Asking if someone would rather marry their boss or their assistant is *not* the same thing as asking if they would prefer to marry someone with the equivalent job but with no business relationship.

My parents are divorced and I can tell you now that I still had more access to my dad than they did to theirs. I have a world of fond memories of my dad doing stuff with us that their dads would have never done–dad making dinner with us at his feet, taking us to the park, having us with him when he went to friends’ houses, picking us up from school, the whole nine yards. Feminist innovations have made it so that dads take on at least some more of the childcare duties, and that I think has more significance than the divorce rate on whether or not kids get exposure to their fathers.

I guess it means we just have to look for other arrangements to satisfy our need for compansionship, children, financial stability, etc.,

Perhaps women are becoming socially conditioned to expect men to leave. Every man has mother issues and every woman has daddy issues, although to call them issues sort of presumes they will be problems when that is not necessarily the case. Basic psychology tells us that we learn how to relate to the world at large from our parents at an extremely early developmental stage. The first two years are fundamental in shaping our personalities and how we approach life.

We are looking at the first massive generation of both men and women who are of marrying age who are children of divorce. In staggering numbers. And divorce rates in the last 30 years have skyrocketed. If enough women watch their single mothers raise them and feed them without a man around or with rotating men around, what does that tell them about the stability of inter-gender relationships?

That attitude and behavior can be overcome, but if you go into a relationship with the expectation that someone will leave you, they typically will. You sort of get what you ask for. So how many relationships die on the way to the altar because one or the other of the parties is expecting the other to leave?

How affordable is the therapy needed to overcome one’s psychological problems, especially given today’s economy and the strangehold of HMO’s on insurance companies and the uninsured?

In short, I don’t see good things for the institution of marriage at large.

On the other hand, perhaps once we are all completely fucked up we can go into relationships with more realistic expectations and we can learn to deal with our collective fucked-up-ness.

Consider yourselves lucky, then. The hardest obstacle we’ve had to work around is other people’s ingrained prejudices.

Robert, the problem is that you’re making absolutist statements. Many people CAN order their lives and give up material comforts to achieve certain goals. Many people can’t, especially when you look at the long-term view: opportunity costs, the costs of risks, and so on. Paying cash for a doctor visit is far different than coming up with hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover the treatment of a closed-head injury.

But in making this decision, the hardest obstacle we’ve had to work around is both of our ingrained uneasiness over such a complete role reversal. Society still looks at a SAHD and thinks there’s something wrong with a man who chooses to stay at home - like he can’t cut it in the real world. Unlike women who make the same choice. Then there’s the difficulty in rejoining the workforce. Though women typically suffer from large gaps in employment history on their resume, employers are becoming more understanding. I don’t see that happening with men.

Robert, COBRA in Oregon would run me several hundred dollars a month. Even if the Oregon Healthplan weren’t busy imploding at the moment, thanks to Governor Cold Fish and the rest, I’d still probably have too high an income to access it. Also, COBRA only lasts for 18 months. Once those are up, if you still can’t pay for your own insurance, you’re shit out of luck.

So you’re talking a double-barrelled paycut if I decide to bolt public employment altogether: The pay cut borne of a non-Union wage and the pay cut borne of having to cover for my own insurance if I can’t find a job that provides it.

I did the math and found that if my work hours in Government never fell below 30 hrs, I could keep my coverage. Below that, I could augment them at great difficulty with COBRA. But again, that would be only a temporary solution.

1. I’m not sure why you assume this.
2. You can make a reasonable salary and still have limited choices.
3. Alsis says her circumstances don’t allow her to follow your suggestions, and I believe her.

My basic point is that it’s very frustrating when people say things like, “You can order your life any way you want.” No, many people can’t. I mean, what do you suggest? What would you say to someone who wants to have more time to pursue her passions, but is living paycheck-to-paycheck?

Unlike you, Robert (and, in fact, me), many people have to sacrifice the car, the eating out, the vacations, and time with their friends and family, and their interests, at least some of them. Most people have to squeeze their real lives into evenings and weekends, between commuting and doing chores and running errands and maintaing relationships and caring for children and cooking healthy meals and getting enough exercise and sleeping. Some people have to work so hard that they have no real lives. That’s tragic and part of the reason I call myself a liberal.

’cause you said so.

Do you have any health issues that require you have health insurance in order to pay for treatment? If so, then you need to either be an FTE or you need to be able to run your own business successfully enough to pay for insurance. If alsis makes considerably more money than you do, so do I. But I must be a FTE in order to get the treatment that my spouse needs. I do not have the ability to run a business that will be succesful enough to pay for HI. Therefore my choices are fewer than those of somebody without serious health issues in their family.

I’m not sure how I have more choice than, say, Alsis. I imagine she makes considerably more money than we do.

As for the IQ of doctors — I dated a surgeon whose IQ, I guarantee you, was closer to 95 than to 145. Sure, you need to be smart enough to get into and through medical school, and there may be some medical jobs that require a high IQ, but mostly, and especially for surgeons, doctors have to be methodical, detail oriented people, a trait that is not necessarily present in those with genius IQs. Moreover, those with lower than genius IQs might be less likely to get frustrated with the relatively routine tasks that make up doctors’ workaday lives. And if you aren’t a people person, well then, you really could be miserable. The point is, high IQ isn’t necessarily the best indicator of optimal job performance, even in demanding professions. It depends on what the job requires.

Neither my wife nor I have a high income.

Sigh. Robert, to be blunt, I need my healthcare coverage that comes through work. My partner can’t afford to put me on his coverage and still run his business if I’m only bringing in a part-timer’s salary at some job that pays less than what I make now. I could live quite well on a 3o hr workweek based on my current hourly wage, but the bosses basically looked at me like I was some kind of cockroach when I asked them if I could cut my hours back. Oregon’s job market stinks, so my attempts at a lateral transfer into another department haven’t been very successful, though I’ve been trying for two years now.

Also, even if I wanted to persuade my partner to pay all the bills so I could stay home all the time, I wouldn’t. For the same reason that I wouldn’t get married. Too much damn baggage, too many strings attached. I really don’t want to drop the boss at work just to replace her with a boss at home. Amanda points out just above a lot of the automatic assumptions that creep into such a relationship, because of “tradition” in male/female roles. It’s not worth it to me.

Do you flip a coin, or do you pick the surgeon with the higher IQ?

I’d figure the surgeon with the 145 IQ probably had a better education because tests very similar to IQ tests are used to determine college and grad school admissions. But I still wouldn’t know. The 145 guy could be a slacker who barely slid through Grenada med school but “tests well.”

Furthermore, at such extreme differences, even a crude instrument like the IQ test can tell us a lot. But that’s not what these studies are measuring. They’re talking about 4, 5 point differences in IQ, which are completely meaningless. If I had to choose between two surgeons with 5 point IQ difference and no other information, I’d gladly flip a coin.

Let me reverse the question. Would you prefer an auto mechanic with a 145 IQ? A masseuse? An artist? A linebacker? All these jobs require “intelligence,” but IQ alone is not going to adequately measure aptitude for these jobs. If it’s not the best measure for these jobs, what makes you so sure it’s a reasonable measure for surgeons?

Robert, your material comfort is why you can order your life as you’d like. The #1 money buys you is freedom.