A few days ago, my friends and I got into an in-depth discussion on the subject of feminism and the family. It started with an article written by Suzanne Venker and published on Fox News titled “The War on Men.” We had all read the article, either to nod and appreciate what was being said or to scoff at what we saw as garbage. The crux of the article was this: The modern women’s movement has changed gender roles in such a way as to discourage the modern man from seeking marriage.
Venker cites statistics that illustrate that the proportion of women who value marriage as one of the most important things in their lives has increased from 28 percent in 1997 to 37 percent. The opposite trend has been observed in men — a decrease from 35 to 29 percent during the same time frame. Venker’s conclusion is that the changing role of women has pushed men away from their traditional provider/protector role.
My left-leaning, feminist friends thought the article was a waste of their time — there is no “war on men,” they said. Rather, women were still at a disadvantage — in Congress and in business leadership roles, among others. What they did not mention was that women are now half of the workforce and that they lead men in both college attendance and college degrees. Women are becoming more and more independent and therefore less reliant on a male figure, at least in the traditional breadwinner sense.
But one could argue that women have no reason to be looking to men anymore, especially considering that men are no longer what they once were. Some 9.3 percent of men are unemployed, versus only 8.3 percent of women. Couple this with the lack of jobs available for college grads, along with an achievement gap between men and women in college, and you have a recipe for men who are not the movers and shakers they used to be.
Women do not really have reservations about outpacing their male counterparts. While Venker’s statistics indicate that women are seeking marriage in renewed numbers, the traditional marriage, the one with the stereotypical ‘white picket fence,’ is not really their goal anymore. Women are shifting away from the stay-at-home mother role — only about one-fourth of two-parent homes have a mom who stays at home. In 1969, this number was double what it is now. In 1970, 85 percent of children in the United States had two parents. In 2002, that number had dropped to roughly 65 percent.
So is a two-parent marriage the ideal? Many studies say just that. Adolescents with married parents are less likely to become sexually active. They are also less likely to suffer from, or witness, domestic violence. In fact, only 38.5 in 1000 married mothers had experienced violence or abuse, as opposed to 81 out of 1000 unwed mothers, and this is even counting women who had been separated or divorced in the ‘married’ category.
Fewer two-parent homes, fewer men seeking success and marriage, more women moving into the workplace and away from the home — how is it all tied together? Who is to blame for this shift away from the traditional marriage and family? That night we got into our heated discussion, I pointed out that feminism, while not solely to blame, had played its role. Women are more career-focused now than ever, and there is almost a kind of stigma on those women who want to stay home with their children. Democratic pundit Hilary Rosen said on CNN that Mitt Romney’s wife Ann had “never worked a day in her life.” Ann was a stay-at-home mom. Being the housewife has fallen beneath the go-getter kind of person feminists now expect women to be. I am all for women working and succeeding alongside men — they should have all of the same opportunities. This does not mean, however, that stay-at-home moms need to go extinct. Women should not be afraid to fill a role at home where they also can have a positive impact on the development of their children and society. A 2009 Pew Research Center study found that only 21 percent of adults say society has benefited by the trend of more mothers of young children working outside the house.
Men bear a great deal of the responsibility for this shift from the traditional family as well, namely by not bearing responsibility as they did in years past. As women move into equality with men, men have begun to shy away from the drive for achievement that characterized the quintessential alpha male. Instead, they go home to their parents after college or seek easy fulfillment in a single life of responsibility-free sex — because the reality is, men still have it easier in this arena. Men are just not pushing themselves into adulthood anymore. In 1960, 65 percent of men had finished school, moved out of their parents’ house, become financially independent, gotten married and had a child by the age of 30. In 2000, only about a third of this age group had passed these markers of adulthood.
In our discussion that night, feminists and traditional conservatives alike recognized the trends. Disagreements persisted, though. My liberal feminist friends celebrate this shift from the old-fashioned family. To traditional conservatives, it is evident that this trend can only lead to a weaker family, weaker children and, ultimately, a weaker society.
Sam Novack’s column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at s.novack@cavalierdaily.com.
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