The disastrous results of trying to “have it all”

Larry Kummer, Editor

8 years ago

Summary: The positive effects of Third Wave Feminism have been front page news for two decades. Now the ill effects begin to emerge from behind the propaganda fog — visible to those who care to see. Seeking the ideal work-life balance is the easy part of “have it all”, whose frequent failure produces the lesser destructive effects. Here’s the more important problem.

Third Wave feminism has been one of the biggest forces reshaping America. Not the Riot grrl fringes, the political nonsense about oppression, and academic gibberish about intersectionality) – but the revolution in gender roles.

Revolutions require a promise to attract the masses. The French revolted for the promise of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”. They got none of the three – only a ruined nation (never recovering its glory and role in Europe). Now women march seeking to “have it all.” The revolution began with works such as Helen Gurley Brown’s 1982 book Having It All: Love, Success, Sex, Money Even If You’re Starting With Nothing.

The public focus of feminist advocacy has been having great careers and fantastic marriages (here’s a fun attempt by the NY Times to disown this advice). This prompted a second wave to the Third Wave, describing how society prevents women from having it all – and how it must change so that they can do so (e.g., this 2012 article in The Atlantic by Ann-Marie Slaughter kicking it off).

While influential among women upper middle and upper classes, this movement had little effect on the rest of America. Most women worked to live, without fulfilling careers. They worked to have families, doing so without housekeepers and au pairs.

But another dimension of having it all was a big success, sweeping across America like a tsunami. It offered women a decade of sexual freedom and experimentation (lots of exciting bad boys!), followed by marriage to a nice beta provider (i.e., respectful, does half the chores) – with the option of divorce and child support after children are in school. Young women are ruining their lives in pursuit of this ambitious goal.

“You should sleep with at LEAST 25 guys before settling down, and I’ll tell you exactly why”
by Amanda Ross at Babe — “Ideally more, but y’know, whatever.”

This is a milder version of revolutionary words by Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) in her best-seller Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013).

“When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home.”

This is the advice, indoctrinated into American girls for generations. It produced the confused narratives that comprise much of the meToo movement (such as “Grace’s” story) and a thousand pitiful stories like Sarah’s in yesterday’s post.

In the rush for women to have it all, nobody asked what the revolution did for men. Or if men would be interested in marrying the products of the revolution, the “sassy, sophisticated, solvent women“, and even the “amazing, attractive, intelligent, …highly educated, very successful women” — often with long active sexual histories.

Allan Bloom predicted today’s situation with eerie clarity in his 1987 book Closing of the American Mind.

“Women are pleased by their successes, their new opportunities, their agenda, their moral superiority. …

“The men have none of the current ideological advantages of the women, but they can opt out without too much cost. In their relations with women they have little to say; convinced of the injustice of the old order, for which they were responsible, and practically incapable of changing the direction of the juggernaut, they wait to hear what is wanted, try to adjust but are ready to take off in an instant. They want relationships, but the situation is so unclear. They anticipate a huge investment of emotional energy that is just as likely as not to end in bankruptcy, to a sacrifice of their career goals without any clarity about what reward they will reap, other than a vague togetherness.

“Meanwhile, one of the strongest, oldest motives for marriage is no longer operative. Men can now easily enjoy the sex that previously could only be had in marriage.

“Under such arrangements the family is not a unity, and marriage is an unattractive struggle …” {See the rest of the passage here.}

What comes next?

We can only guess. Already women complain about their inability to get men to marry them (examples here). Many young men say that they are unlikely to marry. If this becomes widespread, a generation of women seeking to have it all will get little. Less than the husband, house, and children that their mothers had. That will be bitter for young feminists who felt themselves superior to their unwoken mothers.

I believe that future historians will see the gender revolution as the major social change of our time (footnotes will mention that other stuff also happened). How will they evaluate its net effects?

Beyond that are the effects of Fourth Generation Feminism — the fluidity of gender and sex. Time will tell its effects, but they might prove to be even larger than those of the first three waves.