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The most important recent influence on gender dynamics has
nothing to do with rules, regulations or legislation.
It has to do with something that has become customary:
deferred marriage… not to be confused with deferred gratification.
Give the credit to second wave feminism. Women are marrying
later and so, of course, are men.
Since a young woman who wants to get married soon will see men
differently than a woman who wants to postpone marriage,
the change in custom has had a marked effect on behavior.
Since most people do marry eventually, the delay has changed
the way people relate to each other within their marriages. It has also, one
assumes, contributed to the number of divorces.
In a recent article on Yahoo News, Janet Ong Zimmerman explains
how wonderful it is that she had her first marriage when she was 46.
Since it becomes more difficult to find a suitable spouse as one ages, we will celebrate her marriage with her.
And yet, how many young women, upon being told to defer
marriage will be happy to hear that the later you wait the less likely it is
that you will have children?
Young women have read many articles warning them not to
defer childbearing too long. Somehow or other, studies show, they have come
away thinking that fertility is nearly forever.
Trying to rationalize her decision Zimmerman declares that
she had to wait so long to get married because she needed to find herself
before she could find a suitable husband.
She had to learn to love herself and to know her self-worth.
Regrettably, these are empty clichés, but they count as legal
tender in the therapy world. When Zimmerman trots them out as though they showed her enlightenment, she is showing us that she has suffered much too much
therapy.
Paula Bolyard explains that someone who has spent so
much time learning to live herself will probably not know how to love someone
else. Appearances to the contrary, marriage is not about loving yourself or
even finding yourself.
Being an independent, free spirit is not the same thing as
knowing how to cooperate and coordinate two lives.
Having reached a level of therapeutically-induced emotional serenity does not
give you the social skills needed to conduct a happy marriage.
Bolyard offers a number of good reasons for marrying young,
but the one that stands out is so simple that I have often mentioned it myself:
it is easier to build a life together than it is to merge two fully constituted
lives.
3 comments:
The longer one waits the more set in their ways they become until there is very little in the way of compromise because there are so few areas in which it can happen. A good strong marriage takes a LOT of compromise and willingness to do it.
Generally, if one has grown to a reasonable facsimile of adulthood then the younger one is the easier it is to withstand the pressures and strains that marriage and children add to one's life and the more likely one is going to be a parent and NOT a friend.
The older one is the more one becomes a friend which almost always leads to disaster for the growth and success of the children involved. The more likely one has a single child, invariably an adjunct instead of a part of a couple's life, who has no competition from siblings so, in many cases, becomes very selfish and less likely to want to compromise and play nice with others. Beginning to believe, as a parent, that you can manipulate the master manipulators through therapy never turns out well. Children almost always know you better than you know them.
The art of life, and almost any endeavor, is the ability to compromise when it does not devalue one's principles. This is given that one has some moral base from which to work from.
I note that Mormons don't have this problem.
Regrettably, these are empty clichés, but they count as legal tender in the therapy world. When Zimmerman trots them out as though they showed her enlightenment, she is showing us that she has suffered much too much therapy.
This is an excellent point I'd never thought of! Normal, well-adjusted people don't talk that way. Thus, if you see someone talking about how happy, happy, HAPPY their life choices have made them, but their language is burdened with all sorts of overworn therapeutic cliches, it's a sure giveaway that contrary to their claims, their life choices have in fact resulted in them requiring excessive amounts of therapy just to get by.
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