Men...
I was watching a movie called The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio about a woman in the 1960’s who enters all contests in order to, not only augment her family’s meager income, stave off boredom and challenge her brain. The husband is portrayed as a terrible husband and father. He was mortified that his wife would win prizes that inevitably came at a time when money was in desperate need for the family. He dealt with his insecurities with alcohol, spending what little money the family did have. Moronic actions, because it just made her have to enter more contests, which made him drink more, and act out with more violence.
It seems that many men in this era were abusive, violent and angry. While they seemed to be in charge of their lives and of those lives around them, these men were often impotent. The women, who did not work a paycheck bearing job*, ruled the roost through their love and mothering. The men hardly knew their children or their spouses at all. Often, fathering was done through violence, or the threat thereof. The children lost out on having any sort of healthy relationship with their father.
Obviously these statements are all of the blanket variety. My point is that I feel sorry for these men who felt it was weak to show a soft hand with their children. I feel sad that men of this era based their value on their jobs and the appearance of a nice family life, yet had little or no involvement in the family life aspect at all.
My father, who was such a wonderful and loving man to me, was not a man who ever changed a diaper or did things with his young children that I bet he would have done were he a young father today.
Have times changed men and women for the better? When I see couples interacting, they act as though each member was equal to the other. Obviously the power balance occasionally shifts at times, but in the greater arithmetic of it all, it equals out in the end.
Are men happier today? It seems that they are more involved with their children. Men, while still gaining much of their personal value from their careers, seem to have more freedoms in expressions of love and caring than seemed possible in the 60’s.
I am not fleshing this out as well I would like to. I am afraid of misrepresenting my thoughts.
It just seemed to me that men in the 1960’s (which is the era I am looking at) were shut into a mold of what was expected of them and were not allowed to soften until the children were grown and perhaps they had retired. It seems like such a waste of time. Those mens’ children never got to know their fathers. I truly hope that times have changed. I want my children and my friends’ children to know and appreciate their fathers for all their good traits and bad.
*I say this because I think being a stay at home mom is a much harder job than any one that they pay you to do.
It seems that many men in this era were abusive, violent and angry. While they seemed to be in charge of their lives and of those lives around them, these men were often impotent. The women, who did not work a paycheck bearing job*, ruled the roost through their love and mothering. The men hardly knew their children or their spouses at all. Often, fathering was done through violence, or the threat thereof. The children lost out on having any sort of healthy relationship with their father.
Obviously these statements are all of the blanket variety. My point is that I feel sorry for these men who felt it was weak to show a soft hand with their children. I feel sad that men of this era based their value on their jobs and the appearance of a nice family life, yet had little or no involvement in the family life aspect at all.
My father, who was such a wonderful and loving man to me, was not a man who ever changed a diaper or did things with his young children that I bet he would have done were he a young father today.
Have times changed men and women for the better? When I see couples interacting, they act as though each member was equal to the other. Obviously the power balance occasionally shifts at times, but in the greater arithmetic of it all, it equals out in the end.
Are men happier today? It seems that they are more involved with their children. Men, while still gaining much of their personal value from their careers, seem to have more freedoms in expressions of love and caring than seemed possible in the 60’s.
I am not fleshing this out as well I would like to. I am afraid of misrepresenting my thoughts.
It just seemed to me that men in the 1960’s (which is the era I am looking at) were shut into a mold of what was expected of them and were not allowed to soften until the children were grown and perhaps they had retired. It seems like such a waste of time. Those mens’ children never got to know their fathers. I truly hope that times have changed. I want my children and my friends’ children to know and appreciate their fathers for all their good traits and bad.
*I say this because I think being a stay at home mom is a much harder job than any one that they pay you to do.
Buggie spilled her guts for you at 3/06/2008 09:20:00 PM
1 Comments:
Wow, are you taking a women's history course this semester as well? I'm taking "US Women's History Since 1877" and it's just loaded with this kind of stuff. I'm writing my term paper on the Home Economics movement.
At any rate I just got done writing this long post about how lower class workers were more hostile to women entering their work enviornment than management, and then I read this. Spooky.
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