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I see comments like this a lot, and it goes with the general sentiment that men don't respect women and only think of them as sex objects. The truth is that men do value women greatly for certain things that are unique to their womanhood and less for other things that are not unique to women. It's contemporary women who have devalued the qualities they have which men do value.
I know this is controversial to say these days, but the bodies of men who act like women cannot do the things the real women can do with their bodies and, generally, women are highly valuable because of what their bodies are built to do: nurture life. If I owned a goat who just wanted sit in my chicken coop all day, he wouldn't be very valuable to me because he can't lay eggs.
I'm not saying that all people should be strictly limited to traditional gender roles -- there are outliers that just can't perform those roles. However, society is currently obsessed with making outliers the new normal, which is wreaking havoc on both the healthy operation of human interactions and the self-worth of those who have been yaslit into devaluing their natural gifts.
Really? Sure, there's lots of male respect for the cute twenty/thirtysomething new mom with a baby or two on her hip. Let's even be charitable and assume this does show genuine value for the Life-Nurturing Feminine, not just that hot moms are hot. But whatever that value is, it localizes pretty strictly around the 5-10 years of baby-toddler momhood. In mass culture, middle-aged moms of tweens and teens are bad cops and out-of-touch laughingstocks, older moms of grown-up kids are the ones who get vented about in therapy, accused of narcissism/busybodyness and subjected to aggressive "boundary-setting" if they're even tolerated in the kids' lives at all. Is it a wise choice for a woman to opt into an identity with a mandatory retirement policy that's at most decade out? What's she supposed to envision doing for the rest of the time?
A person's value can change over time from one asset to another.
I know you want to read a lot into this, but it's reall very simple, and universal for both men and women:
If you want to be valued (beyond the default "all human life has value" value, which is a wash across the board), you need to provide value.
A young man, for example, is generally valuable for his strong back and plentiful energy; an old man is generally valuable for his learned wisdom, accrued wealth and maybe even skill at the management of young men. If an old man is stupid, poor and cannot lead the young, he is shirking his own value. It doesn't matter if other people want to imbue him with value or not, he provides nothing.
Women, likewise, can be valuable for a lot of things when they're younger, and less valuable for those things later, but valuable for other properties that align with their age and experience.
I am not proscribing that women only do certain things -- certainly there is variability with every person, and I'm libertarian in terms of what part the law should play in this -- but rather suggesting that women who complain that they aren't valued are probably not providing value out of their own choice. Just like men who don't feel valued by women. This type of value is not innate but something one must identify correctly and work towards providing. Old-fashioned gender roles were better at teaching young people how they can be of value to others than today's gender roles are.
So to go with OP's scenario, a woman in her 20s has the option of rendering value through: (a) having babies and raising them, or (b) focusing on her career and developing her ability to offer economic value, maybe while trying to fit in a baby or two for personal gratification along the way.
In option (a), she's maybe got 15-20 years of being valuable to others (since people value mothering mostly through the end of the cute phase); that value is mostly rendered privately, since community members don't much care who breeds or not; and the past value she's rendered is extremely perishable, expiring pretty immediately when her fertility ends and the kids leave elementary school.
In option (b), she can continue to produce value for others, and thus be regarded as valuable in turn, through age 60-65+; her value is rendered publicly and comes with the benefits of stronger community relationships and public respect; and even if something happens so that she gets fired at 55, her compensation thus far has been in investment-friendly cash plus professional connections, which will hold their value well in tough times.
I think this is why old-fashioned gender roles did very much emphasize women's economic productivity, focusing on diligent spinning, weaving, prudent financial management, etc. (Also, creation of children used to be another form of economic productivity/retirement savings, but is definitely less so now that they don't contribute to the household and feel no obligation to look after aged parents.) For better or worse, our grinding middle-management girlbosses are more truly aligned with old-fashioned notions of women's value than the modern sentimental tradwife who stays hot for hubby, bakes cute cupcakes and cuddles the babies all day.
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The gender roles were also very good at determining/controlling pitfalls, too; a society that is only capable of condemning stupidity/violence in men [who provide value by doing], or anger/entitlement in women [who provide value by being], is inherently divided against itself simply because that is the most common failure mode of each gender. It gets worse when those faults are portrayed as positive.
Maybe, but along came mechanization and post-scarcity, and the West hasn't quite figured out how to deal with that yet; now, men need to act like women to succeed (sit down, shut up, regurgitate is how they'll waste their physical and mental peak times of their lives), and women need to act like men to succeed (you have to waste your physical peak proving you're fit to receive the welfare that is most public service jobs and by the time you've done that you're already starting to wilt- divorce doesn't pay well, after all).
And when "how well you can pass as the other gender" is the order of the day, it's not a surprise that men-acting-as-women aren't attractive to women, and women-acting-as-men aren't attractive to men. And while that's great for man-women and woman-men, maybe most people are better off steering clear.
(And really, it's threading the needle: making sure the bi-gender people aren't held back, but at the same time pointing out that cargo-culting their inherent success is a bad idea. If humanity was capable of understanding that nuance we'd probably be better off, but I don't think the average human is and it doesn't remain stable between generations either.)
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Where do you get the idea that adults' mothers are looked down upon in such a way? All around the world, men will literally kill people for insults directed at their mothers. There is a reason "Son of a bitch" is such a common insult. To denigrate a man's mother is worse than insulting himself, his siblings, or his father.
I was responding to the earlier poster's comment:
made specifically in defense of the proposition that women should abandon professional careers to pursue instead early stay-at-home motherhood. So the question of whether the average dude would beat up some other guy for insulting his mother isn't really germane to the question.
Do these mother-loving men love motherhood enough to listen to older women's perspectives, defend their rights, respect their ideas, hire them in preference to hot young recent grads, offer them salaries commensurate with the years they spent in this ostensibly ultra-high-value experience? Do they go out of their way to live near their own moms and spend time with them?
Do they deeply admire a CEO's wife who raised his four kids, just as much as they do the CEO for whatever email/boardroom/golf wankery he did during that same timeframe? Would they go to hear her TEDX talk and buy her vanity book afterwards? Because men find motherhood so high-value and so darn important?
Nobody needs to propose anything because women already abandon their professional careers for motherhood. For many of these women, they would have been far happier pursuing motherhood earlier. Are there women who are happier pursuing careers than if they had pursued motherhood? Sure, but the exception should not drive societal policy and culture. You don't hear anyone push motherhood except conservatives, which most young women do not listen to. So your average young woman might hear from their parents/family about pursuing motherhood, and then nearly the rest of social media/entertainment/school/friends/society tell her to pursue a career instead.
Respect for motherhood does not mean men have to treat all mothers with respect, or treat any random mother to a higher degree of respect than they do for any other person. If the parents did a good job raising their children, it is likely there to be a good relationship between a man and his mother. Most men I know that have a good relationship with their parents do in fact respect their mother and take her input into consideration. I personally also regularly talk with my mother for advice. This does not mean if I meet any random mother, I would respect her opinions any more than that of any other person, unless we were talking about something where her experiences as a mother would be relevant to the conversation.
Why would and should anyone respect a CEO's wife to the same level of respect as the CEO? If the CEO was a woman and her husband raised their kids I would respect the CEO more than her husband because she's the one making the decisions for the company. The CEO is making business decisions that likely have a greater impact on my life than a mother does raising her children. A man can also aspire to be a CEO. So of course a CEO get more respect on the basis that it's something men can aspire towards and on the impact it could have on their day-to-day lives. Does this mean men don't respect motherhood? No, what you're doing here is a false equivalency. You're basically arguing that men don't value motherhood or don't value it enough because they wouldn't respect a CEO's wife who is a mother to the same level of degree as they would for a CEO. The thing is, I respect and admire my own mother a hell of a lot more than I do any CEO, and I'm sure many other men feel the same way towards their mother. A man can simultaneously find motherhood high-value and important and still admire a CEO more than they would that CEO's wife.
Plenty of rich and successful people attribute their success to their mother. You don't hear that type of respect and love as often for a father. If anything, in modern American culture motherhood is highly elevated while fatherhood is not. The most common trope of a father you see in movies, tv shows, video games, advertisements, books, academic articles, the news, etc. is a deadbeat dad, a missing father, a dead father, a stupid father, the list goes on. Of course, there are negative stereotypes about women mothers too, narcissistic parents and all that but despite that, your average person seems to still outwardly declare their love and respect for their mother far more often than they do for their fathers. Just because there are negative tropes about mothers does not mean motherhood is not respected, it just means there are bad mothers out there. If a child does not speak with their parents and has a bad relationship with them, to me that is indicative of poor parenting and not reflective of a societal dislike and hatred for mothers or fathers in general.
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Ah, yes, 40's and 50's girlbosses are widely admired among the masses, the stereotypes of cats and alcoholism are signs of respect.
I think people Just Don't Like Middle Aged Women regardless of whether they're moms or not. Honestly I'm not sure middle aged men get the greatest shake either, although there's positive stereotypes slightly more often I suppose.
Oh, I agree that it's a curse of middle-aged womanhood in general. Underneath that, likely just the bitter animal truth that humans only seek the favor of other humans when they (a) have something to gain from them or (b) have something to fear from them. Men are more physically intimidating into midlife, thus retain the power to command respect and amity for longer.
However, given the choice to be a widely-reviled middle-aged woman with a fat bank account, a nice apartment, some social clout and active power over one or two resentful underlings... or a widely-reviled middle-aged woman with a menial job, no money or future prospects, and the wistful memory of long-ago baby cuddles with grown adults who are now far away living their own lives, calling maybe once or twice a year? It doesn't seem obviously rational to choose the latter.
Family connections bring actual literal benefits; it's probably better to be the lower earning partner in a couple than a higher earning single person. Like the whole thing about a housewife is that it's being a housewife meaning she's married; if a sufficient amount of relationship security is available then this is a rational decision, and given that divorce risk is not distributed equitably then many women- and I would estimate most who consider the stay at home mom route- should proceed under the assumption that they have sufficient relationship/family security to make the SAHM route a more rational decision.
And most adults are not that estranged from their parents, even in early young adulthood, nor do most marriages with a SAHM end in divorce. The median 'retired housewife' is happily married and posting instagram photos of her grandchildren, not alone and working at walmart to pay the bills.
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In modern mass culture, the middle-age dads of tweens and teens are also portrayed as out of touch laughingstocks. At least the moms are portrayed as competent. As for older women, yes, there’s the stereotype of the overbearing mother (or mother-in-law), but there’s also the great respect shown to grandmothers. Just think about the messaging during Covid. Everyone was told to mask and get vaccinated in order to save grandma, but no one even thought to be concerned about grandpa.
Either way, I’m pretty sure dasfoo was talking about the traditional views under the bad old patriarchy, not modern views.
Grandpas typically don't live as long. That's a larger factor towards why grandmas represent the covid-endangered family member than increased respect towards grandmas, I think.
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Well therapy culture sucks. See below.
What, as opposed to "she's a witch, burn her" and the associated other super-compassionate pre-therapy approaches to a society's superfluous old women? Can you cite a single historical or modern context where men as a group eagerly step up to show respect and deference for (non-related) moms in their 40s, 50s, 60s, on account of the erstwhile life-giving properties of their bodies? (And no, abstract Marian devotion doesn't count unless you can show it translating to heightened value for real flesh-and-blood older moms).
Even on this forum, would the folks lavishly praising young motherhood also endorse really serious social consequences for wealthy men who ditch their aging wives to pursue younger, hotter options once the kids have become teens? Consequences on the order of the philandering dude's losing his career or identity, since those are the effective results of family breakup for a wife who's made stay-at-home momhood her professional vocation? If not, then it's definitely safer to be Jeff Bezos than Mackenzie Bezos, and you can't blame young women for trying.
Yes. Abandoning your wife is scummy behavior.
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Alimony was the social invention. And Mackenzie Bezos got billions for literally marrying a dude.
Mackenzie's contributions to Amazon were a lot bigger than just "being Jeff's wife".
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Jeff and Mackenzie started out in their early 20s in roughly the same position, collaborating on a business, both presumably thinking they had talent and some good ideas. So they make a great test case for the options facing young women who choose between (A) early marriage/kids and (B) pursuing their career.
Mackenzie chose A, stayed home with the children and after two decades got to be the unilaterally discarded middle-aged wife with no future, no vocation, no social or professional power, no marketable skills to build on, and zero credit or respect for the 25 years of work she put into the supposedly-so-valuable work of motherhood and family-building (just "literally marrying a dude," in your words). She gets to keep some of the accumulated assets of their joint family project-- much less than half-- and the male public is in broad agreement that she should be damn grateful to emerge with even that.
Jeff chose B, cultivated his career, and gets not just riches but power, public respect, a robust personal and professional network, and a vocation/identity that will stick with him well into his '70s, where his value will increase, not decrease, over time.
Explain to me again why you think young women should follow Mackenzie's path, not Jeff's?
We are talking about billions with a B. The idea that if she worked she’d be in a better situation financially is laughable.
And no, what she did wasn’t as valuable as building Amazon. But that is literally one of the biggest companies in the world. The question is answered by the extremes; it is answered by the average.
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People in Jeff's circles who aren't begging for handouts acknowledge pretty openly that he was a scumbag for what he did. He and his duck-faced new woman are viciously mocked by everyone from the well-educated inhabitants of elite tech and political circles to the literal tabloid press that made fun of him for his 'alive girl' texts and delights in publishing pictures of the couple where they look awful.
Being one of the richest people in the world is always going to attract a baseline level of respect from the majority of the people who surround you, since a pittance from you is enough to set them and their descendants up for generations. Still, I'd hesitate to say that Jeff came out of it better than Mackenzie. You also don't acknowledge that she didn't demand her fair share, she didn't care enough to and settled for much less. She could have demanded (and would have been granted) both more equity and voting shares in Amazon if she wanted them.
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Why the non-related requirement? The point of honoring your mother is honoring the sacrifice she and her body made giving you life and then sustaining and raising you.
In many more traditional cultures, men remain more loyal to their parents, especially their mothers, than to their wives. This appreciation-for-life is truly seen as a life-debt which can't really ever be repaid.
Well, I would.
The original discussion was specifically about young women giving up a career in order to focus on having kids right out of college. The compensation for 5 years of paid professional work in the mid-20s is not just $X salary, but greatly expanded skillset and prospects for future earning, a solid professional network, plus a certain amount of prestige/ social capital that can be traded in for increased power in community interactions, etc. If you're saying the only compensation needed for an equivalent amount of time spent in stay-at-home childrearing should be the freely-rendered love of your own hypothetical someday babies (assuming you don't do anything to piss them off), well, it's a sweet sentiment, but it sounds like a terrible deal for the woman.
I don't think status compensation is the right way to look at it. Kids are their own reward. The main thing women get out of the arrangement is more kids who are more well-adjusted.
Their husbands arguably get the same thing with less personal risk, which is why divorce should bear extreme social and financial consequences in most cases.
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