Monday, March 27, 2006

Marriage is for White People

Yesterday night, late, a link on Instapundit got my attention: Marriage is for White People said the title. Huh? I read the Editorial and couldn't get to sleep that night, mulling over the implications of Joy Jone's opinion.

Traditional notions of family, especially the extended family network, endure. But working mothers, unmarried couples living together, out-of-wedlock births, birth control, divorce and remarriage have transformed the social landscape. And no one seems to feel this more than African American women. One told me that with today's changing mores, it's hard to know "what normal looks like" when it comes to courtship, marriage and parenthood. Sex, love and childbearing have become a la carte choices rather than a package deal that comes with marriage. Moreover, in an era of brothers on the "down low," the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and the decline of the stable blue-collar jobs that black men used to hold, linking one's fate to a man makes marriage a risky business for a black woman.

"A woman who takes that step is bold and brave," one young single mother told me. "Women don't want to marry because they don't want to lose their freedom." (emphasis added)


A man doesn't want to lose his freedom in his testosterone-charged 20s and now women don't want to lose their freedom in their independent 30s. Marriage = Loss of Freedom.

Is this statement true? Has being married mean, well, that I'm a slave, or an indentured servant? Isn't that what "loss of freedom" means at its most basic?

I can see why a woman wouldn't want to marry a debt-laden, STD carrying, addiction-recovering shiftless bum of a man especially given the likelihood that this woman is a single mother, with a good job and seeks a partner not "another baby." But didn't these women help to create the Big Babies? This is going to get me in hot water, I can feel it, but I'll press on. When a woman allows every cutie with a tight glutes into her bed in her 20s without so much as a last name and a condom-request, doesn't she contribute to the perpetual petulant man-child phenomenon? I mean, come on, those babies the women are raising alone didn't jump into her uterus without some help.

It seems to me that one of the trade-offs for sexual liberation, have been isolation and solitary responsibility. The men were talking about here, also have trouble keepin a job, staying sober and generally contributing to society--they aren't parenting as the earnest little boy in Ms. Jone's anecdote hopes:

But as a black woman, I have witnessed the outrage of girlfriends when the ex failed to show up for his weekend with the kids, and I've seen the disappointment of children who missed having a dad around. Having enjoyed a close relationship with my own father, I made a conscious decision that I wanted a husband, not a live-in boyfriend and not a "baby's daddy," when it came my time to mate and marry.



My time never came.

For years, I wondered why not. And then some 12-year-olds enlightened me.

"Marriage is for white people."

That's what one of my students told me some years back when I taught a career exploration class for sixth-graders at an elementary school in Southeast Washington. I was pleasantly surprised when the boys in the class stated that being a good father was a very important goal to them, more meaningful than making money or having a fancy title.

"That's wonderful!" I told my class. "I think I'll invite some couples in to talk about being married and rearing children."

"Oh, no," objected one student. "We're not interested in the part about marriage. Only about how to be good fathers."

And that's when the other boy chimed in, speaking as if the words left a nasty taste in his mouth: "Marriage is for white people."

Here's the thing, that child had to be told by someone, probably a mother, that marriage isn't for black people to justify the situation. A boy wants a father. A mother must come up with a reasonable explanation why no father exists. This rationalization is as good as any.

It seems like the author believes, like many feminists believe, that there are only two options: independence/alone/single/freedom or dependence/together/married/enslaved.

That has not been my experience either way and it's not what I see. While being married can be challenging, I shudder to think of parenting my kids alone. Like all people, I have bad days and am glad to be partnered with someone who can parent as well, but differently, as I do.

In the last generation, men 50 and up, men came home from work to their woman. She cooked him dinner, cleaned the house, cared for the kids and almost everything else. The man watched TV and pretty much did as he damn well pleased. At least that was my home and that of most of my friends.

Growing up, I found the man-woman dynamic repulsive. Most (not all) men talked to their women like another child, showed little to no respect for her hard work and expected everything to be done their way--he was the breadwinner afterall.

Today, the roles for the black population (according to Ms. Jones anyway) are reversed. She brings home the bacon, fries it up in a pan, in the house she buys, with the kids she gave birth to and she's not much interested in anyone's opinion about how she lives her life. And, she's not interested in changing her life around for a man. Why should she?

Is this what women have aspired to? To possess the same selfish, chauvanistic, degrading attitudes toward men that men used to have for women? Tit for tat, as it were?

While the old stodgy roles stifled lots of women into being exclusively mothers and nothing more, throwing the mother role, the wife role, marriage itself out seems to be cutting our noses off despite our faces.

Marriage, between well-matched, loving partners, free people like no other social contract. Married people have more, better sex lives than their single counterparts. Married people, help one another during tough times. Married people have two people who can work should one get sick or hurt or lose a job. Married people don't have to do everything themselves--so the one with the money talent does that. The one with the gardening talent does that.

Married people can focus on the ways they can help their children best and not try to be Mr. or Ms. Everything. No one can nurture a child like a mom. No one can protect a child like a dad. While I'm not interested in playing horsey-rider with my kids, my husband is and does. While I'm not interested in working a chain-saw (not that I couldn't) my husband is. My sons and daugher see a man treating a woman with respect and kindness. They see a mutual relationship. They see conflict resolution. They see friendship and relationships modelled (for better or worse).

My sons and daughter see a whole lot of behavior modelled by their father they just wouldn't see with me alone. Could they survive? Could they grow up to be fine men and a fine woman without their Daddy in the house? I'd like to think so. But there is just no getting around the fact they would not see certain things growing up without a dad or a mom and that that lack would manifest when faced with similar situations as an adult. It would cause confusion like this:

One told me that with today's changing mores, it's hard to know "what normal looks like" when it comes to courtship, marriage and parenthood. Sex, love and childbearing have become a la carte choices rather than a package deal that comes with marriage.

Relationships "a la carte" cause confusion. There is a reason that marriage has been one of the most traditional, enduring social building blocks. It simplifies life. But marriage is not for selfish people. Marriage is not for people thinking that they can come home from work and boss around "the help". Marriage is not for people who view any compromise as a zero-sum game--a loss for themselves.

Marriage might consist of little "losses" but overall gains. Are we so short-sighted and selfish that we are willing to chuck it so we can have our own way all the time? Are we so inflexible and hardened that we are willing to short-change our children for our own comfort. Marriage, done right, offers safety, companionship, protection and stability for people. What is bad about this?

While Ms. Jones make a statement about the class of men available to her, not all men are this way! Perhaps she is hanging with the wrong crowd. Perhaps she hung with the wrong crowd in her 20s, too, when most people find their mates and get married.

Marriage is for all people, but they better be ready to give a little, because operating like a single person with a ring on doesn't cut it. It will be a sad day for America if the majority of all people, black, white or purple come to the conclusion Ms. Jones comes to. A sad day, indeed.

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