The problem with Bettina Arndt's take on men and marriage - Women's Agenda

The problem with Bettina Arndt’s take on men and marriage

I had a perfectly lovely weekend save for two things.

First, circumstances conspired on Saturday afternoon which led me to a busy grocery shop with my two young children without my parent-in-crime. What was I thinking? Thirty minutes in such conditions was enough to remind me why online grocery shopping is the only option when the alternative is being accompanied by a two-year old only too happy to voice her extreme displeasure, loudly, on account of being restrained in a trolley. A trolley with wheels so badly aligned that I kept knocking into my five year old daughter who was equally happy to voice her displeasure at the arrangement. All whilst intimately close to 5000 shoppers who share my suburb and, it would seem, my distaste for the noise being emitted by my daughters. Peaceful it certainly wasn’t.

The second less pleasing aspect of my weekend was stumbling upon an opinion piece written by Bettina Arndt. She was dismayed at the typical “anti-male” take the media had adopted in the annual Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. You know the one that highlighted how men are happier when their wives stay at home?

In her piece entitled “Australian men’s sacrifice on the altar of matrimony” Arndt talked about how the power balance in marriages has changed to the detriment of men. So willing, us women (and the odd male journalist like Greg Jericho) are apparently, to paint men as the bad guys that we complain when men shirk away from the housework. We complain at the discrepancy between hours of paid and unpaid work. Is there nothing we won’t stoop to?

Bettina included an extract from a Canadian blogger, girlwriteswhat, that she says is “the most powerful summing up of this changing deal”:

“From a woman’s perspective, marriage still provides significant benefits over single life — in fact, marriage as an enterprise has only improved for women since the 1950s. A woman now has the right to say no to sex with her husband. If he’s abusive, she has an entire public-sector industry itching to help her. If a woman decides she doesn’t want to be married to that jerk who doesn’t help with the dishes, has mommy issues and leaves his dirty socks lying all over the place, well, she doesn’t have to be. She won’t be stigmatised, she won’t be financially destroyed and she won’t lose her children.”

What kind of a woman has the right to turn down her husband for sex?

What kind of woman, in the face of abuse, would turn to “an entire public-sector industry itching to help her”?

What kind of woman would dare ask her husband to help with the dishes? Or leave a marriage that isn’t fulfilling her?

An empowered woman. A woman who is empowered to believe that her life is her own to live on terms that suit her. Not terms dictated by anyone or anything else.

In her rebuttal of the reaction to news that men are happier when their wives stay at home Bettina Arndt pointed to research that lots of women want to be home looking after their children.  That is a perfectly legitimate choice and in some cases it’s absolutely true.

There is, however, a vast chasm between a woman choosing to stay home to care for her children because it is what she wants and a woman forced to stay home to care for her children. Whether it’s because that’s what her partner wants. Or because the cost of childcare is too high. Or because she can’t get any childcare. Or because her work is inflexible. Or because she was made redundant whilst on maternity leave.
There are a number of reasons why women stay home to care for their children but it’s not always free will.

It is obviously tempting to dismiss complaints from men or women wanting more autonomy about their work – paid and unpaid – as an inevitable symptom of disliking men. Tempting though it might be, true it certainly isn’t. As I’ve said before, liking men and disliking inequality between the sexes are not mutually exclusive. It seems tiresome to even have to say it’s is possible to love and care about men whilst disliking inequality in equal measure.

The primary message in Arndt’s piece, to me, was that if women weren’t so bloody demanding, men would be a lot happier. If men are happiest when their partner submits to a 1950s style arrangement, isn’t that the great problem that needs to be examined? Or is it simply easier to blame women?

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