Feminism and Divorce

[Gabriella_San_S]

In former years, it was much more the case. My point is that classical feminism did not advocate divorce, abortion and other anti-family, anti-life issues. It wasn’t until the “sexual revolution” of the '60’s that the feminist movement became so rabidly pro-abortion.

In alot of cases of single women becoming pregnant, their boyfriends abandon them or do not support them and so they feel they have to choose between their babies and, say, finishing college or ‘moving up the ladder’. An unfortunate number choose the latter instead of the former.

I had a lovely neighbor 20 years ago who was married and had her first baby, a beautiful daughter. One summer day she was out strolling her in a charming old-fashioned buggy with mosquito netting and all the trimmings.
The baby was only a few weeks old, and as I was admiring her, she told me about her important career that was just getting off the ground, making it necessary for her to cut short her maternity leave. As we both gazed into the buggy at the serene little face of her precious baby sleeping there,she said to my horror, “Yes…it’s just** too good** a job to* walk away* from…”

 

[Sugabee43]

I had a lovely neighbor 20 years ago who was married and had her first baby, a beautiful daughter. One summer day she was out strolling her in a charming old-fashioned buggy with mosquito netting and all the trimmings.
The baby was only a few weeks old, and as I was admiring her, she told me about her important career that was just getting off the ground, making it necessary for her to cut short her maternity leave. As we both gazed into the buggy at the serene little face of her precious baby sleeping there,she said to my horror, “Yes…it’s just** too good** a job to* walk away* from…”

I quite agree with you. I gave up a career to be home with my three boys. However, that was my choice. My point is that some women, especially if young and unmarried, feel like their only choice is to abort their child if they want to “live their life”. The Alan Guttmacher Institute (which is the research arm for Planned Parenthood) conducted a study of post-abortive women, and the two most-named reasons for having an abortion was lack of support from family and lack of support from the birth father. If we could find a way to support these women by having on-campus child care/prenatal care, maybe alot of college aged women would not choose to abort.

 

[otjm]

Whatever girl:

I see nothing wrong with women gaining college degrees, and working outside of the home. The problem is that many women put careers first…and so have men. Our culture seems to believe that we have to keep growing our cars, houses, vacations, bank accounts, etc…without a care for family values, etc anymore. Likewise, I don’t believe in a husband working two jobs or working 15 hour days, and never see his family. Where’s the family unit in that, also?

that seems to imply that careers are about money, cars, houses, vacations… which is a raging insult to teachers, doctors, nurses, CPAs, architechts… want me to go on?

Budgie2:
I don’t know if I fully agree with you. I think a lot of women nowadays who do go to university/college may feel pushed into full time careers and it’s more difficult for a qualified woman to stay at home to look after children. Basically it comes down to money. A woman who has gone to college may be in large debt and feel forced to pay it back. Also they may be expected to pay it back in taxation. I think if more women stayed at home with their families then female education would be cut back.

Ex-survivor of a first class degree.

If women stayed home… so we should now keep them barefoot, pregnant, and too uneducated to be a challenge? Sounds like the Stones “under my thumb” a bit too much.

And the little woman stays home, barefoot, pregnant and uneducated, and then the breadwinner dies. Now what? She should flip hamburgers at McDonalds to keep body and soul together?

 

[otjm]

I quite agree with you. I gave up a career to be home with my three boys. However, that was my choice. My point is that some women, especially if young and unmarried, feel like their only choice is to abort their child if they want to “live their life”. The Alan Guttmacher Institute (which is the research arm for Planned Parenthood) conducted a study of post-abortive women, and the two most-named reasons for having an abortion was lack of support from family and lack of support from the birth father. If we could find a way to support these women by having on-campus child care/prenatal care, maybe alot of college aged women would not choose to abort.

And maybe if we didn’t have to raise our daughters in a world of women’s magazines with a minimum of one article, if not 2 or 3 about how to make sex better, and models dressed more provocatively than the prostitutes on the main drag, and we didn’t have such a super-saturated media promoting that sex is your toy, orgasm is your right, and friends with benefits is the way to go, college age women would ;ot be facing the issue of abort or not at all.

Yes, the two secondary causes of abortion are lack of family support and lack of support from the father. However, the primary cause of abortion is children conceived out of wedlock.

 

[JimG]

However, the primary cause of abortion is children conceived out of wedlock.

An amazingly simple observation, and true.

Yet it is the one cause of abortion that our culture is most reluctant to address, because to do so might involve restricting sexual freedom.

And like life and liberty, the unfettered pursuit of sex is considered a fundamental right.

 

[Sugabee43]

And maybe if we didn’t have to raise our daughters in a world of women’s magazines with a minimum of one article, if not 2 or 3 about how to make sex better, and models dressed more provocatively than the prostitutes on the main drag, and we didn’t have such a super-saturated media promoting that sex is your toy, orgasm is your right, and friends with benefits is the way to go, college age women would ;ot be facing the issue of abort or not at all.

Yes, the two secondary causes of abortion are lack of family support and lack of support from the father. However, the primary cause of abortion is children conceived out of wedlock.

Again, I agree; the gift of sexuality is to be reserved for the sacrament of marriage. In a perfect world, or at least a perfectly lived-out world, that would be the case. Unfortunately, humans tend to think they know better than God about most everything.

Again, my only point was to share that feminism, in the classical or pre-1960’s sense of the movement, was adamantly against abortion/infanticide and considered it degrading to women.

 

[edwest2]

that seems to imply that careers are about money, cars, houses, vacations… which is a raging insult to teachers, doctors, nurses, CPAs, architechts… want me to go on?

If women stayed home… so we should now keep them barefoot, pregnant, and too uneducated to be a challenge? Sounds like the Stones “under my thumb” a bit too much.

And the little woman stays home, barefoot, pregnant and uneducated, and then the breadwinner dies. Now what? She should flip hamburgers at McDonalds to keep body and soul together?

Oh please, the same bad image. My mother stayed home. She had two kids in the 1950s. She could mix cement, paint a house and do basic carpentry. Apparently, certain radical groups were too busy tearing the family apart to tell young women how to actually deal with men. If you want to avoid having a baby then stay away from men.

There was something called the family not that long ago. If a guy, me, wanted to marry the girl, I had to sit down with the Dad who knew all about hormones so he could ask me how I would support his daughter. Too often, a “we’re on our own, to heck with our in-laws” thinking is presented. Families, on his side and the woman’s side, actually offered their help and stuck together.

This was a generational thing. We had aunts, uncles and good neighbors we could count on, but thanks in large part to radical feminism, it became ‘the woman is the automatic victim.’ Once again, don’t want a baby or to be under someone’s thumb? Stay away from men and get that career.

Peace,
Ed

 

[tjm190]

The education of women always causes lower fertility/marriage rates as women are more often able to live on their own.

 

[Benadam]

I

I think blaming ‘men’ (as a ‘class’) is not really the point - it was systemic

I don’t argue that point. Paradigm’s project systems but systems are to paradigms like words are to concepts. Words are transitory.I see that as the reason there is more than one paradigm but one system of feminism. Nyarlathotep’s term ‘classical’ is good in that I believe that the origins of the movement intended to focus attention on changing conditions that required adjustments that weren’t happening. To me it seems that ithe original paradigm isn’t identified with the paradigm that projects the current system because in the beginning it was a conscious effort that didn’t intend the radical effect on culture that has happened. The original systems formed of conscious effort appealed to a paradigm with entirely different intentions most women IMO were and are unconscious of.

With our primate relations, everybody just lives with mom until they reach maturity so I think we should be rather careful about what we consider ‘natural’!

I beg to differ on that point. The human pairbond is inherently monogamous and it is because of that that successfull social units formed. A monogamous pairbond is necessary for human societies to succeed and it isn’t untill recently that the maternal bond and it’s disabled-choice character and paradigm has been able to survive and project it’s structures. Technology has enabled that to happen.

It could be argued that, with farming came ‘property’ and inheritance which changed the nature of how men viewed women.

I have to agree. The reciprocal recieving and giving of self and the generative and passive forces of reproduction distort from the scandalous environment brought about by permannently gathering into one place the produce of the earth that females gathered and men hunted.

You missed the ‘gathering’ part of the economy - they were ‘hunter-gatherer’ societies, it’s likely that the basic needs were from gathering (women) rather than hunting (male).

men could gather but women couldn’t hunt.

The emotionally needy of both sexes are trying.

Women who are needy are more apt to heal with men who are not. Needy men are unable to recieve from women. Ever notice that needy men express that weakness differently depending on their moral fiber? One becomes bothersome the other abuses and begin the cycle of abuse.

The big difference really came with domestic goods - things like vacuum cleaners and washing machines which liberated the mass of women from domestic drudgery.

Released from the agricultural form of gathering ie; ‘organizing and keeping together’ was more enabled by a century of men at war imo. Women out of necessity had to work and having already cultivated their own set of skills highly beneficial to industry…well technology served.

I think part of the problem is to look at a particular stage of human history and say that it was, in some way, the ‘state of nature’. For most people, historically, as soon as you were capable of any work (weeding, say) you began to work - ‘childhood’, as we know it, was really a relatively recent invention and that in the middle classes - and the family was an enterprise where everybody did whatever work was necessary on the farm or the business, given the high level of early death in both husbands and wives, the family as an enterprise was tremendously important. Then, with the industrial revolution, both little boys and girls went into the factories.

I agree for the most part. I don’t understand how changing roles or adapting to conditions would negate an experience of natural life in human history.

So, it was 19th Century middle class women who became the paradigm for the ‘normal’ homemaker but it was just a paradigm, it had nothing to do with ‘nature’.

I see that homelife as an adaptation that perhaps had become successfull but in part because it enabled denial of suffering caused by many and complex things but most apparent in complacency that caused expectation rather than gratitude. Suffering that wives were more able to feel and less able to deny,

 

[Kaninchen]

I beg to differ on that point. The human pairbond is inherently monogamous and it is because of that that successfull social units formed. A monogamous pairbond is necessary for human societies to succeed and it isn’t untill recently that the maternal bond and it’s disabled-choice character and paradigm has been able to survive and project it’s structures. Technology has enabled that to happen.

I was questioning just how ‘natural’ anything is with humans - we’re so mediated by the human artifacts of culture, language and society that what is ‘natural’ is what appears to be ‘natural’ through the lens of those creations. Even if we take the, arguably ‘natural’, monogamous pairbond, it has been, historically, so tied up with power, ownership and religious idealism that the ‘natural’ has become identified with the ‘artifactual’ (one hesitates to use ‘artificial’!).

men could gather but women couldn’t hunt.

Just that hunting was a really spiffy, prestigious and male-bonding hobby that took up an awful lot of time - like golf and talking a lot about sport in bars.

I see that homelife as an adaptation that perhaps had become successfull but in part because it enabled denial of suffering caused by many and complex things but most apparent in complacency that caused expectation rather than gratitude. Suffering that wives were more able to feel and less able to deny,

I remember reading that Hitchcock said something to the effect that the great thing about television was that it brought murder back into the home, where it belonged.

I think a lot of the impetus with second-wave feminism was that very many women were really dissatisfied with the way marriage actually worked for them in the 1950’s and 1960’s while circumstances were changing around them - they were better educated than their mothers had been and new kinds of jobs were emerging, for example.

Meanwhile, what we see in threads like these are criticisms of how women responded; what we see much less of is any kind of understanding of just how stultifying the supposed ‘golden age’ marriage could be. Rather like watching people jumping off a ship and into lifeboats and thinking them very, very silly to choose to bob about in little boats rather than dine on board the liner - while having failed to notice that the ship has hit an iceberg.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

I was questioning just how ‘natural’ anything is with humans - we’re so mediated by the human artifacts of culture, language and society that what is ‘natural’ is what appears to be ‘natural’ through the lens of those creations. Even if we take the, arguably ‘natural’, monogamous pairbond, it has been, historically, so tied up with power, ownership and religious idealism that the ‘natural’ has become identified with the ‘artifactual’ (one hesitates to use ‘artificial’!).

So, “guilty by association”? Democracy has long been identified with corruption, vote-tampering, improper influence by monied power groups, bureaucracy, gridlock, ineffectiveness – but have you got any other idea for running a country?

Just that hunting was a really spiffy, prestigious and male-bonding hobby that took up an awful lot of time - like golf and talking a lot about sport in bars.

You say that as if it’s a bad thing.

I think a lot of the impetus with second-wave feminism was that very many women were really dissatisfied with the way marriage actually worked for them in the 1950’s and 1960’s while circumstances were changing around them - they were better educated than their mothers had been and new kinds of jobs were emerging, for example.

Meanwhile, what we see in threads like these are criticisms of how women responded; what we see much less of is any kind of understanding of just how stultifying the supposed ‘golden age’ marriage could be. Rather like watching people jumping off a ship and into lifeboats and thinking them very, very silly to choose to bob about in little boats rather than dine on board the liner - while having failed to notice that the ship has hit an iceberg.

But nobody’s saying that women must remain in the home. If full-time wifery and motherhood “stultifies” one, than by all means, use your improved education and changing circumstances and seek fulfillment in the working world. But others might be “stultified” by the working world, and should not have to suffer the condescension of, and be looked down-upon by, those who feel themselves more “enlightened” than the rest of us and who pretend to know what’s best for all women.

The testimonies of those here who have said that they concentrated on their careers and now regret having done so precisely because they felt pressured by the prevailing feminist weltanschauung are indicative of this “over-correction” if you will.

I know you accuse us (gently and politely, of course) of pontificating (pun fully intended) and ruminating without offering any concrete suggestions. So, here’s my suggestion: All human beings are created equal. Each man and woman must use their God-given talents and skills to build a better world. If your “calling” is to full-time motherhood, don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t. And if your “calling” is to the professional realm, don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t. And if it’s to both, don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t.

There, now apart from cutting down a forest, I’ve planted a tree too.

 

[Sugabee43]

But nobody’s saying that women must remain in the home. If full-time wifery and motherhood “stultifies” one, than by all means, use your improved education and changing circumstances and seek fulfillment in the working world. But others might be “stultified” by the working world, and should not have to suffer the condescension of, and be looked down-upon by, those who feel themselves more “enlightened” than the rest of us and who pretend to know what’s best for all women.

The testimonies of those here who have said that they concentrated on their careers and now regret having done so precisely because they felt pressured by the prevailing feminist weltanschauung are indicative of this “over-correction” if you will.

I know you accuse us (gently and politely, of course) of pontificating (pun fully intended) and ruminating without offering any concrete suggestions. So, here’s my suggestion: All human beings are created equal. Each man and woman must use their God-given talents and skills to build a better world. If your “calling” is to full-time motherhood, don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t. And if your “calling” is to the professional realm, don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t. And if it’s to both, don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t.

There, now apart from cutting down a forest, I’ve planted a tree too.

Very nicely put! I would like to think that we are at a point in society that women and men choose their own destinies. The rub comes in the regret and hindsight, I think. I believe it was Mark Twain who said something along the lines of ‘youth is wasted on the young’.

 

[Kaninchen]

So, “guilty by association”? Democracy has long been identified with corruption, vote-tampering, improper influence by monied power groups, bureaucracy, gridlock, ineffectiveness – but have you got any other idea for running a country?

Are you replying to another thread?

You say that as if it’s a bad thing.

I expect that Benadam gets the point.

But nobody’s saying that women must remain in the home. If full-time wifery and motherhood “stultifies” one, than by all means, use your improved education and changing circumstances and seek fulfillment in the working world. But others might be “stultified” by the working world, and should not have to suffer the condescension of, and be looked down-upon by, those who feel themselves more “enlightened” than the rest of us and who pretend to know what’s best for all women.

Again, I think you must be replying to another thread here.

Should you wish to respond to what I’d actually written, I will, of course, reply.

 

[edwest2]

Very nicely put! I would like to think that we are at a point in society that women and men choose their own destinies. The rub comes in the regret and hindsight, I think. I believe it was Mark Twain who said something along the lines of ‘youth is wasted on the young’.

Women and men could always choose. All my childhood friends had parents, and as I got older, I observed how their lives actually were. Some people got married, some stayed single, as it’s always been.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Sugabee43]

Women and men could always choose. All my childhood friends had parents, and as I got older, I observed how their lives actually were. Some people got married, some stayed single, as it’s always been.

Peace,
Ed

Women could not always easily choose their own destinies, especially when they were not allowed to own property or vote. That was my point, really. Peace back at ya!

 

[edwest2]

Women could not always easily choose their own destinies, especially when they were not allowed to own property or vote. That was my point, really. Peace back at ya!

Modern feminism (post-1960) is the issue. The Sexual Revolution was about sex, not love. And had Modern Feminism actually worked toward solving problems involving men and women, I would have been supportive. Instead, it was divisive and hostile.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Sugabee43]

Modern feminism (post-1960) is the issue. The Sexual Revolution was about sex, not love. And had Modern Feminism actually worked toward solving problems involving men and women, I would have been supportive. Instead, it was divisive and hostile.

Peace,
Ed

Agreed.

 

[a_cermak]

Modern feminism (post-1960) is the issue. The Sexual Revolution was about sex, not love. And had Modern Feminism actually worked toward solving problems involving men and women, I would have been supportive. Instead, it was divisive and hostile.

But was it really? I mean, people are free to marry whomever they want (except siblings and members of the same gender in some states), so I guess I don’t see how feminism per se upset any marriages, other than those in the 60’s and 70’s.

People divorce more today, but I doubt they would have been in happy marriages back before easier access to divorce was available. Today, with both partners having incomes, they are more capable of living on their own so have more options, including that of divorce.
That is really the only connection to feminism is that because the woman has a career, she has more of an option of divorce.

Successful couples marry later in life, on average, which in many cases probably indicates some pre-marital sex. In a free society, there is no way to regulate extra-marital sex, other than in gross cases (e.g. child abuse). If that free sex prior to marriage leads to a higher age at first marriage and if a higher age at first marriage means a longer duration of marriage, then if divorce is harmful to society, isn’t it in society’s interest to benignly tolerate that reality?

By having both of us working in my family, we have been able to amass a warchest of savings for when the economy downturns (like now). Right now we are still both working, but we take solace in these uncertain times in knowing that our savings will float us for a few years of either or both of us not working (fortunately we kept our in case of bad economy break here savings in cash and not the market). Additionally, retirement savings are fairly decent. Those kinds of savings would not be possible without both of us working and there would be much more risk of instability in such a configuration.

Honestly, even in the case of FLDS and their strange families, the government has determined that as long as no underage women are being married, the government doesn’t care. People are free to configure their relationships as they see fit. If you want a 1950’s white middle-classed (the conceit of the woman being a housewife is a conceit of the middle and upper classes, poorer women have always worked for wages either inside or outside the home) American marriage, all you have to do is find a likeminded person of the other gender and there you are. True, that person may change, but I suspect that was always a risk.

 

[Gabriella_San_S]

But was it really? I mean, people are free to marry whomever they want (except siblings and members of the same gender in some states), so I guess I don’t see how feminism per se upset any marriages, other than those in the 60’s and 70’s.

People divorce more today, but I doubt they would have been in happy marriages back before easier access to divorce was available. Today, with both partners having incomes, they are more capable of living on their own so have more options, including that of divorce.
That is really the only connection to feminism is that because the woman has a career, she has more of an option of divorce.

Successful couples marry later in life, on average, which in many cases probably indicates some pre-marital sex. In a free society, there is no way to regulate extra-marital sex, other than in gross cases (e.g. child abuse). If that free sex prior to marriage leads to a higher age at first marriage and if a higher age at first marriage means a longer duration of marriage, then if divorce is harmful to society, isn’t it in society’s interest to benignly tolerate that reality?

By having both of us working in my family, we have been able to amass a warchest of savings for when the economy downturns (like now). Right now we are still both working, but we take solace in these uncertain times in knowing that our savings will float us for a few years of either or both of us not working (fortunately we kept our in case of bad economy break here savings in cash and not the market). Additionally, retirement savings are fairly decent. Those kinds of savings would not be possible without both of us working and there would be much more risk of instability in such a configuration.

.

So, you deem a “successful” marriage, one that is made up of older people (possibly infertile from age or STD’s) who have enjoyed their share of “free” pre-marital relations, who both work and save a heap of money for their resilience in their retirement years before they die, after living a life of wanton self-absorption? And you take solace in these uncertain times? Perhaps your* solace will be challenged in the hereafter.*
Forgive my presumption that you are not concerned for your neighbor’s plight-you may be very charitable in your giving to those in need and I just missed that in your post.
I’m willing to bet that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has greater designs for marriage than amassing wealth. Maybe it has more to do with sacrificial love and life-long commitment,not to mention the* blessed gift* of children-but that’s just my hunch.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Successful couples marry later in life, on average, which in many cases probably indicates some pre-marital sex. In a free society, there is no way to regulate extra-marital sex, other than in gross cases (e.g. child abuse). If that free sex prior to marriage leads to a higher age at first marriage and if a higher age at first marriage means a longer duration of marriage, then if divorce is harmful to society, isn’t it in society’s interest to benignly tolerate that reality?

That would be a utilitarian way of thinking about sexuality, but the Catholic and Jewish way is somewhat different. The Catechism says:

*2361 "Sexuality, by means of which man and woman give themselves to one another through the acts which are proper and exclusive to spouses, is not something simply biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such. It is realized in a truly human way only if it is an integral part of the love by which a man and woman commit themselves totally to one another until death."142

2362 "The acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honorable; the truly human performance of these acts fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude."144 Sexuality is a source of joy and pleasure:

2363 The spouses’ union achieves the twofold end of marriage: the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life. These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple’s spiritual life and compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family.

The conjugal love of man and woman thus stands under the twofold obligation of fidelity and fecundity.*

Similarly,

*Sex is permissible only within the context of a marriage. In Judaism, sex is not merely a way of experiencing physical pleasure. It is an act of immense significance, which requires commitment and responsibility. The requirement of marriage before sex ensures that sense of commitment and responsibility. Jewish law also forbids sexual contact short of intercourse outside of the context of marriage, recognizing that such contact will inevitably lead to intercourse.

The primary purpose of sex is to reinforce the loving marital bond between husband and wife. The first and foremost purpose of marriage is companionship, and sexual relations play an important role. Procreation is also a reason for sex, but it is not the only reason. Sex between husband and wife is permitted (even recommended) at times when conception is impossible, such as when the woman is pregnant, after menopause, or when the woman is using a permissible form of contraception.

In the Torah, the word used for sex between husband and wife comes from the root Yod-Dalet-Ayin, meaning “to know,” which vividly illustrates that proper Jewish sexuality involves both the heart and mind, not merely the body. *

jewfaq.org/sex.htm

By having both of us working in my family, we have been able to amass a warchest of savings for when the economy downturns (like now). Right now we are still both working, but we take solace in these uncertain times in knowing that our savings will float us for a few years of either or both of us not working (fortunately we kept our in case of bad economy break here savings in cash and not the market). Additionally, retirement savings are fairly decent. Those kinds of savings would not be possible without both of us working and there would be much more risk of instability in such a configuration.

But you and your husband aren’t the “cases” we had in mind. You work because you want to work and because it’s financially prudent to do so not (presumably) because you have it in mind that you must work in order to properly live out the feminist ideal.

If you want a 1950’s white middle-classed (the conceit of the woman being a housewife is a conceit of the middle and upper classes, poorer women have always worked for wages either inside or outside the home) American marriage, all you have to do is find a likeminded person of the other gender and there you are. True, that person may change, but I suspect that was always a risk.

Precisely. And society has no place discouraging a one-income household any more than it has discouraging a two-income household.