If you re-read my quote it specifically says it is "difficult" to live without two incomes. In my community the average wage of a 2 income household is about $50,000.00 per year. I am sure that it would be extremely difficult if one of those spouses lost their job.

My priority has always been on my kids, i do not live to work, i work to live. I spend quality time with my children when i am not at work and have never taught them that money is the most important thing. Money can not buy the most important things in life.

You should however have to provide a roof over their heads, food on the table and clothes on their back and in today's world it is difficult to do without both spouses working.

I think women have always tended to be generalists and men tended to be specialists. I could list several possiblities as to why this has happened. But most of them probably have a general theme that historically, men have left their women (be it to go to war, go explore, go find their fortune or go find someone else), which has forced theme to develop capabilities outside whatever is defined as their traditional role at the time.

I think women being generalists has been amplified even more since WWII, when woman had to go to work outside the home. Amplified more during various feminists movements, more again during the 80's as people pushed for more and more wealth, still more and more in the last 20 years as it becomes increasingly difficult for a single income household to stay above the poverty level. In the last 60 years, most moms have been raising their daughters to be generalists.

Men have not followed suit. There are probably a couple of reasons for this, (some maybe just don't want to, others might be lazy), but I suspect the biggest reason why they have not followed suit is that it puts them at a competitive disadvantage. A man who tells his boss he's going to work a little less so he can spend more time with his family is going to get passed over. A "sensitive" man is going to have a harder time in combat.

In interpersonal reltionships, I think this dynamic is difficult. If their are 6 things, or roles, or activities a husband and wife need to accomplish, the generalist (usually wife) says, I think we should both do each of the 6 things at a 50/50 split. The specialist (usually husband) says I think you should do 3 of them and I should do the other 3. To me this is the classic cleaning the house arguement - husband says I work, you keep the house clean - wife says I work too, you should help me keep it clean. Husband says yes, but you don't work as hard or as much as I do. On and on it goes.

I think this creates a negative perception of their spouse in both parties. Both parties devalue what the other brings to the table. The wife may eventually view the husband as obsolete. She doesn't need what he does because she can do it herself. She devalues him and ultimately loses respect for him. The husband may eventually view the wife has inadequate. He doesn't care if she works, since that is his role, she needs to do a better job keeping the house clean. He devalues her and ultimately loses respect for her.

IMHO, marriages that prosper solve this in one of two ways. Either the generalists becomes a specialist or the specilist becomes a generalist. The SAHM might be an example of a generalist becoming a specialist, and these "transitions" seem to happen without a lot of turmoil. Although, I could be missing something.

However, When the specialist tries to become a generalist, things don't seem to go as smoothly. I suppose it's just the nature of the transition. Adding skills is generally harder than dropping them.

I think this is were feminization and emasculation come into play. If the man is trying to become a generlist, it will appear that he is being "feminized". However, as someone else posted, I'm not sure if this is the issue. I think the issue is the confusion around this transition. I think this is where the man is at risk of being emasculated. He is confused about what is he supposed to pick up and what is he supposed to drop. Initially, he tries to follow his wife's lead. But he usually fails. Tries again and fails, tries again, etc. These successive rounds of trying and failing emasculate him. He loses any direction for himself.

I think men fail at this for a couple of reasons. Certainly some are just incapable of it. Still others just won't do it. But I think the average Joe fails because its a constantly moving target. I think women suffer a great deal of stress about being generalists. At times they are in conflict about it. I think this conflict and stress produces a lack of consistency in what they want from their husbands. I also think this lack of consistency is why so much is written about why men need to better understand women, as it changes so much. Most women I know completely deny this lack of consistency exists, but I've observed it too often to agree with that.

Just my opinions.

This would be a great time for people to start going to night school and get degrees that will get them out of that pay bracket.

Well according to this thread he is NOT an atypical male. My take on this thread is that it is saying that society is teaching males to be that way (being feminized) and i do not believe that is true in my experiences.

rprynne, that was fascinating! Thank you!

I understand your point about the thread. Believe me, he is NOT typical, lol.

I READ your quote just fine, if you read what *I* said, it is that NEEDS are much different that WANTS and "most" two-income families choose that way of life for WANTS, not needs.

FTR, I too feel strongly that men have been demasculized by women trying to usurp their position as head of the household.

There really is no bigger a turn-on for me than a man who desires to be the head of the household, and I have NO PROBLEM letting my H do so. To try and usurp that would and SHOULD be inusulting to him.

The bible is very clear on this and to try and go against it has been disasterous in every sense of the word.

Getting back to OUCH'S original topic...

I don't know if it is "obvious" to everyone ! But I do understand the point you're trying to make.



Meaning ??? ... that if they don't "understand" their woman they are not really a "man"? I think that is what you meant. And I agree with you, that is really a deeply flawed basis for achieving man-status.



B R A V O




Yes. That means the woman gets to be the woman and the man gets to be the man.
There ARE fundamental differences.
And those differences make life oh-so-wonderful !



Please, the media is not the boss of me.


The media is not so kind to women either.
I could argue point-for-point the number of TV characters that make women look very unapealing. But I won't ... because I don't think this thread needs another man vs woman debate.


You are talking about the general lack of strong male role models, aren't you?
I think it would be good if you discussed the role models you think are worth their weight in manly attributes. Can you come up with some?


A point overlooked by some. Worth repeating.



So, can you come up with female role models that go against this trend? Current, not past.


That was my number 1 concern after I discovered my H's adultery. My complete loss of respect for him. That was the damage that worried me the most.
I know, and I have said many times, I cannot remain married to H if I don't respect him. He did not need to prove to me he loved me, he needed to behave in a way I could RESPECT for our marriage to go forward. That is a huge difference I see on this forum between myself and so many other betrayed wives.

To me - respect is the foundation on which love can be restored.

Without respect - there was no hope for us.


Are you telling me you did not start this thread to discuss voting rights? How DARE you

Do you realize how many people with degrees are out of work right now? And that income is not far from my state's average income.

Believe me we have a 2 family income for needs not for wants, we do without a lot just for needs.

Also...in our M, it has not always been this way.

Pre-A, I DID try to usurp my husband's position as head of the household, though not on purpose...but because he had not been taught to BE the head of the household. It had not been modeled for him and it seemed like it came onto me out of default.

This led to RESENTMENT and LACK OF RESPECT on both of our parts...and we all know where THAT led.

Allowing him to BE the head of household has changed our M and relationship dramatically...in a very good, POSITIVE way.

I would never want to go back to being the pseudo head-of-the-household. That very clearly created a M loaded with resentment and lack of respect.

Still_Crazy,

I thought I would respond to some of your comments. You asked You can vote, I just won't count it. You do understand the law of the pack don't you? Human's have always operated as a "society" and one of the functions of that society is exclusion of those they don't want to deal with.

Remember people did not always vote, for most of our "civilized" times going back thousands of years, there was no concept of voting. It was simply "might makes right". And since society was determined by "might", and men are the bigger, stronger, faster, guess who ruled? Common, please remember that even today democracy is an experiment not a long standing form of "civilized rule".

You also said Oh come on S_C, you don't like the democratic model??? You don't like to discuss things to death? You don't like to consider every little detail of what "might" happen if anyone did anything? Ok, I am tweeking you a bit here. Someday, I will tell you how at 40 something I finally learned the true definition of a functionary.



Whether you agree with it or not, the fact is lack of control of emotions (crying is the outward manifestation of this) is a very deadly thing to do either physically (yes driving comes to mind) or sociologically. I did not say crying was bad, I simply said what I was taught. But, then again I have also been many many more fights in my life than you have.



Ok, here is where I get exercised. YOUR attitude is exactly why schools are a hostile environment for boys. You don't view what we do as "talent", so you are going to change it. Young boys seem to come in two activity states: running around and deeply focused. Neither of those states are appreciated, nor effectively used in the educational system. Instead they are expected to sit "quietly" in their seats, respond appropriately to all stimulus around them, and shift topics constantly. Young children don't have a lot of focus but what they have should be nutured. Oh! and curiosity???? Forget it.

You are also right it was Ouch who started this I was tired and was reading between Pep's thread and this one. My apologies to Ouch.

JL

This is your interpretation of what ouch was trying to say.

I do not believe that societies view of men is that they must understand women at all. I believe it is quite the opposite, that men are still the "better" gender in the world.

OUCH - I wanted to discuss this a little bit more...


Weakness in men cannot be attributed to how women treat men. I think this is a cultural trend. When strong assertive men are cast as bullies or bruts, the culture has higher regard for men who are not strong in a traditional masculine way.

If you think about how military recruiters have recently been treated on high school and college campuses, you get the idea that the trend is to reward softer men and to cast strong men as something dangerous.

I liked how you mentioned "confidence and security" of the wife when she knows she has a strong man standing next to her. A man willing to fight for her. It's wonderful the way you phrased that.

Good job.

I am not being snarky here, but I am going to tell you some of the ways we are able to stay a one-income family in a "two-income world":

~I cook just about everything we eat from scratch.

~We RARELY do take-out or take the whole family out to dinner.

~I use coupons and have devised a list of our staple grocery items so that I know WHERE and WHEN I can get each item at it's absolute lowest price. I buy things even if I don't need it RIGHT NOW if it is at it's lowest documented price. This took months to do and is ever-changing, especially now that the economy is going down the tank.

~I shop garage sales for much of our children's clothes as well as many other items.

~I "stockpile" their clothes as well as food items so that I am never caught "off-guard" and HAVE TO go out and pay retail for an item.

~We ALL wear wear hand-me-downs, garage sale items, or clothes from discount-type stores and the best part is that NO ONE EVER KNOWS because you CANNOT TELL!!! I am very picky about the garage sale clothes we wear and our kids are now to the age where it MATTERS what they wear. Still I manage to do this.

Now, this being said, I do not work and my H makes decent money but not in the triple digits or anything...and we own two homes and the REASON we do is BECAUSE I am extraordinarily careful about stretching our dollars, as you can see.

And this is only a partial list of how I am able to get our "needs" met and STILL have money to buy a second home.

People are shocked when I tell them this is what I do with my "free time". But that's ok, it's worth it for me to stay home with my children but THIS is why it irritates me when people say you "have to" have two-incomes these days.

You DON'T if you go to extreme measures. The problem is that we have been taught to want INSTANT GRATIFICATION and it's too hard for most people to NOT have instant gratification.

We do a lot of waiting for things around here but that is ok...our family life is worth it.

This amusing article treads a little on the field of this discussion. The author is Fred Reed and he cetainly is an old-styled man. Reminds me of my Uncle Jerry.


Gelding, By Lily

The Sorrowful Rise Of Neuter Man




Ever wonder why masculine men are dying out -- the old strong, silent type who rolled cheroots one-handed while roping dogies with the other -- and being replaced by delicate androgynous Ken-dolls who look like Tinkerbell with a flat chest? Or why women look increasingly . . . not masculine so much as sexless?

Tell you what I think.

(I'll bet that surprises you.)

Used to be, men and women were different, and they knew it. They weren't in competition. So a guy could be Marlboro Man, or sort of anyhow, and grunt, and stand tall in the saddle, and say, "Hoo-ahhhh!" and ride Harleys. And if anybody messed with his kids or women, he'd take a tire iron to'em, or a thirty-thirty, depending--or at least imagine that he might. He had sense enough, anyway, to know that it was a good idea.

Back then, a woman could like a big hairy-chested hunk, because she wasn't competing with him. In fact, the hairier and chesteder he was, the better, because she was vying with her girlfriends to see who could get the manlier man. And a lot of women liked the idea of 240 pounds of muscle in a Stetson that meant to take care of them.

She meanwhile could afford to be cute, feminine, and curved, and dress like a woman, and maybe wield a gorgeous smile that she used to play him like a banjo -- which he probably knew, and figured that was OK too, because that's how things worked, and anyway guys are guys. She didn't have to out-hairy him. She wasn't trying to be a guy.

East was east, and west was west, and the twain would meet at the drop of a hat.

Then everything changed. Women decided they wanted to compete with men. OK. I can understand it. If I were a woman with an IQ of 160, I'd probably want to be a biochemist instead of child-herd and doily-polisher. The idea seemed reasonable to most women, and to most men. A kajillion gals poured into the workplace.

Thing was -- and nobody had really thought this out -- they didn't expect to compete on their merits as individuals, get as far as they got, and figure that was the hand God dealt them. They wanted to duke it out head-to-head, self-consciously and avowedly, as a class, with men. It wasn't Sally wrestling with the law boards. It was Us agin Them.

Which was a Whole Nuther Thing. No society or species had ever tried it.

Problems arose. Fact is, men are hard to compete with. Physically, they are taller, heavier, much stronger, more durable and more enduring. Except for nymphet gymnastics, there may be no sport in which women hold the record. Intellectually men have a large advantage mathematically and a slight one verbally at the high end, that becomes rapidly greater as one moves to the right of the mean; This is the Glass Ceiling. Men are more aggressive, exploratory, adventurous, and versatile. Sorry, but there it is.

Women moved up some, and some moved up a lot, but they didn't catch up numerically with men. It was because they couldn't, and that's a pretty good reason. And when you got down to it, women just didn't care enough. They had other things on their minds, like families and rugrats.

They didn't quite understand this. Nobody did. All women wanted, they said early on, was to be judged by the same standards as men. It was a bad idea. If I judge Cup Cake as a woman, I note that she is sleek, smart, funny, graceful, sweet as sorghum on a Moon Pie, and dances like a dream raised in Arkansas. I'm smitten.

If I judge her as I judge men, she's an emotionally unstable dwarf. How much respect am I supposed to have for a 5'3" guy who bench presses a twenty-ounce Pepsi?

Antagonism inevitably ensued. Men said that the ladies didn't want to be women, and couldn't be men. Why, they asked each other, did a first-rate woman want to be a second-rate man? The women said men were bigoted. Men said they were just observant. Women, who had always regarded men as commitment objects and pre-med objects, became enraged that men regarded them as sex objects. Men were puzzled. They didn't know what else to regard as sex objects.

I was confused myself. I remember a woman screaming at me, "Women don't want to be objects!" Trying to be conciliatory, I said, "OK, you can be subjects." That didn't suit her either.

They don't know what they want. And that's the problem.

They got angry and developed chips on their shoulder pads. War ensued, in which women raged and men didn't know what the hell was going on. When natural ability failed, women discovered, politics would serve. And so we got affirmative action, which means, "pretending."

Depending on the venue, the women needed very little or lots of pretending. The military was worst. It pretended either that women could climb obstacles, or that wars didn't involve obstacles. Soon soldiers discovered that most women couldn't throw a grenade beyond its bursting radius. This will make you unpopular on battlefields. Besides, a woman throwing a grenade looked like a sea lion waving its flipper. So the Army built a little wall for them to drop grenades over.

It was ridiculous. It is ridiculous. Affirmative action always is. Nobody is fooled. Still, it spread like peanut butter on a hot day. For those women who didn't like men anyway, it was sweet revenge. Except -- it wasn't quite. The men knew, and the women knew they knew. On the other hand, the checks cashed.

Intuitively women knew they had to push for unisex. To compete with men, women had to act like men, who are competitive, and get men to behave like women, who aren't. They bought ugly sexless suits, did boring things with their hair, and practiced being disagreeable, often succeeding wildly. Meanwhile the media, fronting for them, went in for pretty male models who waxed their chests and weren't threatening. The compassionate man emerged like a grub from a log.

The women won. Marlboro Man, or anybody too clearly of one sex or the other, is out of style. Both the New-Age woman, and her docile man-surrogate, would be intimidated, and ol' Marlboro would have trouble knowing which was the girl. God it's boring.

P.S. and the things that we have been doing to stretch our dollars have been so successful that we own approximately one million dollars in property...and all of this on ONE, under-six-figure INCOME!

rprynne,

I don't fully agree with everything you have said, but I think what you said merits a lot of consideration and thought. There are some big time dynamics issues in today's society and your post illustrates some of the more basic ones.

Excellent post.

JL

All I know is is takes a college degree to manage a Jack in the Box or a Taco Bell where I live. So I can only imagine how much worse it is for everyone below that education level.

Sorry for yet another TJ!