Not all mother-in-laws are troublesome, but when they are troublesome they are a great source of frustration for wives. Most wives who face this problem try to solve it by putting pressure on their husband to intervene. Wives can bring a great deal of pressure to bear on their husbands in the form of denial of sex and threatened divorce, but in this case their go-to solution is shockingly ineffective.
Ironically the reason wives find themselves powerless against their mother-in-laws is their having taken on the power position in the marriage. Once they did this they created a de facto matriarchy. As the more senior member of the clan the mother-in-law outranks the wife. Putting pressure on the husband doesn’t work in this situation because the husband isn’t acting as the leader and protector of his household; he is trying to placate two women who are effectively in positions of authority over him. The mother-in-law will sense this even if she couldn’t articulate it. When her son requests that she change her behavior the mother-in-law sees him for what he is; he is a messenger from the wife, whom the mother-in-law outranks.
The solution is simple; the wife needs to relinquish the position of head of household and cede that position to her husband. This means she needs to abandon her tools of manipulation over her husband, not ratchet them up. This will take some time and effort, and there are simple steps a wife can take to encourage her husband to start taking on the role of leader and protector.
The solution isn’t foolproof, but it is extremely effective. Nearly all men are highly protective of those they lead, and if they see themselves as head of the household they will start to naturally see themselves as their wife’s protector. The mother-in-law will also sense the change, and since the husband is now acting under his own natural authority she will take him seriously in a way she never did with the wife or when she saw him as the wife’s ambassador.
My wife has given this advice to married women in her circle, and while most were aghast at the idea of allowing their husband to lead the ones who followed the advice were amazed at the results. In many cases the mother-in-law not only ultimately settled down, but became downright pleasant to the daughter-in-law. In one case the formerly at odds mother-in-law and daughter-in-law now actually enjoy each other’s company so much they regularly go shopping and to lunch together.
Patriarchy or matriarchy: take your pick.
I always tell the women I mentor to love their mother-in-laws, heaping burning coals upon their heads…overcoming evil with good. Since we are called to love our enemies, surely this must mean to love, truly love, our mother-in-laws and when you love a difficult one, you bring God glory.
Make sure that you’re careful when you pick your wife or the husband’s mother-in-law can also be a problem.
http://rhinoden.rangerup.com/the-curious-case-of-staff-sergeant-parsons/
I would say that reason the mother-in-law settles down and becomes pleasant to the wife is that they now both share in the status as victims under a man’s authority, in this case the husband / son. Common victimhood draws women together.
@miserman
a protective husband = a victim wife?!?
LOL! What a sad household you must live in!
Miserman,
Unfortunately what you’ve said is too often true. MILs can become one more source and outlet of gossip and complaining. I am blessed with a wonderful MIL, yet every now and then is prone to playing the martyr and doesn’t control herself from speaking negatively about the men in our lives. I now treat her just as anyone else in my life. I control the conversation and do not entertain gossip or complaining. And I no longer speak disrespectfully about my husband to her. While she has tremendous wisdom and is a Godly woman – she is a woman and tempted to go down the misery loves company road. I now enjoy her wisdom not by asking her what she would do (and inadvertantly making her privy to our circumstances) but by observation of how she lives with her husband.
I grew up with critical parents, and very quickly learned to ignore their little jabs and barbs to the extent that they didn’t have a direct affect on me. Harsh awakening #6 was when a girlfriend asked me whether my parents liked her and I (naively, I swear) said no, because X, Y, Z. Hey, I didn’t care, so why would she, right?
The fallout from that was a learning experience. At the point I chose a fiance, I sat both parents down and explained to them that if they wanted to continue having a son that would acknowledge them, they would not speak word one criticizing their future daughter-in-law (this was before they had even met her). To this day, I have no idea what they think of her, and provided they continue keeping a civil tongue, I don’t much care.
@Cautiously Pessimistic
A ballsy and protective stance, although not without its risks. Most men in this age have a tough time sorting the Jezebels from the Marys. Parents and (male) friends are generally a more reliable source of input than the rose-colored spectacles that somehow seem to find themselves on even the most cautious of men in this day and age.
I know for a fact my mother had my two worst girlfriends pegged long before things went pear-shaped. She didn’t say anything because she didn’t want to rock the boat. Arranged marriages have typically been the norm for societies and experienced less failure than the modern chase of “the one.” Even most marriages today are “arranged” in some fashion as few people would willfully marry people their parents hate.
@TKI-
My mother is a man-hating feminist, and my father is a Soviet-loving statist. They have (and had) amply demonstrated a singular lack of good judgement during my formative years and beyond on matters ranging from politics, relationships, finances, etc. The best I can say about them is they are ignorant, rather than evil.
But I’ll grant that most parents are not quite that bad and their judgement can be a valuable resource.
Interesting problem I really never had it from my mother to my wife it just was not an option on the menu. My wife’s mother, my mother-in-law, was a problem in the beginning but she eventually gave up due to me removing her from our life for a time but mostly from me failing to react or acknowledge her antics.
Oddly that same woman seems to like me now. Game. Who knew it would on a mother-in-law.
Fascinating. Never had the problem, but never had good advise for those that did.
@Captian Jack:
Game. Who knew it would on a mother-in-law.
It also works on mothers that forget they’re dealing with adult males instead of kids.
Interestingly enough, Indian culture has a lot of strife between the mother-in-laws and their sons’ wives. This is depicted in Bollywood movies, TV soap operas, etc. Makes one wonder how much of Indian society is actually a matriarchy.
This has certainly helped my relationship with my mother in law. We don’t have much in common and I don’t think she was crazy about me when dh and I were married 16 years ago. But, she’s warmed up to me over time and frequently refers to how well I take care of dh.
She’ll brag to her neighbors that I’m her only daughter-in-law who cooks dinner every night. When my husband hit a milestone birthday recently and I threw a party and did all of the cooking she made a point of coming into the kitchen and saying that she appreciates how hard I try to make him happy.
I’ve seen this dynamic played out in person. A woman from a fairly traditional, patriarchal background married a guy from a matriarchal family where the men kept quiet and let the women run everything. His mother began inserting herself into their lives, especially once they had children and she had opinions on what the children should have. The wife resisted the urge to battle the mother-in-law personally, and worked on her husband to be more take-charge about things. It took years, but he came around to being much less passive, and his mother backed off at the same time. I don’t think mother and daughter-in-law have become great friends or anything, but the boundaries are in the right place now.
Don’t assume that mother in laws care about their sons or grandchildren.
We know that the way Child Custody and Support laws work in this country is evil and horrendous. On top of that, remember that if the father is taken out of the child’s life, so are all of the father’s relatives (cousins, uncles/aunts, and grandparents).
Yet, where is even the SMALL group of paternal grandmothers (the father’s mother) fighting against default mother custody (which is default daughter-in-law custody)? Where is even the SMALL group of older women saying that getting cut off from their grandkids due to unilateral action by the daughter-in-law, is an unjust law.
Older grandmothers are politically powerful. Yet no group of them is fighting against their own grandchildren being taken away.
There are only two conclusions one can draw from this :
1) Feminism supercedes even grandma/grandchild relationships, for these older women., OR
2) Women don’t understand cause and effect very well. The default mother custody that they so cheered when it suited them, is now the same law that takes away their grandkids from them, on the whims of the daughter-in-law.
Conclusion : Strict restrictions on women is the only way a society can function.
I dunno – I’d say the reason why the wives are powerless is that there’s a power vacuum in the marriage. Can’t get anywhere if the rudder is broken.
As for the wife’s actions – if the MIL is in the wife’s house then the wife should calmly ask her to follow the house rules (ie no questioning parenting decisions in front of the kids or no smoking in the den or whatever). If the MIL is a real bitch and tries to pit husband against wife then the wife has the option of running errands or visiting a friend. Unruly people don’t get the hostesses undivided attention, and they don’t get to stir up trouble. One (almost) always has the option to simply remove oneself instead of engaging in power plays. If the wife is at the MIL’s house she needs to deal (yeah, easier said than done – especially when my FIL is getting on my nerves). Don’t engage in power struggles. Do excuse yourself (and the kids) to go outside/to the park/for a story if the MIL is attempting to create trouble. It’s entirely possible to stand up for yourself (and model deferring to your husband as head of the family) without resorting to manipulation. It won’t necessarily make your husband grow a spine, but taking the high road means you’re less likely to be another nagging shrew insisting he do “the right thing” and might just possibly incline him to support the more reasonable faction.
@TFH
I’ve heard plenty of manosphere comments about severely restricting woman. On the other flip-side this means that societal/legal expectations for men have to be raised. Men should have far more authority and respect than they do currently (parental rights, marriage, workplace environment, etc), but this will also mean that they end up with more responsibility. In custody cases this is pretty straightforward – men are being held responsible for children over whom they have little authority. What I would like to see is the manosphere address the implications for carrying this over into other areas of life. If this has already been done I would love to read about it.
They already have the responsibility, especially in regards to parental rights. The corresponding authority has been taken away.
Yep, restoring Men’s authority would not entail an increase in responsibility because…
The responsibility’s already there!
Natalie, much of that has already been done in numerous ways. The catch is that your premise really doesn’t work – Men already have all the responsibility and women have all the authority. The solution is going to be for each to give up some of those things. However, the problem is solely with the women in this one. They won’t give up any of the authority they have or take any responsibility in a million years. Hence, you would have to force them to do this in order to solve the issue. Hence, “severe legal restrictions”.
Natalie,
You are under the impression that a man’s responsibilities have ever gone down.
Feminism is all about benefits going to women, costs and risks going to men.
What I would like to see is the manosphere address……….
You have to do your own digging. But the fact that you don’t seem to think men already take up vastly more ‘responsibility’ in all areas of life, than women, shows you have a lot of reading to do.
There is a triple generation problem here. I’ll work it out by MIL age.
70s: the last pre 60s generation, and generally decent people. I better say that. My Mum could be reading
60s: she’s a boomer. Probably a feminist. Expects the wifey to do all the things she could not like have a career and do it all.
50s: Late boomer // early Gen X. These women tried to have it all. They now do have it all, a job, frail parents, and Teenagers/Twenties at home (on and off). These women are tired. Some have gone quite red pillish and give good advice. Others have doubled down on having it all, dammit. The latter are often divorced and often enmeshed in their kids lives. Avoid the latter
40s. Gen X. Resentful that they did not have a career (to be this age and a MIL, they would have had kids in their 20s) unlike their successful sisters (who now live with cats). More likely to be divorced. More likely to be bitter about it. The younger ones may be crunchy traditionalists. Much more difficult, on the whole.
30s. Run. If her Mum is that young, it spells very young breeding and that generally involves chaos.
“On the other flip-side this means that societal/legal expectations for men have to be raised…”
Oh, really?
Oh, really?
Yeah, Man Up, don’tcha know?
Great post!
@ Natalie
“On the other flip-side this means that societal/legal expectations for men have to be raised.”
In a limited number of cases, perhaps.
Men are held responsible in the current social framework through three primary mechanisms:
1) Alimony
2) Chalimony
3) Redistributive taxation
Women have nearly completely abrogated their half of the Grand Bargain…submitting to sexual control…with the advent of the aptly named Women’s Lib. They were free to ‘express their sexuality’, as the euphemism for promiscuity goes.
For their part, men have enjoyed some success at backing out of their half as well, insofar as they avoid the alimony/chalimony traps by (a) dodging marriage, (b) maintaining control of their seed (i.e., ‘sperm surety’), as and by minimizing the income they earn that is subject to seizure and redistribution by Uncle Sam(antha)’s tax collectors.
People see a cohort of slacker men who fail to launch and (some) who service the Carousel. What most (men and women both) fail to realize is that such slackherhood–failing to ‘man up’–is a perfectly rational response to an environment where the bulk of women are failing to ‘woman up’…by submitting to sexual controls that prescribe chastity until marriage, fidelity until death, and copious amounts of congress in between.
@ D,
“A wife’s best defense against a troublesome mother-in-law.”
Selection plays a role here too, methinks.
A wife’s best defense against troublesome MILs is to screen for men whose mothers are themselves submissive and not matriarchs.
And then, when it is their time to be the stereotypical MIL….don’t.
My experience (sample size = 2) is that the wife’s mother is of far greater concern. Such a person can either be a man’s biggest ally in holding the marriage together, or one of his worst enemies, turning the screw of doubt and contempt and division at every opportunity. I suspect that even the most stalwart and principled wives would crack after being worked on for a decade by a mother who doesn’t hesitate to let her daughter know that she thinks her little girl made a bad choice.
I’d say the reason why the wives are powerless is that there’s a power vacuum in the marriage. Can’t get anywhere if the rudder is broken.
No Natalie, you are framing this in terms of the wife’s subjective view about the rudder being broken. From little things ( and more little things) to big things she is constantly worrying about being in control and assuming there is no rudder. The reason the boat is swerving all about is because every time he lets go of it to go bail the leaking water out to keep her safe, she grabs the dang thing and turns, then when he is at the rudder, she is busy picking at the leaky hole trying to patch it and is making it bigger, all the while she is alternately thing “he isnt steering / he isn’t fixing that leak”. Add 5 million things to that list and her running around tending to them or checking that he has, and you will see why she says there is no rudder. If she’s lay back and enjoy the sunshine the boat ride would be smooth and dry. Hubby is glad to tend to all those things. He is not glad to be micromanaged in doing so.
Its a good deal for women, but they cannot imagine just accepting what is one of mens prime directives….to make them happy. Instead of seeing his allowing her to sit back and ride and being happy, she confuses happiness with him jumping to her whims to make her feel some thing that even she cannot describe, but calls it “safe”.
This seems logical, but I’m having trouble thinking of an area where men should have more responsibility. Since you brought it up, can you give an example?
I just thought of one: religion. As churches have become feminized, women have taken over the role of spiritual leader at church and at home, while their men have become uninvolved. In many families today, Mom drags Dad and the kids (or just the kids) to church on Sundays, and if any praying goes on at home, she directs it. So if women are put back “in their place,” men will have to step up and become spiritual leaders again, taking their families to church and being their spiritual teachers and prayer leaders at home.
That’s the only area I can think of where men aren’t already assigned the bulk of the responsibility, whether they want it or not. Any others?
Having recently lost my mother, and having a wife that really put up with a lot, though not in the interference sense, I can say that two things fixed their relationship.
As Dalrock says, when my wife gave over to relax and be lead and all but eliminated to constant murmur of challenging me (because my mother was very perceptive to that)
and
My wife simply decided to love my mother unconditionally, which I admit could be hard to do.
They ended up as close as any daughter-in-law MIL can be, no small feat since I was only child son of single mother.
Wife’s you have to make that work. There are few excuses to not doing your part.
@Dalrock: “Patriarchy or Matriarchy: Take your pick”
This really jumped out at me. This should be one of the leading arguments against feminism. In aggregate, wouldn’t most people entrust their future well-being in their personal lives (financial security, emotional stability, shelter) to their father than their mother if they had to make that choice? If so, then shouldn’t that same choice apply to their society? Of course, this still assumes rational thought process regarding long term consequences, so it is probably a non-starter for women, but it may be a good eye-opener for men.
One of the counters to the partiarchy vs matriarchy debate is the concept of 100% equalism of course. However, even at the scale of a business relationship they warn against that. Two partners in a business need to have different skill sets, not equal skill sets, and one will always need to have the tie breaking vote to avoid an impasse.
Dalrock hits it on the head, choose patriarchy & rights of men = morals & ethics for the greater good of society & family
Matriarchy gives you delusional loony tunes women … never underestimate the brutality of a feral female family towards their husbands & children, ie abortion & frivorce
Notice its feral women in african families who routinely circumcise womens clitori, because women who enjoy orgasms from men, are a threat to their aging decrepit vaginas …
& feral women in the west who circumcise mens genitals
Its also feral women who mutilate themselves,
By slicing the innards of their breasts out & replacing the innards of their tits, with silicone & other toxic substances
The grizzly & barbaric ways, women in the U.S mutilate themselves is innumerable
Its ridiculous how women accuse muslim religions, while their own deranged women mutilate themselves in the millions
Scooping out the innards of their breasts,
Then theirs mutilation via liposuction,
Disfigurement through plastic surgery
This is what a matriarchy looks like, women disfiguring & hideous grizzly painful operations, to compete with other women
Keep that shit out of your marriage, at all costs, ie displays of placing your husbands needs first,
Men need logical reasons to lead, blatantly put his needs first & you’ll see him grow as a husband & the born leader he is
Unless you enjoy seeing white women performing grizzly operations, on their breasts & scooping the innards of their stomachs & asses, to compete in their feral primitive matriarchial state …
Keep your family masculine & patriarchial, put your mans needs & rights first & you automatically put the greater good of your family & society first …
Matriarchy gives you PC langauage, thought crime, and you don’t dare offend women by telling them their debauchery is bad. Her feelings are more important than morals and values.
And in a business partnership you also need to have the IBYYBM, I buy you, you buy me. Thats how you deal with errant viewpoints. The relational equivalent is IDY I divorce you.
One of the many things not taught younger women anymore is to chose their MILs carefully, because their daughters are likely to turn out a lot like her.
This follows from the way children develop. A girl’s most significant parent in terms of personality development is her father, and his prime example of what a woman is is his mother, the girl’s paternal grandmother and the mother/wife’s MIL.
The parallel advice to men would be to pick a FIL who they like/respect, because the man’s sons are likely to be a lot like him in important ways years down the road.
Consideration for such facts of life used to be built-in to the way patriarchy did courtship, so it bears emphasizing in these post-patriarchal times.
Needless to say, the whole system breaks down rapidly and thoroughly when fatherhood is criminalized by Divorce 2.0 and fathers are expelled by force from families by mom and Uncle Sugar.
Martian Bachelor: “The parallel advice to men would be to pick a FIL who they like/respect, because the man’s sons are likely to be a lot like him in important ways years down the road.”
Men are just flat out better at being casually civil. You don’t have to like, respect, or empathize with someone to be civil, and remaining civil is all that’s expected when dealing with extended family.
There are no ancient epics where women bury the hatchet; the whole “I hate you and everything you stand for but I grit my teeth and deal with it” trope is a characteristic of men.
This is wholly off-topic… but there was an interesting article today in The Economist about the decline of divorce in England.
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21573548-forget-traditional-family-there-are-now-three-distinct-models-associated
Greenlander:
That was pretty interesting. If I’m reading the article correctly, the decline in divorce is driven by a decline in marriages among the working class generally. There’s also a related decline in births to unmarrieds, who I assume to be largely working class, since upper class people still seem to be marrying.
This is a trend which is likely starting (or going to start) in North America also. An awful lot of the kids I see running around are unattached, by their own preference.
The last part of the article is utter bunk. “Crime continues to decline, for example”? Seriously? That’s it? Mountains of evidence of the importance of a father in the home, brushed aside so casually.
This comment is a little off thread but given the events of the week and the pertinence to Dalrock readers.
It would seem that Catholics that fear for their church in the long term have less to fear with the election from Pope Francis. He seems to me to understand the actions to undertake to get the church through this time of scandal and public outcry. He appears to be open to the necessary reform of church and dogma to renew the church in this time of trouble.
While I haven’t read a great deal about the new pope, his philosophies, and background, I caught a few statements that I thought might signal to Dalrock readers about the directions the new pope might take and how he understands that the true base of the power within the modern Catholic church should have its spiritual needs meet.
On Thursday, the new Pope warned the Church would become “a compassionate NGO [non-governmental organisation]” without spiritual renewal – “just as when children make sand castles and then it all falls down”.
In a sermon to Argentine priests, he attacked those who would not baptise children of single mothers. “Those who separate the people of God from salvation. These are today’s hypocrites.”
Yes, this appears to me to be a pope that understands the world as it is, and as it will be. The church has been rocked to its core with the scandals that dominate headlines today.
And by recognizing the true power within the church, especially those who best can assure the renewal of the church by instilling the faith, the values, and practices of the church in those children that are the future, by calling for a spiritual renewal through a worldwide evangelism to reach out to those that would need the blessing and sacrament of the church, a church that eschews the patriarchial “clericalization”, a church that condemns those hypocrites that are so rigid that they would refuse baptism and the sacraments to those have acted in ways that go against “rigid” patriarchial interpretation of church pertaining to premarital sex and annulments…..
then the church can best weather the storm of scandal and assure its future as something more than a mere “Compassionate NGO”.
@ Mark…
Baptizing the kids of single mothers doesn’t reward the mother for her promiscuity…it is for the child’s sake for salvation. In fact I would find it noble a mother would do that for her kid knowing what type of judgement is coming…at least she’s thinking about the child’s well being. Besides the kid didn’t decide how it was chosen to come into the world…so he’s right about priests taking away salvation from people.
I read the article in the Economist. I checked to see whether a man or a woman wrote it but there is no author listed. Usually female authors tend to take a more “positive” and encouraging stance on marriage. I think this is a female author because she made references to “having babies” as opposed to “having children” or “giving birth” and I don’t think a male author would have painted such a “rosy”, even though ambiguous picture.
One would need to be somewhat “Dalrockized” to truly understand what those statistics are saying because there are sub-statistics involved in all the data this article quoted.
If a carousel rider, has a degree, she might have been able to find a beta provider and get off the carousel. Note that hypergamy is at play here. The author infers that the “upper classes” are returning or upholding more traditional value:
“The first, well-to-do, group has largely held to old-fashioned ideas about marriage. Among professionals, births within marriage are four times as common as births where the father is registered as absent from the household—a proportion that has hardly changed in the past decade. And in some ways the upper middle classes are coming to seem more orthodox.”
This statement is also what makes me think a woman wrote the article with the references to “orthodox values”. The hypergamistic carousel rider found a high income provider beta, and she is now sinking the hook. Steve Moxon in “The Women Racket” details that British women really do not want to work. The degree path for them was really about gaining access to high status males. So our “strong and independent” college graduate latched on someone, “senior managers or professional husbands”, and now is having children
“Their fertility is rising, points out Ann Berrington, a demographer at the University of Southampton. Women married to senior managers or professional husbands now wait until they are almost 33 years old before having a child—four years longer than women married to less well-off husbands. As young upper-middle-class women entered university in large numbers in the 1990s, birth rates and marriage rates dropped as children were put off in favour of careers. They are now making up for lost time.”
Notice also “Their fertility is rising”, not, “they are getting pregnant”. She infers that some sort of deferred “fertility” is occurring as those women spent their 20s in university and in getting merit badges and now at 33 ( Does that age ring a bell with Dalrock readers?), after nailing down the higher income beta provider, she gets pregnant, cementing her permanence in the pocket of the man, using the last ounces of SMV to secure provisioning. Divorce among this groups is lower because the options of finding a higher paid male given her age and child and the slim pickings available in Britain today among high wage earnets. The workplace during the 2008-2013 downturn got a little dog eat dog, a lot less “cool lunches in spiffy places with fun people” and lot more “dog eat dog”. British women are learning the “work thing” was a big con job and now she has a way out of it using that baby as the ticket. So despite everything written about marriage and the reality of it, “Betas gonna beta”. Yet be aware, despite this rosy picture of orthodoxy in the upper middle class, there is still 20% of the children to women without husbands. So even among professional women, there is probably some 30 somethings springing “baby traps”, Liz Jones “sperm stealers”.
Another thing to keep in mind is the comments from other manosphere blogs. The guys from Britain have little to say that is good about the typical British woman and join in the chorus with American men about the women being fat, disgusting, drunken sluts, are often are some of the loudest singers. So this has an effect of adding to a scarcity model for attractive women and enhancing their bargaining position with potential beta provider males. So when a high income beta man is constantly surround by fat, disgusting, pigs, and an even slightly attractive former “rider” puts the full court press on him, he is more apt to fall prey to it.
So then among the working class women, again hypergamy is at play. Marriage has dropped from 53% in 2001 to 44% today. Those women just can’t find men to “man up” and earn the income she deserves. Also notice this woman’s statistic.
” A study by the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, found that between 1968 and 2008 women accounted for three times more of working class families’ income growth than men. Coupled with a more generous welfare system, this has made women far less dependent on a man’s income to raise children.”
The British women earned very little in 1968. And there has no real income gains among the British working class men since that time. Women entered the workforce in numbers in the 1970s and according to Mockey, even then, the vast majority of growth among female workers was in part-time work. And the “generous welfare system” is an alpha proxy as well are all aware. So basically our working class woman, or more correctly, our woman who was not able to nail down a high income man, is eschewing marriage to a lower income man or being eschewed by men because she is fat, drunken slut.
The third category that author mentions is immigrant families. The author states that this is the driving group behind the birthrate in Britain. And my analysis of data in America says the same thing was true here. I say “was”, because since 2007, that birthrate among foreign born women has plummeted in America. And the same is beginning to happen in Britain.
“Still, foreigners and ethnic minorities seem to be gradually converging on white British norms. They are marrying less, divorcing more and having fewer children.”
IN 2006, Steve Mockey released a book called “The Immigration Racket” and it led to quite a shakeup in the government in 2007 and some less favorable policies towards immigration, benefits for immigrant men, etc. I would say the fortunes of immigrant men in England has been less fortuitous during the economic turn down.
And immigrant women, like British women, have learned that having a vagina has more upside than having a lower income husband. It can be traded for cash and prizes that far exceed the benefits a lower income husband could provide. And the low status imposed on the foolish woman who would marry such a man can be readily avoided. She gains no status from work and a mini-skirt and some high heels gives our girl all the status she needs to get by.
And while this author paints an ambiguous picture and tries to leave the reader with somewhat rosy image of the state of the “union” in Britain, I see Britain in the same state as America, falling rates of marriage in an ever increasing percentage lower paid people, experiencing a demographic bubble of births in the upper income brackets and in the unmarried lower income immigrant groups adding pressure to welfare expenditures.
@earl
I agree. Please notice I tried to word my statement carefully. But I did do so in a way that would signal to a typical reader of this blog the directions that could be expected from the church.
But what I did notice that in a Reuters article, of all the things that could be said about a new pope, these things are what were printed, and I assumed released to Reuters by the Vatican Press office. I mean, this is Reuters, possibly the largest international news agency.
I am sure the biggest question among Catholics when a new pope is elected is how shall he interpret (I don’t know a better word to use here, so please excuse the use) “dogma”, what direction he will go. When the prior pope was elected, it was interpreted that he was more conservative and would have less tolerance of “Activist” priests that tended to have a more Marxist leaning, particularly in Central and Latin America. And there seemed to be a lot less stories of these sorts of radical priests preaching income and land redistribution in Latin America over the last 8 years.
I would never have even read anything into those statements included in the article and would have thought completely, especially as a Protestant, that, of course, those babies should be baptized. Heck, I used to live in Boulder. We even baptized Kitties in Boulder., and horses, dogs, gerbils, and even Hamsters.
But recent comments by Catholic readers that hinted to the accommodation of the Church to annulments, divorce, and single mothers, caused me to interpret that of all things that the church could say at this time, in the first days, after the election of a pope, they chose to say “We are not going to separate People of God from Salvation”, with a special mention of the children of single mothers, meaning women who had a child outside of marriage after engaging in premarital sex. This tells me that there will be a policy of accommodation towards women and tolerance of lifestyles and modes of behavior that are antagonistic to the true intent of the scripture.
It’s one thing to do it, to baptize those children, but for it to be the first message, that this Pope, this Latin American pope, the place where the Catholic church still has the greatest influence in the daily affairs of people, intends get out among the people with an evangelizing “Come home” message, a message that says “God understands” and the church is here to do God’s will and administer to the spiritual needs of its people and do not let your past keep you from the church. It is a way of saying “We have sinned also. We have not been perfect in any way, shape, or form. If you forgive us then we shall help you find the forgiveness you seek also.
I agree with him. At this time, with this church under the attack that it is under, it has to take this course.
But do not expect this church to take a firm line with women and compel them to honor vows and follow the letter of church law to be able to receive the sacraments.
Hey, sorry – traveling. Didn’t get a chance to answer before now. Ok, so right now men largely have financial responsibilities imposed on them by the state. Love your kids but Mom won’t let you see them? Pay through the nose. Want kids and your wife aborts them? Pay through the nose. There is responsibility of a sort (financial obligations/slavery) without any corresponding authority to validate or energize male responsibility. You are responsible for seeing that “mom” has a state mandated supply of money. You aren’t (often/primarily) responsible for your children’s welfare in a direct tangible way (ie discipline, affection, teaching, etc). So I guess what I’m saying is that male responsibility has largely been reduced to the financial vector. If women are restricted in sphere then men will have to take on responsibility in areas that our current legal environment says are for women (ie default wife custody means default presumption that female discipline is better).
And I’m just talking about domestic responsibility here. What happens to women restricted from the workforce or certain segments of it? How do we treat the spinster, the widow, the orphan? Are they thrown on the state? Are they the subjects of a familial paternalism (a la the spinster aunt living with her brother’s family)? If we strictly limit the franchise that will have other repercussions (many positive I acknowledge). If we limit women’s legal access (explicitly or tacitly) that will create other situations where men have to act for women. Right now women have tremendous power to destroy men’s lives. If you flip the script men will have tremendous power to destroy women’s lives, and my main concern is that this is power that modern men don’t have practice wielding. On balance I would say that men have a much better track record – I don’t buy the “all women were oppressed before Wollstonecraft/Stanton/3rd wave feminism” at all. I pretty much always trust a man in power more than a woman because that’s just the created order. And yet when God brings judgement on a nation we see lots of sluts and men behaving badly. The women need corralling, but that doesn’t mean that this generation of men is necessarily read to do that.
Sorry…jumping in here.
I find it interesting that blame is so reflexively placed on the mother-in-law. I’ve met so many kind, loving, reasonable women who feel that they have to walk on eggshells around their sons’ wives. In my experience, daughters-in-law are usually far nastier to their husbands’ parents than vice versa (I should note that I’m a mother of very young children, so I’m not speaking from personal bias.), and as you indicate, I think it has a lot to do with power.
Women tend to be irrationally jealous of any connections their husbands had prior to their relationship, whether they were with parents, siblings, or friends. To my mind, it’s completely unfair to ask a man to give up his bond with his family, while women can call their parents multiple times a day without raising an eyebrow. Yes, I know the Bible says, “A man shall leave his mother and father, etc., etc.,” but nowhere does it say, “But a woman may remain as close to her family of origin as she likes” or “The mother’s family has first dibs on the grandchildren while the father’s must remain second-class relatives who tiptoe gingerly around the mother’s sensitivities.”
If you love your husband, you owe love and respect to the woman who helped him become who he is, and you should honor his bond with her.
“But what I did notice that in a Reuters article, of all the things that could be said about a new pope, these things are what were printed, and I assumed released to Reuters by the Vatican Press office.”
Hard to say…the Vatican could have mentioned that…or it could have been history they dug up. I take the media with a grain of salt since they are the megaphone of Satan. If they find something that agrees with their agenda (the feminine imperative), they’ll highlight it.
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