Women need “cheerleader” husbands
Natalie Calkin
WVoN co-editor
The chief executive of the Girls Day School Trust in the UK (GDST), Helen Fraser, caused a stir last week when she suggested that girls need to be educated to choose supportive husbands.
Not only should they pick men who do the household chores and cook the dinner, they should also be the “cheerleader” champion of the girls’ careers.
Making the comments at the Trust’s annual conference, she told delegates that educators should be preparing girls to achieve a balance in their personal and professional lives so that they could “have it all” – career, marriage and motherhood.
Girls should, Fraser said, be taught “to find partners who will make space for their own career in a relationship”, and be just as ambitious about their relationships as they are in, say, “aspiring to go to the best universities.”
There have been mixed reactions to Fraser’s speech.
Journalist Jan Moir in the Daily Mail was scathing, stating that: “Husband catching and lessons in love are usually the mainstay of Swiss finishing schools, along with the correct way to glaze an éclair and get out of an E-type without flashing your gym knickers.”
Hannah Betts in the Telegraph commented that encouraging young girls to embrace marriage and children in an age when fewer people are getting married and almost half end in divorce, was a rather antiquated path for women to pursue.
She asked: “it is Fraser’s notion of a cheerleader that gives the game away. Are modern women so fragile that they require someone to spur them on from the sidelines?”
She did, however, acknowledge that Fraser’s views represented a step forward since her school days, when the advice she received was to put community and service above boasting about her intellectual capacity.
Surely Betts, Moir and even Fraser are missing the point entirely. The fact that men “having it all” – career, marriage, fatherhood – is never raised or contested demonstrates that it is not just girls who need educating. Boys also need to play their part.
Marrying or choosing a supportive partner – male of female – is not just a career choice but a choice that reflects self-worth and mutual respect of each others’ needs and ambitions.
Well said Natalie x
The criticism is ridiculous. Sure, we don’t “need” men, but we do want them. And since we want them, we need some advice on how to choose the right ones! I know dozens and dozens of women who are married to unsupportive men. Particularly in the Christian world, women are taught to put their husbands’ needs and priorities first. What about us? Is the wedding the end of our dreams, as Disney has taught us?
What if so many marriages end in divorce for this very reason? Women in this generation DO want it all, but our society still envisions men as the successful ones and the “leaders” of the family. Women get fed up, arguments ensue, disrespect is sewn, egos are crushed (on both sides).
Women so often cheer on their husbands. We are all fragile, friends. We all need support and encouragement. Yes, men AND women need someone to stand on the sidelines and say, “you can do this! Keep going! Fight! Succeed!” Someone who will share the burden of life’s tedious things like the kitchen that never stays clean and the bills that need to be paid and the appointments that must be made.
But too often, as women, we are left to clean up the messes of everyone’s lives and build up our own strength and stamina.
Find a supportive man, ladies!
Abso-fucking-lutely! Don’t go anywhere near the freaks that read Zoo or Nuts who are really more into what men think of them than what women do and get yourself a man that actually wants you to do well in your life, rather than help out in his. Its called mutual love, respect and value – but reading the tripe written in the Mail and Torygraph you’d think equality was a radical concept rather than a law brought in 40 years ago. And who knows, maybe if fathers socialised their sons to be mutually supportive rather than obsessed with themselves we might have fewer divorces, fewer single mothers, less women dead or in hospital from sexist violence. One can only dream!