Did Feminism Kill the Marriage?

Responding to a letter from a distraught soon-to-be ex-mother-in-law Carolyn Hax offers some appropriate words of consolation. There is very little else that anyone can say.

My interest this time is in the letter itself, the writer’s description of her son’s soon-to-be ex-wife. I agree that there seems to be something else going on. It is inconceivable that this woman discovered, upon getting married, that she had become a wife and that her new role was discordant with her deeply-held political convictions. Or are they delusions.

So, here is the letter. Read it and wonder what the world has come to.

My son got married in October to his longtime girlfriend. The wedding was fabulous, but more important, my son and his wife appeared to be blissfully in love.

He called yesterday to say it was over — she had been unhappy since the wedding and finally moved back home to her parents. He said that she felt she had lost her identity, that her career was secondary to his and that they only were friends with his friends.

What's odd about this is that he lives 2,000 miles from where he grew up — but they live in the only city she has ever lived in. Her family, friends, high school, college and career are all still right there. It makes me think that there is something more serious going on….

— Sad Former Mother-in-Law

So, a feminist spasm has killed her marriage, the one she contracted nine months ago. Surely, her reasoning seems to have come directly out of Women's Studies 101.

Clearly, SFMIL has a perfectly reasonable point. Since the woman in question is living in her home town surrounded by people she has known all her life, it makes no sense to imagine that she is distraught over the fact that most of the people they see are her former husband’s friends.

And yet, why would we overestimate the intelligence of her son’s ex-wife. We might well imagine that she is a careerist, that she does not want to have children, and that she wants to have an equal career, or some such. Somehow or other she did not know that once she got married people would treat her as a married woman and that she would forever lose her precious independence.

Of course, we do not know whether she changed her name. We suspect that she clung to her father’s name, in order to strike a blow against the patriarchy. We do know that she moved back in with her parents-- the better to assert her independence and autonomy.

At the least, this supposedly intelligent young woman contracted a marriage without understanding the first things about marriage. It’s a sad commentary on her and her so-called mind. At the least, she did the SFMIL's son a huge favor.