Sexism: Bad

Neat article in the Times discusses something I have been curious about: what we can learn from same-sex marriages about the way heterosexual marriages treat issues such as housework, childcare, etc., and unequal divisions thereof. I'm sure we all know a few gay or lesbian couples in which one partner plays the stereotypically "male" role in the family and the other the "female"; I was just listening to a friend bitch about how her partner, who is the sole breadwinner, was devaluing her contributions to the household by saying "you have every day off." They have two kids under 8! But I think this is becoming rarer as time goes by, and as there come to be more and more same-sex marriages, I think we'll see a lessening of the social pressure to mimic the "normal" heterosexual marriage dynamic.

Notably, same-sex relationships, whether between men or women, were far more egalitarian than heterosexual ones. In heterosexual couples, women did far more of the housework; men were more likely to have the financial responsibility; and men were more likely to initiate sex, while women were more likely to refuse it or to start a conversation about problems in the relationship. With same-sex couples, of course, none of these dichotomies were possible, and the partners tended to share the burdens far more equally.

While the gay and lesbian couples had about the same rate of conflict as the heterosexual ones, they appeared to have more relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the inequality of opposite-sex relationships can take a toll.

“Heterosexual married women live with a lot of anger about having to do the tasks not only in the house but in the relationship,” said Esther D. Rothblum, a professor of women’s studies at San Diego State University. “That’s very different than what same-sex couples and heterosexual men live with.”

Well land o' goshen, who ever would have thought? Next they'll be telling us racism is a real and continuously stressful experience for those subjected to it!

Comments

[Bloix]

There's no indication that they controlled in the study for the presence of children. I think we can agree that it's very likely that a higher percentage of heterosexual marriages have children in the household than do same-sex marriages. I think it's also likely, although you'd want to study this, that childless two-sex marriages are more egalitarian than two-sex marriages with children, and that same-sex marriages with children more closely resemble two-sex marriages in their division of labor between income-earning activities and child-rearing and domestic work. Your own anecdote makes the point.

If the study did not compare childless two-sex marriages to childless same-sex marriages, and one-child to one-child, etc., it may have measured the effects on a relationship of the presence of children, and not a genuine difference between same-sex and two-sex marriages.