Continuing...
His Pressing Responsibility to Provide
A woman needs to understand with an all-comprehending sympathy what a man faces in earning the living. An excellent description is found in Dr. Marie Robinson's Book, The Power of sɛҳuąƖ Surrender, from which I quote:
"The majority of men, when they come of age and marry, take on an enormous burden which they may not lay down with any conscience this side of the grave. Quietly, and without histrionics, they put aside, in the name of love, most of their vaunted freedom and contract to take upon their shoulders full social and economic responsibility for their wives and children.
"As a woman, consider for a moment how you would feel if your child should be deprived of the good things of life; proper housing, clothing, education. Consider how you would feel if he should go hungry. Perhaps such ideas have occurred to you and have given you a bad turn momentarily. But they are passing thoughts: a woman does not give them much credence; they are not her direct responsibility; certainly she does not worry about them for long.
"But such thoughts, conscious or unconscious, are her husband's daily fare. He knows, and he takes the carking thought to work with him each morning (and every morning) and to bed with him at night, that upon the success or failure of his efforts rests the happiness, health, indeed the very lives of his wife and children. In the ultimate he senses he alone must take full responsibility for them.
"I do not think it is possible to exaggerate how seriously men take this responsibility; how much they worry about it. Women, unless they are very close to their men, rarely know how heavily the burden weighs sometimes, for men talk about it very little. They do not want their loved ones to worry.
"Men have been shouldering the entire responsibility for their family group since earliest times. I often think, however, when I see the stresses and strains of today's marketplace, that civilized man has much harder going, psychologically speaking, than his primitive forefathers.
"In the first place, the competition creates a terrible strain on the individual male. This competition is not only for preferment and advancement, it is often for his very job itself. Every man knows if he falters, lets up his ceaseless drive, he can and will be easily replaced.
"No level of employment is really free of this endless pressure. The executive must meet and exceed his last year's quota or the quota of his competitors. Those under him must see that he does it, and he scrutinizes their performance most severely, and therefore constantly.
"Professional men-- doctors, lawyers, professors-- are under no less pressure for the most part. If the lawyer is self-employed, he must constantly seek new clients; if he works for an organization he must exert himself endlessly to avoid being superseded by ambitious peers or by pushing young particles just out of law school and fired with the raw energy of youth. A score of unhappy contingencies can ruin or seriously threaten a doctor's practice, not the least of which is a possible breakdown in his ability to practice. A teacher must work long hours on publishable projects outside of his arduous teaching assignments if he is to advance or even hold his ground.
"There is no field of endeavor that a man may enter where he can count on complete economic safety; competition, the need for unremitting year-in, year-out performance is his life's lot. Over all this he knows, too, stands a separate specter upon which he can exert only the remotest control. It is the joblessness which may be caused by the cyclical depression and recessions that characterize our economy."
Do Women Who Work Feel the Same Pressure Men Do?
Women who work do not feel the same kind of pressure men do. This is because they have a different orientation to the world of work. Whereas a man feels he cannot turn aside from his work with a clear conscience, a woman doesn't feel this same sense of duty. She can resign her job at any time and for any reason, without a feeling of guilt. Economic problems may result but she won't have a lower opinion of herself or feel disgraced in the eyes of the public.
On the other hand, if an able-bodied man were to stop working it would injure his feeling of worth and his image to the public. He and everyone else would consider him a failure if he were to neglect this important duty. A woman feels pressure, but of a different kind-- a time pressure which comes from living a double role. A man feels a binding moral pressure.
(Posting more later.)
Topic: Modern women want to have their cake AND eat it too (Read 9598 times)