Wifework: What Marriage Really Means for Women

Susan Maushart

New York: Bloomsbury, 2001. Pp. 280 (includes index).

I read this book because I wanted to find out what marriage really means for women but my wife wouldn't tell me. After reading it, I still don't know what marriage really means for women, although I feel strangely depressed. Maushart's thesis is simple, if not new. Marriage is a socially-constructed biological adaptation that arises from the female's weakness during pregnancy, and her defenselessness during child-rearing years combined with the need males have to ensure they procreate properly. In other words, women have babies, men do not (this one was new to me!) and there are certain trade-offs to be had right there.

In return for protection and support from her man, the woman stays with him and provides for his spiritual and physical needs. (And boy, are men needy in Maushart's world!) In return for the occasional sex-on-demand and ironed shirts, men get to know that they have not spilled their seed in vain. Men forego spilling their seed in many places, and women forego not having husbands. This is biology. Society then enforces this with its customs. Of course, all this is wild speculation by the author, although it does sound plausible.

What, then, went wrong? If this wonderful adaptation served us so well for thousands of years, why is it failing today? Industrialization and the ensuing liberation of women. As women become wage-earners, the need to maintain a husband that would ensure the children survive diminishes. Basically, women have no need for the guys anymore, so they ditch them in great numbers. Maushart did it twice herself, although it remains a mystery why she ever tried it a second time after the first failed marriage.

This brings me to the learning curve. According to the author, women learn from marriage that it is bad, so when they divorce, they get re-married at far lower rates than divorced men. Women wise up to the uselessness of guys and live happily ever after in lesbian communities. Maybe. Or maybe no one really wants to marry a middle-aged woman with a couple of kids who has lost her looks and probably has issues from the divorce. Sorry, Maushart, but maybe women don't remarry much because nobody wants them?

The bulk of the book is about dirty laundry. That is, it's a litany of abuses that women have to endure in marriage. They have to adjust their eating habits (because men like more meat), they have to clean, do laundry, look after the kids, while Mr. Nice Guy goes golfing on Sunday, the bastard. There's something to all of this, but she overstates her case.

First, not all men are scumbags. I am far from ideal, I have plenty of bizarre hangups, and I am sure my wife is pretty frustrated with some of the things I do or fail to do. But on the other hand, I am pretty frustrated with some things my wife does or fails to do. Yep, she has to adjust to my eating habits, but I also have to adjust to her fixation on veggies. I don't eat what I would have eaten if I were by myself and neither does she. Why is this a problem? When I get fed up with munching on veggies, I eat something else. Even in an ideal world, cohabitation of two different people would involve a lot of compromises.

What about the cleaning? Well, it's the same old story. My wife is much more meticulous than I am. She has a far lower tolerance for messiness and can walk into a room that appears absolutely clean to me (I swear!) and detect dirt, dust, general uncleanliness, and a dire need for a good scrubbing. (I should note that after she blesses a room as clean my mother finds it intolerably dirty still and wants to go over it again! My Dad is as lost as I am.) The bottom line is this: For some reason most men are slobs compared to most women. Maushart's solution is for men to become more like women and get on with the broom. Why? Why can't women become more like men and simply learn to live with some messiness? Where's the compromise?

According to Maushart, the only purpose of marriage is to ensure the survival of the children. She dismisses love with such nonchalant passing that one may be forgiven for missing it completely. This is really annoying. I married for love. As for emotional neediness, most women will probably complain about their husbands not sharing much personal stuff with them. I am of this sort and my wife does complain about it from time to time. But if we're not sharing the personal, how is it that women are these emotional care-takers that Maushart makes them out to be? Her response borders on the ridiculous: Men need less, so they are satisfied with less. But if we need less and are satisfied with less, then surely it's not a lot of work to give it to us? No? In the end, the author argues that men are emotional invalids who don't give a hoot about their wives, who constantly demand attention and emotional care, which, by the way, is not a whole lot because as we established men are invalids, but which somehow is a great burden to the women.

Fortunately, the author does not subscribe to the passe notion that men are horny by nature while women are nurturing and monogamous. Well, they are nurturing, but they are also horny as hell. However, they have no fun doing it in the nuptial bed. Why? Who, the hell, knows. Maushart says its boredom, lack of adventurousness, lack of imagination, having to sync to the husband's raging hormones (these never seem to stop raging even for second, don't they ever sleep?), or something. I have one word for you, baby: vibrator and eat pussy. Ok, ok, it's three words, but it works. You can also be inventive, like, I don't know, do it on the other side of the bed?

Where does this all leave us? Maushart makes some valid points about wifework, namely, that women tend to bear a disproportionately heavy burden in maintaining their marriages. I think men are at fault for taking too much for granted, I know I have. My wife does not make it easy to change either. For example, I think that we should share the boring tasks equally. That is, we should rotate on, let's say, cleaning and laundry. However, the first time she does it by herself twice in a row, my commitment is weakened because I see that if I don't do it, she will. Two more times, and I begin to expect her to do it. Two more times, and I begin to feel entitled to her doing it! It's conditioning, and it happens very fast because we're all lazy and we all try to avoid doing unpleasant tasks. I am sure that the reverse would happen just as quickly. The bottom line is that women have to resist the urge to do it themselves if they ever want us to do anything.

The book is too polemic, based mostly on research by psychologists and sociologists, with nothing from recent research in economics (which I tend to trust more). Maushart rambles endlessly about the same things, repeating herself over and over. The book is poorly organized, hard to follow, and, frankly, quite boring after the first 50 pages (at which point we already know everything the author has to tell us). Nothing a good editor could not have fixed.

Given her staunchly feminist anti-marriage stance, Maushart chickens out in the end by sheepishly admitting that there's some good to be had in marriage but only when children are concerned. To a feminist, this would read like a betrayal (which it is, given how the author had argued the rest of the book). To a guy, this reads like a feeble attempt to make amends for a needlessly vicious attack. I am now thinking about a very unpleasant fact. Given how rough white Western women have it and how cuddled and well-taken care of white Western men are, why the hell am I expected to die so much sooner than my wife?

I always thought that marriage is about the union of two people, not about children. I think of people as bean stalks who weave their way upward, constantly developing themselves and improving. However, without support, a bean stalk cannot get very far. But two stalks woven together can reach much higher because they are stronger. In other words, I have always thought of marriage as a way for both the husband and the wife to help each other become better in what they want to be. Marriage is a commitment. It is a commitment to support the other come what may. It is more than a scrap of paper because we choose to make it so.

April 17, 2003

@book{maushart-01,
    title     = {Wifework: What Marriage Really Means for Women},
    author    = {Susan Maushart},
    year      = {2001},
    publisher = {Bloomsbury},
    address   = {New York},
    isbn      = {1-58234-276-8}
}