Views on the Status of Marriage

I hope this topic doesn't die again.

Has anyone read the articles by Rachel Held Evans? She's a liberal Evangelical (I realize that this sounds like an oxymoron, as it's different from what one expects, but that's actually true) whose views on gender roles are basically: Let people do what they're best at and figure out how to make their relationship work.

She's been married for 10 years so far, and she fights against strict gender-role worldviews.

Sounds all right to me

What do you mean?

Roles in relationships, child raising and so on should be determined by the individual person and what they're good at. Not any of this gender nonsense

Try telling that to the manosphere, the "alpha male" types, who are anal about gender roles. These are the idiots who complain "durr hurr American women are a mixture of men and women blah blah blah marry a Chinese wife because they're submissive and loyal herp derp"

In the comments section of one of Rachel Held Evans articles (I think something like "the legalism of gender roles" or something like that; her site is blocked at work so I can't find it, but it's called "Exhibit A" in another article that links to it), there are quite a few people saying that their marriages worked out because they figured out what they were good at and did it.

One person even said they knew a couple that was constantly talking about rules, where it was always "I do this because I'm the man, and you do this because you're the woman" and so on, and it looked so strange from outside. In this person's own marriage, their roles were determined simply by what they were good at, and it fell into place naturally.

In fairness, that attitude exists on both sides of the gender spectrum. For every man that gripes about women not fulfilling their gender role and wants a woman who "knows her place", there is a woman griping about men not fulfilling their gender role and asking, "Where have all the REAL men gone?"

Both of these groups are actively reinforcing the Patriarchy.

edited 26th Feb '14 9:05:20 AM by TobiasDrake

Both groups probably see that as a good thing. Indeed, "MRAs" point to both of them as "proof" that we need to go back to The Way Things Were, even if such ways don't work for everyone, and had a lot of problems.

Okay, finally I got some more data on marriage that benefits the egalitarian view and puts to lie the desires of "alphas" and "MRAs".

A study from 1980 to 2000, that studied 2,000 families over 20 years, and later interviewed 2,100 additional families in 2000 looked at causes of divorce and a happy marriage. Social liberals will love (most of) their findings.

It also found that cohabitation is bad - but the research really suggests that it's bad because people who cohabitate first tend to drift into marriage without having thought about it ahead of time. That is, they are more likely to become married simply because "Why not?", but aren't compatible enough for that.

Also, divorce in a high-conflict family improves life for kids, to the point where they're almost as well off as kids from stable marriages. Divorce in a low-conflict family throws kids off-guard and can really screw them up. (I've seen it happen to my cousins, as per my aunt cheating on my uncle and then him divorcing her; there was no indication anything was wrong until the cheating was suddenly discovered)

And finally, here's a religious website that advocates equal roles in marriage, and they point to a TON of studies to back up their point. The studies are referenced in the bottom of the article.

I don't have time to go through them all, and many of the studies aren't online but are instead published in physical journals (who reads those anymore?), but if you guys want to browse around, I'd like to see what you find.

edited 9th Mar '14 6:08:37 AM by BonsaiForest