Tue, 2010-06-01 22:49

Quick followup on re-thinking “unwed” pregnancy in an earlier post.

You know…

Perhaps because we’re such psychos about pregnancy and child-rearing as the “wages of sin” for single women we tend to frame our narratives almost entirely on the consequences on the mothers.

I mean, yeah, sure, in a patriarchal society that’s where all the emphasis would go — all the “who’s your daddy” business, all the “already chewed gum” abstinence analogies, all the “women and dependent infants and children” programs, all the “man around the house” idealizing, all that crap and more are going to be of natural concern if what really matters is determining paternity and avoiding “cuckoldry” and scorning “that kind” of woman and all that.

And I know, I know, in patriarchal society pregnancy and child-rearing and staying home with the kids and all that domestic stuff is “women’s work” about which men should be some combination of aloof, clueless, indifferent to, vaguely “pride and joy” motivated about, and largely absent from.

I know all that and I get that when you factor all that in it makes sense that the focus would be almost entirely on the role of women and children in single parent families.

And I even get… in fact I especially get… that in patriarchy men are considered the default, neutral, standard norm against which women and your uterus thingies and other lady parts are “the other.” And that “the other” is always going to get way more scrutiny and be taken way, way less for granted than the by-definition normal, well, normal men-like people.

But…

But…

Y’know? If you start looking at men not as the standard species type for human beings but just one more of a very wide variety of types you start to stop making assumptions and start asking questions. You stop looking at men as “that which in a just society all others will finally be equal to” and start wondering what their tradeoffs, obstacles, and unexamined oppressions are.

And when you do that you have to start asking yourself…

What is the social and psychic cost to the very considerable number not just of single men who’s absence helps define “single-female head of household” but on those men?

Because, seriously, not being part of a family, of having children but not being connected to posterity, of being defined as independent and free of households while in reality being only secondary to them?

Dudes, they’re missing out on some serious quality of life!

That would be one of the problems of defining one’s self by one’s gender roles instead of by, say, what you could create for yourself.

Because if your a man and your “role” is to be “head” of the house…

But you being on average only an average human being you only having a 50% chance of being the “head” in relationship to any other human being…

And then you multiply that sense of defined entitlement/obligation not only by one’s partner but by another 5O% chance for each additional member who comes into the family. Then the statistical chance that you actually are qualified to be the “head of household” of social expectation to which everyone else naturally and justifiably defers goes down pretty quickly.

Which would be fine, of course, except for that Garrison Keilor-like social expectation that all men must be “above average.” Which turns the statistical necessity that all men must be, well, average into its own no-win cycle of shame, withdrawal, undeserved entitlement, anxiety, anger, and isolation.

The alternative for men to being the Ozzie and Harriet “head” of one’s family, of course, is to just be a plain, old, regular, incredibly, incredibly valuable part of one’s family.

The problem with all the common narratives for men in families is it’s all either/or — either you’re the head of the family or… you can’t even be there at all. (And clue #72 would be: even if you are able to merit the capacity to be “head” of the household it’s… still a really, really good idea, even for meritocrats, to distribute tasks and other primary decisions to those who are most immediate to various situations. Just saying.)

Anyway, this often-unwarranted pressure to be the titular-male “head” of the household is largely not, by the way, mitigated by the expectations of everybody else besides the man — beginning with his partner and extending to her parents, his parents, his and her siblings and other family members, often his friends, his employers, his neighbors, and, for that matter, random people walking down the street.

And if “because I say so” is a really dumb reason to try to be in charge “because everyone else says so” is even worse.

It’s a lot of pressure when you think about it — even if you’re committed to being a part of the household and not just roleplaying the head it’s hard to buck everyone else’s expectations.

Which is just one more place where feminism comes in and “traditional” expectations don’t. Which is kind of ironic when you think of the stereotypical/theoretical antagonism between feminists and unattached single men. But here’s the trick: you relay the last four or five paragraphs to your average feminist and she or he’s going to come to your side very quickly. You try to explain it to your average anti-feminist and he or she will just say you need to grow a pair, or to get off his lawn.