February 2, 2018 • 46 mins
Newly-engaged E and marriage-agnostic B sit down with writer Jill Fillipovic to find out if there’s such a thing as a feminist marriage.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Emily, and you're listening to Stuffed Mom
Never told you Today. We are so excited to be
joined virtually by one of my favorite authors, Jill Filipovic,
(00:28):
who's tuning in with us from Nairobi, Kenya, to talk
through what it means to have slash Is it possible
that there is such a thing as a feminist marriage? So, Jill,
thank you so much for being here, Thank you so
much for having me so Bridge and I have some
wildly different experiences that we're bringing to the table on
(00:51):
this one. Uh. In case our listeners didn't already preempt
that some of you might have seen on Instagram at
the start of the year that Brad the Boo and
I have just decided to hop into the institution of
marriage later this year, a decision that didn't we didn't
come to very easily or quickly by any means, especially
as I wrestled with this topic from a feminist perspective
(01:14):
page by page right along with you, Jill, UH, and
I want to start by asking what caused you to
initially set out to write this book and explore that
intersection of feminism and marriage in your amazing book called
The h Spot the feminist pursuit of happiness. Well, I've
been writing about feminism for a long time, mostly on
(01:36):
the Internet, but for a variety of magazines and newspapers,
and kind of kept hitting up this, hitting up against
the same issues over and over again. And obviously, you know,
the feminist I believe in equality. That seems like an
important goal for the feminist movement. But it became pretty
clear eventually that what seemed to be holding women back
(01:57):
on a broader scale wasn't necessarily that women weren't equal
to men um you know which, of course, it's still
not true, we still are not quite equal yet, but
that the world was set up in a way to
make men's lives easier according to sort of men's preferences
and lifestyles. And you know anything, we see this everywhere
(02:19):
from our workplaces to our laws and our policies and
our debates over basic things when reproductive freedom, um. And
so to me, the question then sort of became, okay, well,
a feminist shouldn't be looking for equality, then what should
we be looking for? And you know, the answer, I
think was a world that was that is built taking
(02:40):
into account what it is that women want, and you
know what women want. I think that's what most people want,
which is a happy and contented life. Um. And so
the book was looking at what it would look like
if we began to structure our universe around that goal
instead of just trying to become equal to men. Um
And marriage obviously is one of the institutions that I
(03:02):
found it fruitful to look at through that lens. So
I'm curious. I find that so interesting. What would that
look like? What would it look like if be structured
marriage and all these other social constructs around what women
want and what makes women happy. Yeah, So, I mean
one of the things that's challenging is kind of inventing
a universe that doesn't yet exist, right, So that was
(03:23):
that was the hardest part of the book. Um and
looking at marriage, I mean, there are a few things
that I was sort of fascinated to find in the research. Um.
You know, one is that women who are married tend
to be happier than women who aren't, um, which was
a little bit surprising to me, but sort of explained
by one of two things. You know. One of them
is perhaps people that are happier are more likely to
(03:45):
get married in the first place, And maybe the causation
goes in the other direction. UM. And then the just
being socially connected makes us happy. And so people that
you know are partnered, UM tend to have a greater
social universe and that contributes quite a bit to their
well being. UM. You know that said women who get
(04:07):
married later and so you know, have more dating experience, UM,
tend to have more financial resources, are a little bit
you know, more independent for a variety of reasons, those
women tend to have longer lasting marriages and better marriages
and more feminist marriages. UM. Women who continue working after
they have kids tend to be happier than those who don't.
So you know, while marriage is this fairly traditional, not
(04:32):
particularly in my opinion, feminist institution, these sort of feminist
ization of marriage has made people in marriages happier, which
I found really fascinating. That is really fascinating, and I
think it's important for our listeners and all of us
here today to separate out marriage from wedding, right because
(04:54):
we could. Your two weeks out from your wedding in
Nairobi is so clearly you've got on board, uh with
the institution as a strident feminist that you are, and
you know, today's conversation just for all of our Sminthy
listeners who have been chatting with me on Instagram about
doing an episode around this when Brad Boo and I
(05:16):
announced our engagement. Yes, I would love to do a
whole series unpacking weddings and the wedding industrial complex and
feminism and marriage in so many ways if I had
more time, quite frankly, which we'll talk a little bit
more about in the episodes that follow, But today's conversation
is really about the institution and whether or not the
(05:37):
institution of marriage itself can be feminist. There's a quote
in your book, Jill, in a chapter that you call
wife that I found so profound or sort of so
it spoke straight to my experience as someone who, like you,
had pretty much accepted the idea that being single is
(05:57):
not a bad thing. And that's not what we're trying
to say either. Right, despite the research around happiness and marriage,
that doesn't mean that being single resigns you to a
life of dissatisfaction. Right. And I don't know about you,
bridget if your thoughts on this, if you want to
chime in with your perspective here as a non engaged,
(06:18):
non married person. Um, I think it's an interesting conversation.
You may have gleaned that I have ambivalent feelings around marriage.
I'm not super excited about the idea of marriage. I've
never sort of thought of myself as someone who was like,
very very very happy to be married and wanted to
be a wife badly. And I think it's one of
those things where in popular culture were told that women
(06:40):
who don't get married are spinsters, are sad, or this
or that. And I think why Jill's work is so
interesting is that it can present a different model for
what marriage can be. Instead of this binary that like, oh,
cool girls don't want to get married, and if you
get married, you're so basic and this, and that you're
not really a feminist. I think Jill's work really opens
up a space where we can and you know, not
(07:01):
fall along those buyinarias well. That's exactly what this quote
from her chapter Wife is all about. So if you'll
indulge me, Jail, I'd love to read just a couple
of paragraphs here for a second. You wrote quote, I
had settled comfortably into my identity as a single woman,
and all the freedom and room for folly it brings
with it when getting married obscure this person an individual
(07:21):
who defines herself in large part by her autonomy and
self sovereignty. It's with this frame that I entered this
project wondering whether marriage actually makes women happy, or if
by its nature it subsumes women into their male partners,
and whether any of that changed when we expanded marriage
to include same sex couples. Can marriage ever be good
(07:42):
for women? And can marriage be feminist? And I think
that's the question, right, that's really the question at hand.
What is the space between that binary that Bridget was
talking about that you sort of found in writing this book, Jail. Yeah, So,
I mean I think what Bridget raises is a really
interesting and important point. Um. Yes, we have these kind
of large scale studies on marriage and happiness, but obviously
(08:05):
there's quite a bit of individual variability within those numbers, right.
And you know one thing that folks who have researched,
who have done longevity studies so looked at, um a
particular group of people and kind of what brought them
satisfaction throughout the course of their lives. Women who led
unconventional and interesting lives, you know who didn't decide to
(08:26):
kind of go along with the norms of their time.
We're also some of the most content and the happiest
towards the end of their lives. Um, So there isn't
kind of one, you know, one size fits all model.
And I think feminism has done a really incredible job
of opening up, you know, the sort of universe of
opportunities for women. You know, that said the sort of
(08:48):
question I posed in the book, You know, can marriage
be feminists? Are? Are we living in an era where
marriages are a feminist I think that we are slowly
getting there, Um, but I really don't think we are
there yet. I don't think most marriages are a feminist.
I don't think marriage and in itself is a feminist institution. Um,
(09:08):
you know, I'm entering into it anyway. I also don't
really think high heels are feminist, but I wear those,
like we all have to live our lives and do
things that are gonna bring us sort of contentment and
satisfaction and happiness, even if they don't completely fall in
line with our political ideals. Um but I do think
really engaging, you know, the questions of why we enter
(09:29):
into these institutions and what these institutions are and how
we can shift and change them to be better aligned
with our vision for what a good world looks like.
UM is a really crucial feminist project. So, Jill, I
just want to tease out something that you said just
a moment ago. So women who live unconventional lives, perhaps
dedicated to their craft, their art, their passion, who don't
(09:51):
get married, you're saying that they actually also report being
happy towards the end of their life. So if I
decide to go the root of being the single cookie
aunt who travels and writes and lives alone and has
a life full of other things that do not include
a spouse, I could be just as happy as my
married friends. Is that what you're saying? Definitely? I'm look,
(10:14):
if there was like a recipe for human happiness and
if we could all just kind of fit ourselves into
it and do it, we would have figured out it
a while ago. Um. You know that unfortunately doesn't exist.
But you know, folks who have a deep sense of self,
who have a deep sense of purpose and who follow
that in their lives. You know, whatever form that takes, UM,
(10:35):
they do tend to be people who who are happier
than you know, folks who kind of just go with
the flow. I think that's so real because I know
so many people that and this speaks to I think
a good section of your book, so many people that
get married because they're sort of finished with dating. They've
(10:56):
reached a certain age in their in their life and
they're like, I need to settle down and I'm done
with the dating scene. I'm with someone who is fine,
I'm gonna marry them. And that seems like exactly what
you're talking about. This will go with the flow, as
if dating is musical shares and the music has stopped,
and the one that you're in front of that's the
one that you have to pair up with for life.
And it does seem like this way of sort of
(11:18):
giving into a cultural shift and just going with the
flow and saying, I'm not thinking about what would actually
make me happy, and I'm not thinking about what actually
would ensure that my life is full of more of
what makes me happy. I am doing this because it
is a choice I'm making to sort you know, to
go with this well, Jill. In your book, you write
about that exact model of marriage, which is perfectly reasonable
(11:41):
and risk averse in terms of a choice for a
lot of people. Um, but it's this idea of I've
gotten to this point in my life, this is who
I'm with. Their their dependable, they're kind. And you call
that the responsible partner marriage model a perfectly sensible thing,
but not quite for you. You You went on to write,
following that section quote, I would rather have a string
(12:01):
of loves and heartbreaks than marry someone fundamentally decent but
about whom I feel the least bit tepid. Bridget and
I may may not have read that exact quote over
one cocktail that we share last night after a long
day in the studio, as we talked about and sort
of wrestled with that concept of Mr orm is good enough.
(12:23):
And I guess my question for everybody here on the
podcast is how did you decide to get married h
and know that it wasn't because they were Mr good Enough?
I'm curious, Jill, And then Bridget about your opinions here. Yeah,
I mean for myself. You know, like I said in
the book, I don't think that this responsible marriage model
is a bad idea if what you want is a
(12:44):
partnership and a nuclear family and children and you know,
marriage is kind of a vehicle to that. You know,
I think that's a perfectly reasonable choice that a lot
of women make. Um, that was not appealing for me
for my life, and I fell especially as I got
into you know, kind of my late twenties and early thirties,
(13:04):
Not that there was a lot of social pressure on
me to get married, because I frankly didn't feel that
from either my family or my peer group, but that
there did seem to be a pressure to view relationships
through the frame of is this person marriage material? Um?
You know am I And I sort of found myself
and you know, within my group of friends, um, sort
(13:26):
of not without intending to using that as a way
to evaluate people I was dating, and I think it
did sort of, you know, short circuit my ability to
really be kind of fully present and there in my
dating life as opposed to thinking, you know, eight steps ahead. Um.
So at some point I just totally took marriage off
(13:46):
the table and you know, decided, look, this is is
something I'm that interested in. I doubt I'm going to
meet some you know, the chances that I meet somebody
that I actually want to marry are sort of so
so teeny tiny and small. Um, it's as impossible. So
I'm gonna just not look at men through this lens
and then instead I will do what seems like it's enjoyable,
(14:07):
you know, until it's no longer enjoyable, and then I'll
move on. Um. And that works for a long time.
And you know, the sort of imperfect, not very good
dating advice answers that I got extraordinarily lucky. Um, And
I did happen to meet somebody that, you know, was
that kind of once in a lifetime if you're very
(14:28):
lucky kind of connection. Um. And and that changed my
thought process. And you know, but it was that specific relationship.
It wasn't you know, hitting a certain point in my life,
or wanting kids or kind of any of those other
kind of normal calculus. Is what you're saying is that
if you had not met your current partner, you wouldn't
have just picked somebody because of social pressure because you
(14:49):
wanted to have kids or this or that. You would
have continued what you were doing, which is like dating
and you know, having your heartbroken and feeling really into
people and you know, going through those those processes and
cycles until that didn't feel good anymore. Exactly. I mean,
if I hadn't met my current partner, I don't think
I probably would have ever gotten married. Who knows, not
(15:09):
to mention. In the book, you describe the fact that
he's the one who really expressed that marriage was important
to him about a year into your relationship, right right, exactly.
That's very similar to what happened to me. Just kind
of curiosity, how do you make that case? Because knowing Emily,
I know that your book kind of sold her on
(15:29):
the idea of marriage. So I'm gonna curious if we
follow that threadback. How did your partner sell you on
that idea? Yeah, I mean it was something we talked
about for a long time. You know. It was definitely
not like a decision that was made overnight. There was
no like surprise, you know, proposal. It was. It was
a very much like very talky, um kind of thing.
(15:50):
And you know, I think the way that we sort
of eventually came to the decision to do it was
this idea that this relationship is really extraordinary, really special,
and that we wanted to be family. Um. You know
that he certainly already felt like my family, but marriage
is kind of the pathway to formal recognition that we
have in the culture that we live in. UM. And
(16:13):
then you know, the relationship felt special enough that we
wanted we wanted it to be sort of socially distinguished
from you know, sort of other girlfriends and boyfriends we
had had before. And you know, again, perhaps marriage is
an imperfect vehicle for that, UM, but it's what we have.
And you know, the idea of getting to choose someone
(16:35):
to create this deep lifelong commitment with UM, you know,
it's totally terrifying, but you know, when it's someone who
who you want to kind of take that leap with UM,
it's also really exciting. And you know, after several months
of talking about it, you know, that got to a
point where I think we both felt really excited and
(16:56):
really good about you know, this exciting challenge. It's so
funny how we think of sort of quote unquote dream
engagement as he had a ring and this and that,
and it was so such a surprise what you described
as so much more pragmatic, as we had a lot
of serious conversations and came to an agreement that felt
right for us both. It wasn't Oh, he surprised me
(17:17):
at a red SOX game in front of everybody. Yeah,
that's that's one of the freakiest parts of the whole
marriage tradition, that we were not into it all. And Jill,
I'm like feverishly nodding over here as I was while
reading your book, because your experience spoke to me in
that you didn't have much trepidation about thinking about your
(17:38):
life with this person, which is kind of how I
felt about Brad the boo. We just sort of calmly
knew that this was a amazing partnership that we wanted
to keep leveling up together, you know, keep winning life
together like teammates. And I remember him stating, you know,
(17:58):
I really don't like it one of my friends get
married and say, well, it was no big deal, Like
there's nothing changed, nothing different about us now that we're married,
because marriage meant something really meaningful to him. And I
was like, whoa, what do you mean by that? And
you know, that spun out year's worth of conversation to
the point where I wrestled with the institution because it
(18:19):
does have a pretty patriarchal past um and said, okay,
can we come up with an alternative? And I think
over the course of the last year. I read many
books actually, and had lots of conversations, but yours was
kind of the straw that broke the camel's back because
I couldn't come up with a good alternative, Like, we
could not figure out any other way to demarcate how
(18:40):
we felt about this relationship. So, like you, you know,
we're making it our own, We're retrofitting it to work
for us. Um But I want, I want to talk
more about the history behind marriage that makes that process
feel a little bit tortured for a feminist, or feel
a little challenging for a feminist. When we come right
(19:00):
back after this quick break and we are back and
we're talking through the question, can there be such a
thing as a feminist marriage? We're certainly hoping so, at
least the two of us who are preparing to walk
(19:21):
down the aisle this year. Jill, in your book, one
of the things I love the most is how much
of a history buff you are. The whole concept of
the American foundation in those inalienable rights to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness come up time and again
as you write about the history of how our country
(19:43):
thinks about women and happiness, and as it pertains to marriage.
I found it really interesting when you quoted Elizabeth Katie Stanton,
a legendary suffragette and overall badass woman of history, who
wrote to her friend in eighteen fifty five quote, did
it ever enter into the mind of a man that
a woman too had an inalienable right to life, liberty
(20:04):
and the pursuit of her individual happiness? And she proclaimed
at that point that the institution of marriage itself was
the primary feminist battleground upon which our independence must be
fought and one, So, how far has marriage as an
institution come in terms of pursuing gender equality or getting
more egalitarian? Yeah, I mean it's coming incredibly far. There's
(20:28):
a good reason why marriage was the locus of kind
of early feminist ire. Um. When a woman entered into
a marriage, she essentially ceased to be an individual person. Um,
you know, she became more or less under the cover
of a man. So she could not own her own property. Um.
You know, once once credit cards existed, which was obviously
after after Elizabeth Katie Stanton's time, Um, she couldn't get
(20:51):
a credit card under her own name. When women couldn't
open their own bank accounts, Um, marital rape was largely legal.
Domestic violence was some thing that the police kind of
looked the other way on. UM. So you know, as
soon as a woman got married, she essentially ceded most
of her rights to be a person. Um. And so
(21:12):
that's what a lot of the early feminists were really
focused on and they made They did incredible work in
changing a lot of not just the laws, but also
the kind of social norms around marriage. UM. You know.
And so today it's it's illegal to rape your wife.
Obviously it's illegal to beat your wife. UM. Men and
women have equal rights to shared property. Women can have
(21:33):
their own bank accounts. Um. You know, a marital status
doesn't render you at least legally dependent on your husband. UM.
So we have made great strides, you know. That said,
I don't think we are yet to a place who
are marriage is truly egalitarian, or where most marriages are egalitarian. Um.
(21:54):
You know within and I think this gets exacerbated when
you have kids. But you know, for most women who
are bread or partnered, it is women who still end
up doing more work around the house. It is women
who take on more of you know, the kind of
both physical and psychological labor of running a household, and
you know, those things are they're harder to change. You
can't legislate that. That that has to come from kind
(22:16):
of profound cultural shifts about what we think men are
and what we think women are. Um and that's a
very slow process totally. That reminds me so much of
one of the role Overload episodes we did with Tiffany DOOFU,
and she talks about how the little ways that in
her marriage they have these almost sort of radical acts
where they're helping others outside of their marriage rethink the
(22:39):
cultural expectations of who does what. And so one of
the examples that she gave in that interview was that
when one of her children's classmates has a party or something,
they usually call her and to make the arrangements of
you know, as your kid gonna come, and she'll say, actually,
my husband, he's in charge of the social schedule of
our kids, please talk to him. And that, even though
that seems like a release small thing, that even just
(23:01):
sort of punting the question and saying the proper person
to talk to is actually my husband, not me, because
I'm the woman, actually helps people rethink and they go, oh,
they have they have really built these models for what
works for them within their marriage, not along what culture
and society say should be. You know, the man's job,
the woman's job, etcetera. Yeah, good luck doing that with
(23:24):
wedding vendors too, because I've heard from women who are like,
I cannot get this wedding vendor. This is actually one
of my best friends who's also getting married this year,
can't get the wedding vendors. She's talking you to see
see her fiancee who happens to be a dude, And
it's like they can't fathom that a guy could be
in charge of any of this labor. And it's frustrating
(23:46):
not even just be in charge, give a crap about it.
But I think that the and I know this is
not an episode about weddings, but I think the expectation
is that men don't care, they don't don't don't want
an active part in this, and that you need to
talk to the woman because she's the only person who's
going to care. In a heterosexual pairing. Yeah, I mean,
we clearly have room to grow in terms of equality
(24:10):
in a marriage. The weird thing is, and you go
on to write about this further on in the book Jill.
One of the traditions that troubles me the most, I
think causes a lot of feminist angst amongst my friends
is the question of surnames, last names. You know, I
like you at one point thought, okay, it's there must
(24:32):
be tons of women who are keeping their name after
getting married, or there must be tons of men who
are taking on their wives names. And that is not
what you found, Isn't that right? Right? I mean, there's
the overwhelming majority of women. Do you still take their
husband's names? Um? That number sort of decreased in the nineties,
and now it's actually been creeping back up. Um. And
(24:55):
the number of men who take their wives names is
like so small that researchers don't even really count it. UM.
So you know this kind of language around oh well,
it's a choice. I mean sure, but it's a choice
only women are really faced with, UM. And it's definitely
you know, men overwhelmingly only don't I mean don't even
think about it, and so they're not having to make
(25:16):
the choice. UM. And I mean to me that the
sort of like, oh, you know, we can all choose
our choices totally obscures you know, history and social pressure
and what these norms say about what marriage means for
women about you, versus what it means for men. Um.
You know, and I was saying earlier that you know,
hundred and fifty years ago, a marriage meant totally seating
(25:38):
your identity to a man. Your name is the word
for your identity. You know. We know a chair is
a chair because we call it a chair. Um. We
know that I'm Jill Flipovich because my name is Jill Filipovic.
And the idea that when women marry that gets obscured,
that you know, you then become your identity shifts into
(26:00):
being a part of your male partner. Um. I mean
to me, it is kind of one of the most
obvious and sort of troubling incarnations of patriarchal authority out there,
and you know, sort of stunning to experience. It's always
shocking to me, um, that that women do still take
their husband's names, and that men get you know, not
(26:20):
obviously not the person I'm marrying, and not a lot
of men that I know, but that you know, there
are a not insignificant number of men get really bent
out of shape about it if if their future wife
says she doesn't want to take their last name. Yeah,
I mean in your book you quote men saying like,
I would question my wife's commitment to being faithful if
she wouldn't take my last name, because you might be
holding onto this identity of her as a single woman,
(26:42):
to which I laughed out loud and also thought, this
person has deep seated insecurities and run away from marrying
that person. I mean, it's a weird issue because there
are plenty of self identified feminists who take on their
their husband's name. Um, what are you planning on doing.
I'm planning on keeping my name my last name, especially
in the age of Google, which is another argument that
(27:04):
Jill makes in the book. My name is associated with
all of my professional accomplishments thus far, and I have
no interest in rebranding myself. But I'll give I'll be
completely candid here and say Brad has expressed like this invitation.
He said, I would love to invite you to become
um part of his family's last name. There's definitely conversations
(27:28):
happening about how we can find a way to share
in each other's identity. But if I'm adopting his last
name into my middle name, perhaps, which is something we're
talking about. He's adopting my last name into his middle name.
That's what Yoko ono and John Lynney why I Um.
What's funny is that I had a very early model
for this in my life, which is my mother. Many
(27:49):
of you know I've talked about her before because she's
the best. She's a doctor, and her professional name is
her maiden name. So my mom in a professional setting
is doctor care Lynn Boone. In her personal life and
other capacities, she's Carolyn Todd. And when I asked her, Mom,
why do you have you know? Why are you basically
two people? She always says, well, your father didn't have
(28:11):
anything to do with me going to medical school. He
didn't earn a medical degree. That was me, Because that
before I even really knew in he's not gonna he's
not gonna be doctor Todd. I'm the ductor, not him.
And I loved that because she really underscored for me
at an early age that her professional accomplishments were linked
with her name, and those professional achievements started when she
(28:32):
was Carolyn Boone, not when she was Carolyn Todd. And
so that it has caused some confusion in our in
our in our world. But she sticks by it, and
I think it's a cool thing to own that identity.
It's interesting. I mean, I wonder, Jill, can you shine
any more light on a bright spot? I know. One
of the most interesting parts of the book is when
(28:55):
you featured a couple, Howard and Mary Beth, who you say,
amongst opposite sex couples, many of whom you like, searched
for the most egalitarian marriage, you could find that they
were sort of it. What did you see Howard and
Mary Beth doing in their family to really strive for
equality in marriage? Well, and what I saw them doing
(29:17):
was being really communicative about who was taking on what
and the thing. The reason that I decided to go
in profile how already married Beth is because Howard is
one of the few men, frankly, the only man I
could find who had himself scaled back on work when
they had kids. Um. You know, it's very easy to
find women who once they have kids, you know, decide
(29:39):
they want more balance and take on fewer hours, or
take on part time work, um, you know, or go
to the eleven million panel on women and work life balance. Um.
And it's much harder to find men who even think
about those things. I think the best changing. You know,
I think men increasingly say that they do want better
balance in their lives. Um. But that has very traditionally
(29:59):
been and you know, kind of a women in the
workplace issue. And so I was trying to find a
couple where they had had children, and a man had said,
you know what, I want my life to look different
than it does. And that was Howard Um. You know,
and he's uh in talking to him. You know, it's
very funny because he sort of jokes that, you know,
he was basically put on the mommy track at work. Um.
(30:21):
And he's a consultant and in sort of his uh
universe at the office, it's all women and him, um,
kind of in his department. UM. And that he's you know,
been sort of criticized, not often but sometimes by colleagues
who are kind of like, you know, why are you
not trying to climb the corporate letter while you're not
trying to make more money? Um? And you know, his
(30:42):
take is like these people are all crazy. Like I
get to go coach my daughter's soccer team on Saturday,
you know, I get to make dinner with my wife
and kids. Every night, I get to stake the dog
for a walk in the morning. Like, that's that's a life.
You know, Why would I want to be spending that
(31:03):
time in the office, you know, even if it was
even if it was in exchange for a little bit
more money. Um, you know that said how a wounded
Marybeth or you know, upper middle class like callar professionals,
and so there's certainly, you know, a lot of privilege
inherent to being able to make that choice. Um, that's
not a choice that many working class families have on offer.
That's such a good point. I want to talk more
(31:25):
about class and marriage after this quick break and we're
back now, Jill, you're just making an excellent point around
what marriage looks like along class lines. Can you speak
more to that. Sure. So one of the things that
(31:46):
makes marriages and just sort of like generally more stable
is economic stability. Um. So we know that educated couples
tend to get married later, tend to have happier marriages,
and tend to divorce less often. Um. You know that
it's not because the educated or the kind of elites
are better at marriage. It's because economic stress puts a
(32:07):
lot of stress on marriage itself. Um, And so it's something,
you know, especially when we're sort of trying to think
about in our very politically polarized universe, how we can
work across the aisle. I mean, to me, it's sort
of a big glaring hole that you don't see the
religious right in the United States really pushing for the
kind of policies that would enable stable marriages. Um. You know,
(32:30):
those policies would be things like increasing the social safety net, um,
improving the education system, you know, and essentially giving more
couples opportunities both to be financially independent on their own
and also to have kind of more fruitful egalitarian partnerships.
I mean, that seems to be missing from our political conversation.
(32:52):
Isn't that interesting in terms of the strange bedfellows that
might be involved in that kind of a platform. Because
there's a whole host of hardcore right wing folks who
want to bring back marriage and sort of force marriage
upon people as though marriage is the cause behind economic stability.
(33:12):
And then of course there's a whole bunch of liberals
and economists who would say we need to give people
a stronger social safety net so that marriages can flourish
with less economic anxiety. That makes I don't know, marrying
a man who was displaced economically in the Great Recession,
who you know, for whom trucking and logging and all
(33:34):
kinds of industries like mining is are no longer pathways
to a stable middle class life anymore. For whom, uh
you know, their economic stress becomes a burden on a
lot of women who are weighing whether or not to
marry this person who might be a financial drain on
their families. Right, Like, it's a weird crossover from very
(33:57):
right wing family values. I put that in air quotes
politicians who want to sort of push marriage and the
economists who would say, yeah, but in order for marriages
to flourish, we need people to have stronger stability and
access to a safe middle class life, right. And I mean,
we've seen this played out many times over, you know,
(34:18):
with kind of religious marriage promotion programs that overwhelmingly don't work.
UM and in actually one case, made marriage is less
successful versus For example, there was a program I believe
in Minnesota and I want to say it was in
the late nineties, UM that essentially would let people keep
most of their welfare benefits even if they got married. So,
(34:39):
as it stands, a lot of low income folks who
are dependent on welfare don't get married because then you
have a combined household income that will put you over
you know, the sort of cut off through Recitas benefits,
so it really disincentivizes marriage. So this program allowed couples
to retain most of their benefits even if they married.
And what they' sound was not only were couples obviously
(35:03):
more likely than to get married, but their relationships for
more stable and actually women ended up being more likely
to leave abusive relationships under that program than they were otherwise.
And you know, then, of course welfare reform ended up
gutting it in Minnesota got rid of it um and
you know, it was certainly not something that was championed
(35:25):
by the right. But you know, I think that that
tells us a lot about what people need, as you know,
a kind of basic foundation to grow a stable and
happy relationship on It's also a reminder that personal choice
is not the only thing that impacts marriages in this country. Yeah,
I think we so often, until you've alluded to this
(35:45):
in this interviewed in your book, I think we so
often think that these things are just choices and it's
all personal, and it's just do you whatever you want
to do, and we obscure the fact that oftentimes they
have very real, non personal grounding, whether it's you know, legislation, law, economics,
these aren't just personal choices, as much as we like
to think that they are. Yeah, it's it's easy to
(36:07):
forget how much public policy influences marriage. And it's also
easy to forget that, you know, the changing choices and
constrained choices around marriage don't all fall on women's shoulders either.
It seems like there's a lot that men can do
uh in order to help make marriages more egalitarian too,
(36:30):
And in fact, there seems to be this sort of
tension you allude to throughout the book when you write
the feminist marriage revolution is a stalled one, and you say,
while most women today exist in a marital landscape that
is far preferable to the options of a century ago,
they're still in a strange limbo where men's actions haven't
totally caught up to women's expectations. What do you mean
(36:53):
by that, Joel, Well, there there remains a pretty significant gap,
um and who feminism has really influenced. Um. So, for example,
there's been several studies out of Harvard Business School looking
at what business school students expect their relationships to look like.
And you know, what they find is that men and women,
(37:13):
you know, pretty much both say that they expect of
equal partnerships. But then when there's a follow up question
of you know, well, what if that isn't possible, you know,
whose whose career takes a back seat? Men mostly say
my wife's career takes a back seat. Um, and you know,
whereas women are more likely to basically say, well, we'll we'll,
(37:37):
we'll have to figure out some way to work that out,
will trade off, you know, we we'll do something, and
it ends up being men who are right. Um, it
is overwhelmingly women's careers to take a back seat, even
when the couple kind of goes into the marriage intending
it to be egalitarian. And those choices, you know, can
can feel very personal, and they certainly are, but obviously
(37:58):
they're also influenced, you know, both by public policy and
also my workplace discrimination. And you know the fact that
there's a reason that you know, perhaps ten years into
a marriage, your husband is making more money than you,
and you know holds a higher position, um, and you
kind of feel like you're treading water, and so it
just makes more sense for you to be the one
to scale back. I've heard that story so many times
(38:20):
from friends who say things like, Oh, we have a
child now, and my job was just paying for child care,
so it just didn't make financial sense for me to
keep working. Don't you hate that argument though, because and
I think you address this directly in your book, Jill,
the argument like suspends the potential for any future career
of that woman, as though that's the earnings cap on
(38:42):
her entire career, not to mention her potential for future
promotions or what opportunity she's going to be missing out
on by not staying in the workforce or underestimating the
very challenging on ramp back into the workforce exactly. I
also want to highlight something else from what you just said, Jill,
which is this idea that I think a lot of
men go into marriage is thinking I'm this awesome feminist
(39:04):
ally and I'm gonna have an equal partnership marriage blah
blah blah. But then when you actually look at what
that entails, whether it's making a career sacrifice so that
your your partner can work, or doing more abound the house.
Sometimes they're not actually prepared to take on the actual
responsibilities that come along with an equal partnership, whether that's
(39:26):
you know, sacrificing your career for your partners, doing more
around the house, whatever that looks like. Oftentimes, I think
people can just say they want to have an equal partnership,
but not actually have an equal partnership or put the
work in to make an equal partnership possible, right, Yeah.
I mean I think a lot of a lot of men,
you know, will say I want an equal partnership, and
what they mean is I'm perfectly happy to marry somebody
(39:48):
who works outside the home, you know, who pulls her
own weight, you know who sort of she does the
work to make herself equal to me. Um, I don't
know that. There's always a lot of self reflection on
you know, what do I have to do to make
this relationship function, you know, including scaling back at work,
you know, including Emily. One thing that you were saying
about childcare, even the idea that childcare expenses are measured
(40:12):
against a women's income right and not the whole family's income. Um,
you know, it's kind of indicative. I mean, I hear
that all the time to like, you know, daycare is
almost as much as I was making. Well, I've never
heard a man say daycare was almost as much as
I was making, So I quit my job. Um, you know,
it's it's a it's a family expense, and the kids
are both of yours, So it does seem a little absurd.
(40:36):
You know that even in quote unquote e gualitarian marriages,
it's still a women who are either kind of financially
or physically charged with taking care of the children. And
it also just brings us back to underscore the critical
importance of public policy and how our public institutions could
eliminate the need for that conversation for a lot of couples.
If we had, uh, like every other industrialized nation in
(41:00):
the world, any semblance of a federal paid parental leave
policy or affordable childcare reform in this country, there will
be fewer partners, regardless of gender, who are raising children
who would be forced into making that kind of a decision. So, again,
these are choices, but there are constrained choices. I really
(41:20):
hope we can see the institution of marriage itself continue
to evolve in an egalitarian way with federal support, with
with public policy nudging it along. So, Joe, I'm curious,
how has same sex marriage changed how we think about
the institution of marriage. How does that enter into this conversation. So,
(41:40):
I think same sex marriage it's still so new that
there isn't a lot of great research yet on kind
of on same sex couples and marital happiness, and this
sort of wealth of information we have on opposite sex couples, um,
doesn't exist yet for same sex couples. That said, I
do you think that the Supreme Court case really reflected
(42:01):
the Supreme Court case legalizing same sex marriage throughout the
United States really reflected how much marriage has changed and
how much same sex couples have been really instrumental in
pushing that change. Um. The sort of foundation of the
argument against same sex marriage, and you know, brief after
brief filed by religious groups was that marriage must be
(42:22):
between a man and a woman because men and women
are inherently different and necessarily complementary for a marriage to
even be by definition of marriage. You know that men protected,
women are protected, that women nurture and men are nurtured
this kind of opposite view um of what makes marriage marriage,
And the Supreme Court rejected that. And the Supreme Court
(42:43):
is not exactly one of the most like feminist institutions
on the planet. Um. And what the majority opinion said,
you know, it was basically that gender roles have changed
so much that this idea, you know, that marriage must
be between a man and a woman because of these
kind of opposite afteristics, it's just not true of marriage
generally anymore. And you know, so how can we say
(43:06):
the same sex couples shouldn't be able to partake in it?
You know that that is discrimination And so that's me
is a really powerful moment that both reflects how far
we've come and also shows how the LGBT rights movement
has really been kind of pushing forward and leading the
way on making marriage more egalitarian and better for all
of the rest of us. Absolutely, So, last question for
(43:29):
for everyone here rapid fire style, what are your hopes
for your marriage, Jill or the institution of marriage more broadly,
for the institution, I mean, I hope we keep moving
in a feminist direction. I I hope that you know
the sort of gender of the participants um increasingly ceases
to matter, and I frankly hope that marriage becomes less
(43:49):
of a sort of guiding social institution, that we have
more options for partnerships and romantic relationships and recognize platonic
relationships um other than marriage, that marriage is no longer
the only game in town. I would say, I just
hope that anybody getting married is doing so because they're
really really excited to be married, and that they're super
(44:10):
super happy about it, and they're not feeling pressured by
anything other than their own internal wants and happiness. Oh,
I love that. And I would say I hope we
cease to think of marriage as an achievement. I think
it's perfectly natural and well intentioned to congratulate folks for
getting engaged and to congratulate folks for getting married, But
(44:32):
to misconstrue marriage as some kind of a like entering
the institution of marriage as some crowning achievement, to me
like confuses that's hard work that we put in our careers.
In some ways, I think maintaining a marriage, like having
a fiftieth wedding anniversary, is an achievement, But getting married
(44:52):
is not like a crowning achievement, and I wish we
could change the language around that. Well. Thank you so
much Jill for joining us today. If you haven't already
gotten a copy of her book The h Spot, The
Feminist Pursuit of Happiness, you need to rectify that problem
in your life right now and get you some more
feminist happiness in your life in the meantime. Jill is
(45:15):
a frequent writer on all kinds of great topics. Jill,
where can our listeners keep up with you? So you
can follow me on Twitter at at Jill Filipovic um
or I have a public Facebook page where I post
most of my work, which is Facebook dot com slash
Jill Filipovic page. Awesome and listeners, we want to hear
from you. Have you toyed around with the idea of marriage?
(45:40):
Have you entered the institution yourself? Have you, like many
of us, sort of intrinsically rebelled against the concept of
marriage entirely? We want to hear from you. All your
fraud feminist feelings are welcome. So let us know how
you felt about today's episode and the idea of a
feminist marriage in general. On Twitter at mom Stuff podcast
(46:03):
on Instagram at stuff Mom Never Told You, And as always,
our inbox is open at mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com.
Hey, this is Emily, and you're listening to Stuffed Mom
Never told you Today. We are so excited to be
joined virtually by one of my favorite authors, Jill Filipovic,
(00:28):
who's tuning in with us from Nairobi, Kenya, to talk
through what it means to have slash Is it possible
that there is such a thing as a feminist marriage? So, Jill,
thank you so much for being here, Thank you so
much for having me so Bridge and I have some
wildly different experiences that we're bringing to the table on
(00:51):
this one. Uh. In case our listeners didn't already preempt
that some of you might have seen on Instagram at
the start of the year that Brad the Boo and
I have just decided to hop into the institution of
marriage later this year, a decision that didn't we didn't
come to very easily or quickly by any means, especially
as I wrestled with this topic from a feminist perspective
(01:14):
page by page right along with you, Jill, UH, and
I want to start by asking what caused you to
initially set out to write this book and explore that
intersection of feminism and marriage in your amazing book called
The h Spot the feminist pursuit of happiness. Well, I've
been writing about feminism for a long time, mostly on
(01:36):
the Internet, but for a variety of magazines and newspapers,
and kind of kept hitting up this, hitting up against
the same issues over and over again. And obviously, you know,
the feminist I believe in equality. That seems like an
important goal for the feminist movement. But it became pretty
clear eventually that what seemed to be holding women back
(01:57):
on a broader scale wasn't necessarily that women weren't equal
to men um you know which, of course, it's still
not true, we still are not quite equal yet, but
that the world was set up in a way to
make men's lives easier according to sort of men's preferences
and lifestyles. And you know anything, we see this everywhere
(02:19):
from our workplaces to our laws and our policies and
our debates over basic things when reproductive freedom, um. And
so to me, the question then sort of became, okay, well,
a feminist shouldn't be looking for equality, then what should
we be looking for? And you know, the answer, I
think was a world that was that is built taking
(02:40):
into account what it is that women want, and you
know what women want. I think that's what most people want,
which is a happy and contented life. Um. And so
the book was looking at what it would look like
if we began to structure our universe around that goal
instead of just trying to become equal to men. Um
And marriage obviously is one of the institutions that I
(03:02):
found it fruitful to look at through that lens. So
I'm curious. I find that so interesting. What would that
look like? What would it look like if be structured
marriage and all these other social constructs around what women
want and what makes women happy. Yeah, So, I mean
one of the things that's challenging is kind of inventing
a universe that doesn't yet exist, right, So that was
(03:23):
that was the hardest part of the book. Um and
looking at marriage, I mean, there are a few things
that I was sort of fascinated to find in the research. Um.
You know, one is that women who are married tend
to be happier than women who aren't, um, which was
a little bit surprising to me, but sort of explained
by one of two things. You know. One of them
is perhaps people that are happier are more likely to
(03:45):
get married in the first place, And maybe the causation
goes in the other direction. UM. And then the just
being socially connected makes us happy. And so people that
you know are partnered, UM tend to have a greater
social universe and that contributes quite a bit to their
well being. UM. You know that said women who get
(04:07):
married later and so you know, have more dating experience, UM,
tend to have more financial resources, are a little bit
you know, more independent for a variety of reasons, those
women tend to have longer lasting marriages and better marriages
and more feminist marriages. UM. Women who continue working after
they have kids tend to be happier than those who don't.
So you know, while marriage is this fairly traditional, not
(04:32):
particularly in my opinion, feminist institution, these sort of feminist
ization of marriage has made people in marriages happier, which
I found really fascinating. That is really fascinating, and I
think it's important for our listeners and all of us
here today to separate out marriage from wedding, right because
(04:54):
we could. Your two weeks out from your wedding in
Nairobi is so clearly you've got on board, uh with
the institution as a strident feminist that you are, and
you know, today's conversation just for all of our Sminthy
listeners who have been chatting with me on Instagram about
doing an episode around this when Brad Boo and I
(05:16):
announced our engagement. Yes, I would love to do a
whole series unpacking weddings and the wedding industrial complex and
feminism and marriage in so many ways if I had
more time, quite frankly, which we'll talk a little bit
more about in the episodes that follow, But today's conversation
is really about the institution and whether or not the
(05:37):
institution of marriage itself can be feminist. There's a quote
in your book, Jill, in a chapter that you call
wife that I found so profound or sort of so
it spoke straight to my experience as someone who, like you,
had pretty much accepted the idea that being single is
(05:57):
not a bad thing. And that's not what we're trying
to say either. Right, despite the research around happiness and marriage,
that doesn't mean that being single resigns you to a
life of dissatisfaction. Right. And I don't know about you,
bridget if your thoughts on this, if you want to
chime in with your perspective here as a non engaged,
(06:18):
non married person. Um, I think it's an interesting conversation.
You may have gleaned that I have ambivalent feelings around marriage.
I'm not super excited about the idea of marriage. I've
never sort of thought of myself as someone who was like,
very very very happy to be married and wanted to
be a wife badly. And I think it's one of
those things where in popular culture were told that women
(06:40):
who don't get married are spinsters, are sad, or this
or that. And I think why Jill's work is so
interesting is that it can present a different model for
what marriage can be. Instead of this binary that like, oh,
cool girls don't want to get married, and if you
get married, you're so basic and this, and that you're
not really a feminist. I think Jill's work really opens
up a space where we can and you know, not
(07:01):
fall along those buyinarias well. That's exactly what this quote
from her chapter Wife is all about. So if you'll
indulge me, Jail, I'd love to read just a couple
of paragraphs here for a second. You wrote quote, I
had settled comfortably into my identity as a single woman,
and all the freedom and room for folly it brings
with it when getting married obscure this person an individual
(07:21):
who defines herself in large part by her autonomy and
self sovereignty. It's with this frame that I entered this
project wondering whether marriage actually makes women happy, or if
by its nature it subsumes women into their male partners,
and whether any of that changed when we expanded marriage
to include same sex couples. Can marriage ever be good
(07:42):
for women? And can marriage be feminist? And I think
that's the question, right, that's really the question at hand.
What is the space between that binary that Bridget was
talking about that you sort of found in writing this book, Jail. Yeah, So,
I mean I think what Bridget raises is a really
interesting and important point. Um. Yes, we have these kind
of large scale studies on marriage and happiness, but obviously
(08:05):
there's quite a bit of individual variability within those numbers, right.
And you know one thing that folks who have researched,
who have done longevity studies so looked at, um a
particular group of people and kind of what brought them
satisfaction throughout the course of their lives. Women who led
unconventional and interesting lives, you know who didn't decide to
(08:26):
kind of go along with the norms of their time.
We're also some of the most content and the happiest
towards the end of their lives. Um, So there isn't
kind of one, you know, one size fits all model.
And I think feminism has done a really incredible job
of opening up, you know, the sort of universe of
opportunities for women. You know, that said the sort of
(08:48):
question I posed in the book, You know, can marriage
be feminists? Are? Are we living in an era where
marriages are a feminist I think that we are slowly
getting there, Um, but I really don't think we are
there yet. I don't think most marriages are a feminist.
I don't think marriage and in itself is a feminist institution. Um,
(09:08):
you know, I'm entering into it anyway. I also don't
really think high heels are feminist, but I wear those,
like we all have to live our lives and do
things that are gonna bring us sort of contentment and
satisfaction and happiness, even if they don't completely fall in
line with our political ideals. Um but I do think
really engaging, you know, the questions of why we enter
(09:29):
into these institutions and what these institutions are and how
we can shift and change them to be better aligned
with our vision for what a good world looks like.
UM is a really crucial feminist project. So, Jill, I
just want to tease out something that you said just
a moment ago. So women who live unconventional lives, perhaps
dedicated to their craft, their art, their passion, who don't
(09:51):
get married, you're saying that they actually also report being
happy towards the end of their life. So if I
decide to go the root of being the single cookie
aunt who travels and writes and lives alone and has
a life full of other things that do not include
a spouse, I could be just as happy as my
married friends. Is that what you're saying? Definitely? I'm look,
(10:14):
if there was like a recipe for human happiness and
if we could all just kind of fit ourselves into
it and do it, we would have figured out it
a while ago. Um. You know that unfortunately doesn't exist.
But you know, folks who have a deep sense of self,
who have a deep sense of purpose and who follow
that in their lives. You know, whatever form that takes, UM,
(10:35):
they do tend to be people who who are happier
than you know, folks who kind of just go with
the flow. I think that's so real because I know
so many people that and this speaks to I think
a good section of your book, so many people that
get married because they're sort of finished with dating. They've
(10:56):
reached a certain age in their in their life and
they're like, I need to settle down and I'm done
with the dating scene. I'm with someone who is fine,
I'm gonna marry them. And that seems like exactly what
you're talking about. This will go with the flow, as
if dating is musical shares and the music has stopped,
and the one that you're in front of that's the
one that you have to pair up with for life.
And it does seem like this way of sort of
(11:18):
giving into a cultural shift and just going with the
flow and saying, I'm not thinking about what would actually
make me happy, and I'm not thinking about what actually
would ensure that my life is full of more of
what makes me happy. I am doing this because it
is a choice I'm making to sort you know, to
go with this well, Jill. In your book, you write
about that exact model of marriage, which is perfectly reasonable
(11:41):
and risk averse in terms of a choice for a
lot of people. Um, but it's this idea of I've
gotten to this point in my life, this is who
I'm with. Their their dependable, they're kind. And you call
that the responsible partner marriage model a perfectly sensible thing,
but not quite for you. You You went on to write,
following that section quote, I would rather have a string
(12:01):
of loves and heartbreaks than marry someone fundamentally decent but
about whom I feel the least bit tepid. Bridget and
I may may not have read that exact quote over
one cocktail that we share last night after a long
day in the studio, as we talked about and sort
of wrestled with that concept of Mr orm is good enough.
(12:23):
And I guess my question for everybody here on the
podcast is how did you decide to get married h
and know that it wasn't because they were Mr good Enough?
I'm curious, Jill, And then Bridget about your opinions here. Yeah,
I mean for myself. You know, like I said in
the book, I don't think that this responsible marriage model
is a bad idea if what you want is a
(12:44):
partnership and a nuclear family and children and you know,
marriage is kind of a vehicle to that. You know,
I think that's a perfectly reasonable choice that a lot
of women make. Um, that was not appealing for me
for my life, and I fell especially as I got
into you know, kind of my late twenties and early thirties,
(13:04):
Not that there was a lot of social pressure on
me to get married, because I frankly didn't feel that
from either my family or my peer group, but that
there did seem to be a pressure to view relationships
through the frame of is this person marriage material? Um?
You know am I And I sort of found myself
and you know, within my group of friends, um, sort
(13:26):
of not without intending to using that as a way
to evaluate people I was dating, and I think it
did sort of, you know, short circuit my ability to
really be kind of fully present and there in my
dating life as opposed to thinking, you know, eight steps ahead. Um.
So at some point I just totally took marriage off
(13:46):
the table and you know, decided, look, this is is
something I'm that interested in. I doubt I'm going to
meet some you know, the chances that I meet somebody
that I actually want to marry are sort of so
so teeny tiny and small. Um, it's as impossible. So
I'm gonna just not look at men through this lens
and then instead I will do what seems like it's enjoyable,
(14:07):
you know, until it's no longer enjoyable, and then I'll
move on. Um. And that works for a long time.
And you know, the sort of imperfect, not very good
dating advice answers that I got extraordinarily lucky. Um, And
I did happen to meet somebody that, you know, was
that kind of once in a lifetime if you're very
(14:28):
lucky kind of connection. Um. And and that changed my
thought process. And you know, but it was that specific relationship.
It wasn't you know, hitting a certain point in my life,
or wanting kids or kind of any of those other
kind of normal calculus. Is what you're saying is that
if you had not met your current partner, you wouldn't
have just picked somebody because of social pressure because you
(14:49):
wanted to have kids or this or that. You would
have continued what you were doing, which is like dating
and you know, having your heartbroken and feeling really into
people and you know, going through those those processes and
cycles until that didn't feel good anymore. Exactly. I mean,
if I hadn't met my current partner, I don't think
I probably would have ever gotten married. Who knows, not
(15:09):
to mention. In the book, you describe the fact that
he's the one who really expressed that marriage was important
to him about a year into your relationship, right right, exactly.
That's very similar to what happened to me. Just kind
of curiosity, how do you make that case? Because knowing Emily,
I know that your book kind of sold her on
(15:29):
the idea of marriage. So I'm gonna curious if we
follow that threadback. How did your partner sell you on
that idea? Yeah, I mean it was something we talked
about for a long time. You know. It was definitely
not like a decision that was made overnight. There was
no like surprise, you know, proposal. It was. It was
a very much like very talky, um kind of thing.
(15:50):
And you know, I think the way that we sort
of eventually came to the decision to do it was
this idea that this relationship is really extraordinary, really special,
and that we wanted to be family. Um. You know
that he certainly already felt like my family, but marriage
is kind of the pathway to formal recognition that we
have in the culture that we live in. UM. And
(16:13):
then you know, the relationship felt special enough that we
wanted we wanted it to be sort of socially distinguished
from you know, sort of other girlfriends and boyfriends we
had had before. And you know, again, perhaps marriage is
an imperfect vehicle for that, UM, but it's what we have.
And you know, the idea of getting to choose someone
(16:35):
to create this deep lifelong commitment with UM, you know,
it's totally terrifying, but you know, when it's someone who
who you want to kind of take that leap with UM,
it's also really exciting. And you know, after several months
of talking about it, you know, that got to a
point where I think we both felt really excited and
(16:56):
really good about you know, this exciting challenge. It's so
funny how we think of sort of quote unquote dream
engagement as he had a ring and this and that,
and it was so such a surprise what you described
as so much more pragmatic, as we had a lot
of serious conversations and came to an agreement that felt
right for us both. It wasn't Oh, he surprised me
(17:17):
at a red SOX game in front of everybody. Yeah,
that's that's one of the freakiest parts of the whole
marriage tradition, that we were not into it all. And Jill,
I'm like feverishly nodding over here as I was while
reading your book, because your experience spoke to me in
that you didn't have much trepidation about thinking about your
(17:38):
life with this person, which is kind of how I
felt about Brad the boo. We just sort of calmly
knew that this was a amazing partnership that we wanted
to keep leveling up together, you know, keep winning life
together like teammates. And I remember him stating, you know,
(17:58):
I really don't like it one of my friends get
married and say, well, it was no big deal, Like
there's nothing changed, nothing different about us now that we're married,
because marriage meant something really meaningful to him. And I
was like, whoa, what do you mean by that? And
you know, that spun out year's worth of conversation to
the point where I wrestled with the institution because it
(18:19):
does have a pretty patriarchal past um and said, okay,
can we come up with an alternative? And I think
over the course of the last year. I read many
books actually, and had lots of conversations, but yours was
kind of the straw that broke the camel's back because
I couldn't come up with a good alternative, Like, we
could not figure out any other way to demarcate how
(18:40):
we felt about this relationship. So, like you, you know,
we're making it our own, We're retrofitting it to work
for us. Um But I want, I want to talk
more about the history behind marriage that makes that process
feel a little bit tortured for a feminist, or feel
a little challenging for a feminist. When we come right
(19:00):
back after this quick break and we are back and
we're talking through the question, can there be such a
thing as a feminist marriage? We're certainly hoping so, at
least the two of us who are preparing to walk
(19:21):
down the aisle this year. Jill, in your book, one
of the things I love the most is how much
of a history buff you are. The whole concept of
the American foundation in those inalienable rights to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness come up time and again
as you write about the history of how our country
(19:43):
thinks about women and happiness, and as it pertains to marriage.
I found it really interesting when you quoted Elizabeth Katie Stanton,
a legendary suffragette and overall badass woman of history, who
wrote to her friend in eighteen fifty five quote, did
it ever enter into the mind of a man that
a woman too had an inalienable right to life, liberty
(20:04):
and the pursuit of her individual happiness? And she proclaimed
at that point that the institution of marriage itself was
the primary feminist battleground upon which our independence must be
fought and one, So, how far has marriage as an
institution come in terms of pursuing gender equality or getting
more egalitarian? Yeah, I mean it's coming incredibly far. There's
(20:28):
a good reason why marriage was the locus of kind
of early feminist ire. Um. When a woman entered into
a marriage, she essentially ceased to be an individual person. Um,
you know, she became more or less under the cover
of a man. So she could not own her own property. Um.
You know, once once credit cards existed, which was obviously
after after Elizabeth Katie Stanton's time, Um, she couldn't get
(20:51):
a credit card under her own name. When women couldn't
open their own bank accounts, Um, marital rape was largely legal.
Domestic violence was some thing that the police kind of
looked the other way on. UM. So you know, as
soon as a woman got married, she essentially ceded most
of her rights to be a person. Um. And so
(21:12):
that's what a lot of the early feminists were really
focused on and they made They did incredible work in
changing a lot of not just the laws, but also
the kind of social norms around marriage. UM. You know.
And so today it's it's illegal to rape your wife.
Obviously it's illegal to beat your wife. UM. Men and
women have equal rights to shared property. Women can have
(21:33):
their own bank accounts. Um. You know, a marital status
doesn't render you at least legally dependent on your husband. UM.
So we have made great strides, you know. That said,
I don't think we are yet to a place who
are marriage is truly egalitarian, or where most marriages are egalitarian. Um.
(21:54):
You know within and I think this gets exacerbated when
you have kids. But you know, for most women who
are bread or partnered, it is women who still end
up doing more work around the house. It is women
who take on more of you know, the kind of
both physical and psychological labor of running a household, and
you know, those things are they're harder to change. You
can't legislate that. That that has to come from kind
(22:16):
of profound cultural shifts about what we think men are
and what we think women are. Um and that's a
very slow process totally. That reminds me so much of
one of the role Overload episodes we did with Tiffany DOOFU,
and she talks about how the little ways that in
her marriage they have these almost sort of radical acts
where they're helping others outside of their marriage rethink the
(22:39):
cultural expectations of who does what. And so one of
the examples that she gave in that interview was that
when one of her children's classmates has a party or something,
they usually call her and to make the arrangements of
you know, as your kid gonna come, and she'll say, actually,
my husband, he's in charge of the social schedule of
our kids, please talk to him. And that, even though
that seems like a release small thing, that even just
(23:01):
sort of punting the question and saying the proper person
to talk to is actually my husband, not me, because
I'm the woman, actually helps people rethink and they go, oh,
they have they have really built these models for what
works for them within their marriage, not along what culture
and society say should be. You know, the man's job,
the woman's job, etcetera. Yeah, good luck doing that with
(23:24):
wedding vendors too, because I've heard from women who are like,
I cannot get this wedding vendor. This is actually one
of my best friends who's also getting married this year,
can't get the wedding vendors. She's talking you to see
see her fiancee who happens to be a dude, And
it's like they can't fathom that a guy could be
in charge of any of this labor. And it's frustrating
(23:46):
not even just be in charge, give a crap about it.
But I think that the and I know this is
not an episode about weddings, but I think the expectation
is that men don't care, they don't don't don't want
an active part in this, and that you need to
talk to the woman because she's the only person who's
going to care. In a heterosexual pairing. Yeah, I mean,
we clearly have room to grow in terms of equality
(24:10):
in a marriage. The weird thing is, and you go
on to write about this further on in the book Jill.
One of the traditions that troubles me the most, I
think causes a lot of feminist angst amongst my friends
is the question of surnames, last names. You know, I
like you at one point thought, okay, it's there must
(24:32):
be tons of women who are keeping their name after
getting married, or there must be tons of men who
are taking on their wives names. And that is not
what you found, Isn't that right? Right? I mean, there's
the overwhelming majority of women. Do you still take their
husband's names? Um? That number sort of decreased in the nineties,
and now it's actually been creeping back up. Um. And
(24:55):
the number of men who take their wives names is
like so small that researchers don't even really count it. UM.
So you know this kind of language around oh well,
it's a choice. I mean sure, but it's a choice
only women are really faced with, UM. And it's definitely
you know, men overwhelmingly only don't I mean don't even
think about it, and so they're not having to make
(25:16):
the choice. UM. And I mean to me that the
sort of like, oh, you know, we can all choose
our choices totally obscures you know, history and social pressure
and what these norms say about what marriage means for
women about you, versus what it means for men. Um.
You know, and I was saying earlier that you know,
hundred and fifty years ago, a marriage meant totally seating
(25:38):
your identity to a man. Your name is the word
for your identity. You know. We know a chair is
a chair because we call it a chair. Um. We
know that I'm Jill Flipovich because my name is Jill Filipovic.
And the idea that when women marry that gets obscured,
that you know, you then become your identity shifts into
(26:00):
being a part of your male partner. Um. I mean
to me, it is kind of one of the most
obvious and sort of troubling incarnations of patriarchal authority out there,
and you know, sort of stunning to experience. It's always
shocking to me, um, that that women do still take
their husband's names, and that men get you know, not
(26:20):
obviously not the person I'm marrying, and not a lot
of men that I know, but that you know, there
are a not insignificant number of men get really bent
out of shape about it if if their future wife
says she doesn't want to take their last name. Yeah,
I mean in your book you quote men saying like,
I would question my wife's commitment to being faithful if
she wouldn't take my last name, because you might be
holding onto this identity of her as a single woman,
(26:42):
to which I laughed out loud and also thought, this
person has deep seated insecurities and run away from marrying
that person. I mean, it's a weird issue because there
are plenty of self identified feminists who take on their
their husband's name. Um, what are you planning on doing.
I'm planning on keeping my name my last name, especially
in the age of Google, which is another argument that
(27:04):
Jill makes in the book. My name is associated with
all of my professional accomplishments thus far, and I have
no interest in rebranding myself. But I'll give I'll be
completely candid here and say Brad has expressed like this invitation.
He said, I would love to invite you to become
um part of his family's last name. There's definitely conversations
(27:28):
happening about how we can find a way to share
in each other's identity. But if I'm adopting his last
name into my middle name, perhaps, which is something we're
talking about. He's adopting my last name into his middle name.
That's what Yoko ono and John Lynney why I Um.
What's funny is that I had a very early model
for this in my life, which is my mother. Many
(27:49):
of you know I've talked about her before because she's
the best. She's a doctor, and her professional name is
her maiden name. So my mom in a professional setting
is doctor care Lynn Boone. In her personal life and
other capacities, she's Carolyn Todd. And when I asked her, Mom,
why do you have you know? Why are you basically
two people? She always says, well, your father didn't have
(28:11):
anything to do with me going to medical school. He
didn't earn a medical degree. That was me, Because that
before I even really knew in he's not gonna he's
not gonna be doctor Todd. I'm the ductor, not him.
And I loved that because she really underscored for me
at an early age that her professional accomplishments were linked
with her name, and those professional achievements started when she
(28:32):
was Carolyn Boone, not when she was Carolyn Todd. And
so that it has caused some confusion in our in
our in our world. But she sticks by it, and
I think it's a cool thing to own that identity.
It's interesting. I mean, I wonder, Jill, can you shine
any more light on a bright spot? I know. One
of the most interesting parts of the book is when
(28:55):
you featured a couple, Howard and Mary Beth, who you say,
amongst opposite sex couples, many of whom you like, searched
for the most egalitarian marriage, you could find that they
were sort of it. What did you see Howard and
Mary Beth doing in their family to really strive for
equality in marriage? Well, and what I saw them doing
(29:17):
was being really communicative about who was taking on what
and the thing. The reason that I decided to go
in profile how already married Beth is because Howard is
one of the few men, frankly, the only man I
could find who had himself scaled back on work when
they had kids. Um. You know, it's very easy to
find women who once they have kids, you know, decide
(29:39):
they want more balance and take on fewer hours, or
take on part time work, um, you know, or go
to the eleven million panel on women and work life balance. Um.
And it's much harder to find men who even think
about those things. I think the best changing. You know,
I think men increasingly say that they do want better
balance in their lives. Um. But that has very traditionally
(29:59):
been and you know, kind of a women in the
workplace issue. And so I was trying to find a
couple where they had had children, and a man had said,
you know what, I want my life to look different
than it does. And that was Howard Um. You know,
and he's uh in talking to him. You know, it's
very funny because he sort of jokes that, you know,
he was basically put on the mommy track at work. Um.
(30:21):
And he's a consultant and in sort of his uh
universe at the office, it's all women and him, um,
kind of in his department. UM. And that he's you know,
been sort of criticized, not often but sometimes by colleagues
who are kind of like, you know, why are you
not trying to climb the corporate letter while you're not
trying to make more money? Um? And you know, his
(30:42):
take is like these people are all crazy. Like I
get to go coach my daughter's soccer team on Saturday,
you know, I get to make dinner with my wife
and kids. Every night, I get to stake the dog
for a walk in the morning. Like, that's that's a life.
You know, Why would I want to be spending that
(31:03):
time in the office, you know, even if it was
even if it was in exchange for a little bit
more money. Um, you know that said how a wounded
Marybeth or you know, upper middle class like callar professionals,
and so there's certainly, you know, a lot of privilege
inherent to being able to make that choice. Um, that's
not a choice that many working class families have on offer.
That's such a good point. I want to talk more
(31:25):
about class and marriage after this quick break and we're
back now, Jill, you're just making an excellent point around
what marriage looks like along class lines. Can you speak
more to that. Sure. So one of the things that
(31:46):
makes marriages and just sort of like generally more stable
is economic stability. Um. So we know that educated couples
tend to get married later, tend to have happier marriages,
and tend to divorce less often. Um. You know that
it's not because the educated or the kind of elites
are better at marriage. It's because economic stress puts a
(32:07):
lot of stress on marriage itself. Um, And so it's something,
you know, especially when we're sort of trying to think
about in our very politically polarized universe, how we can
work across the aisle. I mean, to me, it's sort
of a big glaring hole that you don't see the
religious right in the United States really pushing for the
kind of policies that would enable stable marriages. Um. You know,
(32:30):
those policies would be things like increasing the social safety net, um,
improving the education system, you know, and essentially giving more
couples opportunities both to be financially independent on their own
and also to have kind of more fruitful egalitarian partnerships.
I mean, that seems to be missing from our political conversation.
(32:52):
Isn't that interesting in terms of the strange bedfellows that
might be involved in that kind of a platform. Because
there's a whole host of hardcore right wing folks who
want to bring back marriage and sort of force marriage
upon people as though marriage is the cause behind economic stability.
(33:12):
And then of course there's a whole bunch of liberals
and economists who would say we need to give people
a stronger social safety net so that marriages can flourish
with less economic anxiety. That makes I don't know, marrying
a man who was displaced economically in the Great Recession,
who you know, for whom trucking and logging and all
(33:34):
kinds of industries like mining is are no longer pathways
to a stable middle class life anymore. For whom, uh
you know, their economic stress becomes a burden on a
lot of women who are weighing whether or not to
marry this person who might be a financial drain on
their families. Right, Like, it's a weird crossover from very
(33:57):
right wing family values. I put that in air quotes
politicians who want to sort of push marriage and the
economists who would say, yeah, but in order for marriages
to flourish, we need people to have stronger stability and
access to a safe middle class life, right. And I mean,
we've seen this played out many times over, you know,
(34:18):
with kind of religious marriage promotion programs that overwhelmingly don't work.
UM and in actually one case, made marriage is less
successful versus For example, there was a program I believe
in Minnesota and I want to say it was in
the late nineties, UM that essentially would let people keep
most of their welfare benefits even if they got married. So,
(34:39):
as it stands, a lot of low income folks who
are dependent on welfare don't get married because then you
have a combined household income that will put you over
you know, the sort of cut off through Recitas benefits,
so it really disincentivizes marriage. So this program allowed couples
to retain most of their benefits even if they married.
And what they' sound was not only were couples obviously
(35:03):
more likely than to get married, but their relationships for
more stable and actually women ended up being more likely
to leave abusive relationships under that program than they were otherwise.
And you know, then, of course welfare reform ended up
gutting it in Minnesota got rid of it um and
you know, it was certainly not something that was championed
(35:25):
by the right. But you know, I think that that
tells us a lot about what people need, as you know,
a kind of basic foundation to grow a stable and
happy relationship on It's also a reminder that personal choice
is not the only thing that impacts marriages in this country. Yeah,
I think we so often, until you've alluded to this
(35:45):
in this interviewed in your book, I think we so
often think that these things are just choices and it's
all personal, and it's just do you whatever you want
to do, and we obscure the fact that oftentimes they
have very real, non personal grounding, whether it's you know, legislation, law, economics,
these aren't just personal choices, as much as we like
to think that they are. Yeah, it's it's easy to
(36:07):
forget how much public policy influences marriage. And it's also
easy to forget that, you know, the changing choices and
constrained choices around marriage don't all fall on women's shoulders either.
It seems like there's a lot that men can do
uh in order to help make marriages more egalitarian too,
(36:30):
And in fact, there seems to be this sort of
tension you allude to throughout the book when you write
the feminist marriage revolution is a stalled one, and you say,
while most women today exist in a marital landscape that
is far preferable to the options of a century ago,
they're still in a strange limbo where men's actions haven't
totally caught up to women's expectations. What do you mean
(36:53):
by that, Joel, Well, there there remains a pretty significant gap,
um and who feminism has really influenced. Um. So, for example,
there's been several studies out of Harvard Business School looking
at what business school students expect their relationships to look like.
And you know, what they find is that men and women,
(37:13):
you know, pretty much both say that they expect of
equal partnerships. But then when there's a follow up question
of you know, well, what if that isn't possible, you know,
whose whose career takes a back seat? Men mostly say
my wife's career takes a back seat. Um, and you know,
whereas women are more likely to basically say, well, we'll we'll,
(37:37):
we'll have to figure out some way to work that out,
will trade off, you know, we we'll do something, and
it ends up being men who are right. Um, it
is overwhelmingly women's careers to take a back seat, even
when the couple kind of goes into the marriage intending
it to be egalitarian. And those choices, you know, can
can feel very personal, and they certainly are, but obviously
(37:58):
they're also influenced, you know, both by public policy and
also my workplace discrimination. And you know the fact that
there's a reason that you know, perhaps ten years into
a marriage, your husband is making more money than you,
and you know holds a higher position, um, and you
kind of feel like you're treading water, and so it
just makes more sense for you to be the one
to scale back. I've heard that story so many times
(38:20):
from friends who say things like, Oh, we have a
child now, and my job was just paying for child care,
so it just didn't make financial sense for me to
keep working. Don't you hate that argument though, because and
I think you address this directly in your book, Jill,
the argument like suspends the potential for any future career
of that woman, as though that's the earnings cap on
(38:42):
her entire career, not to mention her potential for future
promotions or what opportunity she's going to be missing out
on by not staying in the workforce or underestimating the
very challenging on ramp back into the workforce exactly. I
also want to highlight something else from what you just said, Jill,
which is this idea that I think a lot of
men go into marriage is thinking I'm this awesome feminist
(39:04):
ally and I'm gonna have an equal partnership marriage blah
blah blah. But then when you actually look at what
that entails, whether it's making a career sacrifice so that
your your partner can work, or doing more abound the house.
Sometimes they're not actually prepared to take on the actual
responsibilities that come along with an equal partnership, whether that's
(39:26):
you know, sacrificing your career for your partners, doing more
around the house, whatever that looks like. Oftentimes, I think
people can just say they want to have an equal partnership,
but not actually have an equal partnership or put the
work in to make an equal partnership possible, right, Yeah.
I mean I think a lot of a lot of men,
you know, will say I want an equal partnership, and
what they mean is I'm perfectly happy to marry somebody
(39:48):
who works outside the home, you know, who pulls her
own weight, you know who sort of she does the
work to make herself equal to me. Um, I don't
know that. There's always a lot of self reflection on
you know, what do I have to do to make
this relationship function, you know, including scaling back at work,
you know, including Emily. One thing that you were saying
about childcare, even the idea that childcare expenses are measured
(40:12):
against a women's income right and not the whole family's income. Um,
you know, it's kind of indicative. I mean, I hear
that all the time to like, you know, daycare is
almost as much as I was making. Well, I've never
heard a man say daycare was almost as much as
I was making, So I quit my job. Um, you know,
it's it's a it's a family expense, and the kids
are both of yours, So it does seem a little absurd.
(40:36):
You know that even in quote unquote e gualitarian marriages,
it's still a women who are either kind of financially
or physically charged with taking care of the children. And
it also just brings us back to underscore the critical
importance of public policy and how our public institutions could
eliminate the need for that conversation for a lot of couples.
If we had, uh, like every other industrialized nation in
(41:00):
the world, any semblance of a federal paid parental leave
policy or affordable childcare reform in this country, there will
be fewer partners, regardless of gender, who are raising children
who would be forced into making that kind of a decision. So, again,
these are choices, but there are constrained choices. I really
(41:20):
hope we can see the institution of marriage itself continue
to evolve in an egalitarian way with federal support, with
with public policy nudging it along. So, Joe, I'm curious,
how has same sex marriage changed how we think about
the institution of marriage. How does that enter into this conversation. So,
(41:40):
I think same sex marriage it's still so new that
there isn't a lot of great research yet on kind
of on same sex couples and marital happiness, and this
sort of wealth of information we have on opposite sex couples, um,
doesn't exist yet for same sex couples. That said, I
do you think that the Supreme Court case really reflected
(42:01):
the Supreme Court case legalizing same sex marriage throughout the
United States really reflected how much marriage has changed and
how much same sex couples have been really instrumental in
pushing that change. Um. The sort of foundation of the
argument against same sex marriage, and you know, brief after
brief filed by religious groups was that marriage must be
(42:22):
between a man and a woman because men and women
are inherently different and necessarily complementary for a marriage to
even be by definition of marriage. You know that men protected,
women are protected, that women nurture and men are nurtured
this kind of opposite view um of what makes marriage marriage,
And the Supreme Court rejected that. And the Supreme Court
(42:43):
is not exactly one of the most like feminist institutions
on the planet. Um. And what the majority opinion said,
you know, it was basically that gender roles have changed
so much that this idea, you know, that marriage must
be between a man and a woman because of these
kind of opposite afteristics, it's just not true of marriage
generally anymore. And you know, so how can we say
(43:06):
the same sex couples shouldn't be able to partake in it?
You know that that is discrimination And so that's me
is a really powerful moment that both reflects how far
we've come and also shows how the LGBT rights movement
has really been kind of pushing forward and leading the
way on making marriage more egalitarian and better for all
of the rest of us. Absolutely, So, last question for
(43:29):
for everyone here rapid fire style, what are your hopes
for your marriage, Jill or the institution of marriage more broadly,
for the institution, I mean, I hope we keep moving
in a feminist direction. I I hope that you know
the sort of gender of the participants um increasingly ceases
to matter, and I frankly hope that marriage becomes less
(43:49):
of a sort of guiding social institution, that we have
more options for partnerships and romantic relationships and recognize platonic
relationships um other than marriage, that marriage is no longer
the only game in town. I would say, I just
hope that anybody getting married is doing so because they're
really really excited to be married, and that they're super
(44:10):
super happy about it, and they're not feeling pressured by
anything other than their own internal wants and happiness. Oh,
I love that. And I would say I hope we
cease to think of marriage as an achievement. I think
it's perfectly natural and well intentioned to congratulate folks for
getting engaged and to congratulate folks for getting married, But
(44:32):
to misconstrue marriage as some kind of a like entering
the institution of marriage as some crowning achievement, to me
like confuses that's hard work that we put in our careers.
In some ways, I think maintaining a marriage, like having
a fiftieth wedding anniversary, is an achievement, But getting married
(44:52):
is not like a crowning achievement, and I wish we
could change the language around that. Well. Thank you so
much Jill for joining us today. If you haven't already
gotten a copy of her book The h Spot, The
Feminist Pursuit of Happiness, you need to rectify that problem
in your life right now and get you some more
feminist happiness in your life in the meantime. Jill is
(45:15):
a frequent writer on all kinds of great topics. Jill,
where can our listeners keep up with you? So you
can follow me on Twitter at at Jill Filipovic um
or I have a public Facebook page where I post
most of my work, which is Facebook dot com slash
Jill Filipovic page. Awesome and listeners, we want to hear
from you. Have you toyed around with the idea of marriage?
(45:40):
Have you entered the institution yourself? Have you, like many
of us, sort of intrinsically rebelled against the concept of
marriage entirely? We want to hear from you. All your
fraud feminist feelings are welcome. So let us know how
you felt about today's episode and the idea of a
feminist marriage in general. On Twitter at mom Stuff podcast
(46:03):
on Instagram at stuff Mom Never Told You, And as always,
our inbox is open at mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com.
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.