Monday, September 02, 2024

Why would a woman think this way about marriage?

The latest thing to emerge on social media is the idea that it is wrong for wives to do things for their husbands. Why? Apparently, this represents a wife "mothering" a "man-child". The argument extends even to stay at home wives whose children are at school. They, too, are never to do anything for a husband, and he should take over the domestic work on his return from his paid job.

Here is an example of the mindset:


Now, obviously there is a terrible logic to this claim. If women cannot do wifely things for a husband, because it is "mothering" them, then there is no longer any meaning to the word "wife" - it has been emptied of any real content. It will no longer signify anything of value. And, of course, there is no longer the same level of reciprocity in a marriage. Men will go out to work, will then come home to more work, but cannot expect anything from their "wife" because that would make them a man-child.

How did we get to this point? Well, one reason is that the modernist mindset is to believe that life is about the pursuit of self-interest. When it comes to relationships this means that I should attempt to get my relational needs met to the maximum, whilst only being required to meet the needs of the other to the minimum.

So, specifically this means that a woman will want maximum effort, energy and attention from a man, whilst having few requirements to provide comfort, support or sex; whilst a man will want comfort, support and sex, with the minimum level of effort, energy and attention. Men with this mindset might angle for "situationships" or "friends with benefits", women might want a marriage in which they are not required to do homemaking, or "emotional labour", or to have sex. 

You might ask, if women want marriage to be run according to their own self-interest, why would a man sign on the dotted line? The answer is that women who think the world revolves around self-interest, assume that men think the same way and that marriage has been set up to benefit men. They claim that men get all the benefit from traditional marriage, so they are only righting the scales now to make marriage all about female self-interest. 

To justify this approach, they commonly cite debunked research by Paul Dolan that marriage improves happiness levels for men but sinks them for women. He misinterpreted some data, and has since corrected his original claims (see here). It turns out that married women with children are happier on average than all other categories of women:



To give an example of what these online debates look like, here is an exchange with a woman calling herself Alakazam. She began with the usual claims that wives "mother" their husbands and that men are happier in marriage than women.

I pointed out to her that the research she was relying on had been debunked and then replied with the following:


Her response? Exactly as might be predicted:


I tried to persuade her to retreat from this position by asking her if we should put our own self-interest ahead of our children. But she was happy to answer yes:


There is a positive side to all this. This can be changed. We are choosing to live in a world created by men like Thomas Hobbes. We don't have to. We could return to a different approach, one in which spouses will the good of the other. In a marriage in which both spouses have been formed along these lines, this would mean less focus on what we maximally get from the other, and more on what we have to give as husbands and wives. This is a healthier mindset, because we reach the better aspects of our own nature through acts of familial love. It would allow men to think positively of what they can gift a wife as a man; but similarly it would raise the status of what women might gift a husband as a woman.

3 comments:

  1. Unfortunately it hardly matters that the research has been debunked. Women are firmly convinced marriage only benefits men, that single/childless women are happier than married women, that they do all the work in a marriage, and that men only get married because they want a domestic slave. Nothing will unconvince them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, it's a difficult situation. I'm stubborn. I'm still going to name the problem, bring it into the light, link it to a faulty metaphysics and suggest a clear alternative. But you are correct that this alone will not change the course of things.

      Delete
  2. A thought occurs.

    Women like this would probably bristle at men “objectifying” women, that is, relating to women essentially as objects that produce sexual pleasure.

    The thing is, if her false ideas about marriage are true, then “objectification” is the only possible basis for even temporary satisfaction in marriage.

    In this mindset, if a wife does things “for” her husband, he gains happiness and she loses some. If a man does things for his wife, the reverse happens.

    Under this model, the only way a couple might possibly make this “work” is if they can make each other “happy” (read: pleasure) without exerting any effort. As far as I can see the only thing that could even pretend to accomplish this is exterior physical beauty. If you get pleasure by looking at the other person, they need exert no effort.

    Even physical intimacy will not quite do, because even there, selfish pleasure-seeking can be (not entirely, but somewhat) a zero sum game. Out of decency I won’t elaborate.

    And if all we have is (effortless!) physical attraction and beauty, then this model allows only the most superficial possible relationships, the least accessible, and the most fleeting. After all, even putting effort into your appearance must count as sacrificing your happiness for your partner’s, so the attraction has to be there even when you put no more effort into your appearance than you selfishly “want” to. Very few people are that attractive, and no one remains so once the novelty of the relationship has worn off (never mind age).

    This could be a way to reach such women. My impression of this type is that they are tired of men who “only want one thing,” do not love them for who they are, and only wish to “use” them. It might be worth pointing out to them that their philosophy makes no other kind of relationship possible, and indeed would require them to reject or disdain any man who wanted to sacrifice for her as servile.

    ReplyDelete