# How would you respond to the deferential wife scenario? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 2, 2026, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355 "2026-07-02T13:32:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/21 "2026-07-02T15:45:30Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The Amish do have a tradition called “Rumspringa”, where young people on the verge of adulthood live for a year outside of the community, to see what the rest of the world is like. This is mostly a media myth. Rumspringa varies a lot among Amish and Mennonites depending on sect and community size. Some don’t have it at all and some don’t allow it for females. It seems to be more about attending singsongs and courting / dating; giving youth freedom to choose to be baptized. There are some that get tvs, clothes, cars; drink and drug; live outside the community, but that’s the exception. 85-90% choose to stay and get baptized, but it can’t be easy to leave. There are 2 decades of societal expectations. To be fair though, most of us were biased to stick to some norms, even if they were different norms. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/22 "2026-07-02T15:55:25Z")
> [@Cmyers1980](#): > > **Assuming the wife** (or husband if the genders were reversed) **genuinely believes in the rightness of her deference and/or enjoys it and wasn’t brainwashed or coerced** , what are the best arguments philosophers would make against her (or anyone) living a life like this? This is the key. Making that assumption, there is no valid argument against her personal choices. However, as posts such as JAQ’s excellent one above indicate, it’s a questionable assumption. If someone like that went to see a psychotherapist, they would likely be diagnosed with Dependent Personality Disorder (slightly outdated terminology). But this hypothetical woman wouldn’t get that diagnosis, because she believes in and enjoys her lifestyle and therefore would have no reason to see a psychotherapist. In practice, such a person might become depressed and seek help, and the therapist’s challenge will be to help the patient see the connections between her unhappiness and her lack of personal agency – especially challenging because this “deferential” relationship style is strongly reinforced by cultural norms among conservative groups. ---
**Author:** ![We\_re\_wolves\_not\_werewolves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@We\_re\_wolves\_not\_werewolves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/We_re_wolves_not_werewolves)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/23 "2026-07-02T16:02:47Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > could that woman really be said to be choosing that path? probably not, and that’s why I would suggest that such a woman does not fit the OP, which states that the person was not “brainwashed or coerced” and was choosing such lifestyle willingly. That of course brings up the question of what qualifies as brainwashed or coerced, but to me, a conservative traditional Mennonite upbringing might be getting pretty close. For clarity, my position assumes a woman brought up in a household that embraces traditional liberal western thought and the idea that women are equal to men and have the right to determine the direction of their own lives. > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Any free thinking person can do what they want. But, why would they want to? who knows, it’s not for me to determine. > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I would never get involved with a woman like the OP describes. nor would I. I’m not convinced that I’m capable of fully making decisions for other adults, and I would get extremely bored with my own whims being fulfilled without question. I need a life partner, not a servant. But that doesn’t mean other people all want the same, and I’m not here to make sure they get my version of what their lives should be, their own desires be damned. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/24 "2026-07-02T16:06:48Z")
Another way to look at it, is that a life is something that, ideally, should be spent, and poured out completely, to achieve some goal, and that lucky are the people who manage to find their goal that’s worth pouring out their entire life for. As an example, let me tell you a little about the smartest person I know. I tend to hang out with pretty smart people, so it should be no surprise that this guy is absolutely brilliant. He has an idea, or a set of interlocked ideas if you prefer to think of it that way, that just might lead to an understanding of quantum gravity. Now, please understand me, here: When I say “might”, I mean that my estimate is that there’s, at best, a 10% chance that it might pan out, and a 90% chance that it’ll lead to absolutely nothing. But this guy is pouring out his whole life in pursuit of this idea. If it works, of course, he’ll become one of the great men of history. But if (as is much more likely) it doesn’t, he’s going to amount to nothing much, because he’s putting everything he has into it. On the one hand, this has been very painful to me, to watch a friend of mine set off down a path that will likely lead to self-destruction. But on the other hand, I can’t say that he’s wrong. Because quantum gravity is big enough that, I think, that even a 10% chance of it is worth that price. And ultimately, it doesn’t even matter what I think, because he’s the only one who can decide what it’s worth. To bring this back to the OP, maybe, if one’s spouse is great enough (however one mentions greatness, and everyone has to decide that for themselves), it is worth devoting one’s entire life to supporting that spouse. And that’s a decision that we can’t make for anyone else. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/25 "2026-07-02T16:15:17Z")
People talk about Mennonite and Amish, but their not the only ones. They exist in sort of their own universe, and a lot is invisible to us ‘English’. But what about LDS? They’re raised from birth that women are subservient. They still have autonomy, and use it, true, but deep down they are shaped to think of themselves as sort of second class people. Get married to LDS, have LDS babies, and (at least in AZ) buy the same family car as everyone else. (I used to live in Suburban-ia, now I live in Odysseytown). But it doesn’t always take, and they ‘live among us’, so when your LDS neighbor leaves her husband for a 18 year old she met playing online games, it’s hard to hide. And Fundamental LDS! That’s a whole hell that should be illegal. No woman there ever has autonomy. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/26 "2026-07-02T16:31:59Z")
Why is the hypothetical a wife and not a husband? ---
**Author:** ![Sylvanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Sylvanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sylvanz)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/27 "2026-07-02T16:32:09Z")
Yeah, whatever. I don’t care if people wear whatever they feel. Hell, I wear “modest” swimwear. When you give up your very agency to someone else, you are broken. ETA: The idea that your very thoughts, feelings, ideas, don’t matter and aren’t important if your spouse doesn’t have the same thoughts feelings, is extremely disturbing to me and this is the real dehumanization. No one should ever that believe that their inner life is worthless. It’s destructive, and again dehumanizing. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/28 "2026-07-02T16:43:30Z")
> [@Sylvanz](#): > > When you give up your very agency to someone else, you are broken. Denying someone’s personhood is immoral. Even a broken person. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/29 "2026-07-02T16:44:01Z")
> [@Cmyers1980](#): > > “The deferential wife is utterly devoted to serving her husband. She buys the clothes he prefers, invites the guests he wants to entertain, and makes love whenever he is in the mood. She willingly moves to a new city in order for him to have a more attractive job, counting her own friendships and geographical preferences insignificant by comparison… She tends not to form her own interests, values, and ideals; and, when she does, she counts them as less important than her husband’s… The deferential wife believes that the proper role for a woman is to serve her family.” No, I think I prefer my current situation married to a woman who wears the same worn Lilly Pulitzer dress every day, unilaterally purchases a second home in her home town next door to her weird elderly parents and aunts, places her job ahead of nearly all other interests (except our kids), and doesn’t really have any interests or values besides micro-management. > [@Cmyers1980](#): > > Why does the occupation of the husband matter? The deference is the same whether the husband is rich or a janitor. Yeah it does! ---
**Author:** ![Sylvanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Sylvanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sylvanz)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/30 "2026-07-02T16:49:23Z")
Ok, the person is a broken person, who is giving up their own personhood. I don’t intend to deny it to them. They are denying it to themselves. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/31 "2026-07-02T16:49:35Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The Amish do have a tradition called “Rumspringa”, where young people on the verge of adulthood live for a year outside of the community, to see what the rest of the world is like. I knew that was the case for young Amish men, but is it true for their young women as well? Seems kinda dangerous to shove naive young women out into the world without a very strong support system. > [@Chronos](#): > > And the Amish and Mennonite women would, of course, point out that “English” women are also conditioned by their societies to choose the clothing styles that they do, and would argue that our fashions are just as exploitive of women, or more so, than theirs are. I was just mentioning this as an indication of how totally enveloping their culture is. Nonetheless, wearing those dresses on a hot summer afternoon…they can say what they want, but secular clothing at least has a great deal of flexibility to handle different situations. Nobody has to wear the latest fashions. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/32 "2026-07-02T16:54:22Z")
> [@Sylvanz](#): > > Ok, the person is a broken person, who is giving up their own personhood. I don’t intend to deny it to them. They are denying it to themselves. You can make a choice, to deny their personhood or not. Pointing out their bad choice does not justify your own bad choice to deny their personhood. Don’t deny the personhood of people. ---
**Author:** ![Sylvanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Sylvanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sylvanz)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/33 "2026-07-02T16:57:38Z")
I’ve made the choice. I do not intend to deny this persone their personhood. They are eschewing their own personhood. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/34 "2026-07-02T17:09:45Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > People talk about Mennonite and Amish, but their not the only ones. They exist in sort of their own universe, and a lot is invisible to us ‘English’. But what about LDS? They’re raised from birth that women are subservient. When I was at Census, I had LDS co-workers of both sexes. (Apparently BYU has a very good statistics department.) Regardless of upbringing, both the women and men were holding down good jobs that gave them plentiful career options, making more than enough to live off of, and were around a metric ton of non-LDS co-workers and exposed to their ways of thinking. Obviously that sort of environment doesn’t undo all their prior conditioning, but nobody can argue that if they wanted to leave the LDS behind, they had the ability to do so without any economic hardship or uncertainty. So this would be a very different thing from being raised Amish or Mennonite. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/35 "2026-07-02T17:12:13Z")
> [@Sylvanz](#): > > The idea that your very thoughts, feelings, ideas, don’t matter and aren’t important if your spouse doesn’t have the same thoughts feelings, is extremely disturbing to me and this is the real dehumanization. No one should ever that believe that their inner life is worthless. It’s destructive, and again dehumanizing. Agreed. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/36 "2026-07-02T17:16:55Z")
I really hope that’s the case. But…I have a friend whose daughter (first of 8 kids) when to BYU getting a degree (BA). Then she met a guy and got her MRS degree instead. Now she has a kid. I don’t know if she ever finished her degree. But everyone seems happy with the situation, so who am I to say, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/37 "2026-07-02T17:19:41Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > People talk about Mennonite and Amish, but their not the only ones. They exist in sort of their own universe, and a lot is invisible to us ‘English’. But what about LDS? Or Haredi Jews? Though their spousal dynamic is somewhat different, in that the woman is often the primary breadwinner while the husband studies Torah full-time. ---
**Author:** ![chela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chela/32/21582_2.png) [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/38 "2026-07-02T17:24:46Z")
> [@Cmyers1980](#): > > Assuming the wife (or husband if the genders were reversed) genuinely believes in the rightness of her deference and/or enjoys it and wasn’t brainwashed or coerced, what are the best arguments philosophers would make against her (or anyone) living a life like this? I would argue that the deferential spouse should consider how they’ll cope if they are divorced or become widowed they should envision how isolated and lonely they’ll be without the person who gave their life meaning. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/39 "2026-07-02T17:24:47Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > On the one hand, this has been very painful to me, to watch a friend of mine set off down a path that will likely lead to self-destruction. How will following his ideas lead to self-destruction? Will he be denied tenure or something? ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2026, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355/40 "2026-07-02T17:33:25Z")
b\gjyhujiol0 > [@Chronos](#): > > On the one hand, this has been very painful to me, to watch a friend of mine set off down a path that will likely lead to self-destruction If he is not successful, does he feel he has at least advanced the theory to some degree? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-respond-to-the-deferential-wife-scenario/1031355.md?page=3)