Saving Marriage with the Kiwi
Husband?
Equal Roles in the Household
The
institution of marriage is under attack with marriage rates decreasing.
However, marriage is not dying because homosexuals seek equal rights to
marriage but because our traditional marriage system which is killing the
system from within. Although the traditional “nuclear family” emphasizes
specific roles for men and women in the household, this idea is slowly breaking
down in modern times as can be seem with the emergence of the kiwi husband. The
term that is being used with increasing frequency on Japanese television, the
kiwi husband breaks down our common conception of the husband being the
breadwinner of the family and the wife being the caretaker of the household,
showing that these roles are not mutually exclusive and that maybe Cosmo can be
correct at times (as long as they do not attack their readers’ self-esteem).
The Kiwi
Husband is a term used to define a husband from New Zealand. The reason why
they are talked about on television is because they these husbands share
responsibility for household chores, the husband chipping in to help with
maintaining the household in addition to working, thereby showing that the
division of household labor is fairly shared between both men and women.
Although not much information is given about the role of the kiwi wife in
relation to her work, it is very likely that given her fewer responsibilities
in the household, she is also able to get a job for additional income should
she choose to.
This led me
to wonder both who are considered the most desirable husbands and why.
According to a study by Dr. Almundena Sevilla-Sanz from Oxford University, New
Zealand men came in eight out of twelve as the best husbands out of 12
developed countries, the top four being Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, and the
U.S. This result came from the fact that these four countries were considered
to be the most egalitarian countries among the 12 developed states. Although I
believe there may be some flaws in this study not because it did not consider
notable European countries such as Germany or France. I find these flaws to be
critical given the fact that the study claims that “in egalitarian countries,
there is less social stigma attached to men doing what was traditionally
women’s work,”[1] thereby implying that greater
political equality correlates with more equal roles for men and women in the
family. I find it pretty hard to accept that the U.S. would be considered more
egalitarian than New Zealand given the fact that in the 50s, the U.S. placed
significant effort emphasizing the ideal life of the nuclear family as having a
house in the suburbs with the husband going to work and coming back to a clean
home with his wife having made dinner, idealizing the very traditional roles of
men and women in the family. Although significant progress has been made in
strengthening women’s rights for equality in modern times, the U.S. is quite
conservative and still seems to emphasize conservative values, one of which
being the perception of the ideal family
The study also does not really emphasize the
role of cultural values and cultural perceptions. I can understand that Japan
may be ranked lower than the U.S. but the study does not explain why. In my
layman opinion which is backed solely by life experience and thus should be
taken with a grain of salt, Japan may be more traditionally conservative
because Japan emphasizes filial roles in society, even today. Japan society is
structured around the family and thus there may be expectations, especially
among the more conservative families, that individuals follow traditional roles
in society. I find this to be a common to Asian countries in general, given the
fact that most Asian values seem to stem from Ancient China which followed Confucius’
values. Confucius was a strong proponent of filial ties, his concept of being
an ideal human being known as ren requiring that the individual follow
the five major relationships in society, one of them being between husband and
wife. Although Confucianism has decreased in relevance in modern society, it
still retains a strong influence in Asian ideals which need to be considered in
promoting more equal roles in the household.
The important finding of the study
is not that Norway provides the most ideal husbands. Assuming that divorce
rates correlate with marriage (a fair but not comprehensive assumption given
cultural values of divorce will also affect divorce rates) Norway’s divorce
rate is 40.4% in 2002 which although better than the U.S. divorce rate of 35.8%
and the U.K.’s rate of 42.6%, is still not great given that this means a little
less than half of new marriages end in divorce.[2] The important finding is that great
equality is necessarily in the household if the institution of marriage is to
continue. According to the study, women from less egalitarian countries are 20
to 50% less likely to get married than women living in more egalitarian
countries, most likely due to the fact that women living in less egalitarian
countries realize that if they get married, they will lose any opportunities
available to them by being restricted to performing household chores. Given the
greater number of opportunities available to women in modern society both in
terms of higher education and increased job opportunities, the cost of marriage
from losing access to these opportunities bear higher costs than before. The
increasing number of opportunities available to women makes the traditional
role of women remaining in the household while the man remains the breadwinner
unsustainable.
Marriage rates are decreasing
worldwide and are becoming an increasingly relevant problem to many societies.
The Office for National Statistics suggest that marriage rates have been the
lowest they have ever been in 2007 while a study by the National Marriage
Project at the University of Virginia found that marriage rates in the U.S.
have been declining since 1960, the marriage rate from 1970 to 2008 decreasing
from 76.5 to 37.4 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women.[3]
Although there are several factors
explaining the decline in marriage such as the acceptability of single life or
the recession, these factors do not explain why the decline in marriage rates
is increasing over time. Even if single life is considered more acceptable,
that should not change the number of people who initially want to get married
so there should be a decrease and eventual flat lining of marriage rates if the
sole factor was perceptions of single life. Furthermore, the global recession
began in 2008 with many developed countries experiencing bubbles from 1990 to
2000 which undermines recession being a factor contributing toward marriage
rates.
The breakdown in marriage is not
because homosexuals want to get married as some religious groups claim. On the
contrary, accepting gay marriage may be necessary to save the institution given
the fact that so many heterosexual couples are refusing to get married. The
breakdown in marriage in its current form is a result of conservative values
holding only the traditional perception of a nuclear family, the maintenance of
traditional structures despite changing circumstances making marriage a worse
choice for many women to accept. If we want to protect the institution of
marriage, we need to rethink the conception from the simple union between a man
and a women to a union between two partners who contribute equally to
maintaining their household.
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