BEYOND ROMANTIC LOVE
Copyright 2001, 2006
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“YOU’RE NOT WHAT I EXPECTED: Love After the Romance Has Ended,” Polly Young-Eisendrath, Fromm, New York, 1997.
p. 221: Chapter Six – “Partners In Money And Parenting”
“Is money really important in feelings of personal worth? Is it possible to have good, strong, worthwhile feelings about yourself as an adult and be financially dependent (although healthy and able-bodied)? I’ve rolled these questions around in my mind so many times that they’ve formed well-worn ruts in my thoughtways. The reason they bother me so is that I have seen smart, endearing, and creative women in psychotherapy over the years who ‘believed’ that their worth ‘shouldn’t be tied to making an income.’ Some of these women have been talented writers or artists who decided consciously to become financially dependent to pursue their art. Others have surrendered high-powered professional roles to have and raise their children. Still others… accepted financial dependence as part of being ‘wife and mother’ in the 1950s script for the successful woman. I have tried to keep an open mind to the possibility that financial dependence does not preclude mature dependence, because I have wanted to be empathic with these women.”
p. 222: “The evidence, in my experience and from large studies, is otherwise. Financial dependence in adulthood appears to be hazardous to feelings of self-worth and a barrier to mature dependence. Mature dependence means respecting each other as equals. In our society, feeling like an equal includes earning money for oneself, to meet one’s needs.
RESPONSE: In my mind this raises some interesting questions. Science of Ethics takes a similar approach. (See VOLUME II, Chapter 34, “Work and Science of Ethics.) However, Science of Ethics looks at the issue from the other end. It asks, what needs to be done so that any person who desires to work would be able to do so? Ever since societies have moved beyond agriculture that matter has been a key social problem.
The core issue is that every person be able to use their time in ways that help them to feel directly part of their society. And their society acknowledges their involvement in ways that allow them to earn a living and pay their way. But the specifics of all this will require much thought, and great study.
p. 222: “Children, the disabled, and the elderly are ‘legitimate’ financial dependents in our families. Even for them, this form of dependence is often accompanied by shame and anger…. Our culture promotes the ideal that freedom = money, and though I may dislike this formula, I cannot wish it away.”
RESPONSE: Science of Ethics would challenge some of the foregoing assumptions. It would work to ensure that these persons also would be brought into society in important ways even if they did not earn income.
p. 222: “When I was in my late twenties I spent a year fully out of the labor force, the only such year in my entire adult life. I was pregnant with my second child and writing a master’s thesis (with my other child, under two years old, at home with me).
“I learned about depression that year. By the end of my year of unemployment, I was so depressed that I could barely sign my name – and sometimes I even forgot it! I saw a social worker for a consultation. She suggested that I ‘get out more’ with my husband and hire an occasional sitter for my babies.”
p. 222-223: “Some days later, my husband and I were on our ‘therapeutic outing,’ watching a movie that was supposed to be captivating, and I was feeling even more depressed. Being at the movie reminded me that I had been teaching film criticism only a year before and now I was feeling hopelessly unrelated to this new movie. A light bulb went off in my head. I saw that my problem was being unemployed, not being underentertained. I began applying for jobs the next day, and after a few interviews, life returned to my being…. Was earning money the real ‘magic’ that supported good feelings about myself? I had to conclude that it was, although I assumed that this was probably due to a psychological lack in me.”
p. 223: “I assumed that if I were a ‘really healthy woman,’ I would be happy to serve the needs of my loved ones at home and feel the satisfaction of their successes.”
p. 223-224: “Seven years later when I was teaching in graduate school myself, I came across a landmark study by psychologist Grace Baruch and Rosalind Barnett empirically verifying that my ‘type’ of woman was more likely to feel satisfied, happy, and competent in midlife than other types of women…. Other studies have supported the findings from this one to show that paid work enhances health, in both women and men, even when it is combined with housekeeping chores and child rearing.”
RESPONSE: Examining this idea and becoming aware of the research would be important, as certainly this matter is important to a Science of Ethics.
p. 224: “In this chapter, I elected to combine relational issues of money and parenting because they are connected to many of the same dream lovers. They both activate parental dream lovers – either as saviors (the Great Father or Mother who will finance or nurture me) or demons (the Terrible Father or Mother who fails to support me or overwhelms me). I will make the case that financial dependence is a form of ‘infantile’ or ‘immature’ dependence for adults – incompatible with mature dependence as an ideal for a healthy couple. In regard to parenting children as it effects a couple relationship, I will claim that if a parent forms a couple relationship with a child (for example, spending most recreational time with the child and actively wanting to leave the spouse behind), that parent is meeting infantile dependence needs through the child. Many childish fantasies are tied to dream lovers through whom we imagine fulfillment of wishes and needs…. Mature dependence relies on strengths, both in oneself and a partner. It is a relationship based on recognized strengths, negotiated in an atmosphere of trust. It requires a feeling of confidence and competence that is almost antithetical to financial dependence in adulthood.”
RESPONSE: Recognizing that mature dependence is essentially unachievable where one of the persons is in a position of financial dependence on the other is a very focusing thought.
p. 225: “There are many adults among us, especially women, who are unaware of the shadowy implications of financial dependence.”
RESPONSE: So it sounds like understanding this issue is of critical importance to any who would seek to achieve mature dependence.
p. 225: “I am pained by the felt powerlessness of many midlife and older women who try to cope with their situation of financial dependence…. Taking steps to prepare for earning money and having a place in the world is something that can be accomplished by people of any age as long as they have their health.”
RESPONSE: But like most problems humans have to deal with, one’s support group makes a fantastic difference in how well, or even whether, they can satisfactorily solve the problem. So the challenge of Science of Ethics is to ensure that any interested person has a support group to help them deal with the problem, if not perfectly, at least well enough for them to maintain a sustainable feeling that their life has meaning.
p. 227: “In a free-market economy, freedom = money. Women are still encouraged to ignore this central message, and when they do, they regret it.”
p. 228: “When men are forced to retreat from a place in the world, because they lose their jobs or (less often) they have to care for children or other family members, they too become caught in Child identifications. Although there is some evidence that women are less likely than men to expect special favors from a partner who earns less, men also suffer when they are financially dependent.”
p. 230: “When a person is laid off it’s vitally important that he or she still have a place in the world. As Baruch and Barnett discovered, the role of stay-at-home child rearing may be today’s ‘high-risk’ occupation. It’s full of powerless responsibility.”
RESPONSE: As one who experienced a three year period of unemployment I can agree that the negative effects of such an experience are significant. Although I had withdrawn my retirement funds to live on, received extended unemployment benefits due to the depressed state of the economy, and used the time to carry out projects that kept me in contact with people I cared about, doing things of great value to me, I still came out of it feeling diminished in power and competence.
p. 230-231: “Mature dependence means relying on each other’s strengths. When it comes to earning money, the only way that partnership can work is to recognize the inferior earning and decision-making power of women. Although women constitute 52.4 percent of the world’s population, they own only about 1 percent of the world’s property. Even after the effects of the recent wave of feminism, women in the United States make only about sixty-six cents for every dollar men make. Although 72 percent of women with school-age children work outside the home – putting the working couple in the majority – women lack the earning power, status, and decision-making capacity that men have. In the unusual and infrequent situations in which men… are vulnerable to financial dependence, men are faced with some of the contradictions that women regularly experience: for example, seeing one’s worth and value measured in financial terms that diminish one’s competence, skills, or labor.”
RESPONSE: True, so true. And changing the foregoing situation will take the kind of fundamental paradigm shift proposed by Science of Ethics.
p. 231: “Many women recognize the dangers of identifying with Mistress Lover projections, especially for making financial claims in exchange for sexual favors. Trading on good feelings and making the most of relational ‘superiority’ is a safer means to feel their strengths and to demand compensation.”
RESPONSE: Certainly the similarity between a wife and a whore in some situations does blur the differences. In other cases the similarities between a wife and a maid, or cleaning lady seem rather close. So once one moves away from a focus on family other models of relating easily come to mind. However, relationships based on shared trust, value, and commitment including mature dependence provides a clear model for a marriage relationship that gets to the core of what a man and a woman truly need from each other.
p. 231: “Ironically, this work of love [being a wife] often is financially unrewarded until divorce.”
p. 232: “What was perceived as ‘love’ going into marriage is translated as ‘money’ coming out. I have often thought how unfortunate it is that a woman’s financial security and worth cannot be clarified outside of divorce court if she is financially dependent. She literally does not know what ‘she is worth’ unless she divorces to find out.”
“Acknowledging the inequality between women and men in terms of compensation for work done, and recognizing problems of dream lover projections under conditions of financial dependence, is a first step toward partnership in money. By recognizing the limitations or constraints between the sexes, both partners are able to see more clearly how difficult their ‘partnership’ is likely to be. Without some sense of equality in money, intimacy between the sexes is not likely to come about. By ‘equality’ here, I do not mean equal income, but rather a sense of oneself as ‘equal’ in a financial partnership with a spouse or lover. In order to feel like an equal partner, one has to have some financial resources of one’s own and to embrace the power to negotiate in conflict.”
“Back in 1984 when I read the massive study of American couples published by sociologist Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, I was struck especially by the finding that couples who pooled their financial resources were more likely to stay together.”
p. 233: “First, pooling resources, even the impulses to do so, can be taken as a sign of trust or incipient trust that may lead to mature dependence. The absence of pooling (or even the impulse) is often a symptom of underlying anxiety and insecurity about finances and dream lover projections.”
p. 235: “All husbands, whether or not their wives are working outside the home, average between ten and fourteen hours of housework a week. Other studies have shown that, in some households, when a women returns to the work force her husband actually rebels by doing even less housework than he had previously done!”
RESPONSE: I do find that very curious. I can understand that an isolated male might react in that way, but for males as a group, how is this possible? What is going on in their minds?
p. 235: “It’s no wonder that many married women do not come home to relax, and are reluctant to spend a vacation (or even an extended weekend) at home rather than in some other setting. Being at home often means working harder than anyplace else for married women, even when they are employed elsewhere.”
RESPONSE: Interesting that this should be the case with the modern woman. Sounds like there are some self-expectations that may need some counseling or support groups in order to overcome. Feeling unable to relax in one’s own home doesn’t sound conducive to good mental health and a healthy marriage.
p. 237-238: “The dilemma about unequal earning capacities has been disruptive of trust in many couples I’ve seen over the years. Generally speaking, though, if the male partner earns more money the female partner may resent the situation, but she usually finds some way to accept her lot and believe they are equals as long as they pool their resources. If a husband, while earning more money, makes special accounts for himself (for example, investments of his own), then his wife is more likely not to trust his love – fearing that he is preparing for their demise.”
RESPONSE: Somehow, I find the following quote from the above paragraph a mind stopper. “but she usually finds some way to accept her lot and believe they are equals as long as they pool their resources." Being able to “accept her lot” rather than being thrilled by her good fortune certainly is a red flag in my brain. How would you establish a trust relationship with a woman who brought this kind of an attitude to the marriage?
However, having said all that figuring out how to deal with inequalities of income, especially when they are large, would probably be a major issue for most couples, at least where it is not taken for granted that the man is boss and calls all the shots.
p. 238: “In the cases I have seen in therapy in which the female partner is the greater wage earner (from small divergences of a couple of thousand dollars annually to large ones in which the female partner earns two or three times the male’s income) a certain mystery lingers. How much money exactly does the woman earn and/or bring in (through her inheritance, for example) to the couple? Because she feels embarrassed, even a little ashamed of their earning difference, she has implicitly or explicitly put him in charge of the cash flow. He does not like to make it very clear just who earns how much. He likes to explain things in terms of their joint funds. Often the man does not openly acknowledge that he earns less unless the woman brings up the topic.”
RESPONSE: Well, money is likely to be an area difficult for most of us to look at closely. For me personally separate bank accounts just seemed like the logical solution, and then dividing up who pays what bills based on the available funds, etc. Somehow the idea of mixing it all together and both writing checks seemed very impractical to me.
But it’s certainly possible that this was part of the milieu that led to the divorce, failure to pool resources in a way that established a couple rather than a man and a woman living in the same home. However, it did seem to me that we in fact pooled our resources even in the absence of a joint account. Possibly my perception is an evidence of the problem.
p. 239-240: “It’s my hunch that men fear a female partner’s greater earning capacity because it seems to put the female in the position of being Father – not just Mother, which is bad enough…. For both sexes, however different earning capacities are somewhat lighter emotional burdens than financial dependence – which can promote unconscious identification with the Child. Differing earning capacities encourage projection – often of the Hero or Great Father onto the male (by the female partner) and the Great or Terrible Father onto the female (by the male partner). Sibling rivalry and power struggles about who is ‘more important’ are another kind of dynamic between the sexes in regard to different earning capacities. These projections are (generally speaking) easier to reclaim and digest when both partners are earning money than when one partner is entirely financially dependent on the other.”
p. 240: “On the way to mature dependence, heterosexual couples seem to benefit from pooling their resources under conditions of honesty.”
RESPONSE: How to handle money seems like an important concern where couples need all the guidance they can get. There are so many different ways to look at this issue and each person brings their own perspective probably from the way their parents handled this that getting some outside experience has got to be helpful.
p. 242: “In most middle-class American families, inheritance is ambiguous and unpredictable. Consequently, it can come as a surprise. In most upper-class and upper-middle-class American families, inheritance is expected and its absence is taken as an affront.”
“In working-class white and African-American families, pooling monetary resources in the extended family is more the norm because present survival (not the future) is the issue.”
“When partners from different class backgrounds marry, that difference is highlighted by inheritance.”
p. 243: “Many women have proprietary feelings about their inheritance, especially if it has come down through generations of mothers who have wanted their daughters to have ‘money of their own.’ … I have worked with many women in psychotherapy whose lives finally broadened into their own creativity and strengths when they received some amount of money through inheritance – which freed them from the condition of financial dependence. I have encouraged these women not to pool these resources, because they needed the feeling of ‘legitimate spending’ within their immediate reach.”
RESPONSE: It seems to me how a given couple handle an inheritance might be modeled on how they handle other monies. If family income is shared and how it is spent is jointly agreed on and fair, then that might be the way to handle the inheritance. If family income is held separately and spent somewhat arbitrarily by whoever earned it, then that might be the model for the inheritance.
But if the couple were working to achieve mature dependence then I would think joint decisions on the inheritance would be essential.
p. 243: “Apart from these cases, how do couples negotiate inheritance? Usually with jealousy, rivalry, and greed, I’m sad to say. I have rarely if ever noticed that inheritance readily and easily helped a couple, except in cases when a woman inherits enough money to help her feel like an equal partner (or when a partner freely gives the money to the common needs of the couple, like the college education of their children). More often, inheritance introduces more inequality.”
RESPONSE: It’s my working assumption that when there is more inequality in a marriage after one of the partners receives an inheritance this relates to the level of trust and sharing previously experienced. I would hate to think couples having mature dependence would all of a sudden begin to function in a different way merely because some unexpected money came into their relationship.
p. 243-244: “Because of the peculiar conditions of inheritance – as an ‘unearned privilege’ – I suggest that the person receiving the money have the final say on how it is to be used…. Partners decide differently, but explaining through dialogue makes the decisive difference in terms of intimacy.”
p. 244: “If a partner can speak openly and the other partner can paraphrase and respond openly, usually the meanings of fated money can be clarified.”
“You have probably noticed that I tread gingerly over this area of money and heterosexual intimacy. Social and political inequalities between the sexes are rampant in this part of couple life. In my own relationship and when I work with couples in therapy, my goal is to help both partners feel like they are equal.”
p. 245: “As I said earlier, and as many researchers have shown, men are not prepared (or ready to learn) to share household tasks equally with women.”
RESPONSE: Obviously, this is an area where change is essential. But a factor sure to cause many hours of dialogue will surely be the different expectations men and women have about what is acceptable in housework. Possibly these dialogues will move the degree of communication to a new level. Fairness and equal sharing seem to me the goal of the whole process.
p. 245: “I don’t recommend keeping lists and accounts of who does what. Nor do I recommend trying to equalize or balance the columns of tasks versus income versus whatever. An intimate relationship is not an arena of sociopolitical justice.”
“Accepting certain parameters of gender preference and personal style allow individuals to see their needs and contributions within a realistic framework.”
p. 246: “Reclaiming dream lovers is not an easy task and often we prefer to have a partner carry the responsibility for our dreams of financial success or inability to claim our own needs.
RESPONSE: Working through our projections surely is not an easy task and some areas may be more difficult than others. In the area of money, which can easily translate into being taken care of (and therefore remain as a child, possibly a spoilt child), it is probably particularly difficult for women who have accepted this model. I doubt, however, that they would be good candidates for mature dependence. Working to become a mature adult is not necessarily a goal all adults accept.
p. 246: “Special claims of either partner due to illnesses or protected money (such as inheritance) require dialogue. Although I have read a great deal about prenuptial financial agreements, I find myself somewhat reluctant to promote them as a general rule. (Perhaps this is because I live in a traditional city on the East Coast and not many of my friends have them. I understand it is different in California.)”
p. 247: “In regard to a wholly different topic, the illness of one partner can put a lot of financial and other burdens on the other. Illnesses that require a week or more of absence from work and/or household chores require dialogue between partners. Sometimes people believe that illness is such a clear message that a partner ‘should just know’ what has to be done. But in fact, the breakdown of the usual structure of activities of the couple for a period as long as a week creates a new kind of chaos that cannot be intuited. There is no way to ‘know’ what to do without dialogue. Longer illnesses require a number of levels and layers of negotiations. The objective is to sustain the trust that allows for intimacy. Both partners have to feel equal in this process – being able to speak about needs and knowing specifically what is wanted.”
RESPONSE: I would think times of illness and other stressful experiences would be when dialogue is needed most, and is of special value. When dialogue is so thoroughly integrated into couple communication that it just automatically is the way all issues are handled, to me that would be when mature dependence is actually working.
p. 247: “Money and labor in a couple relationship are problematic especially because they elicit parental projections and tend to invite identifications with being children.”
RESPONSE: So at one level this makes them especially important areas to closely examine and re-evaluate. This may help uncover self-destructive or self-limiting patterns that the individual may wish to attack and hopefully master.
p. 248: “I was very much influenced in my experience as a mother by two-accounts of motherhood: Of Woman Born by poet Adrienne Rich and Inventing Motherhood by British psychiatrist Ann Dally. Both of these books emphasize, from different angles, the effects of the cultural institution of motherhood on women’s experience of mothering. Rich gives her own and others’ accounts of the wide range of ambivalent emotions associated with becoming a mother – terror and joy, hatred and love, insecurity and confidence. She contrasts these with ‘expert accounts’ of how mothers should be: calm, pleasant, supportive, and caring. In describing her struggle to mother three sons after the death of her husband, she reveals the inner pressures that we mothers feel to be perfectly adequate in a role that is filled with responsibility and lacks any real power. As our children move into the culture of their peers in childhood and adolescence, we have less and less control over their values and ideals, and yet are usually held accountable by professionals and the public (and, alas, ourselves) for our children’s actions.”
p. 249: “The recognition of childhood as its own ‘period’ of development, lower rates of infant mortality, and our recent cultural emphasis on the ‘important role’ of mothering have resulted in our current belief in women’s primary ‘maternal instinct.’ This belief has been used as an explanation for everything from confining women in the home, away from the workplace, to assuming that women are less rational and more emotional than men. The idealization of motherhood – and its underside, the Terrible Mother complex – is a constant presence in the feelings of individual women about their mothering. Additionally, many mothers feel absolutely responsible for producing healthy and happy children at a time when our society is full of violence, danger – and resistance supporting childcare and the educational needs of children. Rather than seeing that many of their children’s problems have a larger social context, mothers tend to blame themselves when things go wrong. Our society also holds mothers (not fathers) to be accountable for children’s behavior and outcomes.”
RESPONSE: Certainly working to avoid becoming/ remaining limited in harmful ways by the models and stereotypes our culture provides seems critically important. This is especially important within the context of Science of Ethics.
As I indicate elsewhere the whole area around children and their involvement in and relationship to their society seems to me to need much more examination than it has received up to this time. Children need to be much more involved in society not just in sports, and social events, but also in ways that impinge on the work of the group. How this might be done in an industrial/ communications based society is problematical. But it is a glaring deficiency in modern societies. It needs to play a role similar to how hunter-gatherers and farming communities involve their kids in the life of the community. Schooling and education are important, but unless this is done within a bigger context it can easily be essentially wasted. (See VOLUME II, Chapter 30, “ Education in an Enlightened Community.”)
It seems to me that a very important thing for anyone, especially a kid, is to have an area of burning interest to focus their life to support them through the hard times, help them better see the importance of education and study, put them in contact with others who share their interests, etc.
In the U.S. children of affluent parents probably under normal conditions get much assistance to be actively involved in community life. But those who need it most – the children of parents (often single parents) of minimal education and earnings – usually get almost zero help unless they have unusual parents.
I would take it that the well being of children is a matter that should always be on the mind of a Wisdom Group and all persons interested in Science of Ethics.
p. 250: “As Dally points out, our current preoccupation with making ‘the perfect child’ has too often resulted in producing narcissistic adults who feel entitled to privileges or status simply because they exist.”
RESPONSE: Figuring out how to help kids be all that they can be and not remain stuck in some self-limiting box is a matter deserving far more study and thought than has been focused on this matter up to this time.
p. 250: “Recall that these archetypal images of the Great or Terrible Mother are not representations of real people. They are images aroused by particular emotional states – contentment and nurturance in an infant-parent bond in the case of the Great Mother; rage, unmet need, and aggression in the Terrible Mother. The images are depictions of universal emotional states of human life. These states are especially powerful in infancy prior to language use. When they are projected onto actual women – either our partners or our mothers – the images color the women with powers that are superhuman. No one is the Great Mother or the Terrible Mother.”
“When women identify with these projections, we have seen how disastrous the outcome is.”
p. 251-252: “Working with couples on their parenting, I often find that fathers want to be seen as the Great Father and are reluctant to play the heavy in dealing with discipline. Often this position is presented in terms of ‘not wanting to interfere’ with the mother’s disciplining the children. This is certainly a contrast to the role of father described by Freud in Victorian families, in which the authority and discipline of the reigning patriarch were the mark of a functional family…. Taking the role of the responsible and rational disciplinarian is what I mean by playing the heavy. Setting limits, using parental authority wisely, and saying no to indulgences and excessive demands of children are examples of the kind of discipline that fathers have abdicated…. This too often leaves such fathers open to coupling with a child as well.”
RESPONSE: In thinking about this for myself, I would wonder if the difference in U.S. males today and European Victorian males is the difference between being raised by a Great Mother in Victorian times when “women knew their place,” and had a clear model of how to raise a child, were stay-at-home-Moms; and being raised by a Terrible Mother in the U.S. where Mothers are trying to cope with being “liberated,” dealing with conflicting models of child rearing, working outside the home, being single Moms, and all the other factors that make being a Mother in America a very stressful situation that produces much frustration and thoughtless behavior. Not to mention producing kids who are very confused about what it means to be a parent.
The Great Mothers would raise the Golden Child – an arrogant, demanding, self-promoting, confident, admiration-hungry good boy. The Terrible Mothers raise the Victim Child – a guilty, ashamed, humiliated, castrated, overwhelmed little boy. Obviously the whole thing has to be more complex than the above, but it seems to me the issue might have these things at its core.
But to the degree that the above discussion has merit, the Victorian male would be authoritarian, demanding, confident he had all the answers. Those U.S. males who had the experience I suggest would be unsure of boundaries, uncomfortable making demands, unable to establish reasonable and consistent discipline, etc. So they have some issues to deal with if they are to become fathers who provide the necessary boundaries yet are supportive and help the child to pursue the things their inner needs require.
p. 252-253: “You probably see what I am implying here: The primacy of the couple relationship should sustain parents – instead of their trying to get admiration and closeness too exclusively through their children. Parents have a range of good and bad feelings about their offspring, but can be easily taken by the narcissistic belief that their own children are ‘special’ and ‘unique.’ Parenting is a tremendously important life event (also an ongoing ‘life emergency’ for many years) for both parents. From time to time, it is a very rewarding experience. Often it is just plain hard work…. A healthy partnership in parenting gives parents greater possibilities for reworking what was troubling from their own childhoods rather than acting it out on the next generation. Without that partnership, parents are at risk for repeating the past and for coupling with their children – depriving the children of a secure bond in which they are free to be themselves.”
RESPONSE: I think it is easy for wives to interpret their husband’s reluctance to discipline their children as having the goal of getting the child to love them. However, based on my own experience I would say wives have often been left to provide the discipline because the husband doesn’t have a clue about the need for boundaries and how to establish them. So they see the husband’s lack of firmness as having a motive, a desire to come off as better than the wife who does the punishment. I think as I expressed earlier that the wife’s interpretation is most likely wrong. What she sees as a motive is really incompetence. The male genuinely doesn’t know how to provide the guidance their children need. And this comes out of their own lack of experience and role models showing them how to be an effective father in a family.
From what I’ve observed almost all adults have a “maternal instinct” when it comes to infants. However, women leave men in the dust on this matter. I’m sure this has been used as a tool to accomplish all kinds of distorted goals by persons more concerned with controlling others than with helping them. But I can’t imagine that anyone would seriously question its power and importance. I personally take it as a critically important way to help persons become more aware of their humanity and their compassion for others.
I personally feel the experience of raising my Son has made me a better human being and more human in almost every way. At the same time it is clear that many parents need support to help them better deal with raising their children. Partially this is because they were themselves raised so poorly by their own parents.
I hope it would be obvious to all that a healthy partnership should be the goal in marriage. Yet to have a healthy partnership one needs healthy partners and too many individuals have not discovered the tools to help them reach that healthy state. So promoting the resources to do this seems very important to me. Young-Eisendrath provides some valuable tools to help couples that are lucky enough to be able to understand and follow her recommendations.
I hope it would be obvious to all that a healthy partnership should be the goal in all marriages. Yet to have a healthy partnership one needs healthy partners and too many individuals have not discovered the tools to help them reach that healthy state. So promoting the resources to do this seems very important to me. Young-Eisendrath provides some valuable tools to help couples who are lucky enough to be able to understand and follow her recommentations.
p. 253: “This book is about the search for heterosexual intimacy, not parenting. Rather than speaking about parenting per se, I want to show how parenting (like money) can interfere with trust as the basis of intimacy, and suggest how this interference can be avoided or at least minimized through dialogue.”
RESPONSE: Obviously couples with children cannot maintain intimacy if the child raising process arouses issues that seriously damage these feelings between them. So finding satisfactory models for sharing child rearing responsibilities that are consistent with mature dependence is essential for couples in that phase of their marriage. And in many cases this will require a parent to break through some barriers that have limited their understanding of themselves and their potential as a spouse, parent, employee, citizen, etc.
The dialogue process seems vital for a modern marriage. But of course to successfully engage in dialogue both members of the couple need to be aware of their dream lovers, complexes, and related patterns that get in the way of being able to talk rationally and be well-grounded so a dialogue moves them in the direction of mature dependence.
p. 253-254: “When partners make idealized couple relationships with one or more of their children, trust in the couple relationship is wounded. Let me say clearly that I distinguish between a child’s fantasy of an idealized parent – the Great Father or Great Mother – which may be filled with erotic and other desires of all kinds, and a parent’s actual attempt to seduce a child. It’s the parent’s behavior that I am talking about, not the child’s fantasy. Parents are vulnerable to becoming narcissistically, erotically, and/or aggressively paired up with a child…. Trust can be repaired when the partners are willing to face each other and make their relationship primary again, so that together they can repair the damage done to the child.”
RESPONSE: Helping parents to behave in mature, healthy ways rather than immature, deficient ways seems critically important for society. However, change will be extremely difficult because of all the factors that encourage adult immaturity and the few that actually provide clear enough models and guidance so the confused parent can actually work through their own ignorance and see how to do a better job. A primary goal of Science of Ethics would be to impact the foregoing in a positive way.
p. 254: “When either parent acts with a child in a way disapproved of by the other parent, trust may be disrupted and the partners need to confer…. I will not be speaking here of situations in which one or both parents act malevolently toward a child. That is a condition that may well lead to a breakup of the couple, and perhaps should lead to a breakup unless everyone (child, abuser, and other family members) get help.”
RESPONSE: Having assistance available that actually helps is a critical need of current U.S. society. Science of Ethics would work to ensure that such resources are available.
p. 254: “I am speaking here of legitimate disagreements in style, manner, and goals of parenting seen from the point of view of either partner.”
RESPONSE: It seems to me that developing viable models of parenting is a critical need. Unfortunately, most of the current models are like our models for marriage, incompatible with our current knowledge and understanding of human life. As a result irresolvable disagreements should be common. However, hopefully couples that have mastered mature dependence will lead us in finding equivalent models for parenting kids.
p. 256: “Women appear to gain status in society through seeming to meet the idealizations of motherhood. In fact, however, they gain very little status, power, or control from identifying with the Great Mother. As Ann Dally points out, the idealization of motherhood carries with it little real power, and much responsibility for children’s development – responsibility that should belong also to fathers, the community, and the society at large. By contrast, there is a lot of emotional power (that is, powerful feelings) in parental projections because they are grounded in archetypes. Archetypal images are larger than life, carrying with them the emotional image traces of everyone’s years of infantile dependence and powerlessness. On the other side of the parental coin, there’s also archetypal power in projections onto children.”
RESPONSE: For sure we need to work to provide vastly more social resources to help mothers deal with the challenges they face. This is essential so children will be supported in the ways they need to be.
p. 256-257: “When children are very young, from infancy through about three years old, it is natural for parents to imagine the child as fulfilling all that the parent had hoped for, but failed to do or be…. Carl Jung called this the archetype of the ‘Divine Child.’ When children are very young, they evoke fantasies of having every and any possibility of succeeding, of being special and unique. As they grow older and become individuals, their limitations become clearer, and they are less easy to idealize (until adolescence, when it’s usually hard to idealize them at all). Especially during the early years, the parent-child relationship can be used as a substitute for feelings of intimacy with a partner. It’s easy to project the Hero, the Genius, the Maiden, or the Mistress onto a young child. All of us do this and it’s quite normal. When this happens (even with a same-sex child who may seem to be the ideal that the parent never has been), the parent feels a surge of erotic or narcissistic fantasy that is linked to this particular child. If the parent is alert and fully engaged in a couple relationship with a partner, it’s likely that the parent will feel these feelings in only a passing way. When the partner relationship is in disillusionment, a parent may have a harder time parting with the fantasy and turning to a partner to meet intimacy needs.”
RESPONSE: Every adult needs an affiliative love relationship with another adult. Helping to make this possible is another responsibility of an Enlightened Community. If we have children we need the support to give them unconditional love to help them grown and be all that they can be. Certainly they are special and unique, and this should be nurtured in every way possible. But to focus love on a child as though they were an adult is not beneficial for either the child or the adult.
p. 257: “With all of these various projections of dream lovers and possibilities for identification, partners need dialogue to help them understand each others’ parenting actions, especially when they disagree. For the welfare of children and the intimacy of a couple, it is critically important that partners ask questions of each other when they have differences in parenting. What did you do? Why did you do it? What are your goals? What are your reasons? Without this kind of knowledge of each other’s parenting, partners are likely to base their assessments on their own strange gender more than on reality…. Asking questions and trying to understand a partner’s reasons often opens a way to see things from another parent’s eyes. For the welfare of children and intimacy with a partner, it is vitally important that partners respect the reasonable choices and approaches made by each other. When suggestions are made for change, they should be brought up in a framework of mutual respect.”
RESPONSE: “Ask questions!” I’m sure for most persons that seems so obvious it is not reasonable to even mention it. But for some of us this process doesn’t come “naturally.” It seems like an intrusion, or a judgment, or some such thing to “ask a question.” So it’s something we need to remember and do our best to include.
I have a feeling there is another critical aspect to this issue when the goal is trust and understanding. Since I think often people don’t know why they do what they do it seems important that, “I don’t know why,” be an acceptable answer. If one feels they must have a “good” answer then we enter the realm of rationalizations and creativity. At that point it becomes very difficult to use this as an opportunity to get to know and understand ourselves better. I must believe that every behavior has a reason, and to the degree that we become able to understand it, the closer we get to knowing our own motivations and beliefs. At that point we can then work to change them when they don’t point towards where we want to go.
p. 258-259: “This book is not about divorce and separation, but the simple rule of asking questions and not making assumptions is a good one for divorced parents to follow. Divorced parents, more than married parents, too often, function entirely through projection of dream lovers onto each other. After divorce, trust is broken and the possibility of dialogue is gone. Yet parents must go on cooperating and relating for the sake of their children…. After divorce, though, parents have only one shared responsibility: the welfare of their children. Asking questions and listening are the best tools available to assist divorced parents in responding to their children’s needs without aggressive conflict.”
RESPONSE: Sounds like good advice. Learning how to follow it would probably be helpful growth for me.
p. 262: “Throughout this chapter, I have been confronting issues of money and parenting that present heterosexual couples with dilemmas of equality. My premise all along has been that heterosexual intimacy is based on a relationship of equality and trust that fosters mature dependence and development of a relational self. How can we be equal partners in a relationship that includes vast inequities of income, paid and unpaid labor, and parenting roles? What could the concept of ‘equality’ possibly mean between the sexes, when we are acutely aware of the unfairness of sex roles in this and other male-dominated societies?”
“I have two answers. They have been implied in all I’ve said already. First, equality in an intimate relationship means the give-and-take of honest and open dialogue: the willingness to listen and understand your partner’s point of view because it is as important as your own. This equality of influence cannot translate into ‘equal pay’ or ‘equal parenting’ when these equalities are not under the control of a couple. Although some couples can work gradually into shared parenting, the strengths of individual partners usually preclude exact equality in parenting.”
RESPONSE: I think it is important to look at Young-Eisendrath’s premise which she gives above: “My premise all along has been that heterosexual intimacy is based on a relationship of equality and trust that fosters mature dependence and development of a relational self." Since achieving the foregoing would seem an essential ingredient in the good life, its clarity is important. Also, it seems crucial to recognize that how we apply these things will depend on the specific couple involved. Couples are influenced, usually in crucial ways, by what goes on in the larger society, but in the final analysis it’s what they can do in the part over which they have some control that becomes most important.
p. 262-263: “Wider societal and personal possibilities of equal pay and equal parenting can be opened up through the equality of influence, however…. When equality of influence works, it opens up gender limitations and allows both partners to experience life from each other’s perspectives.”
RESPONSE: Being able to share another person’s perspective seems very important to me. This is an essential tool for self-growth. Honest and open dialogue would seem to provide a powerful tool for self-growth. This process should not only help us to understand our core needs, but also to satisfy them.
p. 263: “That is my second answer. Through dialogue and taking back dream lovers, women and men open up their gender identifies.”
p. 263-264: “Inequities between the sexes are rooted in our strange gender – in how we imagine, fear, and idealize the other sex…. As women and men come to know what life is like for each other and to understand each other’s strengths they gradually reclaim their own strangeness. This is a process that frees each of us of idealization and fear.”
RESPONSE: Hopefully, this process can become more widely utilized so that individuals will become better integrated and also more able to develop additional aspects of their being. This seems like a natural part of developing one’s full positive potential.
p. 264: “Idealization and fear are the roots of sexism and all other power hierarchies. Injustice is freely enacted only upon those whom we consider our inferiors – those who fear us and whom we ultimately fear. When we empty the others of worth and meaning, we fill them with motives to retaliate and possess what is worthwhile. Even in the current atmosphere of inequity, the two sexes can operate according to principles of equality if they cease idealizing and fearing each other. Equal influence between partners in heterosexual couples on issues of money and parenting has revolutionary implications for a future of greater justice between the sexes.”
RESPONSE: So, as individuals come more and more to recognize themselves as members of the human species, and to identify with every other human being because of our common humanity, we will be less and less willing to practice injustice, exploitation, attack, etc. upon others. Unless we can do this with our marriage partner it is unlikely we will be able to do it with others. When we have mastered this process with our partner that provides a model for doing it with others. As indicated many times before mature dependence should prepare any couple to better understand the possibility of identification with all other human beings. And this is the core aim of Science of Ethics.
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