In my experience women, especially mothers, were the "core" (center) of family life. Men were the core providers, focusing more on work than on family. An important role of mothers was to point their sons to the (hopefully good) example of their fathers. Sadly this was in the past. Today there are no such roles for either men or women, thus the confusion and uncertainty that plagues our young people, both boys and girls.
The problem is, if you make women the "core" of family life, you're denying them agency to discern and pursue their own vocation. It really was oppressive, and hideously bad.
What I don't really understand is why re-negotiating this has been so traumatic. If my household can do it (wife, happy breadwinner, husband, happy working part time and doing most child-raising and domestic support stuff, neither in crisis about what it means to be a man or a woman), why is each couple working out what's best for their particular family something other people seem to find insurmountable?
The only way that you can make someone do something that he doesn't want to do is to make it desirable and a thing of value for him. The probability of divorce makes marriage hardly desirable at all to anyone anymore, except the social activitists who are fine with marriage, as long as it is completely changed into something else than has existed before throughout Western history. Many young people, especially those who are children of divorce, opt out.
My body, my choice absolves men of the responsibility that reality once opposed on them. It is the get-out-of-marriage-for-free card. The field of sexual pleasure remains wide, wide open, there on the outside.
It is the principle of vice-versa. Women absolve themselves of the responsibility of family by their choice to exercise the option of killing their baby too. Vice versa. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
It is all about the fun now, and men have vase resources of fun available to them, where the option of fun without responsibility is a real option. There is no downside to too much fun in the nanny state. Men are dying from too much fun at higher rates than women, because men's physiology statistically trends to the extremes. What could be a more powerful experience that a drug exponentially stronger than heroin. Only those who experience fun on the extremes can understand.
Yes all authority is oppressive. The patriarchy oppresses, like any system of authority does. Fatherhood is but one potential path among virtually infiinite other paths to go. It takes effort to makes the path of lesser fun to be recognized as the more desirable one. It takes socialization with the goal of fatherhood being the expected option to take, the manly option even. Entire religions and moral codes have been written in order to make patriarchy understood to be the desirable than the fun choices are.
But parameters that guide us into accepting norms, such as fatherhood, are oppressive-to everyone who is expected to submit to them regardless of identity group!
And so, this is what freedom without parameters looks like. Women have been liberated from oppressive patriarchy. Patriarchy has been abandoned as undesirable behavior. Men are exactly as they have been socially engineered to be. This is what God tossing a wrench into the plans of the social engineers, who imagined a world without the world of fathers oppressing their families in marriage. This is what that world looks like.
By freeing women from the patriarchy, men are freed from the patriarchy too. Vice versa is like a law of social physics. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Vice versa.
But there is no social engineering plan that is so dumb that people will not double down on it in response to its failure.
The problem here is, you blame everything on abortion, as if abortion is a constant reality in most relationships. But most relationships will never be confronted with a decision about abortion. People continue to get married at high rates, and then still find that there are difficulties, even (especially) when there is a commitment to raise children together. So what then explains these dynamics when abortion is not a factor?
And I am still, far, far better off today than my grandmothers were. So if this is post-patriarchy (not that it actually is, the patriarchy is alive and kicking) I'll take it over their reality, hands down.
Because such attempts often come from a feminine perspective that doesn't understand men. There does appear to be a crisis of sorts among American boys, and to say it's unfair to women to investigate that crisis seems to me to miss the point.
Don't women and men need to work on this together? But I don't think anyone suggested that it's unfair to women to have this discussion or to investigate any crisis. Sounds like a necessary part of working together to build a better future.
With that said, the point may not always be expressed well, so let me give it a go.
The trend in education has been, for a long time, that women dominate teaching. There are multiple studies that show the result is to create classroom environments where girls thrive and boys don't. One such study from many years back is Christina Hoff Somers' The War Against Boys. Since there is also a strong correlation that those who succeed in school succeed after school, that is troubling. IIRC there are also studies showing declining rates of boys going on to college, graduating, placing in the professional work force, etc.
I recall one particular situation where boys who were caught fighting in school were forced to sit in chairs, face each other, hold hands, and share their feelings. The result was an increase in violence, not a decrease. Guys (and often mothers of boys) seem to get why that is an obvious outcome.
So, back to the "tough" thing. Tough is a pretty ambiguous word, but there is good data to indicate things like the average male is stronger and faster than the average female. That's simply the way it is. I do, however, understand your concern with such things. Too often the statistics are misunderstood. Further, they are often interpreted as a value judgement (which was your reaction). Those statistics are taken as: All men are stronger than me and better than me.
That's not what the statistics say. I use tennis as an example. The top female tennis player in the world could beat me without breaking a sweat. That's because neither of us are average. She's an above average tennis player and I'm below average. Statistics do not apply to individuals.
Second, whether strong men are good or bad is a value judgement. It's a cultural thing. I happen to think physical strength is a good thing. But that doesn't lead me to conclude men are better than women. It is true, though, that in some cultures that is the unfortunate result.
Finally, there are areas where women test higher than men. That's the way it is. It doesn't make me feel inferior. Nor do I think it's a good idea to judge individuals based on the averages. In fact, it's improper math. If I'm applying for a job, a scholarship, whatever, the individual needs to be judged on his or her individual capabilities.
So, bottom line, in many areas that people think of as "tough" men test higher. Not all areas, but many. That's the way it is. It would be nice, though, if we could get past being offended by that and move to helping boys who are failing.
Your point about statistics not applying to individuals is a really good one, and I agree. The problem is that statistical averages feed into stereotypes, which then feed into negative treatment of women.
The education thing is difficult. I'm aware that there are particular difficulties for boys/men. But there are also (still) particular difficulties for girls/women. (On another forum I've been following a lengthy discussion on the merits of single-sex vs. co-ed schooling, and how girls tend to do better when there aren't boys in the classroom to dominate discussion, for example).
I'm not sure that blaming it all on a preponderance of women teachers is the right answer.
One thing I observe - as the parent of a child with autism - is that our educational systems tend to be very one-size-fits-all. And while that's very understandable when you're dealing with large cohorts and limited resources, it's not what's going to lead to the best results for every individual child. I'm not by any means an educational or pedagogical expert, though, so I don't pretend to have all the answers.
More money might allow smaller classes and more specialised approaches? Is that something our society could sustain, though? Perhaps we ought to prioritise it?
(Oh, and in response to immediately preceding posts, I don't in any way believe in distinctly male and female souls, psyches, etc. We're biologically different, but underneath that, we're all just human).
