A Feminist’s Regrets
Lori Gottlieb has written what can only be described as a soul-baring essay about her regrets over never having married. Highly recommended reading, though many "liberated" women may have a difficult time acknowledging what Gottlieb has to say about her own misspent 20s and 30s.
Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).
To the outside world, of course, we still call ourselves feminists and insist—vehemently, even—that we’re independent and self-sufficient and don’t believe in any of that damsel-in-distress stuff, but in reality, we aren’t fish who can do without a bicycle, we’re women who want a traditional family.
Why loath to admit it? The reality is that for most of us, men and women alike, need to partner up to get through life. Friends and relatives are wonderful, of course, but there is nothing that can take the place of a committed spouse.
It’s a little hard to read Ms. Gottlieb’s acknowledgment that she now realizes that she’s aging, lonely, and the proximate cause is her own choices in life. It’s very personal and valuable for that reason. There are many truths to be found in her article, some of which can be generalized to apply to our own lives so that, while our circumstances are very different, it could be possible to learn from her admitted mistakes.
Personally, my own decision to follow Jesus Christ came after a painful experience and the realization that the self-defined values I’d rigidly sought to live up to were ultimately worthless. The truth is that, like Lori Gottlieb, I’d simply become old enough to recognize that self-deception is the ultimate lie.
Loath to admit it? No, more like embarrassed at have been wrong for so long.
So she finally figured out that biology wasn’t going to change to meet the expectations of the utopian feminists. I asked the same question thirty years ago in high school when all this was the brilliant new thinking: "How can anyone, man or woman, have it all, and all by him / her self?" The answer is, of course, it is much easier to be part of a team. Biologically, men and women complement each other.
I know some single-by-choice mothers, and I would say that by and large it strikes me as a less than ideal situation. Most seem to make the same observations about having their time pretty well taken up with trying to do all the household work, all the parenting, and all the things involved with their work. A friend who was a single (but not by choice) father remarked on many of the same issues. He was very happy to re-marry and blend families, and it seems to have worked.
I know someone will have all the usual examples of wonderfully happy single by choice parents, etc, but I think Gottlieb’s experience is more in line with statistical reality. Marriage works best for most people, and most children do better with both biological parents raising them.