We all find the things that are important to us. If that is what's important to her, let her have her happiness in doing them. Let her family have their happiness in a mom/wife who dotes on them.

Someday, she may decide she's wasted her life. Conversely, she may feel, one day if she goes out to get a job, that she misses those happy domestic days.

No longer concerned with securing economic, political, and social freedom for women, modern feminism has become about compelling behavior and enforcing conformity with left-wing political ideology. No wonder so many women who might have burned their bras years ago today wouldn't touch the term, "feminism," with a ten-foot pole.

The problem is that a movement can never die. Once you secure the vote for women, you need another mountain to scale, another dragon to slay. When you run out of dragons, you make up a few. Modern feminism has reached that point.

"I joke that I'd chase any I had around with a wooden spoon" ~Amy

They tend to enjoy that.

As with any "cause" they start out with a reasonable goal. But, as Conan noted once their lofty goal is met they need another enemy to slay. After the real enemies are vanquished they still have the bloodlust and so start to eat their own. Feminism has evolved to where they now attack their own.

You can't have it all, or at least not all at the same time. Feminism tries to convince women that the only thing of value is a career. That isn't even true for men. Men who have a family are willing to (and do) take on overtime and an extra job for their family, not for fun. Taking care of other people is called love and is not something narcissists understand.

Their feminist causes aren't their goal. They get off on power. Their often absurd causes are just means to that end. Once they climax... er, succeed... there'll be a brief afterglow. And then they'll start targeting their next conquest.

"I Thought Feminism Was Supposed To Be About Freedom For Women."

It never has been about freedom for women; it has always been, for as long as I have been aware, about men and women toeing their political line.

Feminist have always been about putting down women who prefer to be "homemakers."

The government, along with the Ford and Rockefeller foundations (and other deep-pocketed institutions) have promoted and bankrolled feminism to 1) create more taxpayers, 2) increase the labor supply and thus depress wages, and 3) create more consumption.

A woman who expends her human capital within the family only enriches her own family. She doesn't pay taxes on her labor, and her labor does not make a marginal profit for an employer. So, she must be castigated and shamed for her "internalized misogyny."

I

I have nothing against doing all the loving things you want for your spouse, so long as you ask for the things you want in return so you don't resent it later when he doesn't do them spontaneously, whether it's a dozen roses, restaurant meals, etc.

It wasn't really clear if she's a full-time housewife or not. But she has at least three children under age 6, to judge from the photo.

At any rate, she DID make it clear that sometimes she only gets 4.5 hours of sleep at night. I would hope that any husband who would want his wife to do those things would remember that sleep deprivation is no laughing matter (a mother who isn't getting enough sleep might drop the baby, after all). How would she get a nap in the afternoon, unless her kids are in day care or after-school programs, which I doubt?

Bottom line: Even if you're married to a full-time housewife who knows how to multitask chores, it's not fair to ask/expect her to do things that no one really "needs," like ironing bed sheets or baking cookies, unless those are her chosen hobbies. Why? Because we're all entitled to a certain amount of "selfish" leisure time - and no spouse should have to spend twice as much time as the other spouse on work that truly needs to be done, whether the work is paid or unpaid.

(Of course, the marriage is more likely to work if the two of you agree on money matters - and that includes both of you agreeing to choose hobbies that are similar in that they either earn money, save money or at least don't cost much money, if any. One never knows when a rainy day will happen, after all.)

Oh, and charles...

As I've mentioned before, while yes, it's too bad that the role of the housewife got such a bad rap in the 1970s (doing that didn't exactly inspire boys to do/enjoy housework, after all), you'd think everyone would realize by now that SOMETHING had to be done to get girls from conservative families/communities to think twice before throwing away all their options after high school or even college.

A housewife needs to keep her marketable skills sharp, at least, even if she isn't getting paid for them at the moment. As many have pointed out, it's not just divorce - people die, too. Or become incapacitated.

From Oct. 1987, in Ms. Magazine (in response to the complaint that feminism didn't support housewives enough):

"Six months ago I too was a self-described 'happy homemaker.' I baked bread, grew roses, played with my toddler. Then I woke one morning and found my husband (and our car, our stereo, our checkbook, etc.) gone. I was COMPLETELY surprised; I had assumed he was as happy as I was!

"I had to immediately find a job (which pays a third what his does); arrange for day care: try to scrape together enough money for food, mortgage, and utilities.

"Housewife is NOT a valid career option because you have no control over your own life. If you lose your husband you can’t go down to the employment agency and apply for another one!"

"Then I woke one morning and found my husband (and our car, our stereo, our checkbook, etc.) gone. I was COMPLETELY surprised; I had assumed he was as happy as I was!" ~Lenona

The funny thing is you can swap the genders and that is pretty typical today. 50% of marriages still end in divorce. That is how it has been since the 1970s. Both before then and since it has been 60% of women initiating the divorce. Which kinda breaks the narrative you are pushing Lenona.

Thanks lenona; you've only proven my point.

Even back in 1987, Ms. Magazine is telling women that choosing the "happy housewife" life style is NOT a good choice.

And, quite frankly for you to say that girls from "conservative families/communities" are "throwing away" their options sounds just like a feminist!

Fine, if you think that for YOU it would be throwing away those options, more power to you; but, don't tell others who are NOT your family how to make their way in life.

That's the point, I think, is that too many "feminists" are being nothing more than busybodies. (and, yes, how dare I be a sexist and use that sexist word. Guess what, I am a member of the basket of deplorables; so, I don't care what anyone calls me any more)

Wonder what these professional busybodies think about, oh, Bonnie Rotten?

Or (gets out time machine), Tarika Wilson?

Agree with Lenona because

1. Cussedness.

2. She's right.

Lenona asks that:

• Women explicitly describe their desires and expectations
  
  
• Husbands be sensitive to their wives' need for rest
  
  
• Couples see eye-to-eye on money
  
  
• Women observe options to defend their interests through the course of life and its surprises.

'Feminism' to that degree offends you? You regard this tepid counsel as the threatening handiwork of "busybodies"?

Are there happy marriages in your life without the mundane awareness Lenona recommends?

I can't imagine what, or who, you'd prefer.

All that from the man that never married or had kids. No wonder the mgto sounds so clueless.

No that isn't what Lenona asked.

Married once, no kids… You could have inquired.

Maybe this is one of those times when ITG's know *exactly* which cartoon character on the Casper/Bugs/Scooby spectrum they're looking for, and exactly which fight they want to have, whether or not anyone's offering it. Lenona "asked" only:

> How would she get a nap in
> the afternoon, unless her kids
> are in day care or after-school
> programs, which I doubt?

Again— Your complaint with Lenona's comments is, precisely, what?

My words were quite clear Crid the hypocrite. Unlike some I can actually get to the point and say what I mean.

Lenona is wrong. Not difficult to figure that out. Her advice is why most kids grow up in broken homes today. Her words show she approved of doing that with government force.

Nothing complicated about it. But maybe you need an adult mentality to understand things like that.

"But, as Conan noted once their lofty goal is met they need another enemy to slay. After the real enemies are vanquished they still have the bloodlust"

It's more than bloodlust. It's the Gilligan's Island problem of activism. The goal was to get off the island, but if that ever happened, the show was over. Look at Greenpeace - they achieved a world whaling moratorium, and suddenly everyone was faced with the prospect of having to go out and get real jobs, so they pivoted to opposing nuclear power.

"to think twice before throwing away all their options after high school or even college."

Committing to ANY course of action involves closing off some options. Game theorists call that opportunity cost. Choosing a major like gender studies probably throws away more options than marrying and becoming a housewife.

"If you lose your husband you can’t go down to the employment agency and apply for another one!"

Well, not to the employment agency, but there are plenty of services to help one find a spouse. There are even websites to help college girls find sugar daddies. Men, and women, are like busses - another one will be by shortly. There are lots of different ways to live one's life, and back when what Lenona condemns was the dominant path, our society was better off by a lot of measures (or do you think there were more kids shooting up schools back in the Leave it to Beaver days?) The way people dog pile on this mother for her life choices, you'd think they were afraid their way might end up in the dustbin of history if people were allowed to choose their paths freely.

Again, Ben, and this time, please concentrate with all your heart:

Which specific words in Lenona's two comments are "why most kids grow up in broken homes today"?

Thank you very much, Crid.
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Her advice is why most kids grow up in broken homes today.
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Good lord. How is clear communication and being on the same page with regard to how the couple's time and money are spent "bad advice"? Jeez. It's no less important than sexual, religious or political compatibility.

Think of how many couples fall apart precisely BECAUSE they typically shrank from talking honestly about money matters. Or because one party actually tried to make the childish argument that "you don't like doing housework when you come home at night, but I hate it ten times as much, so I shouldn't have to do ANY chores when I'd rather watch TV!" Or because, as Mary Boleyn's father scolded her in "Anne of the Thousand Days," "you gave (Henry VIII) everything and asked for nothing." (Granted, at least SHE kept her head...but the wisdom still holds true for modern relationships.)

Btw, here's a thread with "10 Commandments for Housework, Money and Marriage." I'd love to hear what's so terribly wrong with any of the commandments.

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2017/10/linkle-8.html

One is: "Thou shalt choose useful hobbies and thrifty habits, or else the paid work is wasted."
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The funny thing is you can swap the genders and that is pretty typical today.
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Um, MARRIED mothers abandoning their small children is not "pretty typical." Even "Kramer vs. Kramer" was not a typical divorce movie.
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The way people dog pile on this mother for her life choices,
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I agree that was rude. But if they'd mentioned the possibility of her getting less much sleep than he does, in general, that would certainly have been something for them to criticize.
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if you think that for YOU it would be throwing away those options,
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It's not just what I think. Everyone knows that taking off a decade or two to raise kids and clean the house - and Nothing Else - makes a middle-aged woman far less attractive to employers than a mother who managed to keep her middle-class marketable skills sharp. (And who demanded that her husband help her toward that end by doing at least some of the daily unpaid work.)

I mean, when it comes to SAHMS, percentagewise, how many do you know who continued to stay at home once the last child became a teenager? There are perfectly good reasons most(?) of them HAVE to take paid jobs, even when the last child is still only in first grade!
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there are plenty of services to help one find a spouse.
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They don't work so well for single mothers. You know that.

Btw, can't find it online, but in 1978, Eleanor Hamilton wrote in her book for teens "Sex, with Love" that one big problem in marriage is the following scenario (not verbatim):

Party #1: "If I wash the dishes (a job I hate) I expect you to mow the lawn (though I don't tell you about this). When you don't mow the lawn I assume you don't love me."

Hamilton said: "I am sorry to say many adults do this a lot..."

The point, of course, was that a successful marriage means doing all sorts of Unromantic Things - like spelling every little thing out, sometimes. Or preparing for life's emergencies instead of just assuming "God will provide."

I realize, of course, that communication isn't the same process for everyone.

Example: Most(?) men will say "men don't take hints - so don't drop hints! Just SAY it!"

But that didn't work with Frank Sinatra. Apparently, because of his ego, the following rule applied both to movie moguls and the women in his life:

"Don't tell me. Suggest — but don't tell me!"

Oh, not to mention - if EACH party is working 60 or more hours a week on paid and unpaid work combined, chances are they won't have the energy for more than once-a-week sex. But...how is it any better for their sex life - or their love - if one party is working 20 hours more than the other party?

Lenona has a point in that everyone needs a skill to fall back on if times get tough. There are too many girls who graduate from high school without having learned much, because schools often grade girls on deportment rather than scholastic work.

Lenona does have a point that having a skill to fall back on is important. But that is irrelevant for the vast majority of people.

Since 1990 two income families have been over 60% of families. Prior to WW2 you didn't necessarily have two incomes but both parents still worked. One was paid with cash and the other bartered. The 'only stay at home and take care of the kids' mom that Lenona is railing against is a historical anomaly only present for a generation after WW2. Yay government!

Yes you saw this on TV. Maybe even that was normal in your neighborhood. No it was not normal for most families.

"schools often grade girls on deportment rather than scholastic work." ~Cousin Dave

I'm going to call bullshit on this CD. Schools for the most part grade everyone on age. You go up a grade every year irrespective of achievement or gender. Finish your twelve and get the hell out.

"Um, MARRIED mothers abandoning their small children is not "pretty typical."" ~Lenona

So they take the kids along with the check book and everything else. How is that significantly different?

You live too much in myth and story books Lenona. You often take one specific situation and pretend it is typical. Fiction is fiction. It isn't real no matter how much you want it to be. Even nonfiction books may not be representative. You need to start looking at real statistic instead of railing against a situation 1% or 2% of people are going through. I understand you have the best of intentions, but that isn't good enough. The saying 'the road to hell is paved is good intentions' is an old one for a reason.

I think we all need to calm down and realize that much is being read into this stupid post that is NOT actually there. First, I am a stay at home mom so I can speak on this with some degree of authority. This woman doesn’t work on her house 60 hours a week, or never sleep for more than three hours. I believe what she was saying is that no matter when her husband gets up to go to work, she gets out of bed and fixes his coffee and a hot meal. No where does she say that she doesn’t go back to bed after he leaves. Nor does any normal person spend all day cleaning the house. It takes about 3 hours tops and I am betting she keeps things pretty tidy in between. This woman is not slave to her husband or her children. Based on what she wrote, she sounds pretty organized and I bet her husband is grateful to have her. I know mine is. He comes home to clean house and a balanced meal. It actually reduces the stress on our marriage. We look after each other.

Also, can we dispense with the “what if she becomes a widow” line? Most ppl have life insurance, especially if one parent stays home and there are children in the mix. This isn’t the 19th century where if daddy dies in the coal mine, the bank takes the house and mom has go into prostitution to feed the kids. Ben is right, Lenona reads too much fiction and takes it for fact. I know plenty of women who stay home and they aren’t bored, slaves, abused, or about to be put out on the street by husbands looking to trade up.

I belong to a group of over 230 women who go out into the community and volunteer with children and the elderly, which is especially important bc so many women do work. Last week I did story time at two different schools for about 200 pre schoolers. The week before I served lunch to 60 seniors. This group I’m with also provides scholarships to needy students, so we fund raise too. Through the DAR, I help support veterans and their families. Finally, I look after my widowed mother and make sure she has what she needs. I am HAPPY to being doing all of this. My life is full, so please stop worrying about me and women like me.

You're both making assumptions.

For starters, I read very little fiction. That's been the case for, oh, the last 25 years or so. Why? Because there's too much nonfiction that everyone should be reading, and I'd feel guilty if I didn't try to keep up as best I can. (I'm reading Arlie Russell Hochschild's most famous book - I'm sure I don't need to tell you the title, since it was published September 2016 and was a bestseller by the end of the year. More in a sec...)

And when I refer to fiction of the distant past, it's because it happens to be relevant and/or realistic. (Much in the way the Bible has plenty of outrageous ideas - but one can always cherry-pick for real wisdom.)
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or never sleep for more than three hours.
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I didn't say "never," I said "that sometimes she only gets 4.5 hours of sleep at night." You did notice, right?

Yes, maybe she went straight back to bed afterwards. But she didn't say that, AND she was bragging, which is not polite, and, as the saying goes, boasters always come to grief - even when it's just in the form of rude blowback.
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It takes about 3 hours tops
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With three or four small kids who are all in the house for at least a few hours every day? I doubt that. (Btw, I didn't say SHE works 60 hours - I was just pointing out that even if one person is already working a tiring 40 hours, that's not an excuse to work fewer hours than one's spouse, since that leads to resentment.)
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Also, can we dispense with the “what if she becomes a widow” line? Most ppl have life insurance, especially if one parent stays home and there are children in the mix.
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I was thinking of those Real Life cases that we've all heard about - namely, the ones where you have reason to think you're covered, only to find out, when disaster strikes, that the insurance doesn't cover x, y, or z. Not fiction.

And I'm sure the Brisbane woman is happy. But what bothers women who read stories like that is not just that she doesn't make it clear that she IS getting enough sleep or that she receives as many benefits as she gives to her husband. What also bothers them is the message it sends to the young. Just as many teens still cling to their impractical dreams of stardom in sports, movies, or music - and so they blow off school as a result - many girls also cling to the idea of marrying a rich man and not working for pay (or at ALL), no matter how rare rich men may be in their community.

O, and as it happens, Ben, I'm not sure what you mean by 1-2%. From the Pew Research Center:

"Stay-at-home moms and dads account for about one-in-five U.S. parents. More than 11 million U.S. parents – or 18% – were not working outside the home in 2016, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data."

OK, some may be just unemployed - but how many?

So they take the kids along with the check book and everything else. How is that significantly different?
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Well, obviously the kids don't think highly of any parent who disappears from their lives. Even if they're teens when it happens. And any parent who's a single custodial parent and sticks with it, willingly or not, deserves a certain amount of credit.

Not to mention that just because women might initiate 2/3 of divorces doesn't mean that even half of those women are doing so on a whim. (The same is true for men who initiate divorces, of course.)
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Prior to WW2 you didn't necessarily have two incomes but both parents still worked. One was paid with cash and the other bartered.
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Examples and sources, please? Besides couples who owned farms or small businesses? Did you mean bartered with her husband or with customers? I don't quite follow. Yes, I know that poor women have always worked for money. At any rate, it was a pretty common practice, before WWII, not to hire married women - or to fire them just for getting married, not just for getting pregnant after getting married.

From Wikipedia, FWIW:

...A marriage bar is the practice of restricting the employment of married women. Common in Western countries throughout the 1900s, the practice often called for the termination of the employment of a woman on her marriage, especially in teaching and clerical occupations. Further, widowed women with children were still considered to be married at times, preventing them from being hired, as well.[1][2][3]

The practice lacked an economic justification, except for during times of economic-downturn, and its rigid application was often disruptive to workplaces. It was justified during depression years as a social policy to find jobs for more family units, but the policy persisted beyond such economic times. The practice was common in some Western countries, such as the United States and Ireland, from the late 19th century to the 1970s.[4] Marriage bars were widely relaxed in wartime, however, due to an increase in the demand for labor...
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Fiction is fiction. It isn't real no matter how much you want it to be.
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Same goes for shows like "Leave it to Beaver." (Yes, I know that was bw1.)

From Peter McWilliams' 1993 book "Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country":

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22THOSE+OF+US+WHO+grew+up+in+the+1950s+got+an+image%22&rlz=1CAACAU_enUS888&oq=%22THOSE+OF+US+WHO+grew+up+in+the+1950s+got+an+image%22&aqs=chrome..69i57.903j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

(I can't seem to copy and paste the primary link without making this un-postable.)

You're fond of statistics, so...

THOSE OF US WHO grew up in the 1950s got an image of the American family that was not, shall we say, accurate. We were told, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and Ozzie and Harriet were not just the way things were supposed to be—but the way things were.
Things were not that way...

...Here are some facts about "the good old days":

In 1960, one in three children lived in poverty.
Fewer than half the students who entered high school in the late 1940s ever finished.
The United States has had the highest homicide rate in the industrial world for almost 150 years.
From 1950 to 1959, 257,455 cases of polio were reported, mostly in children; 11,957 died of it.
In 1940, one American child in ten did not live with either birth parent. Today the figure is one in twenty-five.
More couples reported their marriage "happy" in 1977 than did in 1957. (The "happy marriage" index dropped slightly by the late 1980s, but still remained higher than it was in 1957.)

A woman over thirty-five has a better chance of marrying today than she did in the 1950s.

In the mid-1950s, 25% of the population lived below the poverty line.

In 1958, 60% of the population over sixty-five had incomes below $1,000.

In the 1950s, one-third of the white, native-born families could not get by with the income of only one working parent.

In the 1950s, racism was deeply institutionalized. 50% of black families lived below the poverty line; migrant workers suffered appalling working and living conditions; people of color were not permitted to take part in the American dream.

In 1952, there were 2,000,000 more wives working outside the home than there were at the peak of wartime production.

Women who failed to conform to the June Cleaver/Margaret Anderson role of housewife and mother were severely criticized. A 1947 bestselling book, The Modern Woman, called feminism a "deep illness," labeled the idea of an independent woman a "contradiction in terms," and explained that women who wanted equal pay and equal educational opportunities were engaged in a "ritualistic castration" of men.

Women were often denied the right to serve on juries, convey property, make contracts (including leases on apartments), and establish credit in their own names (including mortgages and credit cards).

Men who failed to marry were considered immature, selfish, or homosexual. A man without a wife found it difficult finding work or getting promoted.

Unmarried men and women were routinely paid less than married men and women because, it was explained, their needs were less.

The witch hunts against communists extended to homosexuals and other political and social "deviants." During the 1950s, 2,611 civil servants were fired as "security risks"; 4,315 resigned while being "investigated."

In her book, Private Lives: Men and Women of the '50s, Benita Eisler quotes film producer Joel Schumacher: "No one told the truth. People pretended they weren't unfaithful. They pretended they weren't homosexual. They pretended they weren't horrible." The uniformity we sense about the '50s, with everyone happily "fitting in," was, in fact, a great number of frightened people pretending to fit in—and pretending to enjoy it.

A "sure cure" for homosexuality for either men or women was marriage. This myth was propagated not just by popular culture, but by psychologists and psychiatrists as well. When marriage failed to be the "cure," as it always did, having a child would surely take care of the problem. When that didn't work, a second child was "prescribed." When that didn't work, well, the least you could do is pretend to be heterosexual and do your duty—for your children's sake.

Congress discussed nearly two hundred bills to deal with the problem of "juvenile delinquency" in 1955—the year Rebel Without a Cause was released.

Marilyn Van Derbur, Miss America of 1958, revealed in 1991 that her wealthy, respectable father had sexually violated her from age five until eighteen.

Alcoholism soared in the 1950s.

Wife-beating was not really considered a crime. Many psychologists explained that battered wives were masochists who provoked their husbands into beating them.

A husband raping his wife was not a crime at all, but a sign that the woman was deficient in fulfilling her marital obligations.

One half of the marriages that began in the 1950s ended in divorce.

During the 1950s, more than 2,000,000 legally married people lived separately.

Staying together "for the children" surpassed baseball as the national pastime.

Far from Beaver and Wally telling Ward and June carefully edited versions of their daily adventures over the dinner table, more often the evening meal was a TV dinner on a TV tray in front of the TV.

What the TV couldn't numb, tranquilizers could. A New Yorker cartoon illustrated a 1950s couple, floating down the river in a gondola, surrounded by beautiful flowers, singing birds, and playful butterflies. The husband asks the wife, "What was the name of that tranquilizer we took?" In 1958, 462,000 pounds of tranquilizers were consumed in the United States. A year later, consumption had more than tripled to 1.5 million pounds.

By the end of the 1950s, when Redbook asked readers to supply examples for an upcoming article, "Why Young Mothers Feel Trapped," they received 24,000 replies.

The number of pregnant brides more than doubled in the 1950s.

In 1957, there were more than twice as many births to girls aged fifteen to nineteen than in 1983.

The number of illegitimate babies put up for adoption rose 80% from 1944 to 1955.

Ms. Coontz concludes, "The historical record is clear on one point: Although there are many things to draw on in our past, there is no one family form that has ever protected people from poverty or social disruption, and no traditional arrangement that provides a workable model for how we might organize family relations in the modern world."

Depending on whose statistics you read, today the traditional nuclear family represents anywhere from 6% to less than 50% of the American population. One can fiddle with the statistics endlessly. Should the household have only the male as the breadwinner? Should there be no one living in the household except the mother, father, and children? Should the household be in a single-family house, or will an apartment do? Does a couple living alone without children count? However we look at it, the point is clear: even taking the most generous estimate, today more than half the country lives outside a nuclear family.

(snip)

OMG, lady you are crazy. I am not reading all that crap you posted. For the record, you sound jealous of women who are wives and have children. You spend way too much time at places like Brat Free and those single by choice websites. It feels less like you are trying to convince us and more like you are trying to reassure yourself that children are awful and wives are slaves. You should spend some time contemplating that.

Oh, by the way, with regard to your post last week about Gone With the Wind, the reason Scarlet doesn’t want to have sex with Rhett again, is not bc he’s no good at it and doesn’t understand oral sex, it’s bc he is so good at it that she has begun to fall in love with him, but feels like she’s betraying her love for Ashley. Rhett Butler lives in a bordello and is Belle Whatling’s favorite customer, so I’m pretty sure he knows what a woman likes. It’s called nuance, you might want to look into it.

YOU sound incredibly hysterical.
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For the record, you sound jealous
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Pot, kettle, black.

Besides, we all come here in part because Amy is as anti-sentimental as they come. It's the same for those who read Bratfree. Or those who enjoy George Carlin's humor (the folk at Bratfree like him a lot, even though he WASN'T childfree, since he refused to be sentimental about anything connected to children). Finding a rest from both the nasty news in the media AND sentimentality is difficult. As "The Portable Curmudgeon" author Jon Winokur wrote: "...Offense is (the curmudgeons') only defense. Their weapons are irony, satire, sarcasm, ridicule. Their targets are pretense, pomposity, conformity, incompetence. And they'll tell you that their targets are everywhere and multiplying like Smurfs..."

Btw, you're making assumptions again. I don't know of any "single-by-choice" websites, not even their names.

About GWTW. Maybe you haven't heard, but one big reason that johns pay prostitutes is that the pleasure isn't SUPPOSED to be mutual. (Yes, I know the other reasons - one being that many popular men don't want a long-term commitment to anyone. Which was what Rhett kept saying to Scarlett, before he proposed. I.e., "men don't pay women for sex; they pay them to leave.")

And nuance - or rather, subliminal messaging - was exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned what OTHER people have pointed out - that Scarlett never has an orgasm until That Scene. (This is a tiny bit more explicit in the book.) So her refusal to risk "ruining" her waistline through sex was likely a cover-up for, at least, her inability to stop fantasizing about Ashley in bed.

Not to mention that charisma isn't everything when it comes to female satisfaction, even for Rhett. Btw, Clark Gable's wife, Carole Lombard, said that even HE was "a lousy lay." Probably in the same way that JFK was - that is, JFK had a bad back, but both men were clearly very popular, so they likely didn't see the need to make any real effort in bed. (The Mayflower Madam also said that most of the johns also made no effort - they just lay on their backs and let the women do all the work.)

And, from January:

...what the non-readers don't know is that even if Ashley had never existed (if you can imagine that), Scarlett would still have had three big fat reasons not to be romantically attracted to Rhett - for years, anyway.

Care to guess, first?

1. He's 17(!) years older. Practically old enough to be her father. Maybe that wasn't so unusual in the 1860s, but in 1930 - soon before the book was published - the average age difference at marriage was 3 years - and the median age for a man getting married for the first time was 24...also, as critic Roger Ebert pointed out, Scarlett is really not of the 1860s, she's a woman of the 1930s.

2. Rhett completely ignores what Scarlett has let him know multiple times - she doesn't like babies or motherhood or having a waist that's even 20 inches(!), so why would she want to marry again?...

3. Rhett is always making fun of her lack of education, even BEFORE they marry. Who wouldn't get angry about that, eventually? While it's natural for people like Rhett to want to AVOID drop-outs with a contempt for education, like Scarlett, if you don't, common courtesy demands that you not put them down, at the least.

Lenona, you wanted to know what I was talking about with 1-2% stuff. Well you just did it again. What happened to Rhett and Scarlett isn't necessarily representative of anyone but those two people. What happened to Sinatra is the same. In the same vein only ~0.1% of Americans are Amish. Even fewer care about purity balls. Much fewer than that attend weird MRA dating things. Almost nothing you talk about is representative of any significant population. Essentially you want to help 1% or less but at the same time you harm 30%. This is not a good thing.

Who did women barter with? Each other. Economies of scale don't only apply in a cash situation. Women often bartered between farms with different farms specializing in different goods. Even in urban settings women historically were trapped in the barter economy. A lot of washing was done without cash payment. Prior to microwaves and clothes washers servants were very common. Roughly 60% of urban women worked in such a roll. And they worked without cash pay. Instead they were paid with room and board as well as other goods their employer had an abundance of (what goods depended on what the employer did).

Historically relatively few women raised their own children. Who did raise them? For poorer people it was grandma and grandpa. For the richer is was the servants. When did this trend change? The 1930s is when Social Security was implemented. After that you saw a slow reduction of the extended family. Grandma and grandpa didn't want to move in with their kids and take care of their family. They had to. People don't save. Period. It is just human nature. Once people got too old to work they were forced to move in with their kids and do whatever work they could to pay for their keep. Social Security changed that.

If you still want a good source on women entering the cash economy and the various effects of that you can read Elizabeth Warren's the Two Income Trap. I think I've made my distaste for Warren both as a person and as a politician quite clear around here. Even so most of her book is well researched and documented. Do not trust her conclusions, make your own! But the factual part of her book is well done. You can pick up a used copy lots of places for a dollar or two.

Oh, and Sheep Mom, one might as well argue that Amy must hate liberal ideals, since she's always criticizing liberals.

Wendy Kaminer does that often, too, but everyone knows SHE'S an old-fashioned liberal.

"They don't work so well for single mothers. You know that."

No, I don't. I know lots of single mothers who had no problem finding a second husband, several using online matchmaking services. Heck, I know lots of guys who find it preferable to date single mothers because these days it's an indicator that your date is a genuine biological female.

"With three or four small kids who are all in the house for at least a few hours every day? I doubt that."

With 4 kids under 9 AND a 120 lb. young active dog, my mother spend less than 6 hours a week on housecleaning. Of course, we were disciplined to put things away after ourselves, not eat outside the kitchen, etc.

"Just as many teens still cling to their impractical dreams of stardom in sports, movies, or music - and so they blow off school as a result - many girls also cling to the idea of marrying a rich man"

The latter is statistically more realistic than the former, so maybe you're grinding the wrong axe.

Lenona, perhaps you should take some time to think about the mere fact that this woman is happy with her life, despite making different choices than you would, and dares to share the news of that satisfaction with the world, has you foaming at the mouth spewing walls of angry text.

With 4 kids under 9 AND a 120 lb. young active dog, my mother spend less than 6 hours a week on housecleaning. Of course, we were disciplined to put things away after ourselves, not eat outside the kitchen, etc.
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You just admitted that they were older than the other kids (under age 6). Of COURSE they were better at not making a mess and/or doing their own cleaning. Besides, a dog can usually be kept in one room and taken out for walks by the oldest kid. What's your point?
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The latter is statistically more realistic than the former, so maybe you're grinding the wrong axe.
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As you know, it's still a terribly hazardous and wrong reason to blow off school. More wrong than, say, dropping out for a few years because your parents desperately need you to get a job instead and help support your younger siblings. Besides, as Crid pointed out, life's surprises exist - such as terrible accidents. They even happen to rich men - whether it's a car crash or losing all their money in a bad investment.

There is nothing wrong with demanding that ALL people who chatter about their lives do so with a certain amount of modesty, whether they do paid work or not. Otherwise they're going to be taken to task in all sorts of ways.
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you should take some time to think about the mere fact that this woman is happy with her life
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Did you miss the part where I said "I'm sure the Brisbane woman is happy"? Also, see above about modesty. Again, it's about not misleading the young when it comes to "choices." I.e., you are not entitled to become a doctor OR a homemaker; you are only entitled to TRY to find a medical school who will admit you or a person who wants a SAH spouse. Many men don't, if only because they're scared of divorce court - and even more so if she doesn't have that many skills.

"Did you miss the part where I said "I'm sure the Brisbane woman is happy"?"

Well, it was easy to miss in your wall of angry text. You really should contemplate why this story has you so worked up.

You do make one valid point, however, Opportunities for her path in life are drying up as young men notice the way divorce courts operate combined with all the people like you angrily condemning SAH wives make marriage a losing proposition. Combine that with our society's sexual incontinence, and they can go Galt on marriage and still enjoy most of the benefits.