yet thinks she has made the right decisions in life:
[being childless] is one of the most difficult and deeply saddening issues I have had to face so far in my life. But I stand by the decisions I made that have led me here because they were the right ones for me.
So what led her to delay motherhood until such a late age? For some reason she decided not to have children until she was 33. And then when she did get to 33 she lost confidence in her marriage. She was divorced by age 36, met a new partner at age 37, married again at 38 - but by then it was too late.
To me, this is more evidence against deliberately delaying motherhood until your 30s. If things go wrong, you have so little time to recover. But Alison Cassar won't draw this conclusion, despite the sadness it has brought her.
But the passage from her column that I thought most curious was this:
And where do men figure in this debate? While I know that the physical reality is not as acute for men, I have lost count of how many women have said to me that they cannot meet a man who wants to commit to children. Where are the people telling men that fatherhood is a great thing and they should do it early, rather than put the burden on women?
Where are the people telling men that fatherhood is a great thing? Alison, the feminists you so admire spent much of the past 30 years portraying husbands and fathers as wife beaters, rapists and oppressors of women. The feminist message was that it was not violent strangers that women ought to fear but their own husbands. And it was the more traditional, family oriented men who were held to be the worst culprits.
The same feminists encouraged a sexual revolution in which women were supposed to be "liberated" to pursue relationships with men for sex alone, rather than orienting themselves to love or marriage. That then helped to create a player culture amongst men.
Alison, your beloved feminist movement also encouraged the idea of a sex war between men and women, in which men were the eternal oppressors and women the eternal victims. The idea of completion through a relationship with the opposite sex and of complementarity and cooperation between men and women was broken.
And what of the feminist campaigns for official and unofficial affirmative action programmes for women in education and the workplace - campaigns which have succeeded so well that women now earn 50% more degrees than men and 20-something women now outearn men? Are the men left behind really as likely to commit to fatherhood?
Alison, in 1994 the Australian Prime Minister of the time, Paul Keating, appointed a feminist, Kate Gilmore, to run a national campaign against domestic violence. The Australian government officially endorsed her strategy, which was to portray family men as follows:
You can see the tyrants, the invaders, the imperialists, in the fathers, the husbands, the stepfathers, the boyfriends, the grandfathers, and it’s that study of tyranny in the home ... that will take us to the point where we can secure change.
Do you think that kind of feminist politics is going to encourage men to commit to fatherhood?
Finally, Alison, if you want men to commit to fatherhood in larger numbers you might like to use your influence to change the politics of the newspaper you work for. What liberalism tells people is that independence and autonomy are what matters. That's why feminists have pushed for all sorts of policies to make women independent of men.
But what do independence and autonomy mean for men? They mean a bachelor lifestyle with few stable commitments. If a man wants independence and autonomy, then he certainly won't marry.
Marriage and fatherhood do bring great rewards for men, but also great sacrifices. The sacrifices aren't easily justified in liberal terms. We need to get beyond what liberalism holds to be of value and we need to restore some of the traditional dignity associated with the role of fatherhood in society.
Well said.
ReplyDeletePersonally many of the party girls I have known in my life are now seeing 30 getting closer and closer and many seem to be getting a little bit frantic.
When I point out [with no glee at all] that they had nice guys around at 21 and they may not be able to get the same blokes at 30 the pace of frantic eye movements increases considerably.
The good news seems to be that women without university educations tend to want kids by 30 and this is a trend I notice increasing.
The bad news is that half of these girls seem to want to go through half the bad-boys in the town first, which makes it hard for them to stick with a nice guy afterwards without getting bored.
This is only bad news if you are not a bad-boy of course, which explains why the young blokes who fit in that mould tend to have a VERY good time.
Men have no faith in women to do the right thing. Yeah I wanted to be a dad but there's absolutely no way in hell I trust women. I look at them with contempt merely because they have so many options and usually try them all. Including sacrificing the father of their children. There's simply no way around it and I'm refusing to comply or even try.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I really do not care if my nation or my government, which perpetrates this via laws, goes straight to hell. I can honestly say without a doubt I hate my country because of how evil it is. Who wants to prop up governments or even societies that are so dead set against men? Not me. And that same logic applies to women and families because they take advantage of it even though deep down inside, many know it's wrong.
Let me add women have so many options, right or wrong, and are never questioned, never derided, and never held accountable for them. And you want men to take the plunge?
ReplyDeleteAs I said, do not trust any entity or being that can do what they want without cause or reason and even worse, without penalty.
It would be interesting to see Alison's reaction to your post. To see whether she welcomes or sneers at your advice and observations.
ReplyDeleteAnon,
ReplyDeleteI understand where you're coming from, but you only get to live once and I wouldn't too easily allow feminists to deny you marriage and fatherhood.
Remember that the divorce rate is not nearly as high for men who marry in particular circumstances (men who have a good education, good income, who are conservative, who marry over the age of 21). Remember too that many women do eventually become committed to their families.
Nor is it entirely impossible to judge the character of women. Is she the loyal type? Is she stable in her personality? Does she think of marriage as an important institution in its own right?
When women reach an age of taking marriage more seriously they do tend to treat men with more respect and to consider husband/father type qualities in men. The problem, as I point out so often at this site, is that too many women have been leaving things too late.
As for loyalty to society, I agree with you that you owe no loyalty to society as it stands. But your tradition goes back countless generations. You have thousands of ancestors who worked and achieved and who made sacrifices to create the larger tradition you belong to.
We can't walk away from that because the liberal class in our own time has turned on its own.
The liberal class does not get to stand for our tradition - particularly not when it is so hostile to it.
We have to stand with our tradition against those who threaten its future.
That's a task that calls out the best in us and that gives us a very worthy task to pursue.
Maybe the issue is that we need to rebuild manhood first rather than fatherhood? If men are just labourers for women in the workforce and submissive at home lest the wife walk out should we not reestablish our role as leaders first before concentrating on pushing out the next generation of submissive men?
ReplyDeleteMale children walk in the footsteps of their fathers, the stronger the father is the stronger the son is likely to be.
I became a father two months ago and it is certainly fantastic.
ReplyDeleteIt also goes without saying that my risk of exposure to financial deprivation via the court system has increased dramatically.
I think the best way to approach it is to be extremely vigilant with the women you spend your time with / marry. (Remembering that while a woman worth marrying is rare, a man willing to marry her is rarer still.)
Dalrock has some good articles on that topic that are worth reading. While he write from an american position, it is still relevant for Australia:
http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/interviewing-a-perspective-wife-part-i-should-you-open-a-position/
Jesse 7
ReplyDeleteMy one criticism of your posts is that it nearly always reverts back to blaming the male. This is exactly what feminists and liberals already do. Males don't need any more of this chopper reed style "harden up" language. You could say effiminate hipsters do but they aren't really in the heterosexual game anymore.
I'm finding that I dismiss your comments because of this even if thhey are mostly good points. It just comes of like the articlethat talked about women who can't find husbands then came to the conclusion that selfish stupid women is a myth and its all mens fault.
I am glad she is childless because her children would have undergone feminist indoctrination. Garbage in garbage out.
ReplyDelete"But what do independence and autonomy mean for men?"
ReplyDeleteIf a woman wont commit during her sexual prime why on earth would a man commit during his material prime?
Should he grit his teeth and think of England? That boat has sailed, I guess there will always be enough brown people in the world to cover the slack.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteWhether we like it or not we do have to harden up to deal with the current challenges. You might as well be offended when a senior person talks tough in an army training camp, take it in the spirit it was given.
The real issue is where to from here for men. I'd like to discuss this in the future because I'm off for 2 weeks, catcha.
Where are the people telling men that fatherhood is a great thing and they should do it early, rather than put the burden on women?
ReplyDeleteLabour governments across the land are making it perfectly clear where men stand with regard to children. It's "women and their children" everything. Men are nowhere in the landscape. Not "mothers" mind you but women. Furthermore children collectively are the chattel of women and, thus, totally objectified.
"Where are the people telling men that fatherhood is a great thing and they should do it early, rather than put the burden on women?"
ReplyDeleteI was 38 before I became a father. I wished I'd had children 10 years earlier.
"Furthermore children collectively are the chattel of women"
ReplyDeleteThis is a view held more strongly by women who have never had children. Those women who have never seen with their own eyes how much kids love and need their fathers.
"This is a view held more strongly by women who have never had children. Those women who have never seen with their own eyes how much kids love and need their fathers."
ReplyDeleteJust like all those feminist ideologues sitting in Labour cabinets across Australia. Problem is that they're the ones making the rules.
I became a father at 23. My wife was 29. Our first son. I have a daughter and now we are working on another. Team work is great.
ReplyDeleteMy wife couldn't do this with out me, nor I with out her.
Discipline is extremely important, sometimes the kids walk over my wife, yet the threat of dad works.
My father never had to lay a hand on me, just his tone of voice was enough to gain my full attention. I guess coming from a family of police and military men will give that authoritative projection of voice.
Men need to be more active in the community, be it Scots, PCYC, little athletic, football etc... With work commitments I can understand why that may not be possible. Yet I help out the Scots leader by assisting from time to time. The local Scot leader here actually works 60 hrs per week.
You do need to be highly vigilant of girls. Believe me I mean this as to protect yourself from unsound accusations.
Has any one noticed the deficient numbers of men teaching in primary schools and to a certain degree high schools?
I have and it's a worrying trend, my sons primary school has a total of ZERO male teachers from Prep to year 7. Something that definitely needs fixing. I even mentioned it at my son's school and the ladies there laugh when I mention affirmative action for male teachers.
To make fatherhood more attractive to men we should abolish no-fault divorce and restore laws which made the husband the head of the family. The question is, how can we do it?
ReplyDeleteLook at this.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-single-ladies/8654/?single_page=true
"Look at this." (the Atlantic)
ReplyDeletefrom the article:
"Could we have a modernization of the Mosuo, Ryan mused, with several women and their children living together—perhaps in one of the nation’s many foreclosed and abandoned McMansions—bonding, sharing expenses, having a higher quality of life? “In every society where women have power—whether humans or primates—the key is female bonding,” he added."
In every society where women have power we have primitive tribes that can never rise to any semblance of civilization. Their quotidian concerns for finding food and bed hopping preclude the possibility of technological development,or any other kind of development for that matter. In a matrifocal social setting, things remain static for tens of thousands of years. This is partly because in such a social arrangement men have no stake in the system.
Said ironically, if one wants "progress", technological or otherwise, one needs patriarchy.
Patriarchy is an indispensable fulcrum of civilization. If one wants a life that is nasty, brutish, and short then one will embrace the lifestyle and social arrangements of groups such as the Mosuo.
The part where she and her experts talk about egalitarian tribes going out to work together is very misleading. Men and women were segregated in the "workplace" (with few exceptions) until recently.
Thanks for reminding me why I stopped reading the Atlantic (monthly) magazine over 25 years ago.
I worked for almost 50 years at design and management of electronic communications products - all of the projects I sweated over are now on the scrapheap - but now I see the legacy of my life is my children and grandchildren. The main task of this generation is to provide the next generation. Unless we provide continuation of human life there is no future.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me these 30-40 year old single women are seeing this through the glass darkly.
Maybe the issue is that we need to rebuild manhood first rather than fatherhood?
ReplyDeleteManhood and fatherhood, while not the same, are connected in some ways.
""In every society where women have power we have primitive tribes that can never rise to any semblance of civilization.""
ReplyDeleteLook at our closest relatives the Chimps and Bonobos.
The Chimps live in societies based on an alpha male and his political allies dominating the group and spuring male competition for females. The males tend to be VERY violent but the Alpha male is often the best at group politics rather than simply the biggest.
The Bonobos live in matrifocal societies with very strong mother-son relationships that can last all through life. The groups practice sexual intercourse as a means of social bonding and usually have no clear leaders but rather a small group of dominant females. They are widely known for their peacefulness to other members of a group and fights are rare.
The Chimps spread to dominate all of Africa, everywhere they rubbed up against Bonobos the chimps won. The only reason any Bonobos still exist is because Chimps hate water and cannot swim across the section of the Congo river which guards their last little area of territory.
Probably a lesson there.
Dalrock responds to the Atlantic Kate Bolick piece here:
ReplyDeleteAll the lonely feminist spinsters
The only way the damage can be undone is if all those responsible are arrested and tried(and found guilty of) treason against humanity.
ReplyDeleteAfter every single male hating Judge, Teacher, Prosecutor and or officer of the peace has been prosecuted for treason then and only then could the healing process begin.
Till then the gender war is on full blast.
Interesting article.
ReplyDeleteI did read a comment that suggested society needed to "rebuild manhood."
I completely agree.
Men have been taught that masculinity is everything a female is not. That means men are rewarded for aggressive, irresponsible, and hate.
Unfortunately, if that were not true the term "boys will be boys" wouldn't be in existence.
As a woman, I'm looking for a man that wants to be a good father and husband. I have not found that yet.
I'm 24, I'm getting my education while I'm young.
I've searched around my area and it seems that the only men available are those that are in their 30's without jobs or much responsibility and live with their parents.
Men that are in college, and of my age group, are busy with the life of sex and lack of commitment.
So guys, I share your pain in looking for the one who can compliment me. But I keep getting a feeling that this article points fingers at women leaving men without the responsibility of thinking about who they are and what makes for a good husband, father and over all male.
Looking out there (religion, society, tradition, our friends) is looking outside of ourselves. And if one thinks they're going to find happiness or a woman that's going enjoy that sort of fragile personality, then that could also contribute a factor into why their relationships are not going well.
Look within to know yourself.
Tradition has failed. If wasn't a failure relationships wouldn't have changed.
Sometimes, even though we are given what looks like negativity in life, doesn't equate to punishment.
Maybe this is a chance for men to truly allow themselves to be vulnerable and loved by their female counterparts.
In my personal experience, no feminine love, nurturing, honesty or mothering can get an unsuccessful man to be responsible, loving, nurturing and honest.
(or the other way around)
This sort of work needs to come from the individual.
Think about this.
If a man came into your house and started demanding of you, I'm sure most men wouldn't put up with it for a minute.
Why in the world would you think a woman would stand for it either?
It's about equality and team work.
That's something tradition does not teach us.
Something to think about.