Excellent, as ever. I also found out and wrote in my book "Jenseits der Diagnosen", that the "female factor" is one big behind the surge of diagnosises and treatments in the recent years. A growing share of therapists is female, Women mostly do not disagree openly to each other. Women seek - despite official saying - supply and support, want to be weak in someones arms and have a greater seek for attention. Sexual attraction and fragility is more important. With the rise of feminism a growing mismatch between the claims of feminism and the demands of women, the shown and the felt picture of oneself is seen. Women are the majority of forerunners of climate anxiety, Social Justice Movements, Wokeness, Victimhood Culture and DEI. With that all, also higher anxiety, more need to be healthy, more emotion, all this makes psychotherapy for women more attractive beyond the real illnesses, which of course exist.
I read your entire post. Feminist conditioning starts in school, and the depression builds up by teaching us to deny our biological, instinctive needs. From encouraging casual dating in school, to commitment free cohabitation, to a marriage that falls 2nd in line after a job, it is set up to fail women.
As a high functioning autistic woman, I learned to hate feminism with a burning passion. I was severely abused by women and girls growing up, because of my disability. I developed c-ptsd and a binge drinking problem because of abusive women. Making feminism legal in the west was the greatest mistake ever to come into reality. I hope one day, that dreaded movement will be permanently abolished for good.
I beleive Janice Fiamengo, in one of her presentations, spoke about how feminism planned to demolish the family structure.
A married mate of mine once told me that his wife had said she felt depressed or unhappy after reading women's magazines. A closer look at the self-help articles that they publish and the level of negative stories, it is little wonder that it has an effect on the female population.
"Women have it worse" stories and research articles perhaps exacerbate the issue. The Conversation, which claims to have academic rigour, is fond of publishing research studies demonstrating that the female gender has it worse. A self fulling prophecy.
"Marriage is a Patriarchial institution invented by men to keep women oppressed" This was a popular narrative last century.
You are absolutely correct. From the writings of Percy Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft to Susan B. Anthony, many early proponents of feminism advocated for the "free love" movement and criticized the family structure as a source of drudgery for women. This underscores the great lie that feminism is solely about equal rights—or its modern iteration, equal opportunities—for women. From its inception, it was driven by upper-class, privileged women envious of men, seeking to exact their revenge under the guise of progress.
These "women have it worse" stories as you aptly point out, same content, different packaging.
It's interesting that divorce is seen as the answer to the woman saddled with family and work obligations. So how does that resolve it, realistically? Because she has even more on her plate post divorce, which includes shuffling kids between homes -- and managing the effects of the separation on the kids? And the "friends" who propose this are monsters in their own right.
Many years ago, I had a friend who'd just had a baby. Her husband was running a restaurant, which required long hours at work. She had left her job to rear children. She started complaining to me that she felt "like a single mother" and that he was never home, and that she had to "do it all (herself." Her friends were advising her to leave that loser because he wasn't "doing anything."
I said that he WAS doing A LOT. He was working to provide for his family. He was working to provide her the time and space to spend with their child. He's also a man, and can't be expected to care for their child in her way, but in his man way. She later told me that I was the only friend who'd pointed this out to her, and that it saved their marriage.
There's a NARRATIVE out there, which this piece points out, and people blindly follow it! The narrative needs to change. Divorce is NOT the answer.
Thank you, Dr. Spier. Feminism is indeed founded on resentment. I would also say it is founded on misandry: feminists view men in much the same light as the Nazis viewed Jews.
I've heard feminist friends celebrate how white-middle-aged doctors no longer tell anxious-depressed young women that they probably just need to have a baby. Progress! And of course that approach may be a tad simplistic. But they've quite literally thrown out the baby with the bathwater.
Quite right. It turns out, being pregnant is a stabilizing agent, often I have seen Borderline girls have the best months of their lives when their pregnant. It-s incredible.
I've seen that too, and not just as a transient effect. Borderline/"bipolar" young women becoming completely healthy after having a baby, to the point of losing friends because they've become too boring ... From my own experience as a young man, caring for children can also be stabilizing in itself.
However frustrating the train wrecks must be, take solace in the (younger?) women whom you can guide to find a healthy path in life. Such intervention can make a world of difference.
Thank you Stephen! Yes, that does help. It has been hard emotionally, it affects me very much these 30 somethings who end up childless. Those cases are for me the worst, and the motivation behind Psychobabble. I wish you a happy New Year!
One tictok video I came across recently saw a 30-something women, formerly lecturing men on what women expect of them in dating (alas, she was really expressing grandiosity to her fellow women), bawling without makeup after learning that her egg count was low, and she had to have eggs frozen in the hope future artificial insemination could make her a mother.
Our narcissistic world hurts so many. Thank you for seeing it for what it is and having the fortitude to help those younger women who’ve been badly led astray by it. Courage can take different forms, and yours is one worthy of respect.
Tack för dina texter Hanna, de är så bra! ❤️Du skriver ibland om att feminister är emot self inprovement, hur menar du? Har du andra texter där du utvecklar det argumentet ? Tack!
Selv takk Emmeli! Ikke i detalj har jeg skrevet om bare det, men det kunne godt vart et helt eget tema. Det er mange eksempler på det, nyest ser vi det i "The Body Positivity Movement", som er en feministisk slutning. Det begynte med å brenne feminine klær, klippe håret, være imot sminke - du skal ikke gjøre deg pen for menn. Feminismens mødre, Simone for eksempel, gikk tett i tett med postmodernistene, the Frankfurt School for eksempel, der tankene rundt å rice ned hierarkiene ble utviklet. Å utvikle seg selv til et bedre menneske er avhengig av et hierarki der noe er bedre eller verre. De har gjort det samme med kunst. Ønsker deg god jul:)
Hannah's position is a much needed antidote to what's going on. I've seen it and experienced it and been shouted at when pointing it out. Feminism destroys relationships and lives. These observations must come from women. Very heartening to see Hannah Spier's work on Substack.
I have to say I have seen examples of all 3 of these archetypes and the results are much a Hannah describes. While she is correct to see the causation as feminist ideals coming from culture, it is important not to address the reality that each of these women is actually the proximate cause of her unhappiness. Culture offers guidance on how one should act, but individuals choose to act on this guidance. Culture may tell you to jump off a cliff, but you are the person who CHOOSES to make that jump. In each case, the woman follows the feminist cultural requirement in service of her own narcissism. I want a family but also a full time career. I want a family but demand my partner both work AND facilitate the family so MY career can flourish. I want to be able to sleep around but also want a committed relationship. I want to be able to travel and have an A-list man as my partner and won't look at the 90% of men who just want to have a family but maybe aren't someone I would brag about meeting on Facebook. I want, I want, I want. Notice that none of these women ever approach the problem they are facing by looking at what their partner or children might want or need or consider that maybe THEY aren't contributing enough or in the right way to make the situation work. One can blame feminism for this, but in reality, the core is deeper than that. Feminism is just self serving female narcissim in the form of a political movement. These women are are all wanna be Megan Markel princesses for whom the Royal Family just doesn't live up to THEIR standards. Sorry...but the first thing all these women is a reality check...honey...you ain't that special and you certainly ain't no princess. Get over yourself. Not advice that a therapist is likely to give so bluntly, but one which the men in their lives clearly are giving them by retreating from involvement with them.
I’m sick and tired of spineless men in the west, who are afraid of feminists. You know these women are just lapdogs for rich liberal politicians and white collar ceos with money right?
Most women don’t even like feminists. I don’t blame them. Who wants to be around a purple haired troglodyte, shrieking misandrist banter in the streets? Nobody.
I am a Norse Pagan. Marxist Infiltrators have infected my people’s revival movement since the 1970’s. I have no problems with people who are Abrahamic. They typically have a problem with me. Not because I personally did something abhorrently abusive towards them, because they don’t like my beliefs. It’s a shame, what can I do though? 🤷♀️
I also lost a lot of respect for these types, because, when I would ask for a solution, they wanted to take action in, they knocked me down, made me feel like an “idiot”, for being optimistic and tenacious about it, then scolding and shaming me for not taking their BlackPill nihilism blindly as if it is “the truth.”
People want solutions. They don’t want to hear BlackPill people in their narcissistic echo chambers, only posting things because they like to hear themselves talk. You cannot get angry and defensive towards people, when those people I mentioned, gave off a facade as if they had solutions to “fix the problem.” They are so passionate about.
It isn’t mission impossible however. This whining and complaining also comes from the mouths of men, who put on this facade, that they are “tough warriors” who aren’t afraid of taking action against their “enemies”. However, these same types will cower, fall into black pill nihilism, and cry about how much helpless victims they are to the system.
I’m a man living in the USA…the propaganda psy-op ground zero. I’m an optimistic realist, and think about how I can affect change in the domains where I have influence and control. I meet many men who are reluctant to do anything together. They don’t want to get together in groups to engage in sports, do group activities in the local area, or help each other in gaining financial, technical, or professional expertise.
I’d say starting a matchmaking/marriage introductions service for pro-family and pro-marriage young men and women would be my first step. I’m working on a project like this right now.
Abolish it. If western man legalized feminism, he can abolish it as well. What’s the point of keeping a movement that has enabled the worst of women, made them unbearable, emotionally unhinged psychopaths, decimated the Western family unit, and has bred unnecessary hatred and resentment between the sexes?
I guess my question would be, what do you recommend?
My background is that while I was growing up, my grandmother always said “don’t ever be financially dependent on a man.” She didn’t want to see me repeat her mistakes, where she stayed married to a verbally abusive alcoholic because she had two small children and no good way to support them if she left. My other grandma did leave her husband eventually (who would go weeks without talking to her over some imaginary offense) but then spent her elder years working a retail job and living in near-poverty since she came out of the marriage with nothing after being a housewife and mother for 25 years and having no advanced education. (Both of my grandfathers would have been diagnosed with PTSD from WWII nowadays - back then you just came home and went back to work and dealt with it in unhealthy ways.) I also had a great-grandma whose husband just took off when their daughter was a year old, and wasn’t heard from again for years, and another great-grandma whose husband died and left her to raise 8 kids alone during the depression, as a non-English-speaking immigrant.
I was always grateful to live in a time where I had better options, and more power and autonomy. I got an education and have a long career. It was REALLY hard being a 2 career family when the kids were little. I rarely slept and worked myself nearly to death trying to be a good mom and an effective employee. About 8 years ago, when our kids were in elementary school my husband quit his job to be a stay at home dad. This lightened the load on me a little, but I would still estimate that if you added up all the work being done, both paid and unpaid, I do more than 3/4 of it (and I don’t think my husband would disagree with that characterization). I admit to being somewhat resentful about my workload and the fact that he apparently doesn’t feel any need to remedy the situation by doing more, so I could do less.
I think you’re going to tell me that the solution is that I never should have entered into a marriage with a man who made less money than me, and should have quit work and focused on raising a family. But I feel that would have made me vulnerable to the types of situations I saw in my family tree, and it’s also my observation that it’s the rare man who can resist the temptation to abuse this imbalance of power at least sometimes by being a dictator over his wife and disregarding her feelings and wants in favor of his own, at least this is what I observe in friends’ situations who did go the more traditional route.
It sort of seems like a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t “ situation.
It’s probably too late for me to change course. It’s hard to imagine what that would even look like at this point in life. But I have two teenage daughters. I struggle with what to even hope for for them. What path in life would you recommend for a modern young woman looking to maximize her life satisfaction?
I greatly sympathize with the hardships you describe. It can't have been easy for you, you clearly had quite a bit of baggage that infleunced your own choices. Steering clear of what we percieve have been the mistakes of others is risky. It's not easy to judgen what their mistakes actually were. Often there are elements we are completely unaware of.
The greatest power we women have, and we discount it at our peril, is the gift of youth, fertility and attractivenens of our nurturing side and the effect those have on men. That is the leverage we posess, and in humans, females choose the mate.
Now, you say. "But I feel that would have made me vulnerable to the types of situations I saw in my family tree, and it’s also my observation that it’s the rare man who can resist the temptation to abuse this imbalance of power at least sometimes by being a dictator over his wife and disregarding her feelings and wants in favor of his own"
When this is the attitude you carry with you in your selection process, that will have consequences. The best thing we mothers can do for our girls, is give them a favourable view of men, to regognize good masculine strengths so they won't be attracted to the bad boy psychopaths, and not to have a resentful attidude that will lead them to choose an unstuitable man.
Giving girls a strong male role model who takes responsibility and knows how to stand up to a woman's negative impulses is as necessary for girls as for boys, and it doesn't have to be the father if he is not available.
I hope this was helpful, it was meant in the best way.
Thanks for your kind answer. It actually wasn’t hard for me. I had a great childhood and I have a great dad. My mom took her mom’s warnings to heart. My mom also got an education, and worked full time or part time for nearly all of my childhood. The women who had it really hard were my grandmothers and great-grandmothers who did not have that ability.
If what you are recommending is truly that young women don’t get an education or have a career, and instead focus all their efforts on finding a man to marry who is responsible, ambitious (or wealthy), faithful, honest, kind, fair, won’t get tired of her, won’t be corrupted by power, and won’t die or become disabled, using her appearance and personality as currency, we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
I don’t have to think men are bad to know that some of those things are out of anyone’s control, even good men may give into temptation sometimes, even if it’s just giving into laziness and not doing what he should to help because he knows there are no consequences (I see this in my friends’ husbands all the time - basically decent guys but they’re a little too lazy and put their own desires first) and that the 18 or 20 year old woman who has the insight to understand this when her hormones and all of society are pushing her toward a good looking guy with a rebellious streak is an extremely rare person. And what about those of us who aren’t genetically gifted, but just average looking? The demand for this type of man seems far greater than the supply so it’s not clear that a smart girl who doesn’t turn heads would have this option anyhow.
I think I’m going to conclude that a middle ground is best. Get an education. Get some work experience. Look for someone who is responsible, ambitious, hardworking, and honest. Maybe take time off or go part time when you have kids, but don’t put yourself completely at the mercy of someone else. You can’t make yourself completely powerless in a relationship because it’s human nature that if there’s an imbalance of power between two people the one with more power will lose respect for the other, and will take at least some advantage of the situation.
Excellent, as ever. I also found out and wrote in my book "Jenseits der Diagnosen", that the "female factor" is one big behind the surge of diagnosises and treatments in the recent years. A growing share of therapists is female, Women mostly do not disagree openly to each other. Women seek - despite official saying - supply and support, want to be weak in someones arms and have a greater seek for attention. Sexual attraction and fragility is more important. With the rise of feminism a growing mismatch between the claims of feminism and the demands of women, the shown and the felt picture of oneself is seen. Women are the majority of forerunners of climate anxiety, Social Justice Movements, Wokeness, Victimhood Culture and DEI. With that all, also higher anxiety, more need to be healthy, more emotion, all this makes psychotherapy for women more attractive beyond the real illnesses, which of course exist.
I read your entire post. Feminist conditioning starts in school, and the depression builds up by teaching us to deny our biological, instinctive needs. From encouraging casual dating in school, to commitment free cohabitation, to a marriage that falls 2nd in line after a job, it is set up to fail women.
As a high functioning autistic woman, I learned to hate feminism with a burning passion. I was severely abused by women and girls growing up, because of my disability. I developed c-ptsd and a binge drinking problem because of abusive women. Making feminism legal in the west was the greatest mistake ever to come into reality. I hope one day, that dreaded movement will be permanently abolished for good.
Thank God for people like you. I feel like there is so much bad advice for women on this platform.
I’ve been writing about it on my own Substack, calling it “Munchhausen by patriarchy”
And then also there’s articles like this which are a surefire recipe to get divorced
https://cindyditiberio.substack.com/p/our-fair-play-discussion-signaled
I beleive Janice Fiamengo, in one of her presentations, spoke about how feminism planned to demolish the family structure.
A married mate of mine once told me that his wife had said she felt depressed or unhappy after reading women's magazines. A closer look at the self-help articles that they publish and the level of negative stories, it is little wonder that it has an effect on the female population.
"Women have it worse" stories and research articles perhaps exacerbate the issue. The Conversation, which claims to have academic rigour, is fond of publishing research studies demonstrating that the female gender has it worse. A self fulling prophecy.
"Marriage is a Patriarchial institution invented by men to keep women oppressed" This was a popular narrative last century.
You are absolutely correct. From the writings of Percy Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft to Susan B. Anthony, many early proponents of feminism advocated for the "free love" movement and criticized the family structure as a source of drudgery for women. This underscores the great lie that feminism is solely about equal rights—or its modern iteration, equal opportunities—for women. From its inception, it was driven by upper-class, privileged women envious of men, seeking to exact their revenge under the guise of progress.
These "women have it worse" stories as you aptly point out, same content, different packaging.
It's interesting that divorce is seen as the answer to the woman saddled with family and work obligations. So how does that resolve it, realistically? Because she has even more on her plate post divorce, which includes shuffling kids between homes -- and managing the effects of the separation on the kids? And the "friends" who propose this are monsters in their own right.
Many years ago, I had a friend who'd just had a baby. Her husband was running a restaurant, which required long hours at work. She had left her job to rear children. She started complaining to me that she felt "like a single mother" and that he was never home, and that she had to "do it all (herself." Her friends were advising her to leave that loser because he wasn't "doing anything."
I said that he WAS doing A LOT. He was working to provide for his family. He was working to provide her the time and space to spend with their child. He's also a man, and can't be expected to care for their child in her way, but in his man way. She later told me that I was the only friend who'd pointed this out to her, and that it saved their marriage.
There's a NARRATIVE out there, which this piece points out, and people blindly follow it! The narrative needs to change. Divorce is NOT the answer.
Thank you, Dr. Spier. Feminism is indeed founded on resentment. I would also say it is founded on misandry: feminists view men in much the same light as the Nazis viewed Jews.
I've heard feminist friends celebrate how white-middle-aged doctors no longer tell anxious-depressed young women that they probably just need to have a baby. Progress! And of course that approach may be a tad simplistic. But they've quite literally thrown out the baby with the bathwater.
Quite right. It turns out, being pregnant is a stabilizing agent, often I have seen Borderline girls have the best months of their lives when their pregnant. It-s incredible.
I've seen that too, and not just as a transient effect. Borderline/"bipolar" young women becoming completely healthy after having a baby, to the point of losing friends because they've become too boring ... From my own experience as a young man, caring for children can also be stabilizing in itself.
Excellent and insightful article. Thank you.
However frustrating the train wrecks must be, take solace in the (younger?) women whom you can guide to find a healthy path in life. Such intervention can make a world of difference.
Thank you Stephen! Yes, that does help. It has been hard emotionally, it affects me very much these 30 somethings who end up childless. Those cases are for me the worst, and the motivation behind Psychobabble. I wish you a happy New Year!
One tictok video I came across recently saw a 30-something women, formerly lecturing men on what women expect of them in dating (alas, she was really expressing grandiosity to her fellow women), bawling without makeup after learning that her egg count was low, and she had to have eggs frozen in the hope future artificial insemination could make her a mother.
Our narcissistic world hurts so many. Thank you for seeing it for what it is and having the fortitude to help those younger women who’ve been badly led astray by it. Courage can take different forms, and yours is one worthy of respect.
Wishing the best for you in 2025.
This is fascinating. Thank you.
Tack för dina texter Hanna, de är så bra! ❤️Du skriver ibland om att feminister är emot self inprovement, hur menar du? Har du andra texter där du utvecklar det argumentet ? Tack!
Selv takk Emmeli! Ikke i detalj har jeg skrevet om bare det, men det kunne godt vart et helt eget tema. Det er mange eksempler på det, nyest ser vi det i "The Body Positivity Movement", som er en feministisk slutning. Det begynte med å brenne feminine klær, klippe håret, være imot sminke - du skal ikke gjøre deg pen for menn. Feminismens mødre, Simone for eksempel, gikk tett i tett med postmodernistene, the Frankfurt School for eksempel, der tankene rundt å rice ned hierarkiene ble utviklet. Å utvikle seg selv til et bedre menneske er avhengig av et hierarki der noe er bedre eller verre. De har gjort det samme med kunst. Ønsker deg god jul:)
Hannah's position is a much needed antidote to what's going on. I've seen it and experienced it and been shouted at when pointing it out. Feminism destroys relationships and lives. These observations must come from women. Very heartening to see Hannah Spier's work on Substack.
I have to say I have seen examples of all 3 of these archetypes and the results are much a Hannah describes. While she is correct to see the causation as feminist ideals coming from culture, it is important not to address the reality that each of these women is actually the proximate cause of her unhappiness. Culture offers guidance on how one should act, but individuals choose to act on this guidance. Culture may tell you to jump off a cliff, but you are the person who CHOOSES to make that jump. In each case, the woman follows the feminist cultural requirement in service of her own narcissism. I want a family but also a full time career. I want a family but demand my partner both work AND facilitate the family so MY career can flourish. I want to be able to sleep around but also want a committed relationship. I want to be able to travel and have an A-list man as my partner and won't look at the 90% of men who just want to have a family but maybe aren't someone I would brag about meeting on Facebook. I want, I want, I want. Notice that none of these women ever approach the problem they are facing by looking at what their partner or children might want or need or consider that maybe THEY aren't contributing enough or in the right way to make the situation work. One can blame feminism for this, but in reality, the core is deeper than that. Feminism is just self serving female narcissim in the form of a political movement. These women are are all wanna be Megan Markel princesses for whom the Royal Family just doesn't live up to THEIR standards. Sorry...but the first thing all these women is a reality check...honey...you ain't that special and you certainly ain't no princess. Get over yourself. Not advice that a therapist is likely to give so bluntly, but one which the men in their lives clearly are giving them by retreating from involvement with them.
Well said. Feminism may have been a good idea at first. Men experience life as harshly as women do.
I’m sick and tired of spineless men in the west, who are afraid of feminists. You know these women are just lapdogs for rich liberal politicians and white collar ceos with money right?
What do you expect Western men to do?
Most women don’t even like feminists. I don’t blame them. Who wants to be around a purple haired troglodyte, shrieking misandrist banter in the streets? Nobody.
https://open.substack.com/pub/drmonzo/p/how-feminism-creates-capitalist-alienation
This explains why feminism is so hard to eliminate.
I get tired of people like that. And, most people who have the same sentiments as I do would agree with me.
Are you a Christian (Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant)? Are you connected with any pro-family or pro-marriage groups?
I am a Norse Pagan. Marxist Infiltrators have infected my people’s revival movement since the 1970’s. I have no problems with people who are Abrahamic. They typically have a problem with me. Not because I personally did something abhorrently abusive towards them, because they don’t like my beliefs. It’s a shame, what can I do though? 🤷♀️
I also lost a lot of respect for these types, because, when I would ask for a solution, they wanted to take action in, they knocked me down, made me feel like an “idiot”, for being optimistic and tenacious about it, then scolding and shaming me for not taking their BlackPill nihilism blindly as if it is “the truth.”
People want solutions. They don’t want to hear BlackPill people in their narcissistic echo chambers, only posting things because they like to hear themselves talk. You cannot get angry and defensive towards people, when those people I mentioned, gave off a facade as if they had solutions to “fix the problem.” They are so passionate about.
It isn’t mission impossible however. This whining and complaining also comes from the mouths of men, who put on this facade, that they are “tough warriors” who aren’t afraid of taking action against their “enemies”. However, these same types will cower, fall into black pill nihilism, and cry about how much helpless victims they are to the system.
I’m a man living in the USA…the propaganda psy-op ground zero. I’m an optimistic realist, and think about how I can affect change in the domains where I have influence and control. I meet many men who are reluctant to do anything together. They don’t want to get together in groups to engage in sports, do group activities in the local area, or help each other in gaining financial, technical, or professional expertise.
I don’t think in “pills”…many solutions exist.
I’d say starting a matchmaking/marriage introductions service for pro-family and pro-marriage young men and women would be my first step. I’m working on a project like this right now.
Abolish it. If western man legalized feminism, he can abolish it as well. What’s the point of keeping a movement that has enabled the worst of women, made them unbearable, emotionally unhinged psychopaths, decimated the Western family unit, and has bred unnecessary hatred and resentment between the sexes?
They need these broken women to push their corrupted agendas. Shame on willfully ignorant cowards!
I guess my question would be, what do you recommend?
My background is that while I was growing up, my grandmother always said “don’t ever be financially dependent on a man.” She didn’t want to see me repeat her mistakes, where she stayed married to a verbally abusive alcoholic because she had two small children and no good way to support them if she left. My other grandma did leave her husband eventually (who would go weeks without talking to her over some imaginary offense) but then spent her elder years working a retail job and living in near-poverty since she came out of the marriage with nothing after being a housewife and mother for 25 years and having no advanced education. (Both of my grandfathers would have been diagnosed with PTSD from WWII nowadays - back then you just came home and went back to work and dealt with it in unhealthy ways.) I also had a great-grandma whose husband just took off when their daughter was a year old, and wasn’t heard from again for years, and another great-grandma whose husband died and left her to raise 8 kids alone during the depression, as a non-English-speaking immigrant.
I was always grateful to live in a time where I had better options, and more power and autonomy. I got an education and have a long career. It was REALLY hard being a 2 career family when the kids were little. I rarely slept and worked myself nearly to death trying to be a good mom and an effective employee. About 8 years ago, when our kids were in elementary school my husband quit his job to be a stay at home dad. This lightened the load on me a little, but I would still estimate that if you added up all the work being done, both paid and unpaid, I do more than 3/4 of it (and I don’t think my husband would disagree with that characterization). I admit to being somewhat resentful about my workload and the fact that he apparently doesn’t feel any need to remedy the situation by doing more, so I could do less.
I think you’re going to tell me that the solution is that I never should have entered into a marriage with a man who made less money than me, and should have quit work and focused on raising a family. But I feel that would have made me vulnerable to the types of situations I saw in my family tree, and it’s also my observation that it’s the rare man who can resist the temptation to abuse this imbalance of power at least sometimes by being a dictator over his wife and disregarding her feelings and wants in favor of his own, at least this is what I observe in friends’ situations who did go the more traditional route.
It sort of seems like a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t “ situation.
It’s probably too late for me to change course. It’s hard to imagine what that would even look like at this point in life. But I have two teenage daughters. I struggle with what to even hope for for them. What path in life would you recommend for a modern young woman looking to maximize her life satisfaction?
Dear Dee,
I greatly sympathize with the hardships you describe. It can't have been easy for you, you clearly had quite a bit of baggage that infleunced your own choices. Steering clear of what we percieve have been the mistakes of others is risky. It's not easy to judgen what their mistakes actually were. Often there are elements we are completely unaware of.
The greatest power we women have, and we discount it at our peril, is the gift of youth, fertility and attractivenens of our nurturing side and the effect those have on men. That is the leverage we posess, and in humans, females choose the mate.
Now, you say. "But I feel that would have made me vulnerable to the types of situations I saw in my family tree, and it’s also my observation that it’s the rare man who can resist the temptation to abuse this imbalance of power at least sometimes by being a dictator over his wife and disregarding her feelings and wants in favor of his own"
When this is the attitude you carry with you in your selection process, that will have consequences. The best thing we mothers can do for our girls, is give them a favourable view of men, to regognize good masculine strengths so they won't be attracted to the bad boy psychopaths, and not to have a resentful attidude that will lead them to choose an unstuitable man.
Giving girls a strong male role model who takes responsibility and knows how to stand up to a woman's negative impulses is as necessary for girls as for boys, and it doesn't have to be the father if he is not available.
I hope this was helpful, it was meant in the best way.
Sincerely, Hannah
Thanks for your kind answer. It actually wasn’t hard for me. I had a great childhood and I have a great dad. My mom took her mom’s warnings to heart. My mom also got an education, and worked full time or part time for nearly all of my childhood. The women who had it really hard were my grandmothers and great-grandmothers who did not have that ability.
If what you are recommending is truly that young women don’t get an education or have a career, and instead focus all their efforts on finding a man to marry who is responsible, ambitious (or wealthy), faithful, honest, kind, fair, won’t get tired of her, won’t be corrupted by power, and won’t die or become disabled, using her appearance and personality as currency, we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
I don’t have to think men are bad to know that some of those things are out of anyone’s control, even good men may give into temptation sometimes, even if it’s just giving into laziness and not doing what he should to help because he knows there are no consequences (I see this in my friends’ husbands all the time - basically decent guys but they’re a little too lazy and put their own desires first) and that the 18 or 20 year old woman who has the insight to understand this when her hormones and all of society are pushing her toward a good looking guy with a rebellious streak is an extremely rare person. And what about those of us who aren’t genetically gifted, but just average looking? The demand for this type of man seems far greater than the supply so it’s not clear that a smart girl who doesn’t turn heads would have this option anyhow.
I think I’m going to conclude that a middle ground is best. Get an education. Get some work experience. Look for someone who is responsible, ambitious, hardworking, and honest. Maybe take time off or go part time when you have kids, but don’t put yourself completely at the mercy of someone else. You can’t make yourself completely powerless in a relationship because it’s human nature that if there’s an imbalance of power between two people the one with more power will lose respect for the other, and will take at least some advantage of the situation.