Discussion for article #239414
I don’t think there is a need to personalize this to make the point that alimony has an important function in our society. Quite often, one spouse stays home so that the other can pursue a career. Usually, the former is a woman and the latter, a man. But that is far from always being the case. Alimony may be an appropriate remedy for the “stay-at-home” spouse, female or male.
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Sorry but your vague whining about “marriage’s gender roles” is unconvincing.
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Not sure the point of this one. Alimony is important but I think some of the statements here, while true, should not have much economic barring. Being married changes the decisions both sides make in a relationship. And there are pros and cons to each gender, so to speak. I am sure it is still balanced towards the male. Try to be as fair as possible to both sides and move on seems to be the best way.
Not a slam, just a question…obviously, I don’t know the circumstances of your partnership and unless things are way different than when I was in school, an economist isn’t nearly as lucrative a career as an MD, so this may not apply to your situation at all…, however, I’ve seen at least anecdotal evidence that someone working towards advanced degrees such as an MD degree, have often been pressed into paying alimony post divorce under the principle that the other spouse was working to support them while they were training for a more lucrative career and now that the spouse has an advanced degree there should be some sort of compensation for the support while they were training. Do you feel this sort of reasoning is appropriate and if you don’t, can you tell me why you feel otherwise?
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She is not making the point that alimony has an important function in our society. She is making the point that both marriage and divorce have deep structural biases against women. And that these problems place an undue financial burden on women in a way that they do not on men. And that alimony needs to take these additional burdens on women into account in order to be fair to both parties.
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That is exactly what she is saying. That to be fair, the deep structural biases of marriage and divorce against women need to be taken into account. She is saying that ignoring these problems is fundamentally unfair.
In what way is this question relevant or appropriate to this article about the deep structural biases that marriage and divorce has against women? It sounds exactly like a slam to me.
Why are you assuming it’s biased towards women? The person I was speaking about was a woman who got a degree as an pediatrician and her husband worked in IT and raised the kids while she was doing an internship and residency. My belief is that spousal support should be strictly based on income differential so as to keep one party or the other from falling into abject poverty while they reorganize the structure of their lives. Especially in the atmosphere of no fault divorce, it shouldn’t be applied as a punitive remedy for behavior within the relationship. I agree that often, and often because of the gender inequalities baked into the system, women end up in much worse financial stress coming out of a divorce than men do, but to apply spousal support based in any way on the gender of the recipient or payor is not feminism. If spousal support is to be awarded, it should be awarded strictly based on financial factors, even though quite often than means the male partner will be paying it to the female. In some cases, the reverse will be true. It’s going to have to be determined based on the specific facts in the specific relationship.
Some specifics would help. What did the author’s “choice of grad school” have to do with “traditional gender roles”?
The author also seems to espouse the backward view that alimony should always be paid from the male partner to the female partner, and never the other way around (I know this isn’t explicitly stated, but her justification for alimony based on traditional gender roles strongly implies it).
If this is the case, it’s a position that needs to be defended, rather than swept under the rug in a torrent of faux-victimization and bad writing.
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And not to pick a fight with you, because I think you and I are actually in agreement on a lot of this, I think alimony needs to take the results into account, not the causes. If one party is in a less advantageous financial situation coming out of the relationship, that should be the cause of awarding support, not because one side or the other started at a worse position, but because they ended up in a worse position. If women are in that spot more often than men, then women should be awarded support more often. I would much rather fix the causes, but support is supposed to help to make the result more equitable.
Sorry “appropriate”? Perhaps you would prefer a forum where questions are censored to fit your sensibilities.
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And the article is saying that, regardless of the details of any specific case, marriage and divorce are deeply biased against women. Taking the structural privilege and bias of gender into account is the only way to have a fair outcome. Not taking gender into account will always lead to an unfair outcome, regardless of who was the breadwinner.
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Are you the author? If not, you seem to be writing an awful lot of comments about what the article is and isn’t saying.
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No, she is not implying that and it takes immense deliberate mis-reading of plain English and clear writing to say so.
No, I have no idea who the author is. However, I did read the article and can understand plainly written English.
I think you and I fundamentally disagree on this part. Spousal support is supposed to allow the financially less advantaged partner to receive support for a fixed time. If it’s supposed to fix gender inequality, it should be done in every case and for an unlimited duration because, as you say and as I agree with, there are structural issues with gender privilege. I am assuming you don’t think spousal support should be issued in every case to the female in the relationship, leaving aside for a moment those marriages in which both parties are female, and I am assuming that you don’t think spousal support should be indefinite and of an unfixed duration. Shouldn’t it be done based on the specific facts in each marriage?
Ahhhh “deliberate” misreading. The ad hominem attacks begin. I can’t say I’m particularly surprised.
I will disengage. Have a nice life.
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Let me correct that for you.
“…deep structural biases that marriage and divorce has against men”
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Nah, I don’t think there’s a structural bias against men in either of those institutions. Men tend to come out better financially out of a divorce than women do, based on structural biases that the author speaks of. In some cases, this is going to lead to men, as this party in stronger financial shape, paying to the woman, who is in weaker financial shape. That’s not bias. When the financial situations are reversed, paying the other direction is appropriate.
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