This clip of Fox News dinosaurs experiencing some kind of male hysteria (testeseria?) about female breadwinners is very amusing. What could these boys have their boxers in such a twist about? A Pew Research study showing that four out of ten US households now have a female breadwinner. Their comments reveal a deep rage at the idea that almost half of American households are no longer economically dependent on men.
'We're watching society dissolve around us!!!'
'Something is going terribly wrong in American society - and it's hurting our children!'
'The male typically is the dominant role... the female is a complementary role. It's bad for kids and bad for marriages. It's tearing us apart!!'
'Bottom line: it could undermine our social order!!'
(Exclamation points added to convey testeserical tones in which these statements were delivered.)
Erick Erickson's reaction is the most revealing, with his weird belief that nature has ordained a certain order to male/female relations that this trend of female breadwinners is turning on its head. That one is as old as the hills. It must be wonderful to have such certainty that you belong at the head of a structure, playing a dominant role and that 'science' has ordained it to be so.
Nobody go telling this guy about bees now! Or birds or bears! Or even large primates, for that matter, who live in groups where, yes, there is a dominant male but where the rearing of the young takes place in the group and the group as a whole forage for food and resources.
What is possibly ordained by nature for humans is a hunter-gatherer scenario where men and women live in a tribal group of closely related people. The children are cared for in a group setting and resources are sought and shared within the group. The modern equivalent of this 'traditional' way of life would be homeless people who move from place to place to find food, dumpster diving and 'grazing' at food banks. I hope this Erickson guy is prepared to give up his home and cooked meals and don a pair of fingerless gloves and a dumpster diver's satchel so he can stop destroying America and start living a traditional way of life that is ordained by science. It would certainly help him to lose a few pounds anyway.
I have some good news for the Fox talking heads, however. A recent article in The Atlantic magazine shows that one group in American society is fighting to save traditional values: gay married couples.
In debating this issue, Slate podcast commentators note that Mundy's research showed that there are more stay-at-home parents among gay couples than among straight couples. Whether it's because gay men tend to be higher earners and so can afford a single-income household or whether it's just because gay couples feel less oppressed by the housewife stereotype than straight couples do, this is a growing trend among gay married couples. My guess is that it might be due to the fact that many gay couples adopt their children and having a stay-at-home parent helps their chances in being considered as adoptive parents.
As Hanna Rosin comments: 'We're choosing the conservative, traditional path and gay people are finding a way to make it cool for the rest of us'.
So men of Fox news: take heart! There are still 'traditional' marriages in America. They just might not seem that way to you at first glance.
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