I would have said the opposite about children, i.e. they tend to ignore their parents’ wisdom and give in to their own impulses, often to their own detriment. Goddamit, Dad, I don’t need to have anyone hold my hand while I walk up to the edge of the cliff! And I don’t care if the bicycle isn’t on sale, I want to buy it now, at full price!
But maybe it’s both, something like what you expressed in your later sentence, but generalized beyond the child-parent relationship: a child tends to take all an authority figure says as gospel, or tends to ignore all an authority figure says as bullshit. An adult develops an ability for rational free-thought that is neither excessively credulous nor excessively defiant.
OK. A boy becomes a man when he is possessed of the capability AND the will to cease to exist as an individual, and without expectation of recognition of the sacrifice–when a set of needs and desires exists, but can be set aside at will in favor of the needs and desires of another. Many males never get there no matter how long they live; and many males get there very soon.
Put another way: (generally speaking) adult males are physically stronger and more aggressive than females. “Dominance” gets defined in terms of forcing someone else to be submissive. Pretty much any adult male can physically dominate pretty much any adult female. But only a Man is willing to dominate himself and lend his strength in service of others.
I always felt what separates immature people from mature people is the willingness to sacrifice their own personal happiness for the happiness of another, be they your partner, your children, or anyone else where you would expect no personal gain in return. The hallmark of a manchild (or spoiled adult brat) is the continued insistence of their own personal pleasure at the expense of their own partner and children.
It’s my understanding that the difference between mature people and immature people is that people who have decided they’re mature select aspects about their life which they feel they’ve accomplished and declare those “mature”, and declare that anyone who hasn’t met those criteria is “immature”.
Immature people are those who are still using the criteria set by mature people to determine what’s mature (and often finding themselves wanting), and have not realized that they can flip the game and use it as an excuse to criticize others instead.
If an Incel said that he had all sorts of conversations with men about women and that most men would agree that women suck, you’d recognize that it doesn’t actually mean that women suck or that most men would agree. In that extreme example, we can see the fallacy of thinking our context is reality. But in our day-to-day lives, we create a context too. Our common denominator is us.
I like to think I’m a bit more nuanced than that. I’ll just leave other women out of the below, then, despite all the corroboration, anecdotal and otherwise.
My experience is that men in general push a lot of what is now known as “emotional labor” on to women. This has become sort of a catch all term for the really infinite number of tasks, from bringing snacks and writing thank you notes to making sure everyone is dressed appropriately, to smoothing over hurt feelings and pacifying anger, that men have assigned to women in this culture and for which women are duly censured in subtle ways if they fail to notice and make happen. It takes a lot of time and attention to continually manufacture and apply this social glue. It’s invisible to most men, it appears.
When someone casually assumes that you will do a job they could do perfectly well but just don’t feel like exerting themselves to do – because they won’t get socially punished for showing up without a casserole or their kid wearing the wrong shoes, but you will – I am calling that self-absorbed and immature.
Data suggests a significant difference between conservative marriages and liberal marriages. In general, in conservative marriages, both partners agree that the woman does the bulk of the housework and childcare duties. In liberal marriages, both partners agree that these are shared rather equally. However, in both conservative and liberal marriages, women do a very similar majority of these tasks. It’s just that there is a shared lie about it in liberal marriages.
To me, not pulling your weight in the cleaning, laundry, errand, childrearing, and chore part of keeping a house together – and then blithely imagining that you are – is a sign of selfishness and immaturity.
Who does the censuring, though? Other women? IME Men just don’t care about those sorts of details–they don’t care to do them because they don’t believe them to be especially valuable, and so don’t particularly care whether or not they are done. Those are things that women get hung up about and smart men don’t push back on.
Dunno about liberal vs. conservative relationships. But I’d agree with your last bit.
Ulfreida is a bit ham-fisted about it, but I see where she is coming from. Also, for the record, the censuring is: you stop getting invited to things and people stop trying to hang out with you, because you’re too flaky to remember to bring a casserole to the potluck, or your house is too messy, or any other number of things women are often responsible for more than men - men can act like they never give a shit about these things and that they’d love to hang out at home 24/7 and never interact with anyone else (which is usually false, they just don’t want to hang out the same way or location their wife does), but that is putting the burden on the wife to have to work twice as hard caring for herself and her husband (and possibly kids) in order to meet a goal of being basically socially responsible, so SHE can enjoy hanging out with other people the way she wants to. And not putting in a effort to please your wife about things she wants to do, the same wife who puts in effort to please you, is selfish. You can pretend nobody judges your house, cleanliness, or timeliness, but they certainly do, and when they judge they definitely judge the wife first and husband second. And that judging can definitely result in being uninvited to all number of fun social things.
That being said, I’m thinking on my life though and any man-child that I know also has a matching woman-child as well, though (not married per se, just that for every one I know another). I know just as many lazy, flaky, “my lunch today was a liter of mountain dew and two donuts”, “you have food in your fridge?”, “you bother to cook?”, “oh I didn’t pay for the electric bill and now they’re calling me every day, it’s such a scam”, “(no apology for being late)”, (didn’t bathe for two days), “can you pick me up? I forgot where I put my keys” women as I do men.
I don’t think there is a gender-specific way to define separation between boys and men. It boils down to having respect for other people and for yourself, being able to control your reckless impulses, and the willingness to sometimes put your wants aside to help someone else for no personal gain. That’s all gender neutral.
Actually, not to derail the thread too much, but I’ve thought even more about man-children and women-children, and here’s the relationships I’ve seen:
Responsible Man & Responsible Woman (also Woman-Woman and Man-Man)
Irresponsible Man & Responsible Woman
Irresponsible Man & Irresponsible Woman (also Woman-Woman and Man-Man)
Responsible Man & Irresponsible Woman is, in my experience, exceptionally rare. Irresponsible women aren’t considered good enough for marriage unless you too are just as bad as they are (ah, what was that about society not judging women more? And did I just hear, “don’t stick your dick in crazy”?) And what, of the ones listed above, will cause friction? An Irresponsible Man & Responsible Woman. The irresponsible-irresponsible ones may also cause friction in a different way, but a lot of those complaints you hear are from the relationships where the Responsible Woman is left cleaning up after Irresponsible Man. So I don’t consider it weird that Ulfreida would have a lot of friends this way. If you haven’t heard about it, I’d guess you keep a better set of friends than the average. Which isn’t surprising, considering the educated and “elite” status of a lot of the straight dope.
I’m thinking of Christmas. In lots of households, the wife is the keeper of the traditions. Making sure the kids get their Christmas lists taken care. Making sure that niblings on both sides of the family (hers and her in-laws) are taken care of, gift-wise. Making sure the feast is prepared and of adequate abundance. Making sure the house gets cleaned and decorated .
Yes, everyone always complains when Wife/Mom goes overboard, because it seems like she’s putting all this pressure on herself to be perfect and why can’t she just chillax?! But let Christmas come up significantly short of the ideal, and there will be disappointment and complaints. And guess who is going to internalize that negativity? It won’t be the person who has been sitting in the living room all day, watching TV.
I mean, sure, some of it is driven by self-imposed perfectionism. Breaking your back to get dust bunnies out from under the piano ten minutes before guests are supposed to arrive doesn’t make much sense. But a lot of it is driven by realistic fears of not measuring up to cultural ideals–ideals that are passed down from generation to generation. People say they don’t care about the fluffy stuff that some women put a lot of emphasis on, but those same people will then heap praises on the woman who does all that fluffy stuff and talk shit about the woman who doesn’t bother. Both men and women do this.
This is a fascinating discussion worthy of its own thread. In an effort to keep it from being a complete hijack, I would suggest that men and women do NOT in fact do this. Man children and woman-children do. I’ve been pretty mercenary about chopping superficial people out of my life, and I can honestly say nobody I hang with 1) would talk shit about these sorts of ‘failures’ and 2) those who have partners have actual partners who share the load, preventing burnout and ‘failures’. Which is not to say what you and Ulfreida (and others) describe isn’t a thing, just a thing I don’t see probably by design. My response was somewhat obtuse in that I was applying standards I’ve surrounded myself with to ‘everyone’, which includes tons of grown children. My bad.
Maturity isn’t one simple scale, of course, and there are plenty of people who are capable of cleaning out the dustbunnies or who run large departments with huge budgets and have the emotional control of a five-year-old (when they are dealing with people they can get away with it).
I think it depends on what we’re talking about. I’m not sure we’re talking about the same things. Actually, I know we can’t be talking about the same things.
If I failed to bring something to the office potluck, the stern matronly woman who takes it upon herself to do the organizing every year would most definitely give me a scolding, and she’d probably have a group of other women of a certain age by her side cosigning the tongue-clucking (though perhaps not as severely). While the men who show up empty-handed every fuckin’ year would be ignored and the men who did bring stuff wouldn’t notice my faux pas at all.
In contrast, if a coworker in my team has some major life event (pregnancy, wedding, death in the family), the guys on my team will ask me (one of the few women on the team) what “we” are going to do for that coworker. “We” should throw a party or send out some flowers or bring in a cake, they will say. What they are really saying is that I or some other woman should do all the coordinating (collecting the money, distributing the card, getting the cake, sending out the invitations) while they stand on the sidelines. If I suggest they coordinate for a change, I have to hear “No, that’s not my thing” or “I don’t have time to do it” or “I don’t know the coworker like you do.” In my experience, this kind of behavior is something men are more likely to do than women. I’ve actually had a male coworker once imply that I must have had a falling out with a female coworker just because I didn’t want to organize her office baby shower. My own mother doesn’t take me on guilt trips like that!
None of the “judgers” in these scenarios are “man-children” or “woman-children”. They are simply people operating with weird assumptions about what women are “supposed” to do and what men shouldn’t be expected to do because he doesn’t know any better, poor thing.
And on top of it, Mom tells the family that she doesn’t want anything for Christmas, etc. and then gets upset when there is nothing for her under the tree, or even plays “mommy martyr” to the point where she tells her kids that mothers don’t get birthday or Christmas presents.
Honestly, from what I’ve seen, in many if not most families, if a father did something like take the kids shopping for clothing and school supplies (and not just the “fun” things, either), it would not go over well with Mom ("How dare you undermine me?) and if a father suggested that a child had a problem of some kind, Mom’s reaction would be along the lines of “And if she does, it will be your fault because you don’t take proper care of her.”
Regarding man- and woman-children, I have a Facebook friend (former co-worker) who was regularly going on Facebook and ranting to specified people that her SO is more of a baby than their own baby, etc. I calmly told her that she might want to keep all this off social media, and she messaged me and told me that she can’t get him to do what she wants unless she goes on Facebook and berates him. :eek: She must have taken me off her “preferred” list, or at least doesn’t do it any more, because I’m no longer getting posts like this. Sounds like a really healthy relationship, NOT!
Probably the most extreme mom-dominance, if you will, was a college classmate of mine who told me that she had a legally-filed paper that her husband didn’t know about, which stated that their son and any other children they might have in the future could not live with him, or even have more than very limited contact with him and his extended family, if she died.
In my private life, where I have a lot of choice over whom I hang out with, I don’t see a lot of this. I do see men stepping up to organize stuff, and I don’t see women shamed for not doing it. There are probably more women who LIKE to bring the cake, but if the event needs punch, or cake, and it’s not there, it’s often a guy who will do what is needed.
Work is another matter. Yes, the women are expected to organize the parties etc. Since that’s not MY thing, I find it a little annoying. But since I do like to cook, I probably contribute to the problem by supplying festive foods. I have tried to get male co-workers to bring in cookies, with mixed success. Oddly, the men most likely to do so are the high-status men in my office, however.
