Gay = Happy
New studies show that “gay” means “happy” when it comes to marriage. Why? Because same sex couples aren’t bogged down by sexist gender roles.
From the article:
Notably, same-sex relationships, whether between men or women, were far more egalitarian than heterosexual ones. In heterosexual couples, women did far more of the housework; men were more likely to have the financial responsibility; and men were more likely to initiate sex, while women were more likely to refuse it or to start a conversation about problems in the relationship. With same-sex couples, of course, none of these dichotomies were possible, and the partners tended to share the burdens far more equally.
While the gay and lesbian couples had about the same rate of conflict as the heterosexual ones, they appeared to have more relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the inequality of opposite-sex relationships can take a toll.
Turns out that hetero couples could learn a lot from their gay friends about creating more satisfying marital relationships. Also, gender stereotypes in hetero marriages don’t hold up under scrutiny:
One of the most common stereotypes in heterosexual marriages is the “demand-withdraw” interaction, in which the woman tends to be unhappy and to make demands for change, while the man reacts by withdrawing from the conflict. But some surprising new research shows that same-sex couples also exhibit the pattern, contradicting the notion that the behavior is rooted in gender, according to an abstract presented at the 2006 meeting of the Association for Psychological Science by Sarah R. Holley, a psychology researcher at Berkeley.
Dr. Levenson says this is good news for all couples.
“Like everybody else, I thought this was male behavior and female behavior, but it’s not,” he said. “That means there is a lot more hope that you can do something about it.”
I’m not sure this conclusion is supported by the data cited.
I’ve always thought that same-sex relationships must be EASIER, because of the gender-related tendency to differences in communication that have been documented by research and popularized by John Gray’s Mars/Venus books.
And communication is one of the biggies in any relationship.
This means that heterosexual couples can’t learn from gay friends, because the gay couples don’t have to negotiate those differences.
It may not be “inequality” that takes a toll, but the ease of talking through differences.
Comment by Naismith — June 10, 2008 @ 7:27 am
I’ve always thought that same-sex relationships must be EASIER…
I was married to a woman for eighteen years. I have been partnered with two men for about a year and a half. In my own experience, it is difficult to say that either kind of relationship is “easier” than the other, though the latter is certainly more egalitarian. It may be true that two men “speak each other’s language” more than a man and a woman do, but gender differences in communication are not really as clear as some might think.
For example, we’ve all heard (from John Gray, et al) that women just want to express their frustrations, and that men make a “mistake” by interjecting with “solutions,” when they should simply listen and empathize. I’ve found that this isn’t just a matter of gender. There are times when my partner is upset about something in the workplace, and tells me all about it. My instinct (particularly as a recovering lawyer) is to point out where the behavior of his supervisors is illegal and actionable. I’m learning, however, that this is a bad, bad approach. I’m a fairly assertive person (not that anyone can tell in the bloggernacle). When I respond to my partner’s worries and frustrations with what I think he should do about the situation, I don’t make him feel better. Instead, this places more pressure on him, compounding his distress. If I feel a need to make these kind of suggestions, my best plan is to wait a day or two, until the emotional stress has subsided. When he’s still upset, all he really wants is to vent, and to know he has an understanding person who loves him and will listen.
Ultimately, relationships are about two different people coming together. Each has his or her own habits of communication and behavior. Each has to learn to understand and work with those differences. Sure, it’s easier for a gay man to be in a relationship with another gay man. I would expect that it’s easier for a straight man to be in a relationship with a straight woman. In the end though, it’s more about being able to show love and respect toward each other.
Comment by Nick Literski — June 10, 2008 @ 7:47 am
“Turns out that hetero couples could learn a lot from their gay friends about creating more satisfying marital relationships.”
Are you defining this as “while the relationship lasts” or as “in the ability to create a long-term relationship”?
I think most couples can learn from other couples who are strong where they are weak. Based on the conclusion from the second quote in the post (and Nick’s excellent comment), the above conclusion seems like an overly broad generalization, frankly.
Also, I personally haven’t seen research about average length of one compared to the other, but I’ve heard generalizations that homosexual relationships tend to be much shorter in duration - that, even with the high divorce rate, heterosexual marriages tend to last longer than homosexual unions. Does anyone know if that is correct or not? If correct, that would alter significantly the implications of the quote above; if not correct, it would illustrate a lot about bias.
Comment by Ray — June 10, 2008 @ 8:03 am
Ray, the generalization of homosexual relationships being shorter is just that- a stereotype.
Comment by lemondrop — June 10, 2008 @ 8:09 am
As we say on that dinosaur we call Usenet: Call for reference. Ray qualified his statement with an admission that he lacked facts, but you don’t supply any to support your position, either.
Aside: Literski, you old dog! Haven’t seen you around since I left A.R.M. a while back. Good to see you and good to see you happy.
Comment by MoJo — June 10, 2008 @ 8:28 am
Ray,
The allegation that homosexual relationships are shorter in duration that heterosexual relationships stems primarily from the so-called “Dutch Study.” A fairly complete critique of the Dutch Study can be found here: http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/Articles/000,003.htm
Suffice it to say that the study’s protocol changed repeatedly, progressively narrowing the pool of subjects. In the initial phase, the study pulled subjects from Amsterdam, as well as AIDS patients who attended Amsterdam clinics. At that point, the study included gay men aged 18-65, who had at least two sexual partners in the previous six months (i.e., gay men who were not monogamous). Then, the study eliminated HIV negative men, resulting in a pool of only non-monogamous, HIV positive gay men. Then HIV negative men were brought back in. Then, all subjects over the age of 30 were removed from the study, and excluded from the analysis and conclusions.
The final study grouping, therefore, was made up exclusively of urban, non-monogamous men, who were under the age of 30. It was also weighted toward HIV positive men, due to the recruitment pool and the period wherein only HIV positive men were enrolled. Honest researchers will question whether such a grouping is truly representative of gay men in general. Honest researchers will note that we would expecta group of young, urban, non-monogamous men to generally engage in shorter term relationships, whether they were gay or straight. Honest researchers will note that if you only look at men under the age of thirty, you create an artificial time-limit, beyond which none of your study subjects will have sustained long-term relationships. After all, do you expect a 27 year old man to have been in a 15 year relationship, for example? The subject pool greatly skews the data, if you’re trying to extrapolate to gay men in general.
Unfortunately, there are individuals and groups in our society who are quite desperate to defame homosexual relationships for religious and political purposes. Such people are willing to grasp for anything that can “sound scientific” to an uninformed public, in order to bolster their discriminatory goals.
Comment by Nick Literski — June 10, 2008 @ 8:57 am
Argh!!! That should have read: “The allegation that homosexual relationships are shorter in duration than heterosexual relationships…”
Comment by Nick Literski — June 10, 2008 @ 8:58 am
I don’t know if the title is merited by the given information, considering that Hetero and Homosexual couples have “about the same rate of conflict.” I think it is nice that you appreciate that there are not issues with Gender role/stereotypes in such couples, but that is because there is no gender difference in such couples. Happiness is a personal matter.
Comment by TrevorM — June 10, 2008 @ 9:20 am
It seems to me that you either believe sex differences and what we commonly refer to as “gender differences” are essential/hardwired, or you don’t, and how you interpret this kind of study depends on which side you take in that argument. Which is not to say it’s not worth discussing…for other people. Have fun, y’all!
Comment by madhousewife — June 10, 2008 @ 10:42 am
Ray: Nick’s data is on topic, whereas my anecdata is just that, but my personal anecdata is this: my spouse and I (we were married just as soon as there was a country that would do it. literally: that day) have been together sixteen going on seventeen years. take that britiny spears. (sp?!?)
Trevor: actually you’re wrong. It would be entirely *possible* for same-sex couples to adopt gender-stereotyped roles, even though there two persons of the same sex in the relationship. They *could* imitate the late 20th c fantasy about the 1950’s in the U.S., and have one partner responsible nearly exclusively for house cleaning, childrearing (stereotypical ‘women’s’ role), and the other partner responsible nearly exclusively for financial matters (& uh, what? plumbing, bbq and mowing lawn?? I get lost in these stereotypes). One point of the research behind article is that as it happens, same-sex couples do not–by and large– so structure their relations as to mimic this particular vision of heterosexual relations. Instead, as the article says, same-sex relations tend to be more egalitarian in the division of labor.
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 10, 2008 @ 10:51 am
Really, madhousewife? So, I suppose you’re trying to say that I only point out flaws in the Dutch Study because of “which side I take in the argument?” By all means, please do point out to us how my response is a reflection of “which side I take in the argument. In particular, please do show us that a study of urban, non-monogamous, twenty-somethings, many of which happen to be specifically HIV positive, is a valid reflection of the entire gay community.
I know…you don’t want to talk about it. It’s much easier for you to simply dismiss what I said, so you can continue to make the completely unsupported claims that bolster the side you take in the argument. Right?
Comment by Nick Literski — June 10, 2008 @ 10:54 am
#10:
It would be entirely *possible* for same-sex couples to adopt gender-stereotyped roles, even though there two persons of the same sex in the relationship. They *could* imitate the late 20th c fantasy about the 1950’s in the U.S…..
Absolutely! In fact, the most recent issue of The Advocate has a rather interesting article by a previously-heterosexually-married man who settled down with his male partner, only to find that he ended up in a traditional “wife” role in the relationship! (Oh…and he’s okay with it, btw.)
Comment by Nick Literski — June 10, 2008 @ 10:57 am
Madhousewife, the study is flawed by any scientific/medical protocol you want to measure; thus, it can’t be referred to as an authority.
On the other hand, I’m not sure to what you’re referring: gender differences in the case of what roles a pair takes on in the relationship? or that sexual orientation is hard-wired? I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes. Could you clarify?
Comment by MoJo — June 10, 2008 @ 11:03 am
my favorite word any time i read the results of any kind of study is “suggesting”.
♥
Comment by Blue — June 10, 2008 @ 11:05 am
There have been studies that show that gay relationships are shorter. Also, problems with studies can debunk the claim, but don’t by any means count as a point for the counter camp. I read the critique of the “Dutch Study” in post #6 and after reading it agree there are some obvious flaws in that study. However, that doesn’t mean that their conclusions were wrong (just that the evidence provided by THAT study is weak).
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1704660,00.html
However, Darren Spedale studied divorce rates in Denmark from 1996-1997 and found that 17% of gay marriages ended in divorce vs. 46% of straight marriages… I read this at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/27/MNG1H59R5Q1.DTL
and so I’m not aware of the means and methods of the study. One problem that immediately comes to mind is the sample size of people getting a gay marriage. The social accessibilty of a straight marriage (drunk marriage at vegas for example) vs. a gay marraige might be reasons for more divorce in Denmark during that year. Also it’s a year they’re looking at. I tried to find the study but couldn’t. If anyone knows I’d be very interested.
I don’t know where I stand on this whole issue, but MY conclusions from reading many studies and my experience and observations, are YES the relatioships are shorter, NO they are not as “functional” (there are a lot of emotional problems going on, possibly more than straight relationships), and YES/NO they are happier or not (I personally don’t see why people in a gay relationship are less happy. I think it tries to fill a need that a straight relationship fills for those people).
My two cents.
Feel free to crucify me. I might totally forget about this blog, but I’ll try to come back to read any comments.
Comment by ThisBlogConfusesMe — June 10, 2008 @ 11:28 am
Who cares? Do you go into a relationship (hetro or gay) because it will last longer? I would hope that any relationship you go into, your not thinking “i wonder how long this will last”. Why does it matter what the studies say. I am not going to go into a gay relationship because a study shows it will last longer than a hetrosexual relationship (not that i would to into a gay relationship anyway)
Comment by Bosley — June 10, 2008 @ 11:49 am
actualthoughanonlesbian,
I think you misunderstood my point. I was at least attempting to The title was arguing (at least tacitly) that gay couples are “happier” and then proceeds to say they, “have the same level of conflict”
I missed the statement that they “appear” more satisfied.
So I will concede one could argue they are happier couples, but once again at the same conflict rate, what does “satisfaction” mean?
Other question, If Gay couples were to adopt gender-roles (I did not intend to argue that they could not) would satisfaction levels decrease? would the problems related to Heterosexual couples with stereotypical roles appear in these relationships as well? The poster seems to think they would, while Nick’s post seems to say that they could and that such roles would not cause problems.
Comment by TrevorM — June 10, 2008 @ 11:53 am
Trevor, if one partner in a homosexual relationship takes on a traditionally opposite-gender role (we’re talking in terms of family responsibilities, of course), the level of “problems” caused will depend entirely on the personalities of the partners involved. For the author I mentioned, this development was somewhat accidental, but acceptable for him. For others, it may be entirely unacceptable.
I should point out that for the author I mentioned, the adoption of a “wife” role was largely a result of the two partners’ differing work responsibilities. The author worked primarily at home, while his partner owned a nursery, and thus worked exclusively outside the home, in a very physical occupation. As such, it was a fairly natural development for the author to take on family responsibilities that are traditionally seen as “female.”
Comment by Nick Literski — June 10, 2008 @ 12:11 pm
Nick this is a fair statement, that it would depend on the personalities of those involved, however my question was offered specifically because ECS’ post seems to suggest that gender roles are harmful. She does use the adjective “sexist” gender roles, but this still seems lump any heterosexual couple that has all traditional roles in to the “sexist gender roles” category. However i am sure that some of those polled were quite pleased with their traditional marriage arrangement, they just happened to be in the minority of respondents. Thus even with traditional sexist gender roles it depends on the couple.
I am wondering if there is a correlative shift in satisfaction (on a general, or large scale, not in terms of individual cases) when one partner or the other adopts a traditional role in a homosexual couple.
What I am saying is the post seems to be conflating Sexual orientatiion and gender roles in marital satisfaction. What I am asking is this: is such a conflation acceptable, or would more data suggest that evenly divided domestic/professional roles lead to satisfaction regardless of sexual orientation.
Comment by TrevorM — June 10, 2008 @ 12:41 pm
Nick, my comment was not directed at you, nor was it referring to the Dutch study. As far as I can tell, your critique of the Dutch study is valid. I was referring to the study ECS cited in the post. And yes, I do think you can take whatever you want to from that study and a whole lot of other studies that “suggest” something about sex/gender differences being hardwired or socially constructed. I’d point to any–ANY–thread on this blog in which the subject is discussed, regardless of whether or not homosexuality figures into the discussion, as evidence of that.
MoJo - I was referring to sex/gender differences in general, not homosexuality and not homosexual relationships.
On this occasion I would BEG you all to just dismiss what I’ve said here, as it doesn’t engage the argument, and pontificate amongst yourselves.
Comment by madhousewife — June 10, 2008 @ 12:42 pm
#6 - Catching up on all the comments. Thanks, Nick, for the info - and for taking the time to answer my question.
Comment by Ray — June 10, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
Let me add that I agree that in some views of traditional husband/wife relationships there is a great degree of sexsim.
Comment by TrevorM — June 10, 2008 @ 12:49 pm
I liked this observation best:
Reading that made me just that much more grateful for the relationship I have with my husband, which is very egalitarian, and in which conflicts are typically less than serious, involve no personal attacks, and are frequently funny. Every other serious relationship I’ve ever experienced included some conflict that was unpleasant and personal, and unfortunately those highly emotionally-charged disagreements are what I remember. My marriage is also probably more egalitarian than any other relationship I’ve been in.
When my parents’ conflicts descended to personal attacks that got everyone’s blood boiling, we all knew it was just a matter of time before the marriage ended.
Comment by kristine N — June 10, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
Thanks for your comments, all.
I’m mostly interested in the concept that any role that is foisted upon someone based on his or her gender has a greater potential to make that person miserable and resentful than the same role that someone freely chooses to take on.
The take home message from the article, for me, is that couples who are able to choose their roles and responsibilities in an egalitarian relationship are, on the whole, happier than members of a couple who feel pressured into assuming pre-assigned gender roles. (by social convention, religion, etc.)
I realize Rawls’ Theory of Justice is currently out of fashion, but I see same-sex couples structuring their relationships in the so-called “Veil of Ignorance” before gender is assigned. Meaning, gender is already assigned for same-sex couples, so gender is not an issue when meting out roles and responsibilities. I know, it’s a crude analogy, but still.
Comment by ECS — June 10, 2008 @ 1:03 pm
nick/trevor: I’m afraid this will have to be very quick for the moment (I can elaborate more this evening, if you’d like) but I’m actually not so sure myself that it just “depends on the personalities” involved.
For one, there are some factors entirely external to the parties to a relationship which, in an inegalitarian relationship, spell increased risk of unhappiness. Most notably, if one party is employed and the other is not, s/he who is not just is much more economically vulnerable. *Especially* in same-sex relationships in most areas of the U.S., for under those circumstances the non-employed partner would lack the (albeit minimal) financial protection afforded those whose marriages are recognized by the law. [I think it’s interesting in this light that the case to which you, Nick, both men seem still to be making money, right?]
Second, and not to put it too crudely: some of this is just different for women–NO, not because of our body parts or any other such hard-wiring — but because of SEXISM. A man who adopts something like the “wife” role is doing something novel; a woman who does so (whether through happenstance or quite deliberate choice) is stepping into a role that every bit of sexist, heterosexist and heteronormative social structures tells her she ought to adopt. That can (and I suspect does) make it feel very different for a woman to adopt the “wife” role, even when her partner is a woman. Is it a matter of “personality”? to some extent–but to say that is to suggest, imho, that “personality” can here be separated from the sexist, heterosexist and heteronormative structures in which one’s talents desires and expectations are developed, and that strikes me as misleading.
Anecdata on this last point: the only female couple I know who adopted 1950’s ish gender roles only did so for a period of something less than a year. One of the women gave birth to a child, and they quickly just ‘fell’ into the so-called “traditional” division. Both parties were miserable but the woman at home without employment and with the baby particularly so, and finally the partner who was at home with the baby sharply said to the other in the heat of argument “If I’d wanted this, I would have married a man!” Off to counseling they went; two months later, a more egalitarian arrangement, and their marriage was saved.
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 10, 2008 @ 1:08 pm
t of j is out of fashion? no one tells me these things..
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 10, 2008 @ 1:10 pm
ATAL - that’s what I hear. That, and the blank stares I get when bringing up ToJ in conversation. . .
The veil of ignorance is such a tantalizing hypothetical, though. Which characteristics (race, sex, ethnicity, sexual preference) would you choose if you had no idea to which of these you’d be assigned by birth/accident?
I wonder if there’s a Mormon equivalent of the veil of ignorance in the pre-existence, but I digress.
Comment by ECS — June 10, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
but but.. T of J was mentioned on West Wing! So it’s even in popular culture! oh, wait. maybe west wing’s out of fashion too…. sigh.
as for the question: well, behind the veil I’d choose a social structure that was sufficiently egalitarian to guarantee that it wouldn’t make a meaningul difference to my prospects which race, sex, etc I turned out to have. And then I’d be happy to flip a coin on those questions.
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 10, 2008 @ 1:26 pm
LOL, your political philosophy professor would be proud. (assuming you had one, of course)
Comment by ECS — June 10, 2008 @ 1:28 pm
oh ecs, if you only knew how funny what you just said was.
but yes, I certainly hope the person who first taught me T of J would be proud. I suspect she’d be extremely amused and somewhat baffled to know I was here, invoking it in this context.
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 10, 2008 @ 1:31 pm
Totally off the subject, but, Hooray for couples counseling and egalitarian arrangements! Saved our relationship for sure. When we tried to squeeze ourselves into traditional roles, we were miserable. Once we gave ourselves permission to function in our relationship as we saw fit, things smoothed out significantly.
Comment by Lessie — June 10, 2008 @ 1:36 pm
ECS thanks for the clarification, the way you describe it is great. :
“The concept [is that] that any role that is foisted upon someone based on his or her gender has a greater potential to make that person miserable and resentful than the same role that someone freely chooses to take on.”
I agree, in fact I think you could maybe expand this to any role foisted upon someone based on any social presupposition. Choice (as you point out) is frequently the key.
Comment by TrevorM — June 10, 2008 @ 2:17 pm
To some extent I see different ideas about “traditional” gender roles in different generations. Some younger same sex couples seem to be more egalitarian than older same sex couples, perhaps because they were raised with more egalitarian parents. Some older same sex couples seem to be trying to recreate the gender roles one would associate with their parents’ generation. It isn’t as clear-cut as “modelling” but that does seem to play into it somewhat.
One question I would pose is, What will this mean for straight children of same sex couples? What attitudes about gender roles will they bring into their relationships?
Comment by Quimby — June 10, 2008 @ 3:11 pm
I’m reminded of an episode of Better off Dead where Mason is getting the souls of a gay couple. He enters their house, hangs out for a bit then asks, “So, which one of you is the, uh, man.”
I wish I could remember what they said to that, but I think this kind of illustrates Quimby’s point that for some people all relationships must have gender roles. A happy, functional, gay couple proves one of two things, that gender roles are either completely unnecessary, or gender roles need not be restricted to one sex or the other. Either way this could discount the notion that the immutable ‘traditional family’ is the only way to achieve happiness.
Comment by Starfoxy — June 10, 2008 @ 4:01 pm
Aren’t children the X factor in any relationship? I’ve read most of the comments but haven’t seen any distinction made between couples with children and without. In my own experience, straight couples without children are far less likely to fit themselves into functional gender roles because - well - they both work full-time and spend a similar amount of time at home.
On the other hand, the gay couples I’ve known with kids tend to fit in the same functional roles as a like straight couple (ie. one man will stay at home with the kids and do much of the house work and shopping etc. while the other man will work a full time job).
I could be off the mark. Just a question I have based on my own experience.
Comment by cj douglass — June 10, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
Interesting. I wonder if there is any research on the fact that some relationships even though male/male or female/female will still have one male and one famale characteristics in the relationship. What would that suggest?
Comment by Sunshine — June 10, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
anecdata in response to 35: with the single exception of the case I earlier mentioned (and they quickly went back to an egalitarian arrangement) I don’t know of any same-sex couples with children, or without, who do the ‘one at home’ , ‘one works’ model that you describe. Also, with the exception of that one case I mentioned earlier, all the many same-sex couples I know with children worked out in excrutiating detail what arrangement there would be once child/children appeared on the scene, precisely so as to avoid falling into inegalitarian roles. The couple of whom I spoke in 25 are regarded amongst my compatriots as a lesson of warning (i.e. this could happen to you…)
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 10, 2008 @ 6:03 pm
hmmn, not much from me here. From a guy who’s been married for over a year, I don’t think I have this much to say. Although I’d like to say this, i find the gay or lesbian people more talented and more articulate in work and in dealing with people, but still, there is this feeling that ‘they’re still not that normal’. When it comes to relationship, I have nothing to say, but for sure since I was young, I was told that gay means happy too, but Mom said, Happy people are not gay!
Comment by kenjebz — June 10, 2008 @ 9:18 pm
re: 2
“I have been partnered with two men for about a year and a half.”
Now THAT’s a gay Mormon! Nick Literski: Living The Principle since 2006.
Comment by MikeInWeHo — June 10, 2008 @ 10:14 pm
#39 - MIke, I decided not to address that quote, but your comment is hilarious. Nick, you gotta admit, that’s funny.
Comment by Ray — June 10, 2008 @ 10:20 pm
Mike, Ray - I would appreciate you referring to Nick as a fundamentalist gay Mormon. I don’t want people mixing him up with the mainstream gay Mormons. You know, with the funny hair and all.
Comment by cj douglass — June 10, 2008 @ 11:06 pm
Would “fundamentalist happy Mormon” be more appropriate?
Comment by Ray — June 10, 2008 @ 11:38 pm
Couldn’t a lot of the “more at ease with whatever roles they’ve ended out taking on for themselves” thing have to do with the fact that both people are pretty much forced to agree that,
a) it’s a decision that needs to be made and
b) neither person has a reasonable expectation of what the other will “obviously” concede?
If you don’t have any long-standing model of how things “should” work, and you get to sort it all out with one another over the course of a couple of years, and then I come in with my clipboard and start analyzing, I’d expect that (again, after some time has passed) you’ve done a more efficient job at sorting preferences and negotiating and incorporating joint decisions into the way you run your lives: after all, you had no choice but to work things out and do so in a way that at least seems optimal (at the time) to both parties.
To me this is like saying that after at least five years of membership, converts to the Church are much more comfortable with tithe-paying and the Word of Wisdom (not necessarily that they’re paying full tithes at a higher rate or abstaining from tobacco more completely, just that the issues don’t bother them as much) than life-long members who just got out of college.
The non-stupid gay relationships I’ve seen have appeared to be more or less as dysfunctional as the non-stupid heterosexual relationships I’ve seen — but I don’t know any “married” gay people, and nearly everyone I know is under 30, and thanks to my time at Disneyland I knew a LOT of people in stupid gay and straight relationships, which limits my experience even more.
Comment by Sarah — June 11, 2008 @ 4:44 am
But how much of the “role” is foisted by biology, and has nothing to do with “pressure”? I think comment #35 brings up a crucial point.
In my marriage, parenthood, and in particular the physical demands of pregnancy, has been the most important single influence on the division of labor in our marriage.
My husband could not share breastfeeding with me. I had to do it. He could not handle half the pregnancies, I had to do it. And I am in the worst 2.5% of women when it comes to nausea and vomiting of pregnancy, so I couldn’t earn money during that time (I did hold down a job during the first, but I didn’t do much but put my head down on the desk and moan).
Would I have chosen to be a woman who has severe vomiting during pregnancy? No way. It was foisted on me. That fact of biology is not a cultural construct.
Comment by Naismith — June 11, 2008 @ 7:50 am
#41:
Mike, Ray - I would appreciate you referring to Nick as a fundamentalist gay Mormon.
Wait just a cotton-picking minute, cj! If I’m a gay fundamentalist Mormon, I don’t exist on two counts! Hinckley said there’s no such thing as a “Fundamentalist Mormon,” and he referred to “so-called gays!”
Comment by Nick Literski — June 11, 2008 @ 9:57 am
Nick doesn’t exist. It’s now official. Nice to get that out of the way. *grin*
Comment by Ray — June 11, 2008 @ 2:20 pm
Naismith,
I like “etc” as it embraces oh so many alternatives. If your husband could have breastfed or taken on the nausea, and neither of you had any expectations over which one of you it would be, I’m guessing that (in aggregate, assuming there are lots of other couples in the same position and another large population stuck with the usual biological imperatives) you’d be happier for it, regardless of who ended out in fact bearing the nausea and breastfeeding responsibilities. Except for the “well, I can’t get out of it, so I might as well enjoy myself” tendency, I think that just having the choice is what’s key in this scenario. Two women who decide to have a child together would have a “choice of burdens” scenario, as would a heterosexual couple that is infertile and decides to adopt. Being able to say “I’m staying home from work because that’s what I and my partner have decided is equitable and beneficial for us all” instead of “I’m staying home because I can’t stop puking” is empowering, and likely makes you happier. At least, people who have that opportunity should, over many individual cases, be on average happier than those that don’t.
The fact that your husband can’t take on breastfeeding and morning sickness is obviously a counter to the “heterosexual couples have something to learn from gay couples” thing, though.
Comment by Sarah — June 11, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
[…] 12, 2008 by servetus A reason to change […]
Pingback by Hmm. « (Almost) Without Footnotes — June 12, 2008 @ 11:23 am
ECS– if you are still around here somewhere, take a look at the cover story for this Sunday’s NYT magazine (”When Mom and Dad Share it All”, already online).
Naismith– you might read it too–if you do, you’ll see that virtually none (not none–but nearly so) of the true explanations as to why the division of labor in couples is inegalitarian have anything remotely to do with “biology”. pregnancy is nine months; breastfeeding really doesn’t need to last that long, and the 9 months plus breastfeeding time can be, itself, treated as part of the trade off in the equality equation (e.g. I just put in 9 months of pregancy; first nine months of getting up in the middle of the night are yours. I actually have het friends who made precisely that arrangement)
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 12, 2008 @ 4:22 pm
Hey, there! I’m still around. I started writing a blog post on that article - comparing the gender essentialist Proclamation on the Family to the Equally Shared Parenting philosophy - but I’m not sure I have the stomach for another go-around.
I enjoyed the article, though! And you (and the article) make great points about biology not forcing inequality as much as people might like to think.
Comment by ECS — June 12, 2008 @ 6:18 pm
Okay, first of all, I think the word “egalitarian” is being thrown around here without definition. And it is so often used for “the way men do things,” to devalue traditionally female work.
And what other thing could I possibly be doing that would be more important than breastfeeding? Given the data on the inadequacies of substitutes, what could possibly be better for the baby? And we have so few of them, why would we want to cut that short before they are ready to wean?
I understand that pregnancy only lasts 9 months. But with my last two, I was pregnant or breastfeeding for four years straight. Some of my children have taken a bottle of expressed milk; others have flat-out refused.
Certainly, the extent to which biology affects each of us is going to vary from person to person. Most women aren’t as sick as I am. Not everyone has five children like I did.
I don’t think biology can be dismissed as easily as some might think. When my daughter birthed her first child, she wanted me there. Not her dad, me.
I don’t find the Proclamation on the Family is antithetical to Equally Shared Parenting. The PotF has just a few paragraphs; given the many tasks involved in raising children and running a home, it pales in comparison. And it says nothing whatsoever about housework.
Comment by Naismith — June 12, 2008 @ 7:53 pm
Naismith,
Please read the NYT article, and then tell me what exactly you think is unclear about the use there in of concept of equality. I mean, for heaven’s sake, the studies to which the article refers break down the question into numbers of hours spent engaged in various activities: e.g. two people, both gainfully employed, and when the couple is het, the woman does an average of 28 hrs housework to the man’s 16. What is unclear about that?
Second, I honestly don’t understand your brief diatribe about breast feeding, except that it suggests that you think that I’m hostile to breast feeding (or?) Again, my point is/was to the extent that a couple decides that breast feeding is best, there are ways to trade off that investment of time and energy with other child-rearing related activities (one couple I know had an ‘input’ and ‘output’ arrangement–a het couple who wanted to breastfeed for a while, so she had the ‘input’ for that period of time, while he was in charge of ‘output’)
And frankly, I’m just mystified as to why you think that the fact that your daughter wanted you there when she birthed her first child, as opposed to her father, shows that “biology” cannot “be dismissed as easily as some might think”. You’ve made it very clear that you were her primary care giver while she was growing up; why isn’t that a sufficient explanation for the fact that she wanted you there instead of her father? and/or the fact that she (your daughter, and like all of us) grew up in a sexist culture in which it would run very much against very strong social expectations for a woman to have any male figure other than her husband (supposing there is one) present while she gives birth? And those are just two of the most obvious non-biological explanations…
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 12, 2008 @ 8:22 pm
ECS: I can well sympathize with your hesitancy to take that on. In a way, it’s a shame that the NYT didn’t hold off on the article from earlier this week until after the cover story from this week’s magazine hit the stands, since in many ways, the latter sets a context for understanding at least some of the claims in the former.
It’d probably be even more (stressful? anxiety producing? heart wrenching?) for you, but I for one would be really curious to hear you and some of the other permabloggers here speak directly to how, as clearly well educated feminists well aware of the complexities of gender and gender roles across cultures and time, you reconcile yourselves to the PotF. I’m not sure I can even quite imagine what that must be like for you all (on the emotional level). [I’m a reform Jew, and so such things are easy: there really aren’t any such particular doctrinal comittments required for continued good standing]
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 12, 2008 @ 8:44 pm
btw, I don’t know which one of you put it up, but in the rotating tag-lines, I just LOVE “Jesus Loves us. Who cares what you think.” If, in situ, it makes even (Jewish, Lesbian) me giggle, you know its gotta’ be funny.
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 12, 2008 @ 9:15 pm
actualthoughanonlesbian,
I thought the magazine article was interesting, and I agree with it’s broader message. However, when I tried to follow the link it provided to the U. of Wisconsin’s study, I couldn’t find it, and besides, their website was messy and hard to navigate. So I started googling and found this study from the U. Of Michigan. It appears to be legitimate, and hey, one big 10 school is as good (or bad) as another, right?
The first thing I noticed is that there is a big difference, for both men and women, in the hours of housework reported in this survey as compared to the numbers cited in the Times magazine article. In this case married women do housework for 17 hours per week compared to only 13 for men. However, the part that made me laugh out loud was the line buried deep in the text. They included only what they defined as “core” household tasks, and excluded yard work, home maintenance, and car repairs. A study that purports to show that men don’t pull their own weight around the house takes the easy way out and simply ignores the tasks that men traditionally do!
Comment by Mark IV — June 12, 2008 @ 9:57 pm
Mark IV (the fourth?),
The answer to the question you are posing is found on the survey page, on the wisc.edu page, under the rubric of the various “waves” of the study. So, for instance, for wave 1, see:
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/nsfh/mod1/SE1_1.txt
You’ll notice that the Wisconsin study seems to include under household tasks all those things which you find missing in the Michigan study (the latter of which I haven’t yet looked at myself). The Wisconsin study asked about nine categories of household tasks: preparing meals, washing dishes, cleaning house, outdoor tasks, shopping, washing & ironing, paying bills, auto maintenance, and driving.
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 12, 2008 @ 10:10 pm
nice article actualthoughanonlesbian,
My favorite part….
“I’d prefer to have it unequal than spend all our time measuring,”
Comment by cj douglass — June 12, 2008 @ 10:37 pm
actualthoughanonlesbian,
Thanks for the help. I found a link that goes directly to the study that the Times cites. You can read it here.
We should note that the UWisc report was published in 1990, and the sampling was done in 1987-88. It is my belief that our attitudes about gender roles are changing rapidly, so a study published today that relies on answers from a previous generation is almost prehistoric. It seems odd to me that the Times couldn’t find anything more recent. The UMich report was published in 2005, so perhaps the differences in the reports indicate a positive trend.
At any rate, even if there were a division of labor that is more or less equal as measured in hours, it is still possible that the work itself might still be divided along gender lines. I’m very much in agreement with the main points of the article, that couples are happier when they are able to work together and arrange household tasks in a way that is mutually satisfying.
Comment by Mark IV — June 12, 2008 @ 10:57 pm
that’s interesting Mark IV. Are you sure the stats cited by the Times were from the 1987 version of the survey? (I didn’t see that in the NYT article, but I could easily have missed it) The front page of the Wisconsin study, which can be found here:
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/nsfh/
indicates that the surveys for the most recent wave of the Wisconsin study were completed in 2001-2003.
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 12, 2008 @ 11:12 pm
Hmm. I had noticed that the date on the bottom of the pages you first linked to (comment 56) said January 90, then when I found the paper I linked to (comment 58), it also said 1990. So I assumed that they were the same thing. Maybe I’m mistaken.
Comment by Mark IV — June 12, 2008 @ 11:31 pm
Wow, that website needs some serious work, it is almost impossible to find anything. I looked under Working Papers, and the paper I linked is the only one I could find that addresses this topic. In addition, the table on page 33 shows that men do 14.55 hours of housework weekly, which is also the figure cited in the Times article. So I’m not certain, but I’m inclined to think that my link in 58 goes to the report that is the basis for this article.
Comment by Mark IV — June 12, 2008 @ 11:45 pm
I think they were the same thing, in this sense: what you found is the 1990 published version of the 1987-88 study & I had indeed linked to a page from that wave of the study (the layout struck me as easier to read than the layouts for the relevantly similar pages of later waves of the study). But that study was then repeated twice more, the most recent time being in 2001-2003. The question is whether the NYT claims are based on the study that was completed in 2003, right? is there some reason not to think that’s not the case?
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 12, 2008 @ 11:48 pm
hmmm. maybe so. If so, that’s a very strange thing for the NYT to do. One of us should write them and find out.
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 12, 2008 @ 11:50 pm
Yeah, it’s frustrating that it isn’t more transparent. We got 10 pages of anecdotes, but not a single table. WE DEMAND DATA!
Comment by Mark IV — June 13, 2008 @ 12:29 am
I read the NYT magazine article before my last comment.
My concerns were more about the use of the term “egalitarian” on this thread, rather than in the article per se. I think there is a danger in defining “egalitarian” as same number of hours or same kind of work, rather than the possibility that two different kinds of activities could be “equal” in terms of making equal contribution to the family.
My favorite quote from the article was the one that said, “The question should not be, Is it all exactly equal, but, What is best for all of us as a group right now?”
That pretty much describes my 30 years of marriage. It’s a team effort.
Because I don’t think equality is a matter of the number of hours spent on this or that.
Also, your statement “when the couple is het” implies that the numbers are demonstrably different for same-sex couples. The study from which those numbers came do not include same-sex parternships, so no apples-to-apples comparison is possible from that data source.
In my family, as in many others, we have a rule that whoever doesn’t cook does the dishes. But we break that all the time and support one another. Last Saturday, my husband cooked, but I had to leave for something I wanted to do, and he just did the dishes, the way I do when he has to race off to church assignments three nights a week.
Also, he only cooks on Saturday. I do the other nights because he doesn’t get home until right at supper time on workdays. So our children do see dad modeling the behavior of cooking. He doesn’t do half of it by a calculator count, but we are comfortable with things, which is what matters.
I don’t have an interest in making sure that trading child-rearing related activities are “equal.” What benefit is there to that? Rather, we believe that my contributions to the family in terms of pregnancy/breastfeeding are equal to his contribution in terms of earning money. It isn’t his paycheck; he doesn’t get more power in the relationship because of being the wage earner. We all work hard and we all share and do what is best for the family.
Also, your advice that a reasonable negotiation would be, “I just put in 9 months of pregancy; first nine months of getting up in the middle of the night are yours,” seems very unkind to me. If my husband’s day job provides income for our family, why would I want to jeopardize his job performance by making ruining his sleep, when I can easily nap while the children nap?
The fairness thing varies so much from person to person. In another recent thread, Quimby wrote: “But really, for us, it was a choice we made that the stay at home parent should not be responsible for all of the housework - the primary duty is to parent, not clean. We both live here; we should both be responsible for the housework.”
That principle seems to work well for her family. For my family, not so much. My husband loves to read with children after dinner. I read to the pre-readers, but he is better at reading with the school-aged children. He read THE HOBBIT, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, other classics. I thought that was important, and I wanted his time he was home to be more focused on the children than the housework. He doesn’t do even close to half the housework (not even keeping in mind Mark IV’s comments about how that should be defined), but when he is home, he is not lying on the couch watching football; he is engaged and contributing to the family, and I’d rather have him reading to the kids than scrubbing toilets.
I think we all have different definitions of what is “fair,” and that is fine, as long as both partners agree on their definition of fairness. I think it is a real problem when someone doesn’t realize that clean laundry doesn’t appear into the closet by magic, nor does the lawn stay mowed without effort. I think it is important that those efforts be recognized and appreciated.
But as long as unpaid efforts not dismissed and the wage-earner doesn’t think s/he has more power in the relationship because of the name on the paycheck, I don’t see a problem with partners doing different tasks.
Because we have thought a lot about who does what, because we value all work that goes into making a home and family, I believe my marriage is just as egalitarian as any described in that article.
My daughter wanted me there because of my experience; I had actually given birth five times. My uterus qualified me for the job.
I can see you worked hard to come up with those alternative explanations, so I don’t want to dismiss them out of hand, but I don’t think my daughter is a victim of sexism because she’s chosen a unique path that works best for her family: she had that child while she was in graduate school and her husband is the supportive partner.
Comment by Naismith — June 13, 2008 @ 7:33 am
Thanks so much for your interest, ATAL. We’ve had meaningful discussions about the PoTF here in the past - I’ll see if I can find some links for you. In short, however, I think the general trend is to privilege the “equal partners” language over the concept of “presiding”. Most people have a decent idea of what it means to be “equal partners” in a relationship, but, despite a few earnest attempts, it seems like most people are uncertain what it means for men to “preside” over their wives.
Comment by ECS — June 13, 2008 @ 8:17 am
ECS: thanks. I presume you mean that most feminists here are uncertain what it means for men to “preside” over their wives such that that could be compatible with “equal partners”, and therein lies the struggle
{after all, there is one pretty straight forward meaning of ‘preside’…}
Naismith,
I’m somewhat sceptical that you and I are going to be able to come to a comfortable place of mutual understanding and disagreement, but I cannot resist giving it one last try.
Here are a couple of the things you said in your last post with regard to equality. [Apologies if the quotes don’t come out right; I don’t know how to do the block quote thing]
You said,
“Because I don’t think equality is a matter of the number of hours spent on this or that.”
and
“I don’t have an interest in making sure that trading child-rearing related activities are “equal.” What benefit is there to that? ”
and, from my perspective, most tellingly:
“I think we all have different definitions of what is “fair,” and that is fine, as long as both partners agree on their definition of fairness.”
In each of these passages, and particularly the last of the three, you treat fairness in the division of labor as entirely, or nearly entirely, a matter of perception. But that just isn’t true, and to be honest, I don’t really believe that you yourself would think that is true on reflection, in a cool hour, and/or if the particular issue of fairness were anything else but the one that is on the table.
If a woman gets paid 75cents for every $1 a man gets, doing the same job, is that fair? No. And stipulating that the parties agree to this situatiion cannot make it otherwise. It might (under some unfortunate set of circumstances) be the case that a woman would consent to such an unfair arrangement for other reasons, but the pay is still unfair irrespective of her consent to it.
[and now to date myself…] If a Senator’s son gets out of being drafted for the war, precisely because his father has connections that my brother’s working class parents lack, is that fair? No. Doesn’t matter what my brother, the Senator or his son think of the situation–it still isn’t fair, and the fairness or lack thereof isn’t a mere matter of their perceptions of the situation.
If both my spouse and I work outside the home for the same number of hours, and my contribution to the household labor were to consist only of, say, mowing the lawn once a week, that would not be a fair division of labor. I might think it is (and my spouse might even think it is! human powers of self-deception are astounding). But thinking it’s fair don’t make it so.
The same is true with respect to the issue at hand: whether or not the division of labor required to run a shared home and family is fair is not simply a matter of whether the parties to that arrangement think it is. That doesn’t mean, of course, that it is always self-evident whether or not an arrangement is fair. There are clear cases on either side, there are cases that are not so clear. But all that is and should be a matter for reasoned debate, a reasoned debate that cannot be brought to justified conclusion simply by consulting the parties and querying whether they think the present arrangement is fair.
whew.
Okay, a few other things, hopefully more quickly:
You wrote,
“I don’t have an interest in making sure that trading child-rearing related activities are “equal.” What benefit is there to that?”
Well, one benefit would be that so equalizing child-rearing activities demonstrates conclusively that biology does not–contra your assertions–mandate inequality in childrearing arrangements. It was in response to that assertion of yours about biology that I pointed out that the few investments of time and energy that are genuinely mandated by biology can be traded off in such a fashion as equalizes child-rearing time and energy investment.
You also wrote,
“It isn’t his paycheck; he doesn’t get more power in the relationship because of being the wage earner.”
Look, that’s just false. You may hope and trust that as your committed partner of many years, he will never exercise such unequal power as he has in virtue of being the sole wage earner, but no amount of wishing it weren’t so will change the fact that he has power on account of being the longstanding sole wage earner that you do not. If, G-d forbid, he were to leave you tomorrow, you would suffer and be at risk economically in ways he would not. That just isn’t up to you and your husband–it’s the structure of the economic system in which we live, a system in which (for example) it is very difficult for people who have been out of the paid labor force for a very long time to get back into it, let alone back into it at a truly living wage.
You also wrote,
“Also, your advice that a reasonable negotiation would be, “I just put in 9 months of pregancy; first nine months of getting up in the middle of the night are yours,” seems very unkind to me. If my husband’s day job provides income for our family, why would I want to jeopardize his job performance by making ruining his sleep, when I can easily nap while the children nap?”
Two things are, I think, worth highlighting here. First, your response to me here presumes a situation in which there’s a SAHM and an employed father with a day job. My scenario (one which, as I noted, is a solution actually adopted in real honest to heavens life by real people) builds in no such presumption. Yes, if you hold steady the assumption that in a heterosexual couple, the woman will stay at home and her labor will be domestic, and the man will go work for money, then all sorts of solutions are impossible. But that is not what you were claiming. What you were claiming is that equanimity in such things is impossible in virtue of “biology”. And what the trading pregnancy and nights up with infants for the first 9 months example shows is that in fact, and once again, the very little that is in fact biologically mandated can be traded off in such a manner that does not amount to one person being a stay at home primary care giver and the other being a primary pay earner.
Last but not least, I hardly “worked” to come up with those explanations as to why your daughter might have wanted you there. They came immediately to mind based on personal experience (having been more than once in labor rooms of various sorts myself, I know for a fact that those things are true). But look, even on your own explanation of it, it is false that your “uterus qualified you for the job”. On your own explanation of the situation, your daughter wanted you there because you’d had experience giving birth. It is true that that is an experience you could not have had without also having a uterus, but it is an experience that many many persons with uteri do not have, and hence the having of a uterus did not “qualify you for the job”. Furthermore, as I’m betting you actually realize, there are a good many women whose choice of whom to have in the room when they give birth has nothing, not the least bit, to do with whether or not the other people in that room have themselves given birth previously. Which is to say that, once again, there is no unique tie here to biology.
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 13, 2008 @ 1:01 pm
In the article that you brought up for discussion, one of the bits of research, the Cowan and Cowan scale, is indeed about perceptions, not hours spent. It is designed to measure differences between current and desired balance in task assignments, and differences between the partners in perceptions of who does what tasks.
I think perceptions are exactly what matters to most people’s lives.
And I think that only the couple can decide for themselves. Nobody else gets to insert a yardstick in between them and declare that one is not doing enough.
Also, I have to say that in my marriage, we each have roles as partners, parents, homemakers, church workers, and paid workers, and we believe our work each sums to an equal total. We don’t insist that the total in each sphere be identical. Indeed, complementary assignments work well (we did not go through grad school at the same time, which allowed one to support the other). So maybe your contribution to the household labor is only mowing the lawn, but maybe you also have significant childcare duties, or are going through a residency program.
And to me, the litmus test of fairness is whether one person feels entitled to sit on the couch watching television, “because they have worked all day,” while the other is stuck with the dishes and homework and baths. No way. The other person might negotiate some time on the couch if they need downtime, but at our house, if you are home, you are sharing.
We each only have 24 hours in day, no matter how it is spent.
I can’t think of any better standard; that’s what matters most. The hard thing is that there is such a diversity of tasks involved in raising a family and running a home that it is difficult to assign a relative value to each. Is crawling in the hot attic to do electrical wiring worth more than de-licing a child’s hair? Is sewing a period costume for the medieval faire worth more than cleaning leaves off the roof? Is driving to music lessons less valuable than cooking dinner? Not to mention that few partners have paid jobs with the exact same leave policies and workplace dynamics.
If a couple just accepts that both of them work hard, they don’t have to waste time making such decisions. They just both work together, and somehow it all gets done.
And yes, I should add that in my family we outsource things like cleaning, so that neither of us does it, and we can each spend more time on the other roles of partner, parent, church worker, etc.
If you want to make proving a point your family priority, that’s your choice. For myself and my husband, we do what is best for our children.
Please note I never said that EVERYONE is going to be affected by biology as much as I was. I acknowledged that my nausea was in the worst standard deviation. And of course not everyone has 5 children like we did.
But I still assert that FOR ME, biology was the biggest influence on OUR division of labor.
If we lived on the planet Barrayar where they have uterine replicator technology, that dynamic would change. But I have to live on Earth, in the body I was given.
Again, if equal number of hours are so important to you that you feel compelled to do it that way, fine. But my point was that a male cannot put breastfeeding and pregnancy on the table as a thing they can trade. And in my case, 45 months of pregnancy and at least 5 years of breastfeeding is a considerable debt to try to trade away. Which doesn’t matter to us, so no problem.
No, that’s true. That is how we have lived for 30 years. As equal partners in everything.
All your screeching doesn’t change the reality that I have lived. I think it is sad that you’ve bought into the money=power thing. It’s so denigrating to women’s unpaid labor that I would think feminists would refuse to accept that mindset, but oh well.
Just because I chose to be at home with little children does not mean I am naive or stupid.
First of all, each of us can influence “the economic system that affects us” by prenuptial agreements, and by living in a community property state. And by life and disability insurance for younger folks, since that is a more likely scenario than divorce among temple-wed latter-day saints.
I am aware of what would happen to me in case of divorce. We have only about 10 years to retirement (because we hope to retire early and serve at least one mission for our church), and I know exactly what my rights would be upon divorce: I would still get a spousal social security payment and half his pension, because that is the policy of his employer. He, however, would not get half my pension from my retirement, because my employer does not have a similar policy.
I have checked out my own credit rating, and none of our assets are in his name alone. And even during my years at home, I kept up some freelance work, professional contacts, etc. so that I could return to the workforce when my youngest was in school.
But I am not going to live my life in fear, which is what you seem to be advocating.
My life was greatly enriched by not having a paid job for many years, and thus having the flexibility of being home with my children, and taking four children on sabbatical to South America, and serving as a chaperone for field trips, and having lunch at home with my husband every Thursday, and accompanying him on trips to Asia and Europe.
Why would I want to up give those wonderful things out of fear of the outside chance that my husband might leave me? What is the cost-benefit ratio to such calculations?
Been there, done that. If anything happened to my husband tomorrow, I could support my two children at home on what I earn part-time. I don’t want to repeat my re-entry story again, but numerous studies show that a woman with a college degree can re-enter the workforce successfully within a year.
I am just saying that’s why *I* would not consider such a negotiation to be reasonable.
Comment by Naismith — June 13, 2008 @ 9:31 pm
Bingo! It’s not only feminists who struggle with these definitions, though. Our Church leaders don’t give us much guidance about how to reconcile the two contradictory injunctions on a practical level, either. But our leaders emphasize “equal partners” far more than “preside”, so I think most members see “presiding” as subsumed by “equal partners” (how that works in reality without doing violence to the definitions of either is the question of the day).
Comment by ECS — June 14, 2008 @ 5:06 am
ECS-thanks.
Naismith,
Before getting to the meat of the discussion, I think I need to be very clear about something that looks to me from your response might be unclear to you. The examples I offered were in some cases (where noted) examples of things het friends of mine have done, or (as in the lawn mowing example) entirely hypothetical. I am a lesbian who has been in a monogamous household sharing relationship with another woman for 16 going on 17 years/ I have NO personal horse in this race of whether or not men who live with women do their fair share of the work at home. If they are, great! If men are not in that respect doing their fair share, well, if anything in the world falls into the category of “not my problem”, that does. The concern I have about it is in that way not the least bit self-interested; it has to do with the women whom I love–daughters, nieces, students, etc. And I do care very much if they grow up in a world in which they are surrounded by people who regard a 2-1 division of household labor as “fair” (they do not themselves so see things, for they do not see such injustice modelled and endorsed at home).
Now, to the actual substance of the disagreement.
In your latest response, you have in at least two respects altered your position. First, in your previous posts you took the view that whether or not a certain division of labor qualifies as fair is itself a matter of perception. In this more recent post, you take the view that irrespective of whether or not the division of labor is fair, “what matters most” is whether people perceive it as fair.
What matters most– in what terms? I wouldn’t be surprised if people who perceive (rightly or wrongly) their relationships as fair tend to have, on average, longer relationships. But a long terrible relationship is still a terrible relationship. And if the structure of a relationship is unfair (a debatable matter in some cases, to be sure) that is a reason for thinking the relationship a bad one insofar and to the extent that it is unfair. Here’s an analogy –it’s an extreme one, but I’m deliberately offering an extreme analogy to try and get the point across. Imagine that there is a heterosexual couple, married for 30 years, in which every time the woman (who has charge, in this hypothetical, of all domestic tasks) makes a meal the man doesn’t like, he beats the living heck out of her. If asked, the woman sincerely reports that she thinks this is “fair”. After all, she says, I agreed to make food he likes, and I didn’t do that. What do you want to say about this hypothetical scenario? What I want to say (among other things) is that I don’t care if she agreed to make food he likes, and I don’t care if it seems fair to her that he beats her every time she doesn’t do so–it is still not okay for him to do that.
Second, in your previous posts you made claims about how important biology is per se; now you have switched to claiming that biology “was the biggest influence on OUR division of labor.” I don’t know you (or you me, I might point out) so I cannot make any claims about the latter. But that’s okay as far as I’m concerned, for how much biology did or did not influence the choices you, in particular, made with your husband doesn’t have the political implications that more general claims about male and female biology would. By analogy, this summer I have been and will be in and out of (minor) surgeries, pretty much all summer. Makes a very real difference to how spouse and I can structure our household duties this summer (and work! since this is about the limit of what I can do on painkillers). Implies NOTHING, not one minor tiny little whig about in what manner lesbians in general can or ought to structure their relationships.
Last, but not least, you wrote:
“All your screeching doesn’t change the reality that I have lived. I think it is sad that you’ve bought into the money=power thing. It’s so denigrating to women’s unpaid labor that I would think feminists would refuse to accept that mindset, but oh well.”
To begin with, I’m not screeching, have given no indications that I am– firm argument is hardly the equivalent of ’screeching’, and I think it is telling and frankly somewhat sexist (given the connotations “screeching” generally carries) for you to say that.
Second, I did not say money=power. There are other forms of power; political power, for instance. But yes, money is a form of power and can be used to–literally– purchase other forms of power. The precautions you have yourself taken (prenups, making sure that you continue to maintain professional contacts even while being primarily occupied as a SAHM, checking up on your credit rating and making sure that the major purchases are in both of your names) give away the fact that you yourself recognize the fact that money gives one power. There is nothing anti-feminist, or anti-SAHM in recognizing this straightforward fact about the world. And to point it out is not to advocate that one “live in fear”; it is to advocate that one not live with one’s head burried in the sand; which such actions as you have taken (keeping professional contacts, etc) indicate that you are not, but which head-in-sand behavior is encouraged by such claims as that “he doesn’t get more power in the relationship because of being the wage earner.”
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 14, 2008 @ 1:04 pm
Naismith,
I was going to let the following go, under the presumption that you wrote it in the heat of the moment, and (hopefully) wouldn’t put matters quite this way otherwise. But then it occurred to me that there are so many very young women reading this, women who might just be beginning to raise children themselves, that I could not in good conscience let it go.
In response to my suggestion that one point in balancing breastfeeding against other childrearing activities is that it demonstrates that biology does not mandate inequality in childrearing arrangements, you wrote:
“If you want to make proving a point your family priority, that’s your choice. For myself and my husband, we do what is best for our children.”
Naismith: some of us think that what is best for our children is that they grow up having non-sexist, equality reinforcing behavior modelled for them.
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 14, 2008 @ 1:21 pm
actualthoughanonlesbian,
can you email me? fmhmfranti at gmail dot com.
thanks.
Comment by mfranti — June 14, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
I wonder what my daughter (whom I did not birth - and I didn’t birth my sons, either) will want when she gives birth. If she even does.
I just don’t buy the whole idea that biology is such a very big part of motherhood. Plenty of us are doing fine without it.
Comment by Ana — June 15, 2008 @ 12:39 am
Isn’t it wonderful to see the wide range of how people live? When my eldest daughter was in middle school, there were a lot of group projects, and the groups always met at our house, because ours was the only house where a parent was home after school. One of the boys asked me, “So what do you do all day, if you don’t work?” And I told him about what the younger children and I did, Joy School and library storytime, and so on.
I didn’t say anything negative about both his parents being employed, I just shared how we do things, and that boy was thoughtful as he ate the home-baked cookies and heard about my workday.
I am not afraid for my children to see how others live and judge for themselves.
I don’t see those as different. Perception of what is fair is what is fair. Perception is reality in marriage. This is explored in the book “The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge” by Berger and Luckmann and numerous studies that have proceeded from the theory, including some on housework in marriage.
I would say, what is your point?
I would also ask how you could possibly compare a loving dad, generous lover, faithful church leader, and good provider whose paid job just happens not to have a part-time option to a wife beater. There are many, many reasons why a partner of either gender might not do equal hours of one kind of work. I don’t think they deserve to be denigrated as “unfair.”
And what would you tell her to do instead? To take it to the realm of housework, what would you say to women like me who live in the “injustice” of an “unfair” relationship, just because our spouse may not spend as much time on housework as she does?
How is my life going to be better or enriched by what you propose? How will I be happier? How will my children be better off?
What can you offer me that still allows time for sex and reading, being totally debt-free, three vacations a year, the satisfaction of serving in church, the flexibility to help with grandchildren/elders, the time to serve on a committee for my national professional organization?
Seriously, because the women I know in relationships where housework assignments are “fair” seem often to be in a grind and a bind, and not the least bit happier than I have been with our “unfair” relationship that allowed my husband’s career to soar and me to have more time at home.
This simply is not true. In my first comment on biology (#44), I said
Please note the “my” and “our.” I wouldn’t presume to speak in generalities.
I really don’t have time to comment further.
Comment by Naismith — June 15, 2008 @ 2:34 pm
Ana, please forgive my directness here, but that is an incredibly modern-centric comment. The fact that you have children you “did not birth” and “don’t buy the whole idea that biology is such a very big part of motherhood” would be absolutely incomprehensible to women for the VAST majority of the history of the world - and to the VAST majority of women alive today. I dare say 99% of the women who have ever lived would have no clue whatsoever what you mean; they simply would have no way to relate.
Second, no woman, period, especially no woman who is a mother, is living without the influence of biology. You are going to need to explain your last sentence in order for it to make any sense whatsoever.
Comment by Ray — June 15, 2008 @ 6:39 pm
Ray, I disagree that 99% of women who have ever lived would have no clue what Ana meant - adoption has been with us for a very long time; in fact if you delve into your family history I would be surprised if you didn’t find it there. Which is not, of course, to say that 99% of all women have experienced adoption first-hand; but it is certainly not unheard of, historically.
Comment by Quimby — June 15, 2008 @ 6:45 pm
Ray, read this. Sheri Dew should give you a fairly good idea as to what Ana means.
Comment by ECS — June 15, 2008 @ 6:51 pm
I will admit to having an odd mix of thoughts as I read the NY Times article. I was thinking back to my comments on the stay at home dad post; reading the article made me realise how much DH does that I don’t credit him with doing. (The guilt was made worse that day when I got home from work to discover he’d cooked and done the dishes and done a load of laundry and gone grocery shopping.) It also made me realise that there are some jobs that are classified as “child duties” - for instance, changing the clothes, giving baths that are almost exclusively my domain, and that I guard jealously and don’t want to give up.
Basically, I’m lazy. I’m far too lazy to bother with color-coded charts or schedules or anything like that. Honestly I think having a system like that could put an unnecessary strain on a marriage; suddenly it would become about tit for tat instead of about finding a workable space. So what if there are some days when I do more, and some days when he does more? Do we need to keep score?
In addition to being lazy, I’m also selfish. My marriage works for me. It may not work for anyone else. I’m fine with that. Who says that there is only one way to define a successful marriage?
Comment by Quimby — June 15, 2008 @ 7:13 pm
Quimby and ECS, I understand what Sister Dew is saying - and I understand that adoption has been around for a long time. Those two things, however, are VERY different than saying that “biology” is not involved in motherhood. “Biology”, like “motherhood”, is not confined to giving birth. To say that anyone - man or woman - is living without the effects of biology (is “doing fine without it”) is simply a mis-statement. “Biology” includes our instincts, our inclinations, our urges, our desire to have and raise kids, our sexual orientation, etc., etc., etc. That (biology) plays a HUGE part in motherhood, regardless of whether or not someone gives birth.
If Ana meant that she is doing fine as a mother without ever having given birth - if that’s all she meant, I will take back my comment gladly and fully. That’s not what the second paragraph said, however.
Comment by Ray — June 15, 2008 @ 7:27 pm
Heresy means different things to different people and for me, reading the NYT Sunday magazine not on Sunday, is heretical. So, I’m late to the debate. I loved this article but wished there could have been more and varied families highlighted. As a queer girl who is committed to a lifetime monogamous relationship with a man, I kept bouncing the information in this article back and forth between this relationship and a previous one with a woman. It was interesting but like other commentors have noted, a lot of my experience seemed related to the personality of the person more than the gender. The woman I lived with was very…femmey? Is that a word? I believe that I fell into a much more traditionally male role with her than I employ now but I have a difficult time divorcing this from her personality.
Comment by CrazyWomanCreek — June 15, 2008 @ 7:32 pm
ARGH! Thought I was getting fancy and block-quoting.Sorry if it’s confusing.
Comment by CrazyWomanCreek — June 15, 2008 @ 7:35 pm
Mmmmmm, cookies . . . If I had a friend who said I wasn’t a feminist because I made cookies, I’d make sure never to give her any of my cookies.
Great. Now I’m hungry. Thanks a lot, CrazyWomanCreek.
Comment by Quimby — June 15, 2008 @ 7:40 pm
#75 I was going to reply along the lines of Quimby and direct you to the excellent Mother NAture, A History of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection, which was suggested on this site by cchrissy- one of my favorite recommendation, BTW, because it has excellent information on “allomothers.” Since the book was published even more studies have been published outilning the importance of allomothers to our predecessors as well as modern people. So I was going to stick to passing along that information but then I reread your comment and thought, “BS.”
I think you know very well that Ana meant that as an adoptive mother she has the same impulses, emotions and bonds as a biological mother and she’s proud of her relationship with her children and maybe just the tiniest bit defensive that she would be judged differently. Did you really not get that? Because your comment seems cruel. I was going to temper that, but I think I’ll let it stand.
Comment by CrazyWomanCreek — June 15, 2008 @ 7:49 pm
Oh no, Quimby. I may have to revise my memory of this. In truth, I did not share these cookies with any of my friends. I see now they could care two hoots about what kind of feminist I was they just wanted cookies!
Comment by CrazyWomanCreek — June 15, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
#83 - I was serious in #79. If you are correct, and that is all Ana meant, I will gladly apologize and stick solely to the point I made in #79.
I don’t know Ana - not at all. I don’t know if she is lesbian or straight - Mormon or not - monogamous or not - nothing. I am not a long-time commenter here. I am trying to respond openly and honestly to each thread and comment that interests me. I recognized the reference to adoption; I simply reacted to the statement that “biology” has nothing to do with motherhood - and I already offered to rescind my comment if Ana simply meant that adoptive mothers are mothers every bit as much as biological mothers. I agree with that 100%.
Frankly, sometimes my parsing nature gets me in trouble, but I want to be judged on what I actually say - not what someone thinks I say. Therefore, I try to respond to the actual words other people write, not what I think they **might** mean by them.
Ana, I sincerely apologize if I misread your comment - if you simply were speaking narrowly about adoption and the words you used got in my way.
Comment by Ray — June 15, 2008 @ 9:05 pm
mfranti– I have outpatient surgery early tomorrow, after which I will not be compos mentis for a while. When I am, however, I’ll sit down and figure out how to get an email accnt that will preserve my pseudonymity & email you (I know, gmail is supposed to– I’m just too tired to double check whether & exactly how it does so right now).
okay Naismith; it’s clear you and I just aren’t going to get anywhere with one another. I deleted another very long response b/c I think it’s probably time for both of us to just walk away from this one. But I’m not letting that public book reference pass without comment: that’s a terrible book. As I’m sure you know, though other readers here might not immediately realize (or not without being reminded)–there’s a whole academic discipline full of specialists in theories of knowledge and it isn’t sociology.
#80: I don’t know about slippery slopes here, CWC (is that the polite way to abbreviate your pseudonym?) I mean look, as one cookie-baking feminist to another: she who objects to my cookie baking or short-skirts, make-up, long hair, hair-products, knitting, decorating, or fascinated with tzchacke ways can pry my feminist card out of my cold dead hands. I have paid my feminist dues more ways than 99% of those who might so object could imagine, and I do all those things while at the same time mowing lawn, bbq, plumbing tasks, deck building, and (more recently) auto maintenance. And I have three degrees, a full time job, and the battle scars of dealing with sexism on the way here. cold dead hands. And they still wouldn’t get any cookies.
On the other hand–children are different, and my own feeling is that I don’t want any of the children whom I am playing an important role in raising to look at spouse and myself and generalize (in the way children inevitably do) and form the presumption that ‘girls/women don’t do x”. So, yeah, sometimes that means I go out and learn to do things I could pay someone else for doing, even though I really don’t feel any desire to learn to do that thing. Most recently, auto maintenance. oy. But worth it to me–small thing I think I can do to help, in a tiny way, build a less sexist world.
[side note: I was serious when I made the remark on which you were commenting, but as I trust you realize, it’s tone and glibness was born partly of the fact that it was in response to a remark by Naismith which latter remarked implied that my concern for equality in domestic labor was at odds with the best interests of my children. as though ’some people care about equality’ and ’some of us care about our kids’– I was somewhat glibly pointing out in response that the former can be an outgrowth of the latter]
Comment by actualthoughanonlesbian — June 15, 2008 @ 10:07 pm
Mormons enter Calif. marriage fight
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/06/mormons-enter-calif-marriage-f.php
Comment by TPMCafé Trackback — June 25, 2008 @ 12:51 am
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