In his recent post on the Spearhead, Jack Donovan linked to this stomach turning piece from July of last year in the Atlantic (be sure to watch the slideshow). What struck me first about the piece was the image above of women escaping the horror of being trapped in marriage as well as the unbelievably blunt subheading:
The author is ending her marriage. Isn’t it time you did the same?
Normally the media takes the trouble to encode this bit of feminist wisdom more subtly before broadcasting it out for consumption by women of the west.
The piece is by Sandra Tsing Loh, just one in a long line of despicable feminist attention whore writers who seem to think that every time they blow their nose they are at the vanguard of some powerful new trend.
Prior to writing the above piece about how she cheated on her husband and then decided her marriage wasn’t worth working on, she was busy writing articles and even a book on motherhood.
In late January of this year, she wrote the following in an Op Ed piece in the NY Times:
I am stricken with the peculiar curse of being a 21st-century woman who makes more than the man she’s living with …
I don’t know how it’s going for my sisters, but as my 40s and Verizon bills and mortgage payments roll on, I seem to have an ever more recurring 1950s housewife fantasy.
I’m truly at a loss for words.
I hope her ex husband is focusing on raising their two poor young girls and sheltering them from the unmitigated disaster they have for a mother. I also wish the national media would shelter the millions of other children she wishes to do the same thing to with her continuing attempt to transform millions of other women’s lives into the abject failure she has made of her own.
Is what she is saying any worse than what we read every day in the Manosphere?
She is just the other end of the marriage strike.
I am truly at a loss and cannot relate in any way to what these women describe: these boring, sexless, self-draining marriages they are so eager to leave. Maybe it’s because my marriage bears a striking resemblance to the traditional model. I don’t know.
The friend (rachel?0 whose husband hasn’t touched in her 2 years because she’s gained weight: I have gained some weight as well over the years (5 pregnancies can do that), but I put effort into keeping it at bay as much as possible. Part of that is not eating like crazy person and keeping my self looking put together. Our intimacy has never waned. She needs to listen to her husband. The man told her point blank she needs to lose weight and she responds by spending her evenings “gobbling mini Dove bars”, then wonders why he’s turned off. I’m stunned. The whole piece was sick and troubling, including the slide show.
Mostly, I’m saddened for the children.
She (and womenlike her) are the reason for the marriage strike.
Justin: Is what she is saying any worse than what we read every day in the Manosphere?
She is just the other end of the marriage strike.
Are you aware of just how badly the deck is stacked against men in matters of workplace rights, divorce and custody rights, not to mention the continuous MSM and Euro-centric feminist campaigns?
No, our grievances are mainly those of the downtrodden who are really just asking for a fair shake.
What this article is is worlds away – an attempt to explain away what could only be described as amoral self-indulgence.
The Mens Rights Movement may be arguing for the end of marriage, but for different reasons. We wouldn’t argue for her perspective to be given any credence in the new awakening.
@Justin
Is what she is saying any worse than what we read every day in the Manosphere?
She is just the other end of the marriage strike.
Seriously? Breaking a solemn promise is far worse than choosing not to make such a promise in the first place.
The anthem of the modern American woman: Me! Me! Me! Whine! Whine! Whine!
I wrote a book about how tough is to be mother. Me! Me! Me! Whine! Whine! Whine!
I wrote an article in The Atlantic about how tough is to be married. Me! Me! Me! Whine! Whine! Whine!
I wrote an Op-Ed in The NY Times about how tough is to be the breadwinner. Me! Me! Me! Whine! Whine! Whine!
Biological age: 40-something. Mental age: 4-year-old.
The Roman were onto something when they considered women as “legal minors”. Giving these immature creatures the powers of a grown-up has been the downfall of the West.
There’s some Dalrock-bait here:
http://whatwouldphoebedo.blogspot.com/2010/12/other-than-fact-that-criticizing-pill.html
It’s a blog post based on a NY Magazine article about the 50th anniversary of The Pill here:
http://nymag.com/news/features/69789/
Have at it.
These women seem deeply dissatisfied. Yet they live upper middle class lifestyles! Over 100k a year! They don’t know what it’s like to really struggle or suffer, but they are so unhappy. It reminds me of that saying, “Wherever you go, there you are.” One has to live with oneself, and these women just sound like they will perpetually be unhappy.
It’s also ironic, because the author is presumably Asian or Chinese, and there are millions of women in China who live in crushing levels of poverty where they don’t have running clean water or deal with toxic levels of pollution and pesticides. Any of those women would look at a woman like this and be incredibly envious of her “boring” and extremely luxurious lifestyle.
Personally I feel lucky to be living the life I do, for air conditioning, running hot water and modern conveniences, because I did grow up in that harsher environment, and I saw others even worse off. When I was a kid, in winters you only took bucket baths with boiled water, you slept under three thick layers because the room was so cold, and during the day you warmed yourself near a burning coal stove. We turned off all the lights immediately after using to conserve electricity, and saved water in buckets in the summer due to frequent shortages. I still feel bad for throwing away old, rotted food. Maybe it’s a lower class mentality of scarcity, but to me, complaining about the stuff this author complains about just seems so… ungrateful.
She wrote a parenting book? WTF. I wouldn’t take parenting advice from a willfully-divorced adulteress, for one simple reason: for all the need to materially provide for children, the best thing parents can provide their kids are a mom and a dad who love each other.
Hope,
“It’s also ironic, because the author is presumably Asian or Chinese, and there are millions of women in China who live in crushing levels of poverty where they don’t have running clean water or deal with toxic levels of pollution and pesticides. Any of those women would look at a woman like this and be incredibly envious of her “boring” and extremely luxurious lifestyle.”
Great point. I guess it’s vaguely gratifying to know that selfishness and narcissism knows no color. Your line of thinking reminds me of the song “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” (I will link the original, not the barenaked ladies version.)
Augustine,
I thought Phoebe’s post made a lot of sense. I laughed out loud (is that what the kids are calling lolz these days?) at this line:
“Is it supposed to come as a shock to women that the Pill prevents them getting pregnant during their fertile years? Isn’t that kind of the point?”
A sane man will avoid marriage, cohabitation and kids with the modern woman. Pump n dump is where it’s at.
“In this magical Technicolor world, the breadwinner husband, Brad, leaves home (where his duties are limited to mowing the lawn and various minor home repairs) at 7 a.m. When he returns from work at 6 p.m., aside from a savory roast with mashed potatoes, his homemaker wife, Nancy, has pipe, slippers and a tray of Manhattans ready.”
Ah, you can sense the housewife bitterness right here…she’s perfect for that role too, she’s already ready to denigrate his day at the office kissing up to the boss to put food on the table, and minimize the work he does from his honey-do list.
Hope, you have really hit on something. There is something very offensive about someone who absolutely refuses to be happy. It would still be offensive but not so bad if she weren’t given a national stage to deliver her toxic message. That is, if she weren’t damaging her two young girls like she is.
I think I’m going to change my slogan from “Stop being a dumbass!” to “Shut up and be happy!” (and if they won’t be happy, at least shut up…).
Good link Augustine. It is funny how people can complain when a product works exactly as intended.
I also like the term Dalrock-bait! The world unfortunately seems to be teeming with it, doesn’t it?
Feminists have been posting this type of bullshit in the media for decades.
Finally the men have answered: http://manhood101.com
I certainly hope men can come up with a better answer than ‘The Principles of Manhood’.
Isn’t Loh the woman who referred to her former husband as “the kitchen bitch”, as a result of his deliberate choices to cook and clean; choices that every single main stream media outlet assures men over and over again are the keys to a happy marriage? Clearly he was too nice and kind to her.
There is something to the article, though, that increasing number of couples exist where the woman earns more than the man. In addition to creating friction in the alpha/beta thinking, it also means that when/if the woman gives birth, she cannot quit work to stay home with the child without causing a serious decline in family income. So either he picks up the slack, doing the Mr. Mom thing that likely will induce contempt in the back of her head, or they both continue working and hire someone to raise the child. Those are the two choices, although there are variations (his or her mother come into the picture and raise the grandchild, for example) and guess what? None of the choices are all that great for the child. Of all the options, “Father works half time and covers the home front” is the least damaging for the children, but potentially most damaging to the marriage.
Is this any way to run a railroad?
I guess its true, the meek will inherit the earth.
It has been almost 10 years since I dined with adults on a weekly basis. My domestic evenings have typically revolved around five o’clock mac and cheese under bright lighting and then a slow melt into dishes and SpongeBob … because yet another of my marital failings was that I was never able to commit to a nanny.
Oh the inhumanity! Jesus wept! This poor woman! 5 o’clock mac and cheese…. That’s a pretty poor showing for dinner; it’s no one’s fault but her own if she couldn’t do better than throw sub-standard food at her kids like they were a couple of dogs. I find it funny when people complain about things that are totally under their control – like the brightness of the lights. What a fool.
[…]I, as a writer, worked at home and hence was ambivalent, because if I had daily in-house help, what was my role as a mother? Would I be emotionally displaced? Also, I secretly worried that using domestic help was exploitative[…]
It’s all about meeeee! And giving someone a job is not exploitative, you ninny. Yeah, I don’t think I can read any more of this tripe.
Anonymous Reader, that is a particularly “anti-feminist” idea which has women of my generation very confused. The notion of the “equal” marriage is that the man does housework. But there will inevitably be resentment as the man takes on feminine roles of cooking and cleaning, even though women claim this is what they want, and even go out of their way to be proud of not knowing how to cook or clean.
When I was growing up I never saw men cooking or cleaning. My female relatives and my mother could all cook some delicious varieties of healthy entrees from scratch. I would be embarrassed as an Asian woman to not at least be able to cook a decent stirfry. It’s not particularly difficult, and it just takes practice and willingness. So here’s an Asian woman making a bad name for Asian women general by talking about how she can only make mac and cheese.
It’s not the niceness of the husband that was “bad,” but her attitude and indoctrination in the feminist message. When I started living with my husband I basically did all the cooking and cleaning, and cheerfully without nagging him about the socks on the floor or the crumbs on his desk. My mother nagged me about everything when she cleaned, and I loathed it, so I wasn’t going to do that. The result is that we never argue over any of the housework petty stuff, and there’s no resentment over other stuff, so we don’t argue.
I might be wrong, but wasn’t she the one who wrote an article a few months back about how even though SHE had committed adultery, she had decided to stay so they could try and fix the marriage?
Or am I thinking of another attention whore?
I think feminist sex-envy and socialist class-envy are two sides of the same coin, and we seem to be flooded with both kinds right now. Anyone can be dissatisfied with their circumstances if they want to be, and imagine that they DESERVE to be much happier. Yes, we are entitled to the fruit of others’ labor, and to dump on our spouse for no reason and eventually kick him to the curb, because we want to. Leftists and feminists are driven to fan the flames of dissatisfaction because, I guess, it gives meaning to their empty lives to think they are striking a blow for injustice. When in fact, the only injustice is that caused by their own arrogance and selfishness.
“The best thing parents can provide their kids are a mom and a dad who love each other.”
This should be placed on a plaque and hung on the mantle. This simple but powerful truth has been long since forgotten in the West and the younger generations are paying the price for it.
May I recommend the following as an appropriate song for ex-husband (note: nsfw):
Dalrock, I hope you write a post about youngish marriage. What’s the secret? Our grandparents were capable of it. Even some of our parents. With some exceptions like you and Athol Kay, it’s not happening that much today. Average age of marriage keeps creeping up, further reducing the window. It’s some terrible combination of the whispers and the tingles delaying women, and a lack of achievement and confidence in men I think.
Yeah, Team-Parent is the best thing a kid could have. BARF!
The best thing a kid can have, and almost zero kids in horrific parenting America have, is parents who actually care for the worthless child animal.
Some parents are bad people. And bad parents as well. This includes fathers.
I wonder at the people who choose to ignore the obvious.
I hope you write a post about youngish marriage. What’s the secret? Our grandparents were capable of it.
I suspect it’s because our grandparents didn’t have much in the way of options at their disposal. If one didn’t get married, one would be shamed into the religious life or just simply talked about in a somewhat negative manner by others in the community. Singles just didn’t have the free range of lifestyles in that era that we do now due to our transition to first world country status and our advanced technology. You married to appease everybody in your community and your family, have somebody cook or provide food for you, and maintain or provide housing. If you divorced, you’d end up being shamed by community and starving if you’re female, and there wasn’t much in the way of options for looking for a replacement, especially in small towns.
“The best thing parents can provide their kids are a mom and a dad who love each other.”
Except it seems that some moms don’t love dad anymore.
These women seem deeply dissatisfied. Yet they live upper middle class lifestyles!
I’m tempted to argue that it’s because they compare themselves with those who have done better, so she’ll always feel like a loser because there’s somebody out there with even more than her. She’ll never be happy as she’ll always see her life as imperfect.
This has to be in the running for the stupidest, most moronically self evident idiocy published in the NYT this year:
” I am stricken with the peculiar curse of being a 21st-century woman who makes more than the man she’s living with — first with a husband for 13 years and now with a new partner. It’s an increasingly common situation, according to a recent Pew study that found that the proportion of American marriages in which the wife makes more money rose to 22 percent in 2007 from 4 percent in 1970.
I don’t know how it’s going for my sisters, but as my 40s and Verizon bills and mortgage payments roll on, I seem to have an ever more recurring 1950s housewife fantasy. In this magical Technicolor world, the breadwinner husband, Brad, leaves home (where his duties are limited to mowing the lawn and various minor home repairs) at 7 a.m. When he returns from work at 6 p.m., aside from a savory roast with mashed potatoes, his homemaker wife, Nancy, has pipe, slippers and a tray of Manhattans ready.”
Stricken? With a peculiar curse that’s somehow now common to oh perhaps yes, 30% or more of all modern ‘relationships’? Know any economics much? Demography? All those smart nice young lasses going to college at Higher rates than the boys & men? Yep. That has some consequences & natural outcomes. Higher earnings for those yes, Lucky Duckies! Why is this so damn mysterious? Why is it to be regretted? Is this not the exact triumph of the very model you espouse?
Now Ms. No Loh, all those 50-60’s era housewives? Were LESS Educated than hubby typically, and married & begetting children a decade earlier too. You could look it up. All the daunting services that were ‘required’ of the typical housewife then & the ‘stultifying’ resulting boredom of this ‘mindless drudgery’, led Betty Friedan to write the Feminine Mystique’ & to found NOW to demand ‘equal treatment’ for women in more realms of the economy. So what? Some 47 years later you could whine your delicious sounding whines to all the bo-hos in the NYT about what a lousy deal this was after all?! I guess this is why we never left the women in charge of the Cold War. On any given Thursday after lunch at the club/bar with the girls, you could hiccup and decide ‘Marx & Lenin’ were right after all! ‘I’ll give that nice cuddly man Khrushchev a call and bring him around for lunch for a nice talk’. Yeah like that.
It’s not that this train of thought is stupid as it is crassly, venally & profoundly silly. And folks? This is the best they’ve got too! Cheers, ‘VJ’
Our grandparents were capable of it. Even some of our parents. With some exceptions like you and Athol Kay, it’s not happening that much today. Average age of marriage keeps creeping up, further reducing the window. It’s some terrible combination of the whispers and the tingles delaying women, and a lack of achievement and confidence in men I think.
Actually I agree with Dave Alex on this one. People are not marrying young because they don’t face any pressure at all to do so. We have, for the first time in a long time (probably ever), permitted the development of a new life stage in our midst = a kind of extended adolescence, in terms of diminished responsibility *and* diminished behavioral expectations coupled with disposable income and lifestyle independence. Think: teens with cash and freedom from their parents. That’s an attractive life for a few years, and understandably so, really: get the fun part of life when (especially as a woman) you are at your most attractive, without being hamstrung by responsibilities or expectations that come from a committed partnership, and delay the onset of those responsibilities as much as possible. Guys are doing this for similar reasons, whether they are hanging out in Guyland or wiping the floors with women like Tucker Max. There simply is no social pressure on 20-somethings to get responsible until they are 30, and in fact a lot of messaging out there that explicitly tells them that their 20s are for fun and exploration — like college used to be, but now that lasts from 18-30!! And the parents support this, for the most part, really.
Numerous things facilitated this, like the pill and so on, but the major factor is that no-one expects anyone to get seriously committed until around 30, and so people are taking advantage of that. I mean, it’s not rocket science as to why people find the extended teenage years plus cash plus freedom to be enjoyable and worth delaying the responsibilities that come from an earlier lifetime commitment.
“There simply is no social pressure on 20-somethings to get responsible until they are 30”
I quibble with your concept of “responsible.” These are not intrinsic responsibilities of life – they are responsibilities that are created by people when they enter into marital partnerships or choose to have a child. One is a “responsible” adult if they support themselves and obey the law. It’s logically impossible for adults to “run” from responsibilities that don’t yet exist.
After years of fighting for feminism and to escape the “oppression” of the so-called patriarchy, more and more women are going to long for the 50s. Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.
If there is something that proves the inability of women to make good decisions, this is feminism. Women had the best deal possible with the traditional family in the 50s: they got a provider while they took care of the children, spending their time with the people they love the most (and children eventually went to the school), doing household chores at their own pace, with no schedule, with no boss.
And somebody told them that working in an office was fun, that evil men were keeping them from working because they wanted all this fun for themselves and they wanted to oppress women having them in the kitchen with a chain. Bad!Bad men!. And women were so dumb that they bought that.
And women stampeded into the workplace, looking for the office of glamour and alpha men that Cosmo depicts in its pages. They wanted liberation. And they find drudgery, stress, an angry boss and the need of working until retirement.
And I don’t want to talk about women that fought for casual sex with no commitments, giving men what they wanted and condemning themselves to a life of single motherhood.
Let’s admit it. Women are not very intelligent. You can bullsh*t them with the most unbelievable BS and they believe it. If men would have been the ones who were househusbands, they would never have accepted going to slave themselves in the workplace.
Now there is no turning back. Men will never give up the conquests they have had. For example, they will never wait for marriage to have sex. We are not that dumb to shoot ourselves in the foot. Women are.
Female hypergamy runs amok.
Crazed American woman (of Asian decent) refuses to be happy. She needs a good spanking, like any misbehaving child.
It’s women like this for whom Game is being shared widely.
@Badger
It’s logically impossible for adults to “run” from responsibilities that don’t yet exist.
Good point. But I think this is the case because our society has forfeited all moral authority to ask for more than the bare legal minimum. If we had a functioning church, even just a small one which only impacted its own community, this would be different (at least for that community).
No society could survive if its members chose to do only the bare legal minimum.
Brendan said:
“I mean, it’s not rocket science as to why people find the extended teenage years plus cash plus freedom to be enjoyable and worth delaying the responsibilities that come from an earlier lifetime commitment.”
I agree with you and David Alexander. The one thing I’d add is that there is an old term for this kind of thing, a term that people don’t use very much any more (even as they are surrounded by the behavior); that is decadence.
The richest and most privileged of societies have always ended up exhibiting decadent behavior. Indeed, decadence can probably even be defined as the flouting of middle class values. Middle class values (responsibility, thrift, chastity, etc.) which are all based on self-control, probably arose because such self-control was necessary to avoid one’s family losing its hard-earned wealth and falling into poverty. Through the second half of the 20th century, as Western society has become the most materially prosperous in history, more people were freed from adhering to such behavior.
This means that our current trend of ever-loosening mores is not irreversible. A prolonged economic decline could stop it in its tracks.
@Saint Louis — I agree. We could start seeing a turn back if the economic situation for most turns to be ad bleak in the middle term as it looks to be. Still it’s unclear. The working class now has low marriage rates and high bastardy rates and doesn’t seem to be turning to middle class values as a result of continued economic hardship. The deep poison of the ideas of the later 20th century runs deep now I think.
@nothingbut —
I think in terms of the leaders, feminism was about power. Taking economic/ earning power from men and giving it to women, while augmenting female sexual power — in each case something that really only benefited the best in class women ( either in careers or sex appeal ) but left the rest of them stuck in a system that made things worse for them by forcing them to work whether they liked it it not and lowering their ability to trade sec for commitment. Feminism was great for women like Friedan and Steinem. Not so good for Jane Average really.
I think women en masse went along because the idea of independence and power is appealing in theory even if it works out badly in practice. Plus it EAs an opportunity for a generation of women to stuck it to their husbands with broad social approval , and they did so in droves in the 70s as the divorce rate spiked. For many women that was the definition if liberation. And for the rest of the women thus was sold ad being a good thing for the herd so it was broadly backed by women. Fun was a part of that but it was more about independence and power. It was, and is, a political struggle against men as a class to appropriate power from us.
“Middle class values (responsibility, thrift, chastity, etc.) which are all based on self-control, probably arose because such self-control was necessary to avoid one’s family losing its hard-earned wealth and falling into poverty.”
Independently of wealth I think it is easier to live a happy life when discriminating between needs and desires and living accccording to your needs only and ignoring your desires. Modern marketing (and some ideologies) concentrate on blurring the lines between needs and desires and making people believe that their desires are needs.
@Lavazza
Slight correction:
Modern marketing (and some ideologies) concentrate on blurring the lines between needs and desires and
makingencouraging peoplebelieveto rationalize that their desires are needs.Yeah, that is better. Still the encouragement is so pervading and the rationalization reflex so common in so many people that the result is almost guaranteed.
Anyway, once you have found a way to “step out” on a regular basis it is quite possible to cultivate discernment. And it is quite easy to test if what you are told is one of your needs is actually only a desire.
You are entirely right Lavazza. I hope you didn’t mind my fine tuning.
lol @ a narcissist writing a parenting book.
@Brendan:
There simply is no social pressure on 20-somethings to get responsible until they are 30, and in fact a lot of messaging out there that explicitly tells them that their 20s are for fun and exploration — like college used to be, but now that lasts from 18-30!! And the parents support this, for the most part, really.
This is true. My husband was born to a family of all boys and he recently told our brood (of all girls) the ritual that took place in his parents’ house when one of the boys graduated high school:
For about a month after graduation, they were allowed to take it easy. No demands, no pressure, nothing. Halfway through the summer, their dad would tell them, “You need to decide what you’re going to do next. Military, trade school, community college (there wasn’t money for university so it wasn’t an option). If you choose work, that’s fine. Rent is $300 a month and is due September 1st. Chores are still expected and curfew is 1 AM. You’re still gettin’ off cheaper than you would on your own.”
His older brother didn’t heed the warning, didn’t have the rent on 9/1 and was promptly evicted. My hubby, second born, lasted until October. Most of the boys struck out on thier own because they figured if they had to pay rent they should have the freedom to come and go as they pleased. Not one lived at home past the age of 19. All but one of them were married by the time they were 22 years old, got education later, and are doing quite well. Only the brother who went to university (accumulating a mountain of debtalong the way incidentally), is still single.
Basically, they majority of boomer parents spoiled their kids, removed any semblance of real responsibility, and each successive generation has grown more immature.
Another specimen of why American women need to be avoided. Stastically, a man who marries one has a PROBABILITY (not a remote chance), of ending up just like the por sap who married Loh did.
An American bitch’s only intention in marriage is to clean a man out for alimony/child support at the earliest opportunity. Then, to make matters worse, she usually shacks up afterwards with a complete scumbag; and has the added vengeful satisfaction of flaunting that sick relationship in front of her broken ex-husband.
The fact that literary productions like Loh’s are standard reading among American women further proves that American women fundamentally hate men. Anybody who bothers to read womens’ magazines at newstands, or see any of their other media consumptions will never find men portrayed in anything but a negative light; usually as stalkers, rapists, abusers, bumbling dunderheads, &c,; never a single word in any of these pages about happy families, the qualities of a good husband/father. It’s page after page about the uselessness and stupidity of men; with plenty of female self-aggrandizement. The bitches eagerly consume this garbage and act it out accordingly on any unfortunate male she happens to meet.
A man’s best insurance is avoiding them like the plague!
I’m thinking that feminists believe that any kind of responsibility is a form of oppression.
And this is pretty much what I mean by self-centered parent:
A whole month. Wow. The largess. It disgusts me with it’s make believe benevolence. Me and my brother once received such largess from our father. We told him he could keeps his Christmas presents, we didn’t want them. Last time we got Christmas “gifts” from him. No loss. He was a fully employed electrical engineer who was busily piling up a 1 million dollar 401(k) for no discernible reason at the time. Later he would bitterly resent the fact that the divorce decree forced him to pay less than a third of the costs of our college.
Back to the “good dad”. Their dad was in a wildly hallucinatory state if he thought that chores+300 dollars a month for one bedroom SHARED bathroom and SHARED kitchen was “cheaper than on your own”. He simply wanted child-animal out as soon as possible. But rather than be upfront about it, he decided to lie. Because lying is the mark of a strong man. The writer admires the lie to. You can tell by her words.
And yeah, I would have left. A few years later he’d wonder when I’d talk to him again. My pithy answer would be why would I want to talk to an absolute stranger? His response would be something about him being a “father”. My pithy response would be he sure didn’t act like one. I would be very pleased with my wit, and the completely unique Elan with which I delivered my lines. I would probably nearly collapse patting myself on the back for teaching him a firm lesson in “emotional independence”.
It would really be the kindest thing I could do, because as these writers have pointed out, the cruelest thing is often the kindest. And any case, there is no way to know till you dial it up to 11 because you can.
Because you can is the key to raising a child. Focus on that and let it be your guiding light. Because you can.
After all, it’s what you do already.
Is P.T. Barnum off his meds or is he always this ornery?
“Is P.T. Barnum off his meds or is he always this ornery?”
Don’t feed the troll.
The increasing age of average marriage surely has a lot to do with the belief that post-graduate education in some form is necessary for career success. Even if the Masters or PhD is in some squishy-soft subject, or it’s a law degree from a second-tier school in a market that already has too many lawyers, people have been convinced that additional years of education have some sort of magical power.
Also, Hope mentioned “the refusal to be happy.” I think all the “self-esteem” preaching in K-12 schools has contributed a great deal to rising senses of entitlement; this is then followed up by university education which often seems intended to inculcate resentment toward the general society, or maybe the universe as a whole.
@PT:
The boys initially shared your opinion when they left home. Now that they’re older and most of the guys they grew up with are dead, in prison, or hanging on the street corner, they say what their dad did was probably thebest thing for them.
For the record, we would never do that to our kids, partly because they’re girls and need our protection, and partly because it is extremely lacking in grace. However, with hindsight, my husband doesn’t see through as bitter a lens as he did as a 19-year -old and looks after his dad very well in his old age.
However, we think today’s parenting that withholds responsibility from kids, allows young adults to leech off parents indefinitely, and encourages promiscuity as a valuable life learning tool is just as cruel to kids, if not moreso.
And by the way, my own coddled brothers are among the sad statistics that you can find everywhere you look concerning black men. There’s that.
And no, I don’t admire everything my father-in-law did, not by a long shot. BUT I’ve got one heck of a strong, responsible, capable husband and I don’t think what FIL did was abusive.
Teaching children frugality and fending for themselves is always a good idea. You do not know if they will have the same financial success as yourself and children growing up taking stuff for granted will have great difficulties in outperforming their parents financially.
It is one thing helping children investing and another thing helping children consuming.
It’s not just the women’s magazines, Eric, who promote feminazi propaganda dressed up as human interest stories. It’s hard to find any TV show that doesn’t buy into the men are stupid, weak, effeminate, not-there, etc philosophy. When my daughter still lived with me (before my wife took her away to live with her boyfriend and her) I often got to watch Disney shows. It was disgusting how seldom anything remotely resembling a masculine man was ever portrayed at all, let alone in a father role. One popular show, I-Carly I think, has the kid living with a young hippie type who I think is her older brother. He lets her do anything, run her own life, and provides nothing resembling discipline or correction. Any show that has an actual father portrays him as weak and effeminate, by no means the head of his household.
Kids who are raised on this propaganda start out with a big chip on their shoulders toward men, and may have no idea how a normal family is supposed to be anyway, since so many now come from broken homes.
“Only the brother who went to university (accumulating a mountain of debt along the way incidentally), is still single.”
It is funny how the one that went to a university had the worst outcome. I really think liberal arts is a huge waste of time and money for most people. All easy government backed student loan money has made college education an overpriced asset, like in a bubble. Student loans should be dischargeable through bankruptcy, I think that would would fix some of the problems at least. Unless your kid gets a full ride or close to that, you should just steer your kid to a community college/apprenticeship/vocational school/military. Unless you just happen to be loaded, then do whatever.
Athol Kay wrote about this:
http://www.marriedmansexlife.com/2010/04/dont-destroy-your-sex-rank-by-stupid.html
HHUF from the AutoAdmit has written a numberof threads on this subject, all of them quite hilarious:
http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1321460&mc=141&forum_id=2/&PHPSESSID=b0f705bbf5d5b923028a50aca1d2d523
@brendan
Feminism was great for women like Friedan and Steinem. Not so good for Jane Average really.
And yet, today, after decades of feminism, Jane Average will defend feminism till death and she will react to any criticism of feminism as if she was Torquemada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1s_de_Torquemada) listening to an apology of Judaism.
And all this while her life has been ruined by feminism. She would blame society, patriarchy, men, capitalism (mostly men). Everything except blaming herself or feminism.
Which only proves my point: women are not that intelligent.
Cluelessness, thy name is woman.
Everything except blaming herself or feminism.
I blame myself and feminism! 😛 Gloria Steinem is evil; there’s just no other word for it.
Thag, you are not average, you are exceptional 🙂
Knepper:
I certainly agree. All of the movies and television shows routinely portray men as fumbling dolts utterly dependent on a strong, intelligent woman. Murdoch’s networks are probably the worst example of this kind of programming.
PT:
‘Choose to abort or sue for support’.
That saying’s a lot closer to the ‘guiding light’ most women follow when it comes to children.
I can’t stand TV. The simple solution would be to not watch it, but for some reason people are mesmerized. I’m reminded of that Simpsons Halloween special where the giant advertisements came to life and in the end Paul Anka and Lisa were singing a song imploring people “just don’t look” because advertising loses its power if no one looks at it. Imagine if people just stopped paying attention to Hollywood… All these so-called “stars” getting all their narcissistic supply from schlebs who pay attention would whither into dust.
Aw well, shucks. I’ve made a pretty average mess of my life. 😛
woops wrong thread, lol
It was disgusting how seldom anything remotely resembling a masculine man was ever portrayed at all, let alone in a father role. One popular show, I-Carly I think, has the kid living with a young hippie type who I think is her older brother. He lets her do anything, run her own life, and provides nothing resembling discipline or correction. Any show that has an actual father portrays him as weak and effeminate, by no means the head of his household.
iCarly has been banned from my house and also from my son’s mother’s house, for precisely these reasons.
iCarly has been banned from my house and also from my son’s mother’s house, for precisely these reasons.
From the few episodes of this show that I’ve seen, I’ve yet to understand what’s so problematic from the show and how it’s different from Saved By the Bell for my age cohort. These tween/teen shows have minimal parental influence primarily because it’s simply easier for the exaggerated plots to work out that way. Otherwise, you might as well simply show re-runs of older shows with the same effect. FWIW, my friends and I back then were smart enough to understand that we could never mimic TV show behaviour because it simply wasn’t acceptable with our parents and the consequences would be harsh. Mind you, I suspect it was easier to swallow since I’m not white, middle class, and had immigrant parents that had no qualms about using beatings with a belt to punish us.
No society could survive if its members chose to do only the bare legal minimum.
Admittedly, I’ve never understood this type of argument from conservatives and traditionalists. How is it wrong if I delay having children or decide not to have children in order to focus on working and enjoying the fruits of my labour? Why am I under some obligation to society to get married and have children? Is it really magically decadent to lead a solitary life going to work, paying taxes, and not being a burden on the rest of society? To me, that isn’t decadence, but the ultimate expression of middle class values.
@DA:
Mind you, I suspect it was easier to swallow since I’m not white, middle class, and had immigrant parents that had no qualms about using beatings with a belt to punish us.
My parents were not immigrants, but I hear you on the rest of it. This occured to me briefly when I read PT Barnum’s response to my comment about how my husband was forced into manhood at age 19 rather than being allowed to spend years figuring out what he wanted to do with his life.
When he responded with his rant about his father not wanting to pay for his college I laughed. Neither my husband’s or my own family had money to pay for a four-year university education. 401K? Ha! Every penny went to pay the bills of the month. It wasn’t until we were all grown (I was the youngest of 7) that my parents were able to look forward to investing in a retirement, and that only because my dad has a young, working wife and spent 30 years working in a public sector job.
The television shows like Saved by the Bell were lke flights of fantasy to me, having absolutely no basis in reality. I fail to see what is so cruel and unkind about requiring young adults to be, well, adults. In my daily life, I am confronted by other moms (most of them at least a decade older than me) who balk at the fact that our girls have chores. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard mothers say, “We believe school is our child’s job.”
Where I am blessed to live now is something that I am experiencing as first generation in my family. We lived in a working class neighborhood, and had what we needed, but my house is much bigger and nicer than the one I grew up in. And my kids have waytoo much crap. I admit it. I didn’t have half of what my kids have, but we seemed to have more fun. These other mothers I see around the neighborhood? This lifestyle is nothing new for them.
My husband and I approach parenting more the way parents did a couple of generations ago because that’s how we were raised: be responsible for yourself when you want to live however you want. To be sure, our parents were hardened in some ways by virtue of being coming of age in America during the 1940’s and all that came with being balck during that time. Like you DA, having our hides bruised with a belt was not off the table when we misbehaved. We are doing a few things differently, but we are being very careful to hold on to many of the values they gave us that are worthwhile and time tested. I guess that’s why marrying young didn’t seem like it would take away from our life in any way.
After all, it’s HARD to explain the nobility of selfishness and nastiness when everyone doesn’t moo as one.
I said he paid less than a third. He paid about 300 dollars per month to my college. This was the 1990s. I very much doubt that your parents were so poor they couldn’t scrape together that small sum. However, whether they WANTED TO scrape that together is another matter entirely, ISN’T IT. My scholarships paid for most of my college with the rest payed by debt and small jobs.
So your parents weren’t nice and your brothers still blew-up, how surprising. Fortunately, we can ignore that because it doesn’t fit in with your narrative. And for the record, while some people consider spanking being “wrong”, I believe that other things are many many times more important. The writers attitude towards her parents having any money to spend on her well shows who the focus of their family was, though. I too had a father with a million dollars in his 401(k) who couldn’t shut up about me sending him to the poor house. 300 dollars a month at a time
I harp on money, but it is merely a reflection of attitude. Lots of things reflect that attitude. Selfish advice, deliberate cruelty, lack of concern for the health of the child-animal, and many, many other things.
So his father continues his selfishness. I stand surprised. That such nobility as he displayed in his youth would suddenly transform, without any change in his behavior, to mooching. I know a woman who will never marry or have children because of her mother’s enormous feeding on her time and money. So good, so pure. Because she is a mother, and a mother would sacrifice anything for her child. This is true even when the mother’s own actions have ruined the daughter’s life. A common narrative, we all stumble upon the truth but move on quickly.
My brother is dead. Moving on from the truth is somewhat hard for me, I’m sure you can see why. So there, you now have your other “completely unverified single counter-example”.
The only thing odd about it is it’s actually true.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard mothers say, “We believe school is our child’s job.”
From an aspirant middle class perspective, some of the other mothers may have their kids lives scheduled to the point where doing chores interferes with other work that their kids may be doing. Others are simply spoiling their kids, and for others, they simply don’t trust their kids to do it (read: not patient enough) or it eats away at their sense of homemaking. My brother and I did chores around the house, but that’s because our mother has fibromylagia and a number of other conditions, so it was necessary for us to sometimes wash our own plates and do our laundry. Regardless, if you’re in a social class that can afford maids and uses a dishwasher, then kids doing chores is a weird concept, especially in the era of helicopter parents.
Every penny went to pay the bills of the month.
My parents blew their money on paying bills and sending my brother and I to Catholic School and then college, so they never really saved up anything. It’s one of those things that starts to burn now that my dad isn’t around, and I de facto take care of my mom. I’m probably now a bigger believer in life insurance and asset protection now more than ever. Regardless, my parents pretty much did the best they could to take care of us, something that a lot of people in their cohort believed in. American notions of kicking your kids out of the house at 18 seem foreign to them since in Haiti, one generally stayed at home until one married. The idea has always been that you work hard for your kids, and you repay the favour by doing the same for your children once you have them so that they can have a better life than you did. To my parents, it seemed really cruel and anti-family to go have your kids go pay rent to some landlord for some weird sense of independence when they can stay at home and be a family and your kids can build wealth for their future.
BTW, I owe you an e-mail reply to the comments you left on my blog.
@PT:
So your parents weren’t nice and your brothers still blew-up, how surprising.
You presume so much, lol!
1) When did I say my parents weren’t nice?
2) My brothers blew up because my dad (and he readily admits this, being the honest and godly man that he is) spent so much energy trying to make sure his girls didn’t end up pregnant like so many other girls in the ‘hood that he didn’t pay the attention he should to the company his boys were keeping.
In the end, PT, what you and I have is a fundamental difference in what we believe the role of a parent should be. No amount of back and forth will change that. Secondly, being a parent of young people on the cusp of adulthood has allowed both my husband and myself to see our parents through eyes of grace and gratitude more more easily than we would have had we not raised children ourselves.
Your father may have been terrible. I won’t argue the point. My father wasn’t perfect and my husband would never claim my FIL was. In the end, this is our position:
No one not even our parents, OWED us anything once we’re old enough to fend for ourselves, particularly when we wanted to call our own shots in life. Period.
“No one not even our parents, OWED us anything once we’re old enough to fend for ourselves, particularly when we wanted to call our own shots in life. Period.”
The one thing that I think we need to keep in mind is that no one is perfect. Of course between anyone, what best practices we think are applicable when it comes to any topic is going to differ either a little, or significantly. However, while I’m not a Christian, looking back there are quite a few useful lessons which can be found in the bible.
Check the fruit on the tree.
Was your FIL perfect Terry? Nope, neither were my parents, but, you have a husband and some BIL’s who can fend for themselves, my brother and I are happily married and my sister has relatively high standards for the friends she keeps of her own. Seems to me that they did pretty good wouldn’t you say?
We are always going to be able to nitpick on somethings about how we where raised, but just how many posters even on this blog would trade even 90% of it away to make their parents less harsh or easier in their methods? Speaking for myself, I have pretty serious ADHD, if my parents where any less strict, I would be in jail by now. Heck, it was because I wasn’t incarcerated that when people continually asked about my symptoms I dismissed them.
Check the fruit on the tree; if you’re a productive member of society, then your parents have done a decent job of raising you, I would wager that the closer you are living your life the way you want to, the better a job your parents did.
I agree with you, Omnipitron, 100%. Your point is exactly the point I was trying to make to P.T. Barnum.
Take all the credit for the successes, and completely ignore the failures. Yeah. Kinda like an inverse of “responsibility” eh? I see now, an America parent achieves balance by holding his child responsible for everything, while forgiving himself/herself for everything. Yes, so much makes sense now.
No one, not even our children, OWED us anything once we’re….. oh wait, your father-in-law is moocher man.
And at what point do you define “old enough”? I’m quite sure father-in-law was selfish, cruel, and nasty when they were seven to.
After all, isn’t it a given in America that 7 year-old boys should “deal with it” when three ten year old boys decide to terrorize him? Cause that’s what daddy or mommy would do if three adults attacked and beat the daylights out of them… oh wait no… that’s not right is it?
I see again. We have achieved balance by having the state baby the adults, especially the women, while abandoning the children to the wolves. Yes, yes I see now. The children are the adults and the parents are the children.
This is why you don’t talk to people who “moo wrong”. Wrong mooing can disrupt the carefully arrange and completely insane “thoughts” by which you guide your life.
@ Sideshow aka PT Barnum
Here is the deal I don’t like talking to feminists or trolls, for one reason, you argue with fools you become one yourself. Now, to start.
1. Mooing, dude, if you haven’t noticed you bash anything that anyone says and don’t promote or agree with anything else. Maybe the person with an issue is YOU. Trust me when I say that I couldn’t be bothered with agreeing with you as doing so seems to be very difficult. I bet I’m not the only one.
2. Here is the deal; our parents don’t owe us anything but life. I don’t care if you think I’m mooing to you, the world doesn’t care if Omnipitron is mooing to PT Barnum, the world doesn’t know who we are capice? We get a start, and then it’s up to us, and from the sounds of it, it seems that you may not have kids. If you do then I apologize, but if you don’t….STFU as you haven’t the foggiest idea of what it takes to raise kids. Lots of ideas seem kewl in theory, then life gives you the truth and you have to humble yourself.
At the end of the day, you are simply a troll, which others have inferred but haven’t come right out and said so. Just to preempt, whatever foolishness you come back with will simply prove my point, the more you argue the more you prove to everyone that you should be ignored. How many people are running around to prove you right?? How Many.
Fade to black……
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Justin says:
Is what she is saying any worse than what we read every day in the Manosphere?
What you hear in parts of the MRA sphere is the most bitter disgusted with the opposite sex that’s out there in public and print, and should be compared to the most radical feminism. Which it doesn’t come close to with maybe rare individual exceptions. (Don’t hang out in the regularly bitter places myself or for that matter pure MRA places, except to give and sometimes get divorce theft real info.)
further most MRA’s don’t want to be selfish, but feel badly stung by selfish women, or see others stung. Loh is championing female selfishness and basically disregard for husbands.
This is by a woman who identifies as a feminist but not a radical one, and is writing in a mainstream publication.
It’s disgusting that she feels and evidently gets support so much support for her immensely selfish attitudes that she feels “empowered” to celebrate them in article after article in one of our principal upper middle brow magazines.
It’s coming from one direction, and if you can’t understand that, you’re being dim. I’m not saying every marital breakdown is only the woman’s fault (though I think it is by far most of the time. She just isn’t really feeling it as much anymore and thinks that make it fine to split apart the family, take the kids, take child support=stealth alimony in high after tax percentage amounts these feminist days, and most of the time get a lot more money than she brought in, i.e. take a lot of hers.) I am saying that the whole public viewpoint has become whatever she’s thinks might be most fun for her should determine her actions, despite the fact that it’s well documented that children in most cases suffer very considerably emotionally and in outcomes from divorce when they’re still minors at home. Whereas American society has about never thought a man should feel free to leave his wife and child (or worse take the children with him) for that reason. It’s disgusting. And you just don’t get it
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I read the article and, more than anything, she seems exasperated by what feminism has done to the homestead.
I’m an American woman and glad I read this. It’s true what foreign women say. American men have all turned into fags.
Listen to all the terrible things we women are (childish, immature, stupid, fat, in need of a spank, bad at sex, men are superior, dick is superior) sounds frankly like faggot shit all women have heard in a thousand male gay leather bars where men routinely meet, drink, dance, sweat then fuck each other in the ass through wall holes where the whole idea is never see their face.
Do yourselves and all women worldwide a favor: since you hate us so much and menz and dikkz iz superior?
COME OUT.
Because my European Russian man is all man and we have no problem. He likes my income, he drools over my body, and he gives me a good 8 inch rock hard dicking you’re all too tiny, too busy chasing Princess Peach and frankly too fucking gay to match.
Feminism made one good mistake alright: it failed to persuade at least one full American generation of women to abort all their male fetuses.
Evidence: you and the rest of the Manosphere.
All women everywhere need to D&C the entire lot of you and be done with American men for about let’s say um THE NEXT TEN GENERATIONS so European men can clean up the mess and move us all on. Great comedy reading by the way, boys.
Bend, spread your cheeks and be the woman for what you obviously consider superior. Google “do straight guys ever…?” and see how bad they want you. Clearly mutual. Have at it.
You won’t be missed, not one minor speck of a fuck.
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