a brief explanation of the quote:
If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don’t blame the women’s movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based. – Betty Friedan
i love this quote and believe it to be true, though if i were to have been the one to write it into a speech, i would have used the term “gender roles” and not “sex roles.” as the term “sex” refers to physiological aspects of the body and “gender” is a reference to what realities and responsibilities people take on themselves, regardless of their actual physiological sex (transgender/transsexual, two different terms for this reason).
what the quote is talking about…
the typical roles that males and females take on in their marriages and how those roles are stifling, even damaging to the success of the relationship. our society, individuals affected by our culture, is *beginning* to evolve past these roles. i say “evolve” because there is now a level of awareness in the modern relationship – especially one with children - that both partners need to really behave as partners, team mates if you will, for the relationship to work. none of this, men go to work and are not held accountable for the state of their home or the way their children are managed while women are solely responsible for those two aspects of the family life and not permitted to have professional goals or worse, not supported in pursuing them. assuming men are in the right to take on the professional role in the house no matter what abilities or desires the woman has is sexist at best, abuse of power at worse. in other words, no matter how you look at it, this perception is horrid. it does not allow both sexes to excel in their personal lives or their family life. and thus, becomes the death of the relationship. these gender roles are a huge problem in marriages. so much so, that many divorces occur without even being able to rightly name this problem until admitted in hindsight, and sometimes not at all. there needs to be flexibility in the responsibilities of both male and female partners (and let me just say, i believe this to be true of same sex partners, too, as i’m not directly speaking of them here but am not writing without awareness of their role struggles), this nuclear family way of life with distinct roles for both male and female is becoming obsolete. and it is not the woman’s movement that has caused divorce rates to go up, but the actual damage of these gender roles – with or without awareness of them.
i’m certain someone else could explain it better, or add to what i have written here, but that is my best for this moring.
