Lava- Women stayed at home for quite a few years before the 1960’s. I think what made the 60’s “the 60’s” was the big wave of maturing young boomers, and an economy strong enough to have a part-time job and wonder what else you want to do with your life.
Vietnam was also a catalyst in terms of anti-war sentiment and beyond. (Many USAians were introduced to marijuana while serving over there, where it was commonly grown in the country side and casually consumed before dinner time.)

NSFW, just two weeks? Could be he's psyching himself out about ending the drought. It's been an issue for me and my girlfriend; the psychological pressure can interfere with (emotional or physiological) arousal.

It was after the war the nuclear family became the favoured economic and social unit. And the couples in the fifties, trying to build after the horrors of WW2, the dynamic was different. The nuclear family, no grandparents etc nearby, hasn't always been and isn't in many parts of the world, a culture's only child rearing/ economic structure.

This young woman is twenty two years old, and in a Very foreign country. And she's working. And if she's sometimes sad, it's not the end of the world. Sad is a real emotion one needs to get to accept in life. Lots of sad moments.
And do something to take her mind off her sadness, go learn the language. Yes, focus on this opportunity and stay aware of and respect the rules and rituals of the country she is now in.

Also during the war the women showed they could do it all, getting out and keeping it going while the men were at war. The story that women can't do it all was shattered. The war ends, and people wanna love not fight and viola, the love nest. Capitalism played the sweet skinny waisted housewife, in apron, holding a spatula,repeatedly in their ads, to help with the re programming.

@49. Venn. "Best" religionists as in "least bad". But I'm actually very pro-religion in terms of what I take it should be. Socially minded, compassionate, governed by principles, decent, thoughtful or self-examining, given to the life of the mind: what's not to like? Evidently these are not Christians as they are represented in the U.S.'s current culture wars--even if they are many Christians in point of fact.

The last time I left the US was seven years ago, and Trumplandia isn't really recognizable to me as anywhere I know. Was I just living a purblind, privileged existence in the cities? Have things gotten that different--in a bad way--so fast?

@61. Bi. Well, I'm pleased it wasn't a visual representation of a crab scuttling away at the end of your sentence! I have never had crabs, thank God. Other than Alaskan spider crabs in overpriced, heavily high-concept Russian restaurants in London.

You say, in effect, 'she hasn't said she wants monogamy' and ''she hasn't said she doesn't want monogamy'; both are extrapolations and the conversation has to happen. Yes, the conversation has to happen. But from most ordinary points of view, most people's points of view, he would seem to be offering her extraordinarily little. 'Yes, I want to go on fucking you; you can keep me as your toyboy, but I'm not prepared to take on the life- or emotional responsibility of parenthood and exclusive partnership'. This is how it would seem (it so seems to me) to most women in their late 30s or early 40s. If there is no indication that someone involved with a LW would be open to poly or some nonmonogamous arrangement, I feel we should take it as a default that they wouldn't be--that, indeed, they might feel threatened by it, hurt that their lovers are suggested it and (conceivably) slighted in that it would flout their values. The alternative is some almost self-congratulatory echo chamber of Savagistas supposing that any sexual combination or proposition can be endless talked about and rationally resolved or decided without reference to the norms and instincts (often, of revulsion) of the majority.

@71. Venn. The posher you are in England, the more you swallow your vowels. I always got laughed at for my (eventually) mid-Atlantic pronunciation of 'research' ('ree-seaRRch').

Bi. If someone you were dating avowed to you he (or she; but 'he' is more readily imaginable) liked your look because it reminded him of a child, I'm guessing you'd dump him sharpish. No one imagines that you shave to attract pedophiles or quasi-pedophiles. There's nothing incendiary in cap's saying that shaved pubes reminds them (reminds cap individually, that is) of a child.

@100: Sportlandia: Congrats on hitting the Hunsky!

@110: Ooops--my post didn't make it?

@111: Okay--never mind, there it is. Sorry to be so late in the comment threads this week.
Cat sitting for friends, working on online music projects, composing, practicing--and my beloved VW and I just had to soak up some rays. Happy springtime and Cinco de Mayo, everybody!

Lava @98: Wow. I don't see any back-patting in ANGST's letter at all. And what does his situation have to do with feminism failing? I see it as feminism winning: a man feels he has the choice to take a lower-paying job in order to spend more time with his kids from a prior relationship. Isn't that the freedom of choice feminists fought so hard to get?

Sporty @100: Aha, I was wondering what suggested "female" to you. My suspicion was that it was the use of the phrase "me time."

Lava @106: Good point about the sexes being re-programmed post-WWII to resume some entirely separate gender roles. Interesting.

Harriet @108: I'm not drawing a conclusion that if BABY proposes non-monogamy, Ms BABY will immediately see that as the solution to their problems. She may; she may not; you may be right that a woman traditional minded enough to be thinking about a ticking biological clock is more likely to want a monogamous nuclear husband than a poly arrangement. But it depends on how badly she wants children and whether she's prepared to consider all possible means of getting there. I disagree that he isn't offering her much; I think it's huge to say "I know how important it is to you to be a parent, and I'm willing to sacrifice a huge chunk of our relationship so that you can have that with someone else." As you say, what are the other options? Breaking up or unwilling fatherhood, the latter of which I would never EVER advise, for the sake of the mother, father, and especially the only half-wanted child. He describes them as being "in a loving relationship"; he's not a casual fuckbuddy, "toyboy" was my word. Even if it's unlikely Ms BABY would see this as a solution, with the alternatives being so unappealing it's worth a mention.

Harriet @109: As my chest itself is pre-pubescent, I actually would NOT (and did not) dump a lover (female, as it happened), who lustfully told me, "You have the body of a teenager!"
And I disagree that Cap's all-caps "TO ME" makes their statement unoffensive. If I said, "TO ME, hairy men look like gorillas," that would be just as insulting with or without the "just my opinion, maaan" equivocation.

Griz @112: And happy spring to you, too!

@113.. Fan, why even mention he could have a higher paying job at all? It's like he thinks he has a choice, which would mean his ex wife would have them 24/7.

Lava @114: I don't understand your question. ANGST does have a choice. If he chooses to move away and get a higher paying job, he once again has the option of a sex life in the form of sex workers. He'd rather spend more time with his children and be sexless. He's wondering whether there's anything wrong with this; there isn't! Why do you feel the need to demonise every man who writes in?

@113. Bi. As it happens, to me ... 'to me hairy men look like gorillas' is not an offensive comment. ;) It’s just what they look like to the speaker. People swing how they have to swing. Suck the sherbet that's to their taste. Someone on the spectrum, or with a superb public image channeling the spirit of Quentin Crisp (in their mind), who said, 'I would no sooner have sex with a member of the working classes than date an ourang-utang' would not, to me, be making an offensive remark.

But of course you were entitled to take cap's remark the wrong way. The woman you were with saw you as sexual (sexual in a way she found hot), not as prepubescent.

@113. Bi. I wouldn't at all presume what BABY's partner might say if it were put to her that they could stay together as a couple and she start a family with another father (or mate--or other partner). The suggestion could go down well--receive serious consideration. She might care for BABY so much that she'd like to explore ways of their staying together without the clock ticking past her period of fertility. But ... you'd have to accept, I think, that this isn't the cultural norm when it comes to thinking about whether straight men are committed to their (early midlife) partners. One hears, very frequently, 'it turned out he wasn't ready to make the commitment ... I had to find someone else'. It doesn't mean 'I can't drag him to Pina Bausch' or 'he has no interest in themed sex parties' but 'he doesn't want to have children'. Having a good relationship, cultivating it, staying interesting, overcoming irritations, is seen as a relatively easy, low-commitment activity; and parenting seen as a significant undertaking, commitment and sacrifice.

I would agree with anyone who said this was a pity. That there is an art of living which is important to get right; and that lots of parenting can be mundane or drudgery. As a community, though, we (the commentators) get up ourselves if we fail to take account of the most usual responses to our unusual or creative proposals. In this case, the courageous thing for BABY to do, surely, is to put his cards on the table--to make what is mostly unspoken more explicit. Let him ask what she would do if he said 'no' to kids. Would she dump him?

Harriet @116: Oh, so the way you took it was the RIGHT way, and the way I took it was the WRONG way? Gotcha. insert eyeroll emoticon
I also prefer the hairless look, though pubes are not a dealbreaker, not because I like prepubescents or think that hairless equates to prepubescent in any way, but because mmmm, smooth.

Harriet @117: If this was "the cultural norm," as you say, they'd probably have already thought of it.

Hunter @118: If it was Ms BABY writing in, SHE'D be advised to start the conversation. She didn't write in; he did. His choices are start the conversation or keep waiting for her to do it, which hasn't worked so far.

@119. Bi. 'To take the wrong way' does not mean 'to misunderstand' or 'to fail as a hermeneut', as you well know. In the spirit of compromise, I will say that I like my lovers' pubes neatly bisected, with one half left to grow wild, free, luxuriant! A forest of man- or lady-grass in the sun!, and the other razed, shorn to the merest whisper of stubble and massaged to a pink like the inside of a lamb's sweetbread... Mmm... (Writing goes wonky down the page...)

Really Fan. I'm not demonising any men, just pointing out the patriarchal assumptions under some of their decision making. And I stand up for men often in these threads.
And you've read my points All wrong. And it's too late in the week to go thru them again. Cheers.

Thanks for telling me what I know, Harriet @120. I'll forgive you though as that visual was just too funny.
And Lava @121, not sure describing ANGST's letter as "patting himself on the back" could be taken as anything but anti-man, but hey ho, yes. Time for another column.

M?? Harriet - It reminded me of one of Mr Ophian's quirks. He was considerably pro-religion, and quite decided about how the anti-gay Christianists were Christianing Wrong. I was not at all certain about whether that was true, or whether the Christianists were the ones who had figured religion out correctly and interpreting it the way it was intended.

It also makes me think of Elizabeth Bennet's first invitation to dine at Rosings when she is a guest at Hunsford. Mr Collins assures her that she need not be the least uneasy about her apparel. Lady Catherine won't think ill of her for being humbly dressed, and indeed likes to see the distinction of rank preserved. She should merely put on whatever of her clothing is superiour to the rest; there is no occasion for anything more.

@124. Venn. I think the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life. But I'm no theologian.