A case against post-feminist marriage
In the July/August Atlantic Monthly, contributor Sandra Tsing Loh announces that after 20 years of marriage, she is divorcing. Her reason: marriage is a mostly sexless, joyless affair:
Like so many other working/co-parenting/married mothers … I can pick up our girls from school every day; I can feed them dinner and kiss their noses and tell them stories; I can take them to their doctor and dentist appointments; I can earn my half – sometimes more – of the money; I can pay the bills; I can refinance the house at the best possible interest rate; I can drive my husband to the airport; in his absence, I can sort his mail; I can be home to let the plumber in on Thursday between nine and three, and I can wait for the cable guy; I can ask friendly questions about anybody’s day; I can administer hugs as needed to children, adults, dogs, cats; I can empty the litter box; I can stir wet food into dry … However, in this cluttered forest of my 40s, what I cannot authentically reconjure is the ancient dream of brides, even with the Oprah fluffery of “date nights,” when gauzy candlelight obscures its messy house, child talk is nixed and silky lingerie donned, so the the two of you can look into each other’s eyes and feel that ’spark’ again. Do you see? Given my staggering working mother’s to-do-list, I cannot take on yet another arduous home- and self-improvement project, that of rekindling our romance.
Actually Tsing Loh’s essay is not indictment of marriage per se; she has kind words for traditional marriage, which she portrays as unrealistic but pleasant and efficient. No, her essay is an indictment of another type of marriage: the post-feminist “companionate” model in which husband and wife both work and share household duties. She makes a number of good points. When men and women share domestic responsibilities, they often compete against each other. In one of her anecdotes, “Ian,” a documentary-filmmaker editor and self-styled gourmet chef, upraids her for giving the wrong medication to their dog and not deglazing the saucepan. And when men and women both work, most women feel too tired to bond emotionally with their husbands. Ian’s wife, Rachel, says she has not had sex with her husband in two years.
Tsing Loh’s criticisms, especially her criticism about sexless marriages, are not unique to her. Still, her portrayal of marriage is one-sided and misleading even, ignoring a generation’s worth of scholarship about the benefits of marriage; the same article could have been written in 1979 or 1989. Married people don’t have less sex than single people, let alone the single parents who have lovers on the side that she idealizes; they have more and more fulfilling sex. While a Rutgers study finds allegedly that only 38 percent of married people self-describe as happy, other studies note that married people are happier not only than singles but also remarried people. And though Tsing Loh says at once that divorce harms children and that activity-dominated kids are too busy to notice if their father no longer lives in the home, the overwhelming evidence is that divorce benefits only one type of children, those whose parents abuse them; and that’s a small minority of parents.
Tsing Loh doesn’t quite say it, but if given her druthers, she would endorse a European co-habitation model of marriage, as it has been shown to be stable for adults and kids alike. Leave aside the fact of whether a European custom can be transferred to these shores. Should it be transferred? In a word, no, for the reasons I alluded to in my last post. And I suspect that if pressed on the point, Tsing Loh might agree. In an aside, she notes that “some northern-European women are reportedly eschewing their progressive northern European male counterparts and dating Muslism, who are more like “real men.”
(Picture by siderevs used from a Creative Commons license).
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Mark, I’ve read this piece 3 times and I’m not really sure what the point is you’re trying to make. People should stay in marriages that no longer meet their needs? Women becoming more self sufficient is responsible for a higher divorce rate? Marriage is healthy? Women really want to be dominated?
Seriously I’m not getting where you’re going with this.
The point was that Tsing Loh’s attack against marriage was misleading and exaggerated; marriage has real benefits that her article ignored.
In response to another comment. See in context »Well since I haven’t been able to read her full essay yet I can’t comment on that. But from what you’ve posted here it sounds like she’s really just describing her own process on how she came to the point of changing her life in a manner that was good for. I’m not sure why you see it as an attack against marriage, divorce is not an attack against marriage, it’s a decision that make people when they realize it’s time to move on and create a life more suited to them.
I don’t know what people think will be gained by other people staying in relationships that no longer work for them (leaving aside cases where minor children are involved). Where is it written that marriage is the be all and end off of the human condition?
In response to another comment. See in context »Tsing Loh’s article was terrible for a number of reasons – mainly b/c the gist was “My marriage is ending, so should yours!” And since hers was a modern, work-sharing marriage, Stricherz takes the leap that this means, “See, women should stay at home!* We were right with this patriarchy stuff all along!” Except…
Divorce rates are highest in the Bible belt (Baptists, to specific) and among those who marry young. I’m guessing those aren’t bastions of gender equality within marriage.
The lowest rates of divorce:
- are in the liberal Northeast (the lowest being brie-elitist John Kerry’s state, MA)
- are held by atheists/agnostics
- college-educated women with a separate income have a divorce rate fully half that of women who marry young and depend on their husband financially.
So, this is yet another example of conservative jawboning about family values running smack dab into actual statistics demonstrating conservative incompetence in the area of family values. A classic case of protesting too much, methinks.
The whole hysteria about the divorce rate is silly anyways. It’s been going down since the 80’s and has always been wildly skewed by people on their second and third marriages. The vast majority of first marriages are permanent.
* I’m assuming this is what Mark means. It’s always obliquely hinted at, and I’ve never heard him suggest that the man should be the one to stay at home.
In response to another comment. See in context »Thank you for the clarification. Though I’m still a bit iffy on M.S.’s position …
In response to another comment. See in context »Very nicely put Josephs.
In response to another comment. See in context »Joseph,
Your assumption is in fact wrong. The best arrangement for children, and arguably for both the husband and wife, is for one parent to stay home. Our family does a version of this. I take care of my daughters two days a week and my wife one day. Call it neo-traditionalist. But consider that many women, especially middle- and working class women would prefer to stay home with their children. By my lights, government policy should encourage them to do so, not to mention their husbands.
Two in five first marriages fail. Is that a vast majority? I don’t think so. Far too many children are scarred by divorce and grow up in homes without a father present.
It is true that Baptists and Southerners divorce more than others. But it’s also true of blacks and Hispanics, two groups that are rarely called conservative. Does those four groups’ expressed concern about family breakdown make them hypocrites. Maybe. But it also means they are looking for government to help them out.
In response to another comment. See in context »My apologies for that assumption. I thought that was the case for three reasons:
1) The title of your article, which may have been referring to Tsing Loh’s view, but I thought was referring to your own opinion that we should go back to a pre-feminist, woman-at-home structure.
2) “Traditionalists won’t win the marriage wars; many women, especially those in the professions, will stay in the workforce, and many children will be raised in daycare.” from your Jon and Kate article, which gives the assumption that it would have to be women, not men, that stay home if traditionalists could have their way.
3) Your comment about men & women sharing domestic duties, which again somewhat gives the impression you’d want to go back to the old way, pre-feminism. Actually, no matter who works, I don’t really understand how anyone could make a case against sharing domestic duties. It just seems like common decency. Tsing Loh just sounds hard to get along with in general, to me.
I commend you on your arrangement, and I hope that my wife and I can work out a similar setup when we decide to have kids. Unfortunately, economic circumstances often make it hard for people to do that. But as you’ve said elsewhere, if it’s a matter of a bigger house or someone staying home with the kids, I agree it should be the latter.
And I also agree that government should encourage efforts for parents to stay at home, especially in the early years. I would definitely support efforts for us to become more family friendly like Europe with child allowances, paid maternity leave, and health care.
The true numbers on divorce are hard to find, since the National Center for Health stopped collecting detailed data from states in 1996. I’ve heard 15 to 25 percent of 1st marriages get divorced, but it’s definitely not the 1 in 2 number always cited in alarming tones by the media. I think the best way to prevent divorce is not making divorce harder or bringing back its stigma, but to encourage people not to marry young (aka use birth control) and to be selective when they do marry.
I don’t think those groups are hypocrites. I was just trying to say that this finger pointing at feminists and liberals as the cause of the breakdown of the American family doesn’t jibe with the statistical record. I particularly don’t like feminism being blamed, as its made the lives of women all over the world freer and richer – like my wife, who wouldn’t have been able to be a minister prior to those walls being knocked down. She may still want to stay home with the kids one day, but she appreciates being given the choice.
In response to another comment. See in context »Huh?
[...] both spouses work and shared household duties as a joyless and sex-less affair. Over at True/Slant, I noted that while many of her criticisms were valid, her attack against marriage as a whole was without [...]