[QUOTE=Guestimate]
I think it’s fair to ask/hope that IF that happens, Freekalette considers that living as master/slave concurrent with mother/father COULD be part of the reason.
[/QUOTE]
This is what we like to call a post hoc argument.
I really, really hate the way the parent-child relationship has been so over-simplified in this thread. I think a lot of you are freaking out because of the way the relationship is being described in master/slave terms. I’ve already posted - TWICE - in this thread about growing up with parents who had a similar relationship, where the only difference was that it wasn’t defined in any concrete terms. (I think Queen Tonya also posted something similar.) My mom always deferred to my dad. He commanded, she obeyed. I’m not saying they didn’t love each other, or that he abused her, but it was always a given that his authority was supreme in our household. That’s just how my parents were brought up. That was the norm for their society. That is what they still believe in.
No, my mom didn’t wear a dog collar or kneel on the floor, but I think a lot of you are latching onto details that take place infrequently and making it sound like she’s fucking crawling around the house on a leash in front of her children 24/7. That’s not the impression I got at all from the thread. And anyway, it’s the principle of the thing. Children aren’t idiots, and even if the mom dresses like a goddess and the dad kisses the hem of her gown every morning, they’ll be able to sense whether there is true respect between their parents or whether the show of worship is merely a performance. A husband can shower his wife with diamonds and call her a goddess and order to make a sandwich all in one breath. Which, come to think of it, is what my dad did, for the most part.
Please tell me how this is different from the relationship in question in this thread. Please tell me how it is UNHEALTHIER to mutually consent to such a relationship and take the time to tell your children that your relationship is a particular case and not to be taken as a universal standard (which is the environment I was brought up in). And while you’re at it, please tell me how I managed to become an educated, independent woman who wrote her MA thesis on feminist literature, despite the fact I grew up watching my mother obey my father. Please tell me how my brother grew up to be a young man who has nothing but respect for his female friends.
Once again, I’m not condoning my parents’ patriarchal beliefs, but so many people in this thread seem to be insisting freekalette’s children are doomed to be warped. If a generation of parents who believed in patriarchy managed to produce children that don’t follow those beliefs, surely two individuals - who love each other and their children, who have defined their relationship and mutually consent to it, who take the time to educate their children on how their dynamic of husband-master/wife-slave is an individual choice and not a universal standard - surely they can managed to bring up children who will be no more fucked up than the rest of us.
PS - Ritter, thanks - at least now I feel like I’m not shouting into a void here.