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Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Educated Harpy, Present and Accounted For
Today I learned that I am relationship poison. At least according to Forbes, which warns you not to marry any woman who has a college education and/or earns more than $30,000 a year. Such women's desire to be treated like human beings can only make you unhappy.
Strangely, Forbes doesn't offer any marriage advice to women earning above the poverty line -- apparently our dastardly degrees have put us far beyond the realm of human happiness. But maybe, just maybe, we should be marrying "down" as well. After all, if we marry go-getters like ourselves, who'll pick up after our million dollar homes, and soothe our sniffles with homemade soup? Who will raise our economically-advantaged spawn and parade about our bedrooms in tiny, shiny pairs of underpants in order to please us? Not that damn attorney/doctor/professor. It's all he can do not to discover the cure for cancer when you'd rather he was dusting. update from Rev. Check out the drama over at boingboing over this article. First they pull it, and everyone posts the cached version, now they've reposted it with a counterpoint. Nice try Forbes. Were your editors asleep or just stupid? How many of them are sleeping on the couch tonight? |
13 Comments:
The one-sidedness of that article (and, it sounds like, some of that "research") is appalling. While it tut-tuts about those FILTHY EDUCATED WHORES having office affairs and running off with THAT DICK FROM H.R., not a whisper aout male affairs. Or is it just that the Manly Men have Manly flings with the secretaries, but wouldn't dare leave the Sainted Goodwife and their two point five Little Angels.
Also left unspoken is the amusing implication that the wife is leaving her Manly Man for someone better. Ouch. (But don't think too much about that, men, it's just that she's a FILTHY WHORE.)
But even moreso than that, I think that passage has unwittingly stumbled upon the true reason: compatibility. Marry early, and you're effectively cutting yourself off from meeting other, potentially more compatible, partners (unless you're not averse to cheating and divorce -- though again, according to the author, you risk accelerating the heat death of the universe if you dare to get divorced. But I digress.)
Anyway, where was I? Right, compatibility. I'd like to see if any of these studies (which I suspect to be fairly poor, and/or funded by conservative "pro-family" groups) controlled for the age of these couples, and specifically when, in the arc of their careers, they married. I highly suspect that couples who marry later in life, after their careers are established and they are certain they know what they want in life, are just as stable as "traditional" marriages, if not moreso.
If they marry at a very early stage -- say, straight out of college -- well, that's a time when people are still uncertain as to what they want out of a career and a life partner. Their identity is still being shaped, and exposure to the real world will only change it even further. As they meet new people, discovering new points of reference, they may discover that they're not so compatible.
And furthermore, if the "traditional" wife is just as unhappy in her marriage as one of them newfangled feminazi edumacated females... or if she feels vaguely incompatible... what recourse does she have? What point of reference does she have to the wider world to gauge the overall value of her marriage? Maybe she doesn't know any better, and will be less likely to leave and more likely to rate herself as "happy" (even if she isn't).
I'm surprised that the author didn't pick up on something so elementary, but I guess it would have interfered with his thesis ("FILTHY EDUCATED WHORES"). No wonder he broke it down to something as absurdly simplistic as that the wife found someone she "like(s) more than you." Pfeh. Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Maybe she just left you because you're a dick.
3:07 PM, August 23, 2006
Who the hell publishes these journals? And what academic research journal would publish the following:
When your spouse works outside the home, chances increase they'll meet someone they like more than you. "The work environment provides a host of potential partners," researcher Adrian J. Blow reported in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, "and individuals frequently find themselves spending a great deal of time with these individuals."
In other news, the correlation-causation errors spewed throughout this thing make my head hurt.
In other news, men whose wives do everything for them are happier. And the women's views? Well, their husbands say they're happier. Those poor little women can't think for themselves, you know.
3:11 PM, August 23, 2006
The OBVIOUS misogyny aside, I can't believe how badly this article treats men.
According to this piece men are too stupid to take care of themselves, to lazy to clean up or take care of the kids, have such frail egos that the can't deal with a woman who is their equal and to chidish to even consider how they might contribute to the problem.
And they say feminists bash men? Whatever. This article does it worse.
it should be titled "Don't marry whining men looking for a mommy"
3:31 PM, August 23, 2006
Iya, you are right. My favorite part of the article was the slideshow, where it states that a man is more likely to get ill if his wife is educated.
Apparently, these mythical men need someone constantly looking out for them if they are to refrain from getting scurvy or eating radioactive waste for dinner.
3:39 PM, August 23, 2006
Eh, I don't think it's that the men are too incompetent to do those things; it's that they shouldn't have to. Hurts a man's pride, don'tcha know. Makes him unhappy. And if the kids see Daddy cooking dinner, they'll grow up gay!
4:13 PM, August 23, 2006
Oh yes, but apparently, the men in this article not only don't want to perform various tasks, but they simply don't/can't. If someone else doesn't clean for them, they can't be arsed to do it themselves. They just live in filth.
So not only are they arrogant, they're incompetent. Brilliant combo, mysterious social research man! I think we have discovered a new species, homo chiponshoulderus or something.
4:59 PM, August 23, 2006
The article's author appears to have a penchant for articles of this nature, having previously penned one entitled "The Economics of Prostitution," which contained the following gem of prose:
Wives, in truth, are superior to whores in the economist's sense of being a good whose consumption increases as income rises--like fine wine. This may explain why prostitution is less common in wealthier countries. But the implication remains that wives and whores are--if not exactly like Coke and Pepsi--something akin to champagne and beer. The same sort of thing.
Wow, it's so nice to be treated like a consumer choice, rather than a human being with my own will and unique destiny.
Also -- I wonder if real men drink their whores out of the bottle.
5:33 PM, August 23, 2006
Forbes may be reconsidering its position as the article is no longer there. But I can tell right away that anyone who believes champagne and beer are the same sort of thing certainly is a giant asshole.
-JE
5:53 PM, August 23, 2006
Hee hee. I read that as "my own will and unique DENTISTRY". Not that I have any idea what that would mean.
6:01 PM, August 23, 2006
Man, now I'm having second thoughts...
7:00 PM, August 23, 2006
Ah, the reverend has considered the possibility of spending the rest of his adult life being treated like an adult . . . and the thought shakes him to the core.
9:17 PM, August 23, 2006
C'mon, that's every man's nightmare.
You telling me I can't rock and roll all night and party ev er ry day?
10:04 PM, August 23, 2006
"Forbes may be reconsidering its position as the article is no longer there. "
It actually is still on line, just moved and a new counter poitn article was put up by a female staffer. It's called "Don't marry a lazy man"
http://www.forbes.com/home/2006/08/23/Marriage-Careers-Divorce_cx_mn_land.html
9:03 AM, August 24, 2006
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