Tag Archives: Marriage

Commentary

Suzanne Venker on the decline of men and male roles

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Fox News editorial from a woman who defends men.

Excerpt:

In November of last year, I wrote an article for Fox News called The War on Men (which I subsequently expanded to an eBook). To keep it pithy, in the piece I focused on one effect of this war: the lack of marriageable men. But there’s so much more to it. The truth is, men have become second-class citizens.

The most obvious proof is male bashing in the media. It is rampant and irrefutable. From sit-coms and commercials that portray dad as an idiot to biased news reports about the state of American men, males are pounced on left and right. And that’s just the beginning.

She talks about the problems that boys face in feminized schools, and also in university, and then explains some of the reasons why men are shying away from marriage:

When men become husbands and fathers, things get really bad. In family courts throughout America, men are routinely stripped of their rights and due process. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is easily used against them since its definition of violence is so broad that virtually any conflict between partners can be considered abuse.

“If a woman gets angry for any reason, she can simply accuse a man and men are just assumed guilty in our society,” notes Dr. Helen Smith, author of the new book, “Men on Strike.” This is particularly heinous since, as Smith adds, violence in domestic relations “is almost 50% from men and 50% from women.”

Shocked? If so, that’s in part because the media don’t believe men can be victims of domestic violence—so they don’t report it. They would rather feed off stories that paint women as victims. And in so doing, they’ve convinced America there’s a war on women.

Yet it is males who suffer in our society. From boyhood through adulthood, the White American Male must fight his way through a litany of taunts, assumptions and grievances about his very existence. His oppression is unlike anything American women have faced. Unlike women, however, men don’t organize and form groups when they’ve been persecuted. They just bow out of the game.

America needs to wake up. We have swung the pendulum too far in the other direction—from a man’s world to a woman’s world.

That’s not equality. That’s revenge.

It’s not just the American White Male who sees these problems. I am an American Brown Male, and I have the same problems.

Is she right that men and women commit domestic violence equally? That’s not what we are told in school and in the media, but let’s look at the studies and see.

Studies on domestic violence

Let’s see what’s happening with domestic violence rates in the UK.

Excerpt:

Data from Home Office statistical bulletins and the British Crime Survey show that men made up about 40% of domestic violence victims each year between 2004-05 and 2008-09, the last year for which figures are available. In 2006-07 men made up 43.4% of all those who had suffered partner abuse in the previous year, which rose to 45.5% in 2007-08 but fell to 37.7% in 2008-09.

Similar or slightly larger numbers of men were subjected to severe force in an incident with their partner, according to the same documents. The figure stood at 48.6% in 2006-07, 48.3% the next year and 37.5% in 2008-09, Home Office statistics show.

The 2008-09 bulletin states: “More than one in four women (28%) and around one in six men (16%) had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16. These figures are equivalent to an estimated 4.5 million female victims of domestic abuse and 2.6 million male victims.”

In addition, “6% of women and 4% of men reported having experienced domestic abuse in the past year, equivalent to an estimated one million female victims of domestic abuse and 600,000 male victims”.

And the numbers from the government of Canada are the same.

Canada numbers:

An estimated 7% of women and 6% of men in a current or previous spousal relationship encountered spousal violence during the five years up to and including 2004, according to a comprehensive new report on family violence.

So it’s pretty even. Women are about as likely to commit violence as men are. And in lesbian relationships, the rate of domestic violence is extremely high, from 17% to 45%, depending on the study. I think in general, women are more violent when there is no man present, because they have more difficulty restraining their emotions and resolving disagreements with rational arguments instead of fist, feet and weapons.

You also see higher rates of violence by mothers against their own children, than with fathers. Mothers are more than twice as likely to abuse children as fathers. Biological fathers are programmed to protect children – it’s the stepfathers and live-in boyfriends who harm children. In fact, one of the roles of the father in the marriage is to restrain the woman’s outbursts and anger so that the children are not harmed, and to protect them from threats from outside the home, too.

The negative perception of men deters men from marrying

I am very conscious of the perception that women have of men these days. Instead of looking to men for leadership, the presumption is that our role is to entertain women. And not to make judgments or claims of knowledge. The worst part is that most women don’t know and don’t care about how men are perceived today. I think that is the worst problem for me with wanting to get married. I just don’t believe that there are any women out there who are really looking for a husband in the traditional sense of the word, and with the traditional male roles. The negative perception of men and the way that women prefer men who are non-judgmental, non-religious and ignorant are two major reasons why I personally am cold about marriage.

Polemics

New study: men and women have different goals and expectations when cohabitating

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Carson Weitnauer shared this fascinating article from the Atlantic, authored by marriage researcher W. Bradford Wilcox. The article discusses the variances between cohabitating men and women regarding goals and expectations.

Excerpt:

According to a new paper from RAND by sociologists Michael Pollard and Kathleen Mullan Harris, cohabiting young adults have significantly lower levels of commitment than their married peers. This aversion to commitment is particularly prevalent among young men who live with their partners.

Pollard and Harris found that the majority of cohabiting young men do not endorse the maximum indicator of relationship permanence: 52 percent of cohabiting men between ages 18 and 26 are not “almost certain” that their relationship is permanent. Moreover, a large minority (41 percent) of men report that they are not “completely committed” to their live-in girlfriends. By contrast, only 39 percent of cohabiting women in the same age group are not “almost certain” their relationship will go the distance, and only 26 percent say they are not “completely committed”. Not surprisingly, the figures above and below also indicate that married women and men are much less likely to exhibit the low levels of commitment characteristic of many cohabiting relationships today.

[…]The only thing worse than being in a relationship for years with an uncommitted person, it would seem, is marrying one. Research by psychologists Scott Stanley and Galena Rhoades, spotlighted in a New York Times op-ed last year, suggests that cohabiting couples are in for trouble when they “slide” into cohabitation and then marriage rather than “decide” to take the same steps. Their work indicates that many couples begin living together without clear expectations, common values, or a shared commitment to one another. And after a time, some of these couples get married, in part because friends, family, and they themselves think it’s the logical next step. But without common values and a shared sense of commitment, the couples who slide into cohabitation and marriage, instead of purposely deciding to deepen their commitment to one another, are more likely to divorce.

Stanley and Rhoades illustrate this point by pointing to the research on cohabitation, engagement, and divorce. Women who cohabit prior to engagement are about 40 percent more likely to divorce, compared to those who do not cohabit. By contrast, couples who cohabit after an engagement do not face a higher divorce risk. Those who cohabit only after engagement or marriage also report higher marital quality, not just lower odds of divorce. Stanley and Rhoades think that “sliders” are more likely than “deciders” to cohabit prior to an engagement, and to have trouble in their marriage if they go on to tie the knot. On the other hand, couples who deliberately choose to move in together after a public engagement or wedding are more likely to enjoy the shared commitment that will enable their relationship to last.

So, given the low levels of commitment and the gender mismatch in expectations often found among today’s cohabiting couples, young men and especially women who aspire to a strong and stable marriage should take caution when considering moving in together.

You can click through the article to see the graphs he is talking about in the excerpt. Highly recommended. It turns out that women cannot just pick a good-looking guy and drift into a commitment by stringing together good days and good experiences. Ladies, let’s be clear. A man who will have recreational premarital sex with you before marriage is not looking for marriage, but recreation. Marriage is a commitment to work hard, be disciplined, be self-sacrificial and to compromise with another person – all in close quarters. When choosing a mate, you need to look for someone who is good at commitments. Not someone who is good at fun.

The ability to have fun with a man is not a good predictor of marital success because fun is unrelated to the things that a man really does in a marriage: protect, provide, and lead on moral and spiritual issues. Similarly, the ability to impress your friends with a man’s appearance or entertainment value does not make a commitment work. What makes a commitment work… is a man who demonstrates that he is good at making plans and achieving goals through discipline and hard work. Marriage requires making plans and achieving goals more than it requires having fun. Recreational premarital sex is about having fun – not making plans and achieving goals. Instead of talking about the next good time with a man, maybe women need to learn to talk about the mechanics of marriage with a man. And talk about the man’s roles in a marraige with a man. And then they need to learn to avoid men who don’t have plans and who aren’t ready to perform those roles. There are plenty of men who are not “bad boys” who do have plans and who are ready to perform traditional male roles.

A final point. I have noticed today that women tend to avoid men who have strong, exclusive views on moral questions and spiritual questions. The minute a man expresses a moral point of view or a theological argument, women tend to want to avoid him. Sometimes they fear rejection from men with definite convictions. Sometimes they resent male leadership. And there are other reasons to avoid strong men. The problem is that a man who has definite moral views is exactly the kind of man who is likely to be trustworthy and predictable in the marriage. And a man who has definite spiritual views is exactly the kind of man who is going to have some sort of overarching plan for the marriage (AND PARENTING) beyond mere pleasure. You wouldn’t choose someone who was guided by hedonism to be your stock broker or your medical doctor, because doing a hard job requires self-sacrifice and discipline. The same rule applies to choosing husbands. Husbands have duties that are typically best performed by moral, spiritual men.

News

If we pay women to have children before marrying, will they do it more?

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Dina tweeted another article from the UK Daily Mail about the problem of paying women to have children before marriage.

Excerpt:

Talking about her future, a young woman neighbour told me: ‘Everyone is going to be a single mother in the  end — you just have to find the  right donor.’

Her view was shared by many of those who lived in the various council estates where I grew up. Single parenthood was the normal method of rearing children.

While my own father left our home when I was young, my mother, who has lived in Britain since emigrating from Jamaica with my grandparents, has been devoted to her children.

Although my father was a good dad and maintained contact, lots of my friends were not so fortunate. Few had any involvement with their fathers.

In many of these homes, the State was almost invariably the main breadwinner, with the families in receipt of welfare cheques.

With the State providing unceasing financial support, there was little thought given to the costs and responsibilities of having children.

[…]The welfare state was meant to be a symbol of civilised society, giving support to the genuinely poor and vulnerable. Today, though, it too often acts as a gigantic engine of social breakdown. Costing more than £220 billion a year, it simply incentivises personal irresponsibility and family collapse.

Far from rescuing people from disadvantage, it traps many claimants and their children in the destructive cycle of welfare dependency, where values such as ambition and commitment are lost. It should come as no surprise that in the parts of the country where welfare dependency and joblessness are most prevalent, fatherhood is the exception rather than the rule.

A report published last month by the independent think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, showed that the number of lone-parent families is increasing by 20,000 every year, with the total expected to reach  two million by 2015. Incredibly, in some areas of the country, such as Riverside in Liverpool or Ladywood in Birmingham, more than 70 per cent of households with dependent children are headed by lone parents.

Children who grow up in these places rarely come across a male role model.

Today, around half of British births take place outside wedlock, while just over a quarter of all families are headed by lone parents.

Despite a wealth of evidence that absent fathers put children at a disadvantage, I find it deeply depressing that the political class is terrified of taking any action to shore up family life.

Leftist political parties in the UK put in place a system in which women were encouraged to have children out of wedlock because they would receive taxpayer money – money taken from high-earning married men – in order to have children before getting married.

There’s actually a reason why the government pays women to have children before marriage. It’s because of an ideology called radical feminism. Radical feminism supports single motherhood by choice, because radical feminists are opposed to traditional marriage. In a traditional marriage, the man typically works to provide money to support the family, and he derives from that provider role the authority to lead the family on moral and spiritual issues. Women typically focus more on raising and educating the children and supporting the husband/father by doing home-related tasks. These traditional rules are suited to men and women respectively, but they are opposed by feminists because they are “unequal” – just because they are different. And that’s why radical feminists want to undermine marriage. What better way to undermine marriage than by paying women to replace the male role in marriage with government?

Now how should we fix this? Is the solution to tell men to “man up”? No. That is a slogan, not a solution – it does not address the root cause of the problem of fatherlessness. One positive change is to remove the welfare that makes it easier for women to have children out of wedlock without needing to choose a man who is proven to be able to perform the provider role. Today, we have a massive problem where women are not even looking to men to provide for them. Traditional male roles are out. Bad boys are in. Many women grow up fatherless and have no idea what a man actually does in a marriage. When selecting men for relationships, their most important criteria is physical appearance – not providing, protecting, moral leading or spiritual leading.

I’ve even noticed a trend lately where women are even claiming that good-looking terrorists like Tsarnaev and murderers like Hernandez are innocent of the crimes they actually committed, just because these men are “too good looking to be guilty”. This is a whole other level of wrong, but it’s not surprising with women who have been taught that men have no special roles that they are supposed to be performing. The faster we cut off the money for women who prefer bad-boys to provider-men, the better off children will be.