How the Patriarchy Destroyed the Traditional American Nuclear Family

Forcing women to endure financial abuse is not going to “save” the institution of marriage.

I remember my parents getting into a fight because I wanted to get a job outside of the household. My mom was all for it. The walls were paper thin, so I could hear her laying out the argument.

“It will be good for him. It’s a way for him to build self-confidence. It will make him more independent.”

My dad would become petulant when he perceived any challenge to his will. That would provoke him to make his arguments with physicality rather than reason. He’d sink into his recliner, set his jaw, and brood. When he was really angry, he indicated this with an expulsion of air that preceded every outburst.

“Sigh! I told you, he needs to work for me. Other people will cheat him. I don’t want to see anyone take advantage of him.”

That was the argument he voiced, but it has taken me decades to comprehend his true motivation. He didn’t want me to work elsewhere because my independence threatened his control.

She persisted and got a job of her own

For a long time, my mom, too, had been prohibited from working outside the house. Eventually, my dad’s contradictory nature gave her the ammunition she needed to secure permission. Even though he was the one who stopped her from working, he delighted in tormenting her over how he was the “sole provider.”

“It must be nice to sit around on your butt all day.”

“You’re right, that’s unfair, I guess I should get a job.”

“You don’t understand the financial pressures that I have to endure.”

“You’re right, that’s unfair, I guess I should get a job.”

“You should be thanking me because I’m the source of everything you have!”

“You’re right, that’s unfair, I guess I should get a job.”

Again and again, he kept falling into the trap. It was like he couldn’t help himself. He resented her as a consequence of his shortsighted authoritarian demands. He expected obedience and respect but he refused to practice accountability.

The rest of us didn’t have any power. He had no right to complain because he was the architect of both his and our misery.

Eventually, my mom’s constant pressure broke through.

“I guess I should get a job,” she muttered.

Usually, this statement was met with silence, but one time my dad erupted. “Well, I guess you should!” he screamed. We all looked at him in surprise.

Mom had won.

That was that, we all heard it. He’d given permission and now he couldn’t take it back or he would risk having the reversal erode his own precious sense of infallibility. He was incapable of saying, “I was wrong.”

My mom got a job the very next day.

I didn’t fight that battle

As for me, I continued to work for my dad. He paid me less than minimum wage and complained that the work I did was substandard. If I protested, he told me it was farm work and that I should be grateful that I was getting paid at all.

“Most kids just call this ‘doing chores’ and they do it without question,” he grumbled. “You have it so much better than all those other kids.”

“But aren’t those other kids being taken advantage of?” I thought about the question, but of course, I knew better than to ask.

I remember being briefly excited when he gave me a raise from $1 an hour to $2.50. Even in 1980, getting paid $1 an hour only served as motivation to turn to a life of crime.

At the same time all of this was going on, there were signs that what I was being told didn’t make sense. I was at the top of my class in math and science. That was supposed to be worth something. I got that information from my dad.

“Smart people should be paid more!”

He insisted that I get good grades. He said I needed to get good grades to get a high-paying job. But then I showed him my good grades and he prohibited me from getting a job that required any kind of advanced thinking.

But this was a battle I didn’t have the resources to fight. Instead, I put my energy elsewhere. I didn’t agitate to break free of his will. He was too much of a nightmare when directly opposed.

“Get a good man who will take care of you…”

Using finances to control people is not a new idea, and women have most often been the target of this cowardly tactic.

There’s a lot of baseless chatter on social media where frustrated men blame “feminism” for eroding the nuclear family. Apologists for traditional systems say things like, “All of these women today want to pursue high-profile jobs instead of knowing the joys of staying at home and raising a family.”

There are a lot of ways to respond to that. For one thing, it’s no longer possible for the nuclear family to endure if both of the parents aren’t working. The authoritarian system we have in place in society has kept wages so low that the concept of the single-income household has gone extinct.

The patriarchal model is no longer possible. Yet, nobody ever mentions that. Instead, the only thing the media seems to want to do is blame “feminism.”

“Women want to go out and get jobs rather than let a man take care of them, that’s awful!” This misinformed statement is considered unassailable, even though it’s clearly wrong.

Perhaps we should give equal time to the counter-argument that maybe patriarchal men have never been good at taking care of anyone. We should present and study the overwhelming evidence that the traditional model has failed.

Let’s present the facts, have an honest discussion, and allow people to make up their minds.

How the patriarchal model leaves a family exposed

My dad’s whole philosophy revolved around the concept of making us all financially dependent on him. When he threw a temper tantrum and left, we felt the pinch. That was by design. That was the bitter harvest of the seeds he had sown.

“I’ll teach them to appreciate me. They don’t know how to make or manage money. When I leave, they’ll starve. I bet as they’re laying emaciated in the dirt they’ll use their dying breath to whisper a soft apology for being so cruel to me.”

Yeah, that’s one possibility.

The other possibility is that we’ll all go out and get jobs. Oops, you forgot you’d no longer be there to prevent us from doing the things we wanted to do. You’d no longer be there to moderate our access to information or stop us from controlling our bank accounts.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that managing money isn’t nearly as difficult as convincing a stubborn man that he is wrong.

It’s dangerous if a family is too dependent on one person. What happens if that person falls ill, gets injured, or dies? We pretend that a family is “protected” if the primary wage earner has life insurance. But what happens to a family that has been denied any form of financial education?

How long will a lump sum last? Insurance doesn’t protect you, knowledge does.

Somebody once said something about teaching people to fish.

Lift your family up, don’t hold them down

My wife is the most hardworking person I’ve ever met. Any time she’s wanted to pursue further education it’s because she’s been motivated by earning a higher wage, and I’ve always supported her.

When she went to get her teacher’s license, one of her friends congratulated me. “It’s a wonderful thing you’re doing,” she said. “It takes the support of a whole family to achieve something like this.”

Her words stunned me because they indicated as to how unusual it is for men to support their wives professionally. That’s tragic.

The way I see it, if my wife is bringing more money into our household, that’s good for us. It helps us provide more for our children. The more she advances professionally, the more she’s able to model a replicable model of success.

My ego isn’t so fragile that I’d condemn my family to live in poverty because I insist on being in total control of every penny.

Traditional values threaten families, not equality

The household where I grew up followed a strict patriarchal model. My father was the ultimate authority and nobody was allowed to question his beliefs or decisions. I observed firsthand how this model proved to be an utter failure.

We were saddled with the unproductive burden of constantly having to find workarounds to accommodate his contradictory beliefs. He wanted praise for all the burdens he endured, even though he used his power to physically stop us from assisting.

The irony of this is that he wasn’t frustrated with us. What he never came to understand is that, ultimately, he was frustrated with the inherent shortcomings of the patriarchal model.

Today, too much credibility is given to the ridiculous belief that the way to “preserve” the traditional family is to strip women of their autonomy. Certain groups want to go back to a time when women were deprived of all financial independence. They think they can save marriage by making it impossible for women to ever escape abusive situations.

However, what these groups fail to acknowledge is that there are plenty of examples of happy nuclear families where both parents are equally empowered. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that toxic, patriarchal authority is what destroys households, not equality.

Our focus is in the wrong place. Sooner or later our society will have to recognize that authoritarian systems are susceptible to abuse.

All of these discounts are forever.

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