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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Published Letters: 329 Editor's Choice: 37
I'm relieved to see that so many of the previous commenters got it. I don't know how old the author was when she got married, but it sounds indeed as though she and her husband went through a difficult phase of poverty, which so many of us go through, and grew up.
I don't know if I ever thought my husband should take care of me, but I remember how panic set in, a week after our wedding, when i was in a cockroach-ridden studio with him a thousand miles from home, in the godforsaken wasteland of a frozen Rust Belt city, and he told me I needed to get a job quick, because he didn't think he'd make it through his difficult graduate program in the physical sciences. (He did, with flying colors. It was just first-year jitters talking.)
I don't think I ever thought of leaving him...maybe, partly, because I didn't know where I would go. But this is something that happens in many marriages during hard times. It's not that you stop loving your spouse--it's just that love gets buried under stress and anxiety.
It wasn't the only time the prospect of financial stability stressed our marriage--there were times when I was ashamed of not handling things well, and he forgave me, but even now I still feel terrible about it. The important thing is that we stayed together and carried each other through. We loved each other.
In sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, still holds. It's just that it's not always a walk in the park. Love isn't perfect; it needs refining. It sounds like the bitter, misogynistic commenters on the first couple pages haven't quite grasped this.
...until the new-parent hormonal surge has worn off.
Maybe it's part of my unenlightened, barren state, but I've just never understood the obsession with baby poop--and this from someone who used to have to *document* the bowel movements of her students* (a memory I've been repressing all these years).
*profoundly DD kids at a residential school where teachers were also caregivers to a certain extent.
that these women want to be free from feminist scrutiny? And why should they be afraid of feminist scrutiny? Because feminists, believe that women are capable of, and should be doing, the same kind of work men do. And as a result, we see men as our equals, we know what they're going through, we know what it's like to watch a career you've been working on for so long, that's such a huge part of your identity, disintegrate with the economy.
Dare I say we actually have more in common with financial guys than these spoiled little princesses (in the detested Midwest, where being consigned is apparently a fate worse than death, we call 'em Trixies).
And *we're* the man-haters?
Oh, I know it's complicated and hard when your significant other suffers a career-related identity breakdown, because suddenly a great deal of what he is, or what you've always known him as--what he's known himself as--is gone. That does put stress on a relationship. And I guess I'm a little old-fashioned in some ways--I don't expect a man to be a provider, but given the fact that he was already born with all the privileges that come with male genitalia, for which so many of us women have to struggle and prove ourselves over and over, I do expect him to pull his own weight. But I'm just hoping that these support groups, nauseating as they sound, don't just become places for these women to whine and drink girly cocktails--maybe having gotten it out of their system, some of them will be able to grow up and become companions and partners, rather than pampered little lapdogs.
I'm not faulting Broadsheet for covering this, but I'm so sick of the whole "baby bump" thing. All the speculation about celebrity pregnancy in general is so. incredibly. tedious. Almost as boring as the breastfeeding-in-public debate. Makes me long for the fifties, when it was taboo to utter the word "pregnant" on the teevee and movie stars very carefully stage-managed their images and were fiercely protective of their privacy.
But all the comments expressing hope that this imaginary child will be a boy--they kind of bother me a bit, you know? As if two daughters, no matter how delightful, could never possibly be enough.
Who are you, Fox News Undercover? Jeez, man, chill. Funny how they talk about the Obamabots. Sounds like *you* were programmed to start attacking just days after the guy took the oath of office.
Yep, Salon articles on the Palin family sure do bring the wackos and their gibberish nonsequiturs out of the woodwork.
Nice article, Ms. Traister. I've felt sorry for Bristol Palin ever since the whole story broke back in early September. I don't doubt she did make her own decision about whether to have the baby. In fact, there's a little nagging voice in the back of my head pondering the disturbing possibility that the real scenario was actually the reverse: that her mother may even have tried to pressure her into having an abortion, which would be comparatively easy to cover up. Palin senior, after all, seems to have had her own doubts about whether to carry Trig to term, according to reports this week. This may sound crazy, but I wouldn't be surprised, considering that everything Sarah Palin does is intended to benefit Sarah Palin...including steamrolling over her daughter's single opportunity to show that she's more than a political football. (And I caught the veiled hostility in her opening line, too.)
Ok, maybe that's a knee-jerk reaction. But you are essentially *keeping* your husband, working TWO jobs, without the aid even of a car, and you're still doing the bulk of the housework? Is this right?
You are being bullied. No, scratch that. Sweet and gentle? You're being gaslighted.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
