Read on Twitter
I had some popular tweets this weekend on the subject of marriage, divorce, kids, and feminism, mainly my criticism of white feminism whose relationship to men is centered in their feminist family narratives, a subject that's long bothered me.
First on this piece, which focuses on the importance of marrying well: https://twitter.com/flotisserie/status/1306654866614497281
And then this one, which emphasizes the moral righteousness in divorcing a man when you don't, it turns out, marry well. https://twitter.com/flotisserie/status/1306993825693478912
Then my old friend @JillFilipovic picked up these pieces and wrote more about them both, that they are in effect correct, though she dives more into the economic issues in play. https://jill.substack.com/p/divorce-your-glass-ceiling
While I agree that it's obtuse to ignore the trajectories in individual choices, I think, in the end, that there are infrastructural, racial, economic forces here that make the husband question a big, ugly red herring.
And the more I thought about it, the angrier it made me. Like, surely contemporary feminism has more to offer than these Lily Bart themes, the angst and importance of choosing a good good husband and father, and a shrug if you don't.
The husband question is facile - because in the end, no matter who you marry, you will still shoulder the primary responsibility for household and children, your work inside and outside of the home will be invisible and underpaid, your rights always embattled.
And that's just for white women, who don't also have to personally worry about the effects of policing and incarceration on their marriage pool, their own safety, and their children's quality of life. For example.
This argument also weirdly skates over the demographics of families that already exist: about 42% of all American children grow up in a single parent household. For example. And this varies across demographics, mostly female parents. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/04/25/the-changing-profile-of-unmarried-parents/#:~:text=Among%20solo%20parents%2C%2042%25%20are,cohabiting%20moms%20(30%25%20vs.
Further, I was agog reading Lenz's "divorce made it equal" irresponsible empowerment fairy tale. Depending on the data, a full 1/3 of dads don't see their kids at all after divorce. Most women take on full or most of the responsibility, with or without court intervention.
Pew reports that 3 in ten of solo mothers live in poverty. Among solo parents, mothers are almost twice as likely as fathers to be living below the poverty line (30% vs. 17%)
Something that further bugs me about the "marry and marry well" suggestion is this is a policy that conservatives have promoted off and on for forty some years, most recently with GWB. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supporting_Healthy_Marriage_Project
The Bush administration suggested that a healthy marriage is good welfare policy, and tried to make social services contingent on it. Weird to see feminists toying with the same framework instead of advocating for women as a class.
I'd like to advocate that feminist pundits take a look at the data here, the decades of research that shows over and over how a mother's individual choices are a fart in a windstorm because mothers are women in a world that hates women.
And the more intersectional your identities, the more you veer from the vaunted ideal mother, the more resources will be withheld from you, the more stigma and hardship you will shoulder, the more you and your kids suffer.
This isn't even touching on the reality that most pregnancies remain unplanned. Real people make decisions based on hope and love, they overlook their partners' shortcomings, they make irrational decisions for so many reasons. https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-united-states#:~:text=In%20other%20words%2C%20nearly%205,the%20United%20States%20were%20unintended.
And I'd argue, that any argument that "certain people" "should" be having kids, and when, and why, veers mighty close to the eugenic project.
Point being, the husband question, the husband frame, is one that we should hold up to the light. What interest does Feminism 2020 have in advocating for married two-parent households? Who does this serve, historically, why? What does it solve for women?
And second, don't let your personal outrage about the men in your life lure you into thinking that divorce will finally afford you a room of one's own, because the outcomes for most women are far more grim. (Don't stay married to an asshole, but adjust your expectations.)
Finally, I have to say that parts of the organized men's rights movement have gained rhetorical ground exploiting narratives around marriage, divorce, and childrearing, and feminists have been sleeping on this for some years.
But no matter how you spin it, it turns out marriage and divorce are both pretty bad for women most of the time.
Folks don't get married planning to divorce. The question of whether to have children is rarely based in equity. We forget this as we congratulate ourselves on our blessings. Every partner is a good enough partner, until they aren't. Women deserve more than this gamble.
