Why some women are saying 'I don't' to unequal marriages
'The rage of motherhood is a rage of wifedom that we translate onto the children,' says author
*Originally aired on Feb. 21, 2024.
Women in heterosexual marriages, holding down full-time jobs, and carrying the extra load domestically as wives and mothers have had enough. They aren't just tired, they are mad — and they are done being a "married single mom."
Wives and mothers on TikTok and Instagram have shared endless lists of how men are failing as a husband or father — from daily, arguably minor, irritations to full-blown neglect. Increasingly, women are discussing marriage not in terms of how to make it better, but whether to get married at all.
"We normalize the misery of women as wives, especially — and motherhood. Although I think a lot of the rage of motherhood is a rage of wifedom that we translate onto the children," said Lyz Lenz, author of This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life.
While Lenz thinks it's possible for wives and husbands to have good relationships, she believes that the issue is marriage itself — that it's a system predicated on inequality between men and women. Modern marriage, her research has found, relies on women to do all the hidden work that makes married life viable.
She points to findings about work ambitions that show how men and women are socialized differently about their jobs. Women are primed to think of their own careers as more flexible than those of men — or even expendable.
"If a woman is a lawyer and her husband's a doctor, she'll say her career is more flexible. But flip it. She's the doctor. He's the lawyer. She'll still say her career is more flexible. So it's both legally and culturally where we have primed women to sacrifice themselves on to this pyre of marriage."
Child care is a key example of where this self-described flexibility meets the systemic problem of the gender wage gap, said Lenz. Daycare is unaffordable, so the burden falls on women to put their own career ambitions on hold by either working jobs with more flexibility, or leaving paid work altogether to stay home.
Challenging unequal partnership
Lisa Strohschein, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta, says the determining factor whether marriage is in trouble depends on whom you ask.
While fewer Canadians are getting married — and they're marrying later in life — Canadians are still seeking out partnerships: 58 per cent in 1921 versus 57 per cent in 2021. Albeit today, the proportion of cohabiting couples is significantly higher.
Certainly, there's been a shift in marriage and in women's autonomy compared to 100 years ago, but the one thing that endures, Strohschein says, is the gender division of labour is still unequal. Men are doing more in the domestic space than in the past, but women are still doing the most.
"So while we are in a different space than we were in the 1970s, it's also the case that we really haven't caught up to the modern era. So despite that narrowing gender gap in the gender division of labour, it's women who are still caring for kids and doing the household chores to a far greater extent than are men," Strohschein explained.
"And certainly then there is that cause for resentment among women who feel that men aren't pulling their fair share of the load."
As a wife and the primary caretaker of her two young children, Lenz says the problems in her marriage were not about having made a bad choice about the man she married. It was the pressure of the broader cultural forces she was living in.
"I went into our marriage thinking it would be a marriage of equals. And then somewhere along the line, you know, we had two children, and I realized that my career was on the back burner when it didn't have to be. I mean… his sure wasn't," Lenz said.
"And, and not only was my career on the back burner, but all that equality we had been trying to work so hard for was just not present."
Lenz was trying to keep up with her career, take care of the kids and also maintain the house during her marriage.
"Meanwhile, he's able to get up every day, grab his little lunch that I packed him and head on off to work. And so I broke. I eventually left that marriage."
It's not ' we' are working hard. It's 'I '—' I 'am working hard.- Author Lyz Lenz
She says it was an eye-opener when she found being a single mother less onerous than being married.
"I didn't divorce thinking like, 'Oh, this is going to be great.' I divorced because I was so miserable. And then I got to the other side and I was like, 'Wait a minute, hold on a second.' I have more free time now than I ever had before. My house is cleaner. I have more time to work. I'm suddenly making more money because now I can work in a way that I had never been able to before."
Lenz believes in hard work and sacrifice. She did it for the 12 years she was married. But like most women, she was doing most of it.
"It's not we are working hard. It's I — I am working hard. I'm setting up the date nights. I'm hiring the babysitter. I'm calling the marriage therapist. I'm reading the self-help books about how to communicate with him. I'm giving up my career to make this a priority."
In our society when people say you have to work hard in a marriage, Lenz asks: "Who are you asking to work hard here?
"Because it's always the wife. And if your idea of marriage is predicated on one partner working really, really hard while another partner occasionally vacuums a rug, then that's not a partnership. That's servitude."
Guests in this episode:
Lisa Strohschein is a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta.
Lyz Lenz is a journalists and writes the newsletter, Men Yell At Me, that looks at "personhood and politics in Red State America." She is also the author of This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life.
Alice Evans is a senior lecturer at King's College London in the Uk. Her research focuses on gender divergence.
Fereshteh Hashemi is a friend of IDEAS producer, Naheed Mustafa.
Sobiya Syed is also a friend of Naheed.
*This episode was produced by Naheed Mustafa.
