Gender roles in marriage. Do some men just have a problem with women?

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There’s also a subgroup of men who also go for exclusively Eastern European women because they think that these women are more feminine, aka, more submissive.
 
@Peeps I do not share your shoe issue, but I certainly sympathise! For what it’s worth, I do think that an expensive pair of shoes is usually a good investment, especially if you only have a few pairs. I know women who will buy a pair of shoes for £5 and wear them once. With men’s shoes, the savings seem obvious. My husband has a favourite pair of shoes that he wears virtually all the time. They are expensive, but an expensive pair of shoes that lasts for 10 years is a better investment than a cheap pair of shoes that has to be replaced every six months!

Sainsbury’s has an ongoing marketing campaign for its lingerie which I think is quite positive. It’s produced by an all-female team and uses models of all sizes, shapes, ages, ethnic backgrounds, at least one woman has visible scarring, at least one woman has a visible disability. Personally, I find it a bit cringey to see a grown woman using the word “boobies” in public, but my husband says that’s just me being prim.

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WingedHussar said:
To return the original point, the claim was made that China and India are facing a problem in the form of a gender imbalance. I want to know why this is a problem. The only thing women can do that men cannot is bear the next generation. However expecting any individual woman to have that duty runs contrary to feminism. So why is the gender imbalance a problem?
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Are you seriously asking why the gender imbalance in some countries or cultures is a problem?

First, the fact that it invariably arises because people do not want to have girls and therefore have female babies aborted. I find that to be a problem in the first place.

Secondly, because it means having a society in which a large proportion of men will never be able to find a female partner within their own country or culture. These men will then remain single for life or will emigrate to western countries in the hope of finding a wife there. Note also that in the countries where the sex ratio is the most imbalanced, the consequences of being single for life and not having children are the most serious. If you are from the United States, as I think you probably are, being single and childless may not be particularly bad, but if you are from China or India, being unable to have a wife and children has serious consequences. And also please note that gender imbalance is regional as well as national. In China, there are 104 boys per 100 girls in Tibet, but there are 143 boys per 100 girls in Jiangxi. Therefore, about 1 in 3 boys in Jiangxi will grow up knowing that they can never marry or have children. It’s appalling. I cannot imagine how you cannot see that.

The human species has evolved in such a way that males and females are supposed to be reproduced in more or less equal proportions. It is frankly mind-boggling that you do not see massively imbalanced sex ratios to be a problem.
 
Sarcelle said:
There’s also a subgroup of men who also go for exclusively Eastern European women because they think that these women are more feminine, aka, more submissive.
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Eastern Europe was living until a recent time under the communist system. This political system does not encourage or create submissive women (at least to their husbands!). Quite the contrary.

I think it is more due that some Eastern women want to escape their poverty by contracting a marriage with a more wealthy man from a western country.
 
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Anicette said:
For eg, in general, people who met or marry at a young age, such as your are more concern about who is the person and love feelings. They don’t have a lot of experience of life and more ideals.
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My husband and I are both in favor of young marriage, as long as the couple has dated throughout their teen years, and as long as the couple have a clear and practical plan to support themselves and achieve their financial goals (e.g., owning a home, travelling, investing in art, donating to charity, etc.).

When a couple starts dating at young ages, they are generally both still under the authority of their parents, which means that curfews, spending, schooling, etc. are determined by their PARENTS, not their own desires. This steadies the relationship, and allows for counselling and even a “bail-out” if the couple, in their immaturity, spend too much, or have a huge fight, etc. The parents can also put the brakes on anything that is harmful to the couple.

When people wait until they are older and out on their own, there are no parents around to counsel, correct, and help out.

Also, when a couple starts dating young, they form their interests, goals, dreams, likes/dislikes, etc. TOGETHER, and this makes it easier to be “one” in a marriage. My daughter and her husband started dating when she was 14 and he was 17, and dated for seven years before marrying at ages 21 and 24. They have been married 11 years now, and seem more like 60-year olds–they KNOW what the other person wants, thinks, feels! It’s so cute! And…it’s conducive to a harmonious marriage–they grew up together and have a lot in common and have worked through quite a few adverse circumstances in their lives (deaths of family members, infertility, getting through college and trade school, etc.).
 
The danger I think is what happens if the parents are not wise. Personally I shudder to think where I’d have ended up if I married the sort of man my parents would approve of. My parents’ marriage was very unhealthy and I expect I would have been pressured into replicating those dynamics and accepting them, rather than having the chance to grow as an adult and see them for what they were.
 
You give an interesting perspective.

I agree that when we met young, it is easier to adjust our live to someone’s else than when we are older. and parents can supervise and advise more their children when they are at home. Yet divergences (personality, religion etc) can grow as we are becoming older or when children or real life (marriage, workforce) come. It is what happen for me.

Except that I don’t favor at all underage teenagers’s dating. The marriage of your daughter is truly amazing, but in the majoriy of cases, people don’t marry their young teenage sweetheart. It leads only to break up, sadness, distraction in studies etc.
 
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Anicette said:
Except that I don’t favor at all underage teenagers’s dating. The marriage of your daughter is truly amazing, but in the majoriy of cases, people don’t marry their young teenage sweetheart. It leads only to break up, sadness, distraction in studies etc.
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My husband and I also started dating when we were young (he was 15, I was 16), and we dated for six years before marrying at ages 21 and 22. We have been happily married for 41 years.

When a boy and a girl grow up together, they learn lots about each other, and they share many memories together that help them to deal with all the joys and sorrows that life has for them.

Another wonderful thing about young dating is that, assuming that there are no infertility issues (like with my daughter), the couple can start their family when they are young (and have energy, and don’t mind eating a lot of Ramen noodles on a cheap budget!). We were only in our mid-40s when our kids graduated from high school, and that means that we have had twenty years (and counting) of life with just each other since the girls left home for college/career. That’s been wonderful!

Don’t get the wrong idea, though–we LOVED raising our daughters, especially spending so many hours (and so much money!) at the ice skating rinks, and we’re so thrilled that both of them still ice skate (and coach) and love the sport. We known other parents whose kids couldn’t wait to be finished with high school so they could quit skating–one girl finished her last ice show, and physically THREW her ice skates (probably cost around $1200.00 at least) back into the skating rink and said “I’m DONE!”

I don’t think the breakups are necessarily harmful for teenagers–it’s part of life. Teens have been dating and breaking up for decades. Have you ever read the “Little House” books by Laura Ingalls Wilder? She talks about her friends dating and breaking up, and this all happen in the 1880s, out on the prairies of North Dakota!

As for distraction in studies–my husband and I were both school “brains,” and we actually improved in our studies after we started dating seriously. We both expected the other to do well, and we helped each other with the subjects that were weaker for us (I was pretty bad at math, and he was not the best writer.) We pulled some stunts (we attended a small town public high school) that 45 years later, both teachers and students, even those who were younger than us–still remember and laugh about! And we starred together in the Senior play, and did music contests together–and you know, we still hung out with our friends. I went to plenty of slumber parties, and my husband still got together with his nerdly-science-loving pals.
 
WingedHussar said:
Take note gents. Feminism took off due to a pair of factors.
  1. Labor-saving devices that freed up lots of time for women.
  2. Prosperity that created a whole class of idle upper-class women who provided the intellectual firepower behind the movement.
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  1. Birth control, too, of course.
Also, mechanization made women’s labor outside the home much more valuable than had been previously possible. There were all kinds of new machines (like telephone switchboards and typewriters) that women could operate just as well or better than men could. Also, both K-12 education and healthcare have provided millions of well-paying jobs to women that would not necessarily have ever been very appealing to men.
 
Sarcelle said:
There’s also a subgroup of men who also go for exclusively Eastern European women because they think that these women are more feminine, aka, more submissive.
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HA HA HA!

I know Russian and I’ve worked in Russia and known a lot of Russians and I would say that Russian women are on average more domestic and put more effort into their appearance and femininity than (Northern) US women but that that goes hand in hand with being fairly high maintenance and more divorce-y than middle class American women.

(Southern US women put more effort into their appearance than Northern US women, on average.)
 
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Heehee.

I’m thinking of a female Chinese manager I once worked under. She was GREAT. But oh wow. If someone married her thinking she’d be ‘easy to control’…

I’d like front row seats to that dumpster fire.
 
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I know some Japanese and Korean women and they also aren’t the “easy to control” types.
 
I don’t think there are guarantees anywhere, frankly.

Even women in the most unenviably patriarchal cultures can find loopholes. Do you remember this nugget of wisdom from My Big Fat Greek Wedding?

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To be fair, what’s “mainstream” isn’t necessarily correct.
 
Debatable, doubling the workforce pushed down wages the same way a massive increase in anything would decrease its monetary value. Thanks to current economic system, dual income households are almost a necessity.
 
WingedHussar said:
Debatable, doubling the workforce pushed down wages the same way a massive increase in anything would decrease its monetary value. Thanks to current economic system, dual income households are almost a necessity.
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I don’t think the workforce did quite double due to female employment, as unmarried women participated very substantially in the workforce even in the past. The mid-century US expectation was that middle class women–broadly understood–would work outside the home at least until marriage and into early marriage, but not work outside the home when there were small children at home. I also don’t think it would have been shocking (circa 1960 or so) for a married mother with school-age children to work as a school teacher or librarian or similar.

Also, a lot of men have exited the workforce in recent years, so that’s another reason that I don’t think we can say that the workforce has doubled.

Oh, a third point–children, teenagers and young adults work less for pay than they used to.

Young American mothers work a lot more for pay than in the middle of the 20th century, but children, teenagers, young adults and men work less.

(Anybody who has actual stats, feel free to clean up my generalizations.)
 
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Except that no woman has the duty to reproduce according to feminism so that particular capability is not relevant.
 
Speak for yourself. Duty and honor are concepts that I find highly motivating.
 
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