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happypete (and others).
Feb. 1st, 2006 10:14 amOn this past weekend's This American Life, the last segment (starting about 47:00 on the RealAudio stream, episode title "I Enjoy Being a Girl (Sort Of)") was a lengthy interview with a woman in a polygamous marriage. IIRC all of the wives are educated and have outside jobs, the main exception having been when several of them had small children around the same time and collectively *paid* one of the co-wives to stay home and provide child-care. Really a very fascinating piece, in which the husband sounds like an expert at negotiating group dynamics (at least by the report of this one wife; none of the other partners are interviewed).
But then, one of the familiar planks of the "Defense of Marriage" crowd is the restriction of both husband and wife to rigid gender roles. "All decent women should stay at home with the kids instead of taking real jobs away from the men who *need* those jobs to support their (non-working) wives and children," quoth figures such as Ann Coulter and Dr. Laura from their professional rostra. Their heads would probably explode at the concept of constructing an interconnected consortium of households with the resources of five or six full-time incomes.
Of course, now I'm getting a weird conventionality backlash urge to lie down on the sofa to watch soap operas and eat bonbons. Unfortunately, I can't stand soap operas and have no bonbons, and it just doesn't have the same vibe of bland suburban decadance to sack out with Buffy while munching organic produce. The farmers' market doesn't have much stuff this time of year compared to summer-- the Pink Lady apples are just about done for the year, and the strawberries are still at their year-round default level and not yet !!!!STRAWBERRIES!!!!-- but the tiny little mandarin-orange tangerine things are dang tasty. The wombat-consort ate six pounds of them since last week.
But then, one of the familiar planks of the "Defense of Marriage" crowd is the restriction of both husband and wife to rigid gender roles. "All decent women should stay at home with the kids instead of taking real jobs away from the men who *need* those jobs to support their (non-working) wives and children," quoth figures such as Ann Coulter and Dr. Laura from their professional rostra. Their heads would probably explode at the concept of constructing an interconnected consortium of households with the resources of five or six full-time incomes.
Of course, now I'm getting a weird conventionality backlash urge to lie down on the sofa to watch soap operas and eat bonbons. Unfortunately, I can't stand soap operas and have no bonbons, and it just doesn't have the same vibe of bland suburban decadance to sack out with Buffy while munching organic produce. The farmers' market doesn't have much stuff this time of year compared to summer-- the Pink Lady apples are just about done for the year, and the strawberries are still at their year-round default level and not yet !!!!STRAWBERRIES!!!!-- but the tiny little mandarin-orange tangerine things are dang tasty. The wombat-consort ate six pounds of them since last week.