It is a cliche to thank someone for their frankness after a post like this, but thank you anyway. I can slightly relate, in that the pandemic provided a salutary balance-reset drill in my own marriage: I had just quit Google thinking I would spend 2020 traveling and singing in choirs (haha, says the universe, ha. Ha.) and Catharine’s job went into sudden high gear as network traffic 10x’ed worldwide, so I was stay at home dad, housekeeper, and de facto homeschool teacher for the year instead. We were ludicrously privileged to be able to work it out that way— our friends who had two full-time jobs and kids at home were sooooo much more stressed.
A friend of mine named Cathy Reisenwitz has, from a *very* different personal perspective, written some insightful stuff on her ‘stack (cathyreisenwitz.substack.com) about how whether marriage is a good deal has come to depend much more on your economic class, and how that exacerbates inequality and creates an increasing number of angry single men. That seems like an underappreciated driver of a whole lot of social trends, from declining fertility to increasing support for right-wing authoritarians among young men.
Thank you for this! I have a whole ball of wax I intend to get into about angry young men and the damage they’ve had done to them and the damage theycause, but for the moment, I definitely agree with your friend’s take about economic status. The privilege to be able to contribute more in a marriage, much less to write about it, is not to be underestimated.
It is a cliche to thank someone for their frankness after a post like this, but thank you anyway. I can slightly relate, in that the pandemic provided a salutary balance-reset drill in my own marriage: I had just quit Google thinking I would spend 2020 traveling and singing in choirs (haha, says the universe, ha. Ha.) and Catharine’s job went into sudden high gear as network traffic 10x’ed worldwide, so I was stay at home dad, housekeeper, and de facto homeschool teacher for the year instead. We were ludicrously privileged to be able to work it out that way— our friends who had two full-time jobs and kids at home were sooooo much more stressed.
A friend of mine named Cathy Reisenwitz has, from a *very* different personal perspective, written some insightful stuff on her ‘stack (cathyreisenwitz.substack.com) about how whether marriage is a good deal has come to depend much more on your economic class, and how that exacerbates inequality and creates an increasing number of angry single men. That seems like an underappreciated driver of a whole lot of social trends, from declining fertility to increasing support for right-wing authoritarians among young men.
Thank you for this! I have a whole ball of wax I intend to get into about angry young men and the damage they’ve had done to them and the damage theycause, but for the moment, I definitely agree with your friend’s take about economic status. The privilege to be able to contribute more in a marriage, much less to write about it, is not to be underestimated.
Cliched appreciation is always appreciated!