Instead of telling women to settle for something they’re inclined to not want (thereby paving the way to divorce0 perhaps we should encourage men to take on some of the traits that high-powered women are too busy to develop nowadays.
The ultimate question is who is bringing what to a household? If a woman is bringing home the bacon and doing most of the housework plus childcare, the guy is probably not adding net value to the relationship, generally speaking. If his pay check is a lot lighter than hers, then rightly or wrongly he is going to have to compensate to retain value in her eyes. Which means he’ll have to do what women in the 50’s used to do: kickass in the kitchen, be the primary caregiver, and keep the house looking nice and tidy. Oh, and be physically attractive.
We’re focused a lot on money in this discussion, but I think that’s only one aspect of the issue here. Women have made significant strides in economic independence, which has traditionally been considered male territory. But have men made signficant strides in areas traditionally considered female territory? I’d argue no. It’s probably time guys make that move.
Wow - this thread is fascinating! It’s comprised almost entirely of anecdotes and opinion yet virtually every post seems to conclude with half the planet being told how they need to change as a gender to meet the others expectations.
I’m 37 now. I was with the same woman from the age of 26 to 35. The last year and a half she lived abroad for career reasons and ultimately, well, left me for someone else over there. I now find myself wanting to be settled down and having a family - as I was so sure I would be when I thought about such things when I was 30ish - but instead I am more on the crapheap with 40 creeping ever closer. I’m educated, stable and with a good job but, you know, biology.
And how I wish I’d known how that relationship was going to work out.
Sort of. Being able to be more selective won’t make the number of men who fit the desired criteria increase. The higher your standards, the less chance that there’s anyone out there who is both available and who meets them.
You are talking about four distinct and specific things here, none of which are the main thrust of the topic at hand: personal hygiene, fashion sense (and making this one’s priority), household cleanliness, and physical fitness.
Some people happen to have learned to make some of these things an important focus of their lives, and some people haven’t. One is unlikely to date or marry someone who focuses on each of these things to the same degree as oneself. However, once the leap of faith to a committed relationship or marriage has been made, it is common for one partner to make an effort to close the awareness/practice gap for any of these things, to some degree, both out of altruistic love, and through realizing that they really have been taught something of value.
I’ll add that I wouldn’t expect someone to jump into a committed relationship with someone else who fell far short in one of these habits (if it’s a trait that’s important to them), UNTIL the potential mate had at least shown that they are CAPABLE of improving (that is, they have the potential to both learn the skill, and the generosity to make the effort to sustain it).
We already determined I watch Sex And The City.
What actually seems to be happening, partially due to economics, partially due to societal changes, is that men and women are spending longer time in a sort of post-adolescent limbo. Instead of graduation from college being the launching point into adulthood, they are spending their 20s job hopping (or un/underemployed), “finding themselves”, continuing their college barhopping experience and otherwise putting off the traditional trappings of adulthood - job, house, marriage, kids, etc.
The problem is that as you delay those things, you potentially miss some windows of opportunity. Some of these are social but others are biological. Your early to mid 20s are your ideal time to find a mate since it is a time when most young people are out meeting other young people. They haven’t built up a lot of baggage or issues and are excited about the future.
But even if you plan things perfectly, stuff happens. People don’t find someone they want to spend their entire lives with. They get divorced. People die. It’s not like if you miss getting married at 28 or have your first kid at 40 your entire life is over.
[QUOTE=Wesley Clark]
The problem is that a good part of our dating behavior is genetic, not cultural and a gender roles revolution probably wouldn’t stick anymore than the efforts by Marxists to radically reform social orders failed.
[/QUOTE]
You can tell this because dating and gender is exactly the same in every society on Earth.
Oh wait, it isn’t. You can find everything from polyandry, “hookups”, child marriage, no marriage and temporary marriage being the norm. Our own society has changed dramatically right in front of our eyes- not from some kind of social engineering, but from some straight forward shifts in economic power. There are fundamental drives, but economic forces are what shapes how those drives are expressed dramatically.
Nice passive-agressive nice guy rant about being a “low value” male, though.
I’m not worried about what men are doing, and I can’t even conceive of thinking that they “should” be doing different.
What I do think about is what I’m doing. Right now, I am able to satisfy my sexuality quite easily outside of a committed relationship. I am financially independent. I have close friends and a loving family. I know that I cannot rely on a spouse to be there for childbearing- getting married still leaves me at a huge risk of being a single parent.
So I really don’t see many ways that a spouse is going to add to my life. I do see a lot of ways that a spouse would detract from my life. So right now, I’m not focused on marriage. If that means I don’t get married, I’m fine with that. You can’t have it all. I don’t think men “should” change so that I’m more excited about marrying them, or anything like that. I don’t have a problem or a complaint here. Sure, I will probably hit some regret when I’m 40. Who doesn’t have a bit of mourning about the road not taken when they are 40?
And restricted to the self-absorbed middle class, too. Working class mothers have been working outside the home ever since the Industrial Revolution. Working class fathers have always been contributing to child care (my parents worked opposite shifts for this very reason). Working class couples, if they want to own their own homes and build equity, need to buy fixer-uppers, so yes, dad didn’t do the laundry as much as mom, but he was up on the roof repairing shingles or in the basement fixing the plumbing and furnace.
So you’re saying the quintessential mid-life-crisis sports car is going to be replaced by the mid-life-crisis DIY test tube baby? Seems like there’s a tiny bit of difference between the two.
My point that is not that women can afford to be more selective because they have more mating options. Rather, they can afford to be more selective because the threat of famine and stigmatization aren’t breathing down their neck, compelling them to marry just as soon as they graduate. Women don’t need men to be providers like they used to, so it is not surprising that their standards have risen.
This is not something you can change through guilt trips, either. Telling women that they should adjust their expectations isn’t suddenly going to make them attracted to truck drivers who can only talk football.
Men have always been able to focus on themselves in their late 20s/early 30s and their families in their late 30s/early 40s. Is it really so bad that women can now do this as well?
There are upsides to older parents, as well. I will be able to raise my child with things my mother could have never provided for me. My child will have a competent professional with a lot of self-actualization to look up to, not a woman is barely scraping by and hustling for rent and not really feeling all that great about herself and her place in life. My child will be able to travel, will go to a good school, and will have well-connected family friends who will help her on her life’s journey. The child will have a competent, confident mother. I couldn’t have offered any of these things at 26 or 27, and if I had been focusing on childbearing rather than career, I’d probably never be able to offer them.
And, as I’m fit, active and don’t smoke, I will probably be in better shape at 35 than I was at 25.
It’s realistic. It’s responsible.
My mom bet that she could get married and live happily ever after, and she ended up screwed. My grandmother bet that she could get married and live happily ever after, and she ended up screwed. My great-grandma bet that she could get married and live happily ever after, and she ended up screwed. My uncle made the bad bet. My friends made the bad bet. My co-workers made the bad bet. And people who make this bet without a backup plan end up broke, in complicated custody arrangements, and stuck in life.
Divorce happens. Alcoholism happens. Abuse happens. Death and disability happens. Life happens.
Anyone who has a child needs to make sure they are ready to raise that child alone. It’s just a reality. Walking down the aisle is not a guarantee of security. It’s a promise, a shared wish, a dream…but it can’t force a reality, and you can’t start anything on year 0 and know with certainty it will be intact 18 years later. All you can do is give it your all. But sometimes it just doesn’t work out and you are now a single parent when you never expected it. Be hopeful, but have a back-up plan.
I’m encountering a version of that where I live. Anywhere else, my combination of an undergraduate and graduate degree from fairly well-regarded public universities would render me “well educated”. Here, I’m considered borderline retarded, because my higher education isn’t solid Ivy/Seven Sisters/Oxbridge, and there isn’t a PhD in the mix. Out of the top 20 Census tracts with the highest percentages of PhDs in the United States, six are in the small town where I now live. It’s quite easy to Google dates; the results are often page after page of articles in peer-reviewed journals.
The other problem I’m starting to face: I’m in my 40s, and still single. Being socially awkward in my younger years, and bouncing around the country later on, led me to where I am now. I almost got married a few years ago, but a layoff, and my long-term girlfriend not wanting to leave her hometown, killed that. I’m seriously thinking about lying and telling women that I’m divorced, thanks to those who think unmarried men over 35 are “creeps” or “damaged goods” unworthy of love.
It becomes more difficult to become pregnant, and the likelihood of complications dramatically increases in your late 30s.
Yes, everyone knows shit can happen, but you can still rely on people. The majority of people who get married and have a kid can expect to raise that kid with their partner. It’s certainly not an excuse to plan to have a kid as a single mom, and the fact that you turned out ok doesn’t negate the overwhelming evidence that kids with two parents do better.
You seem to be assuming that I’m telling women to settle for lazy bums. No. I’m saying that someone who is frustrated about not meeting good people at her level should be open to meeting good people who are not quite as well-educated or driven as she is. Men of my father-in-law’s generation (he is 95) saw any kind of housework as demeaning. Men of my generation don’t, and men of my son-in-law’s generation are even less like that. If you think men aren’t doing better now, I submit you don’t know of any men of the previous generation. I doubt you’ll find any men around here who would admit to thinking housework is woman’s work - a 1965 SDMB would have no such problem.
I’m not denying that there are lazy men out there, but I’m also not advocating any women marry them.