How Practical is it for Women to be Submissive to Their Husbands in Modern Society

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A wise husband would listen to his wife’s expertise. To continue your business analogy the husband is the CEO, his Vice President is indispensable but that doesn’t make him any less the CEO.

If the husband insist on a path over his wife’s objections she has two choices. Talk him out of it or undermined him. The second option just sets you two up for war and destroys trust.

I dislike the business analogy because husband and wives are a unit. They have to watch each other’s back. Once a decision is made (by whatever means) it is their decision. They both need to execute that decision to the best of their abilities. To do otherwise harms the family.

I guess my best way to illustrate this would be to ask you what you would do if your husband ignores your expertise and insists on doing it his way?
 
KathleenT said:
I guess my best way to illustrate this would be to ask you what you would do if your husband ignores your expertise and insists on doing it his way?
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I would do what I thought was right regardless of the path my hypothetical husband took. I trust my judgment.
 
Hahaha. No, we don’t. But I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.

Everything you described about having a small child is very familiar to me.
 
Um, how?

Husband wants to buy x car, wife wants to buy y.

You would take the money and go buy y, just to get your way?

Good luck ever seeing a dime of his money again
 
I did read your whole post. Fair enough.

Though I was not saying that the vows were invalid. Only that they would be now, at least according to the standard vow formats in English-Speaking countries.

I think if couples want to interpret submission in this way and it isn’t abusive then fair enough. But I really think that marital arrangement would offer many more opportunities for virtue to the woman than the man. I mean, if a man can wave his hand and declare that things will be done “my way” then that really doesn’t challenge him much does it?
 
So, you’re saying that I have to give in to his every petty whim or else suffer financial abuse? Great case you’re making for “traditional” marriage there.
 
KathleenT said:
Husband wants to buy x car, wife wants to buy y.

You would take the money and go buy y, just to get your way?
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Husband and wife both have jobs, husband and wife both make the money to buy their own car, each person buys one car and picks it themself based on what they can afford. Simples.

Marriages are a lot happier when one person isn’t seeing the other as the money machine for the family. It’s also very helpful to have that setup in case one person all of a sudden dies and the survivor still has bills to pay.
 
TheAmazingGrace said:
I would do what I thought was right regardless of the path my hypothetical husband took. I trust my judgment.
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That doesn’t work either. That’s the other extreme. Even in a marriage where the husband didn’t invoke obedience you couldn’t do that. There are other factors to consider. Who will drive the car most of the time. Is your husband more knowledgable about cars in general. What’s the MPG/Insurance cost. Is it a good deal. etc. etc.
 
She was talking about a situation in which the husband ignores the wife’s expertise.
 
No, that is not what I said.

You said you would do whatever you wante$. That’s not a marriage. Marriage is pooled resources and mutual decisions.

A husband who ignores his wife’s wishes and overrides her is an abuser…a wife that does the same is “strong and independent”
 
KathleenT said:
You said you would do whatever you wante$
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The scenario you brought up was one in which a husband ignores his wife’s expertise. In such a case, especially if it was an emergency, I feel that I would have a responsibility to act on my knowledge and skills. I didn’t say I would “do whatever I want.” I would expect my hypothetical husband to do the same if I was acting like a jagoff and he was the one who knew better, but that doesn’t mean I want to give him the final say in everything that affects my life.
 
Vonsalza said:
But your husband being less than helpful in the day to day baby-grind doesn’t justify your rejection of headship. I doubt you’ll find it in Casti Connubii, anyway. And you need to be careful that you don’t sow seeds of enmity that may one day bear some ugly fruit in your marriage.

But either way, if you could leave me out of your cathartic and confirmation-seeking narrative that conflates Christian husbands fulfilling their God-given duty of leading their households with calloused wife-oppressors, I’d appreciate it.
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Here’s the thing–a guy could think he was fulfilling his God-given duty of leading his household while actually making bad choices and hurting his wife. In fact, that’s exactly what my husband was doing. It’s not uncommon for husbands to be oblivious to problems at home, or to not understand how serious problems are.


And it’s not hard to imagine how this happens–he’s not at home all day living the life his wife is, so he doesn’t know where she is.

Depression is an epidemic among SAHMs.


US SAHMs are more depressed than working moms (28% versus 17%–that’s over a quarter depressed), sadder (26% versus 16%), angrier (19% versus 14%), and more worried (41% to 34%). The “good” news is that SAHMs are not substantially more stressed than working moms–SAHMs are “only” 50% stressed whereas working moms are 48% stressed.

These are extremely serious numbers with a lot of implications for how long women are willing to be SAHMs, not to mention implications for the health of marriages and children’s welfare, and I can’t say that I’ve ever heard hard care submission type people really grapple with what they mean. People complain about small US family sizes without thinking about what conditions are like at home and how well mom is doing.

US SAHMs are not, as a group, a very mentally healthy group of people, and it’s going to have downstream effects on the well being of their families.

Edited to add: It wasn’t just that my husband was unhelpful when our youngest was a young toddler, but that he was actively trying to keep me from doing things to keep my head above water by making it hard for me to get out of the house and see other adult human beings. He could not see how isolated and lonely and stressed I was, and he did things to to make my isolation worse. And if he saw me falling apart, he didn’t recognize how badly off I was, and he didn’t think of it as his responsibility to help me figure out how to do better. I had to save me by putting Baby Girl in PDO one day a week.
 
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Yes, because life always works that neatly.

If the financial decision annoys you substitute it for something else: where the kids go to school, where to live, etc.

My point was as a married couple you can’t just go your own way
 
There seems to be a fine line between submission and generous self-giving love. Last night, my husband wanted to go for a walk and look at Christmas lights. I didn’t want to go. It was cold, it was late, and I didn’t want to bundle up the kids. I tried to talk him out of it, but he was insistent. He knew I didn’t want to go, but he didn’t let up. So I went. Was that submission or self-giving? It was certainly the subjection of my own will to make him happy. But don’t we all do that in marriage, men and women alike? If we aren’t doing that sort of thing for our spouses, we should be.
 
Xantippe said:
US SAHMs are not, as a group, a very mentally healthy group of people, and it’s going to have downstream effects on the well being of their families.
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Could that partly have to do with the fact that society increasingly places the value of the SAHM at nil? If SAHMs were valued highly as being the contributiors to society that they are then that would probably change slightly?
 
babochka said:
He knew I didn’t want to go, but he didn’t let up. So I went. Was that submission or self-giving? It was certainly the subjection of my own will to make him happy. But don’t we all do that in marriage, men and women alike? If we aren’t doing that sort of thing for our spouses, we should be.
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Yeah, but if that only goes one way then you are the one dying to your husband and not the other way around.
The Church teaches mutual submission for a reason. It’s untenable in a marriage for one person to submit all the time.
 
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Edmundus1581 said:
As I said, my “vile lie” from the feminists is the lie that many, if not most, husbands rule the home with a fist, and that “domestic violence” by men against women and children is a first-order issue, rather than a fringe issue. This is not to belittle the victims where it does happen, but they are not the vast majority of western homes.
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Why does it need to be the majority to be a serious problem?

I grew up in a home with a mother who could be very violent, right up into my mid-teens. She grew up in a very abusive home in various respects. I don’t talk about this in real life much at all, so anybody who knows me wouldn’t know that when I was a kid, my mom was breaking wooden spoons and spatulas on us kids, backhanding teen daughters, and literally using a horse whip on us. (And that, by the way, was one of the reasons why wifely submission to a husband didn’t sound terrible to me as a young bride–because all the inappropriate violence I experienced came from my mom and my dad’s presence was what kept us safe from her rages.)
 
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AdamPeter said:
I’d say they’re a lot happier when the money is just regarded as a family resource rather than “mine and yours”.
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One could argue that, but I see too many couples, including in my family, where the man makes the money and then his wife spends more than they can afford.

If you’re going to spend money, bring money into the house. If you’re not bringing money into the house, then don’t expect a lot of extraneous stuff or status goods.
 
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