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Downthread, in the discussion on cheating in college and the decay of institution, @hydroacetylene brought up a frequent topic: is the college-to-work pipeline good for society and for women? Rather than the high-level moral or strategic view, I wanted to look more at the countervailing forces here. Even assuming that early family formation is good, desirable, and pleasant for women compared to schooling, why would they choose college? Not to bury the lede: I think it’s risk mitigation.
A woman’s life is, not to an infinite extent but nevertheless to a great extent based around vulnerability. She is especially vulnerable to men, who are stronger than her and yet want something from her. A man who wants something from her more than he cares about her is not a curiosity but an active threat. Even if no such threat manifests, her very nature makes her vulnerable. A pregnant woman, or a new mother, is incredibly dependent on those around her. If any part of that support should go away, she could be in serious trouble. Women’s life strategies, unsurprisingly, center around mitigating these risks.
These strategies fall into two major camps: finding a center for her protection and support, and making damn certain that she has excellent control over that center. (For men this is simple: he is his own center of protection and support, always. Everything else is just a fallback for extenuating circumstances, or part of his larger ambitions.)
For her center, a woman can choose, in essence, a man, an institution, or herself. For herself, she will obviously be unable to reproduce. This is a fallback, the spinster’s last resort. No more needs be said. An institution is impersonal and uncharitable, but (say) a widow will find it tolerable, and she has some modicum of control. If she follows the rules, support will not be retracted. So what is preventing her choosing a man? Her lack of control over him.
Men are famously fickle. A man will sing a woman’s praises to the moon, and maybe even believe himself, and vanish as soon as he gets some. He will spend the family’s money on dice or drinks. He will say that whatever he earns is his by right, and ignore the duty he has towards the flower he plucked in the prime of her life in an explicit contract to care for her forever (till death do we part). Even if he is one of the rare, dutiful ones, his simple preferences become domineering imperatives, and you have to think on every one: is this worth fighting over, if he might just leave? To say all men are cads is to go too far. But there are cads out there, and their attentions are disastrous.
(I know women who have had their men: get fired and refuse to work, get addicted to painkillers and refuse to work, allow their mother to browbeat their wife, and support an entire separate family in another country, off the top of my head. I also know women who have had loving husbands with no problems who are in old age. But would you want to simply gamble on the outcome here?)
So what women need is leverage. Historically this was twofold: the highly salient and important labor they performed, and their tight bonds with their (and their man’s) immediate community. For reference, before modern textile production, a woman would quite literally make the clothes on her husband’s back and the food he ate. Were he to get them elsewhere, they would be much more expensive and less tailored to him. This makes any argument inherently easier for the wife to win. He depends on her, too. Meanwhile, if he were to stray, her connections to the local wives, perhaps including her own parents and his, or moral leaders like a priest, would allow her to bring wide-ranging pressures down upon him. Or, say, if he were to romance her but fall short of his duty to propose to her, a brief word between their fathers would end in a joyous wedding officiated by shotgun. I’m not trying to imply the distant past was a glorious feminist utopia, but these were to the best of my knowledge the mechanisms of women’s power back then.
Woman’s work was eviscerated by the Industrial Revolution, and her community was shattered by the car. Bluntly, there is nothing coarse and material that a housewife can offer a man in this day and age which he cannot get for an acceptable amount of his own money. Food and cleaning are trivial, and the only real limitation on sex is whether porn is sufficient (it generally is). The only things she can offer are on a more sophisticated or higher plane, like the abstract of a continued legacy through childcare or loving intimacy and affection. These are important, but have a lower valence than the material, meaning that the man’s opinion is dramatically privileged. And in a postwar suburb of friendly acquaintances, in and out of the house on errands and excursions, there’s nobody to drop in on and talk to and organize with - and even if there were, why would the man not simply get in his own car and leave to find those who “understand“ him better? As the last nail in the coffin, the pill and the Sexual Revolution deny women even their power over sex. If it’s pleasurable and has no risk, what right does she have to demand that her man do something in exchange - except pay as her john? With pregnancy on the table, it’s obvious: he risks what she does, together with her. But without, it’s harder to argue the obvious truth that she is risking time, because he does not have the same pressure to make the most of the flower of youth.
This is the foundation of our current moment, and given the premises women choose independence. They do not perceive a reasonable alternative by which they can have a marriage where they are respected and equal. The life plan changes accordingly, and becomes: go to college (to protect you in your most vulnerable and desirable period and increase your status and the treatment you can demand), take a job with a good healthcare plan (including maternity leave), find a man who sticks with you for several years (while you are on the pill, and proving he is not a cad), and finally, around 30, get married to a man you TRUST to support you and your children. Of course, this costs a huge amount of time and money, but it’s more palatable than taking a dive for the first schmuck on the street with no good way out. (And even if he is a good man, get stuck in a suburban home near HIS job with an infant or two and an absolute dearth of friends to see during working hours and little sense of what you’re really bringing to the table. At that point, why not just get a job working alongside other ladies and stick the kids in daycare?)
So that’s my analysis. College is just a means here; if it were not available, women would go for anything else that could protect them, probably an employer. The problem for women is that they feel like the whole deal is raw, that they’re going to struggle to get a man who works for them and supports them and who they can influence. Unless they feel their own power in their own relationships, they will scrabble for every edge they can get. If you want to fix this on a personal level, as a man, be trustworthy and the whole reproduction thing will come pretty easily. As a woman - can’t comment with quite so much authority, but valuing men for their private (i.e. directed at you) virtue over their public (i.e. abstract and status-seeking) virtue might help. On the societal level, focus less on pushing women into childrearing and more on pulling. What are the advantages? How do they mitigate risk? And what’s in it for them, on a practical and day to day sense?
Long-term I feel this will shake out. Men and women who figure out how to bond and partner quickly and effectively will be aspirational and fruitful, and they will be the new model. But for those of us alive now, I think it helps to be intentional about our own lives.
Interested in the opinions of married mothers on this (I think we have a few). I’m a happily married father, so I have some insight, but it’s all third person to me.
I think that the job of housewife is on its way out, and has been on its way out for the last century.
Back in 1800, with no washing machines or fridges, it was a full-time job to take care of the needs of a family (especially as family size was large due to lack of contraceptives). A man (or anyone) who worked full time simply did not have the time to take care of washing his clothes and cooking his meals.
Luckily, we made these chores much less time-consuming and freed women to do more useful work. And they do. There are mothers who are teachers, physicians, clerks and a myriad of other professions.
Naturally, the markets (especially housing) have reacted to this reality (plus a ton of other factors), and the age where you could raise a family with a single income from not-highly-specialized labor is over.
As you point out, social changes have made the strategy of just marrying a man and relying on him to provide for you high-risk, because if he is rich enough to pay for you to stay at home and watch the kids, he is likely also rich enough to replace you with a younger, more attractive woman in a decade or two.
I think that a big point of both men and women going to college is the signaling value both towards employers and towards potential mates. Roughly, the same qualities which are valued in an employee (somewhat smart, willing to submit to an institutional system, ability to achieve long-term goals, etc) are also good qualities in a partner. A degree, especially in a strongly regulated field like law or medicine, will significantly update your estimate on the earning potential of a person. Then there is education as a mark of social class. A man from a family of academics will probably not marry someone who dropped out of high school. (Sure, there will always be some men who prefer to marry 18yo village girls, but "I will just wait for some Trump-like man to marry me" will not work for the vast majority of them.)
I agree that there are probably bullshit degrees pursued by women who really want to graduate college with an MRS degree, but I think that the answer is not not cut down on women in college, but to push degrees which can actually earn money.
The pattern "Earn a degree, get pregnant at 30 and then become a stay-at-home mum" is obviously not very efficient. But I don't think we will go back to "get pregnant at 20 and then become a housewife". What society should aim for is "Earn a degree, get pregnant at 30 (if you want), re-enter the workforce a few years later (e.g. part-time)".
The thing is that cooking and washing were compatible with childcare, while teaching and medicine generally are not. Children benefit from stay-at-home moms; I did, anyway. And if your values differ from those of the broader culture, daycare is likely to drag your kids at least part way to that culture.
I know that this isn't practical for all families. But we should try to make it practical for as many families as we can. And for those couples who are on the fence about what to do, we should let them know that it's good for them and their kids.
Edit: Since this discussion started with college, I'd like to add that the liberal arts are valuable for most intelligent people -- the actual liberal arts, not activism in a skinsuit. Making those available in a way that is culturally and economically compatible with housewifery as a life path is a worthwhile goal in itself.
Bring back the dame school, but don’t let feminists within 100 yards of it.
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