Heteromonogamy is really just another way to waste women's time, isn't it?

[solidgoldbrass]

All those books, articles, courses on how to Find The One, Make Him Commit, Keep It Exciting - keeping women occupied with the Perfect Relationship means they don't have time to do anything interesting with their lives.

[sparky680]

i think one of the problems is-society still doesnt see that a sp/non traditional family is a bonifide family.
also-society still doesnt see/like to see that women are quite capable and quite capable of raising a family in a non traditional way.

[Himalaya]

SAF - indeed, really it is best not to assume either way, but talk about it adult to adult and only have unprotected sex with someone you are willing to commit with to an 18 year+ relationship (of some sort...).

Perhaps I read it wrong but I read cutsoftheirtails's dismisal of finding someone willing to commit (to be a dad) as pointless 'jumping through hoops'.
This seems like thowing out the baby with the bathwater, and lumping the heteromonogamy question together with the one about being a responsible parent.

e.g. "woman who have children in their late 30s because it took until then to convince their long-term boyfriend to agree to TTC." The question here isn't about monogamy it is about fatherhood.

[ForkInTheForeheid]

Not read all the replies since this morning so apologies if I'm repeating anyone else's thoughts.

SGB: First you have to find the man, then you have to catch the man, then you have to keep pleasing the man and also policing him so no breach of monogamy can occur.

Of course the above is crap, crap, crap for women - that version of heteromonogamy is not conducive to a happy or fulfilled life as a woman. I honestly find it hard to comprehend anyone who actually lives their life like that though. I live a fairly sheltered life and most of my friends/family fit into the hetermonogamous category but that description would not fit me or any of the women I know. (It might be that I just know really cool, strong women :) )

As for my personal experience, monogamy is part of the deal with my and DH, it's something we both feel strongly about. However, we don't police each other or stress about it, we just accept that while we are happy in our relationship we will not seek sexual fulfilment elsewhere. We are also agreed that if we get to a stage where we find ourselves on the brink of this then something has gone badly wrong with our relationship and we need to A. Sort it out or B. Break up.

As for catching and pleasing the man. Urgh. Being considerate of a partner's feelings and thinking about them should be par for the course in a relationship. But I definitely don't buy into this 1950s claptrap of 20 ways to please your man blah blah blah. Do what works and fuck what other people think.

(sorry that was rather ranty and incoherent)

[MillyR]

Himalaya, I am not sure what point you are making.

Are you saying that when people have a child, they should make it clear what their role is going to be? So if a woman has a child by sperm donor, that is fine if they are both agreed. A woman who has a child by a male friend, but he has no involvement or very limited involvement, that is fine. Basically, that any arrangement is fine as long as the father agrees he wants a child, even if he isn't going to be involved?

Or have I misunderstood?

The issue of children having fathers who wish their child did not exist seems quite an uncommon one, and not a very controversial one. If this is the point you are making.

And the issue of women over 35 TTC, surely that is to do with long term relationships? If that women wasn't caught up in the idea that she had to get married/have a partner in order to have a child, then she wouldn't be waiting around for her long term partner to decide he feels 'ready' to have a child. So it seems much more to about long term relationships than it is about fatherhood.

[Becaroooo]

I have been out with men who seemed to think monogamy was a type of wood!!!

[BertieBotts]

"...knowing that bringing up children is one of life's hardest jobs ever and wanting to be really really bloody picky about who i am willing to share that job with."

I actually think this is the most important thing, and I think the expectation of heteromonogamy has positives and negatives to this. Firstly yes, if you're aware of the influence of your partner on any potential children and you have a good relationship template to start off with and you find someone really good who you really think would be great at it, then heteromonogamy is great in that situation, because it is expected that you'll stay in this arrangement until the children have grown up and left home, and even if you do split up, society expects the father to continue to be involved in his children's lives. But if you have the opposite - an unplanned pregnancy, or a bad relationship, or pressured into it, and you make the mistake of putting the father on the birth certificate, there is no way you can undo this mistake and get him out of your child's life, if they're a bad influence or manipulative or whatever, the best you can hope for is that they disappear.

I think children do need positive role models of different genders, examples of positive relationships (which don't have to be heteronormative ones, just respectful ones) but I DON'T think this needs to be within the family home. I just feel that I was let down by my childhood examples of male behaviour and what relationships were like, and while I was totally happy to raise DS as a single mother (As my mum did, and she was brilliant) I just completely disregarded the importance of his father and assumed he wouldn't make any kind of influence on him, or something. And I think that was a mistake. If DS' father wasn't his father, if he was an uncle or something, I wouldn't let him see him, and that strikes me as ludicrous that just because he happens to be a parent that there's this expectation that they should have some kind of relationship, when XP has never really bothered to be involved with him.

[skrumle]

i just don't actually know anyone who lives their lives the way the daily mail seems to think all women do - find/please/keep a man.

so while it's irritating that so much of the media focuses on this kind of crap i think for most women a heteromonogamous relationship is something they aspire to because they find the idea of a life partner appealling and/or they want to have children and don't want to be a single parent.

also, while i know plenty of relationships where things are not necessarily wonderful, in most of the marriages i see around me the woman is in charge. now some of that is "wifework" but some of it is being in control - managing money, house choices, holiday choices, when to have children, etc, etc.

[HerBeX]

I agree to some extent re the woman bieng in control in lots of marriages skrumle

But tbh a lot of them don't want to be - they want equality and they're exhausted by having to do all tht control - they just assume control because their dh's aren't tht bothered.

I've also seen cases where such women have divorced their husband as soon as the kids have left home. Popular culture doesn't sell women the idea of being in control, it sells us the idea of having an equal, involved partnership. And though obviously control is more attractive than lack of any control (who wouldn't rather be a hammer than a nail?) it isn't why women enter marriage.

[HerBeX]

I look at a lot of couples and it's obvious that the woman is the dynamic one in the relationship.

Because we're socialised to be I suppose - to worry about our relationshiips, to work on them, to nurture them etc.

[TheFrozenMBJ]

It is true that the husband does seem to become on of the children in many relationships. My MIL certainly tries to make me take responsibility for DH's actions, which of course is ridiculous. He is an adult and if he can't be bothered to check which passport he takes when leaving for a business trip, it is no skin of my nose when he gets to the Eurostar and has 19 month old DS's passport instead of his own*

*True story. She still maintains it was my fault for nit checking he had the right one

[AnyFucker]

ha !

I once had a massive falling out with MIL because I refused to "remember" all his family members birthdays and arrange card-and-present-buying

she seemed to think I should do it

I said I would do my share if he took responsibilty for my side of the family too

she also couldn't believe that I "made him" do his own ironing

[HerBeX]

I once had a convo with someone who complained that her friend's husband licked his plates clean and she found it disgusting and didn't understand why her friend didn't do something about it.

I agreed it was gross. I couldn't understand why she didn't do anything about it either.

That was before my feminist consciousness was raised.

[AnyFucker]

to be fair, this was years ago and she has a lot more respect for me now, seeing me as a good thing for her little boy

we get on great, and I have a lot to thank her for

a shaky start, notwithstanding

[TheFrozenMBJ]

Oh, I rant on here about mine, but she's great really. Just has some odd ideas about responsibility.

[Himalaya]

MillyR - yup, something like that. 

The idea that  a wannabe mum  whose long-term partner doesn't want to have children doesn't have a real problem, just a  hang-up from reading too much Cosmo seems weird to me. 

It's not necessarily that the woman is caught up with the idea that she has to have a partner in order to have a child. It is that she already has one, she enjoys what they do together and values his commitment (or as the romantics would say, they are in love...). So they are both is faced with a real dilemma. 

[HerBeX]

Yes I agree that that's a real and genuine dilemma Himalaya.

Though tbh it wouldn't have been one for me - I would have known that the imperative to have children, was more important than the fact that I enjoyed this guy's company and I would have known that either there are other guys in the world whose company I would enjoy and who wouldn't veto my fertility.

I think the less genuine dilemma is that of a single woman who wants children and is being told that she can't have them because she hasn't found a man to have them with.

Interesting that the Archers covered this storyline with Mad Helen as the protagonist.

[SheCutOffTheirTails]

I think reducing someone's entire cultural conditioning to "a hang up from reading Cosmo" is a glib misrepresentation of both the OP and the point I was making.

If a woman who wants children puts off having them until it's too late because she is "in love", then that rather makes the case that heteromonogamy wastes women's time.

There can only be a dilemma between choosing to stay with a man who refuses to reproduce with you and finding one who is willing to in a culture that places a lot of importance on romantic relationships.

It is also interesting to interrogate the characteristics of romance that demands women sacrifice their biological urges for children to maintain relationships with unwilling fathers.

[Himalaya]

I own up to glib (but it was a 3 line OP about articles on Finding The One, Make Him Commit, Keep It Exciting etc.. which I read as Cosmo headlines, not entire cultural conditioning...)

By your argument if a woman wants children and puts them off until too late because of her career, or her business does it also make the case that these things are wasting women's time too?

Time is limited, we want different things, we face dilemmas, we make choices. Society makes those choices harder than they should be sometimes, and we should try and make them easier. But it is a bit sweeping to say that therefore relationships are a waste of women's time.

I agree it is a waste of time to stay with a guy who doesn't want children if you do, in the hope that he will come round, or to stay in a bad relationship in hope that it turns good.

But again, these examples don't therefore mean that all effort put into relationships is worthless, or that there aren't real human dilemmas when two people love each other but want different things in life (by the same token, if a bloke finds out that his wife is infertile it is quite ok to dump her to go fulfill his biological urges, and any emotional pain either of them feel about this is just cultural conditioning about the importance of romantic relationships??)

[SheCutOffTheirTails]

The argument is not that relationships are a waste of time, it's that heteromonogamy wastes women's time.

My point is that we live in a culture that tells women that they can't have children until they've found a man who wants to "commit" and that given that women's fertility is time limited, that that culture puts women at a disadvantage.

The thought experiment is to imagine a world where women choose when to have children whenever they choose throughout their lives, regardless of their relationship status. So maybe a young woman decides to have a child straight after college before further study. She gets pregnant by a close friend "with benefits" who is involved with their child. They never life as a couple.

Then she qualifies and works on her career for a while. By that stage she is in a steady relationship so has another two children by her then partner. She gives up work when the children are small and starts her own company. Her relationship breaks down, but as she approaches menopause she decides to give motherhood a last chance. She is single, so uses a sperm donor.

During her 30s she has also donated eggs to a gay couple who wanted to have children by a surrogate.

A woman who lived her life like this would be excoriated for having 4 children by 3 different fathers, for getting pregnant before starting her career, for being an older mother. That's not how the script is meant to play out.

I haven't said anything about individual dilemmas, or whether relationships are worthwhile.

I'm a part of that culture too. I'm a fully paid up member of team heteromonogamy - I would not have chosen to have children before being married. I don't think relationships, or careers are a waste of the time of individual women who care about them.

The point is that as a culture, the message we give to women about how they should live their lives wastes their time. It tells them to put an enormous amount of energy into maintaining relationships, even crap ones, because they are a good in and of themselves.

Look at the Relationships board when a childless, unmarried woman comes on to complain about her boyfriend being rubbish - people will tell her that "relationships are about hard work" and that you need to take the rough with the smooth. But the reality is - NO YOU DON'T. If a relationship doesn't please you, particularly when you have no commitments to someone at all, then you end it. Why stay?

The answer frequently comes down to time "invested" in the relationship. But what's the return on the investment?

The return is a hoped for future with children and security.

That's the incentive for women to stay - because they have absorbed the message that they need to wait until a man agrees before they have children. But the reality is that they don't have to wait for that permission. There are other ways.

Interesting point about an infertile spouse. I don't think it really fits into the "wasting time" argument. Although I guess a lot of time can be wasted in pursuing fertility treatment with someone rather than leaving them to find someone else.

Certainly a decision to stay is culturally determined, and probably part of the same heteromonogamy that wastes women's time in other ways. Maybe it protects the infertile at the same time that it damages the fertile?