Lori Gottlieb’s new article in the Atlantic, "Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough" is enjoyably torn to pieces by Amanda Marcotte over at Pandagon.
Gottlieb’s argument in short is that being a single parent is hard and that settling for a guy is much better. Moreover, you’ve got to settle young because by the time you’re in your mid-thirties to forties the dating market sucks for women.
It was fairly obvious it was going to be a terrible piece based on an awful line of argument in the start.
And all I can say is, if you say you’re not worried, either you’re in denial or you’re lying. In fact, take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous.
So, there’s no women that don’t want to have children? Or have settled and got a relationship that wasn’t better to leave? Or settled and were left? This kind of false consciousness argument deals with critics by simply saying their personal experience is invalid or ignorant. It avoids the heavy lifting of making a real argument and makes it easier to use the kind of sloppy thinking common in this piece. There’s no stats, no in depth interviews with people that settled or are happy not settling, just Gottlieb’s personal experience which she generalizes to an argument relevant for all women.
Anyways, I certainly buy the idea that single parenting is hard. In some cases, it can also be fairly inevitable, so I do support subsidized child care and other programs that make things easier for all parents but single parents in particular. But in terms of her immediate practical it sounds like what Gottlieb needs is not a husband but a strictly childrearing partner. She might even want to consider moving in with her other single mother close friend in the same predicament. There’s economics of scale in child-rearing and I don’t think having sex with one another is really that key to successfully raising your kids.
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