October 14, 2005
A WORLD OF PETER PANS
The trouble with men (Molly Watson, The Spectator, October 15th, 2005)
There’s many a slip betwixt having an amusing, attractive boyfriend and the pair of you committing to the long haul of marriage and children. I know dozens of delightful men of my age and considerably older who say they want to get married one day. They will even go as far as talking about how comparatively young their own fathers were when they sired them, and fret about how geriatric they’ll be by the time they have a son of their own to kick a ball about with. Yet they are careful to preserve the idea of getting married and/or settling down as purely hypothetical and entirely out of their control — as though a meteorite might hit the earth one day and when they come to they’ll be at the altar. In the meantime they concentrate on having as much immediate fun as they can and dodge thinking about next month or next year for as long as possible.And who can blame them? If our biological clocks didn’t jump-start us into wanting babies, I think many women would do the same. Ours is a generation that has grown up with the luxury of being able to pretty much please ourselves --- especially when it comes to our romantic lives. The power of parental pressure and societal disapproval has all but evaporated. Nobody is made an honest woman of anymore. These days the only reason to marry or commit to anyone is because you really, really want to and you think you’’re going to carry on really wanting to. Yet the whole art of pleasing oneself is remaining free to do just that --- something to which the arrival of a small child could prove an obstacle.
No one ever said biology was fair. I have accepted that in real terms I am suddenly much older than my male friends. When a great friend who turned 30 within weeks of me came round to discuss our shared milestone, it emerged that I was already bracing myself for my 40th birthday. He, needless to say, still thought of himself as being in his early twenties and claimed to have never considered a future with his girlfriend of two years’ standing because he ‘‘wasn’t ready for all that’’. Of course not every man his age is in a state of prolonged adolescence, but a critical mass of them are. I recently went to a wedding where the presiding vicar actually congratulated the groom on having enough ‘backbone’ to commit to marriage while his spineless contemporaries squirmed in their pews.
I don’t know a woman of my age whose version of living happily ever after fundamentally hinges on becoming editor, or senior partner, or surgeon, or leading counsel. But faced with a generation of emotionally immature men who seem to view marriage as the last thing they’ll do before they die, we have little option but to wait, busy ourselves with making the most of our careers and hope that Mr Non-Phobic Right eventually makes himself known to us before our ovaries pack up completely.
But surely all these man-boys are making free choices based upon what is right for them. Who is anyone to complain?
Posted by Peter Burnet at October 14, 2005 1:06 PMSurvival of the fittest in action. Meanwhile, us Christian conservatives are getting hitched in our early twenties and having kids a couple years later.
Posted by: Timothy at October 14, 2005 1:41 PMVenture on over to Althouse and see how they deal with a related question.
There's a book review in The Atlantic this month by Caitlin Flanagan (who is apparently a writer for the New Yorker) that shockingly states in her conclusion that the greatest accomplishment of civilization was convincing men that they had a responsibility to support their children, and that the severing of this idea through the assault on marriage & fatherhood has had severe detrimental consequences for women & children. This is shocking because such obvious truths are finally being spoken by liberal thinkers who would have dismissed them not too long ago...
Posted by: b at October 14, 2005 1:56 PMDennis Prager links this back to Judeo-Christianity.
Societies that did not place boundaries around sexuality were stymied in their development. The subsequent dominance of the Western world can largely be attributed to the sexual revolution initiated by Judaism and later carried forward by Christianity.
This revolution consisted of forcing the sexual genie into the marital bottle. It ensured that sex no longer dominated society, heightened male-female love and sexuality (and thereby almost alone created the possibility of love and eroticism within marriage), and began the arduous task of elevating the status of women.
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/homosexuality/ho0003.html
Instead of complaining about men not wanting what she's offering, maybe she should consider offering what men want. I don't know any older men out there who would consider "settling for a much younger companion who falls far short of the intellectually equal but by now hopelessly barren soulmate" to be a tragedy.
Posted by: Brandon at October 14, 2005 2:44 PMB:
Caitlin Flanagan's part of the younger generation who realize this. She's very very good. Been writing for a while, first for the Atlantic, and then I believe the NY'er poacher her.
I'm pretty sure she's the daughter of the novelist Ths. Flanagan of "Yea of the French" fame.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at October 14, 2005 3:57 PMThe Althouse thread is interesting, and almost impossible not to psychoanalyze. The most striking thing to me, though, is that it never seems to have crossed the mind of these women that people selling semen over the internet may not be the most trustworthy people of all.
Posted by: David Cohen at October 14, 2005 6:23 PMI can't get past the first few posts. The argument that single women should have no problem having children because, despite the fact that single motherhood is a generally lousy way to raise kids, otherwise those children would never exist is very strange to be hearing from anyone, let alone a pro-choicer. But from anyone, it's kind of creepy.
It might make a good pickup line--"hey, baby, we owe it to our future children; the alternative is their nonexistence!"
That's right, men--by not sleeping with you, beautiful women around the world are killing your children!
Posted by: Timothy at October 14, 2005 7:22 PMMolly sounds simultaneously embittered and contemptuous, and any man in his right mind would avoid her. I know I would.
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at October 14, 2005 7:56 PM"The trouble with men" - is thois like the trouble with Tribbles?
Posted by: obc at October 14, 2005 8:43 PMMore like the opposite.
Posted by: David Cohen at October 14, 2005 11:38 PMWhere did this idea of being "ready" for marriage or fatherhood come from? As Yoda might have said, "there is no ready, there is do or not do".
Nothing worthwhile has ever been done by someone who was ready to do it.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at October 15, 2005 1:08 PMIf men nowadays had to wait until marriage to have sex, they'd be getting married younger too.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at October 17, 2005 12:26 PM