You know, I think putting out a guide to help men get happily married is a great idea. That is, unless it comes from these folks (especially when it references these kind of articles).
The folks who put out the guide in question tell us: "Too many guys make their way into their 20s and 30s without the marriage modeling and insights that were once easy to find from dads, coaches, teachers, mentors and Christian leaders. When they do find advice about relationships, it's often spectacularly bad" (emphasis mine).
Yeah, the irony meter bumped into the red on that one. The folks responsible for this guide list all sorts of cheery statistics about men wanting to get married more than women (But wait, I thought men were the ones who had commitment problems!). I suppose all of this hoopla about guiding men to marriage merely serves to reinforce the preconceptions and value judgments certain pundits have about manhood. However, I am not certain their guide is going to gain much traction if developments like this become more prevalent.
Another bad cop
2 years ago
7 comments:
That was a nice catch: a couple months ago, Boundless was citing a secular story about men being "afraid of commitment", and yet they are now reporting--NEWS FLASH!--that men actually want to get married more so than women.
In all seriousness, I have no personal beef with the folks at Boundless. I think their promotion of traditional values is generally good, while occasionally they drink some of the mainstream evangelical Kool-Aid and need a snapper back to reality.
Even their dabbling into headship theology is otherwise laudable, in the sense that they are trying to deal with the wussified cesspool that liberal theology has created in the Church. My only gripe is that they have taken the wrong extreme at times: implying that the depravity of women would be absent but for the depravity of men.
(A great object lesson in that is the movie Fireproof. While I otherwise highly recommend the movie, as it does a good job making the case for the sanctity of the marriage covenant, the plot has one HUGE FLAW: one gets the impression that the wife's depravity is exclusively a result of the porn-addicted husband's. I would have given the movie a much higher rating, but for that.)
As for the economic advantage of staying single, it really depends: with a marriage partner who is a help-meet (or reasonably close), marriage can be an economic advantage.
On the other hand, if either partner fails to appreciate the gravity of the crisis, the resultant marital turmoil can be a prescription for disaster.
"The folks who put out the guide in question tell us: "Too many guys make their way into their 20s and 30s without the marriage modeling and insights that were once easy to find from dads, coaches, teachers, mentors and Christian leaders. When they do find advice about relationships, it's often spectacularly bad""
Dads? How many dads...even Christian dads...have been victimized by the divorce industry? Great modeling there, eh?
Coaches and mentors? Like who?
Teachers? They're 90-95% female. Yeah, they'll learn 'em to be men.
Christian leaders? They mostly produce Christian Nice-Guys, and are a big part of the problem.
Anon (10:59pm),
Read the five key words that you evidently failed to consider in your cut & paste excerpt:
that were once easy to find
"A total of 47 per cent of the single men surveyed said they would spend more money than they currently do if they were to enter into a relationship. "
An asute observation. Women bring with them into the relationship loads of debt in the form of student loans for university. Many women, after they've gotten their lib-arts pieces of paper, then want to stay home. They have to find some guy to saddle with that load before than can do so.
Amir, I saw Fireproof a couple of weeks back. I too agree that the husband's porn habit received a whole lotta focus, yet the wife's failure to meet her husband's sexual or emotional needs was nowhere to be found.
Many women, after they've gotten their lib-arts pieces of paper, then want to stay home
I currently feel SO incredibly guilty about this that sometimes I wish y'all would just put a sock in it already.
But then, if people had been this vocal about it when I was choosing a college, I woulda gone to USF for free without even thinking about it.
Things to teach my daughters? Boo to a father with rich clients who pressures me into the same schools as them and doesn't offer to help foot the bill >.< At least he's paying for the wedding.
LOL Christina.
Take educational opportunities away from men ...then make them pay for it.
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