House of Eratosthenes

It’s been a pretty rocky road and it hasn’t been all good for the boy. But I will say this: Of all the things we have done that have hurt him the most, the biggest thing by far has been all the yelling and arguing. And one thing I can say for an absolute certainty is, if I’d married her, there would have been a lot more of that…and not too much of the other stuff would have changed. We still wouldn’t have “made it” because we still would be two different people who look at life in two different ways.

This is the problem with arguing about marriage in simplistic terms. The institution has become a complicated, wrinkled-up mess. We think of it as some kind of a “promise” when it isn’t anything even resembling that anymore. It’s a change in legal status; a change made to get some bennies. Promising doesn’t have anything to do with it. It’s become just a shrink-wrapped bundle of weird benefits and equally weird (toothless) obligations, all of which are re-defined one week to the next according to what lobbyists and activists tell politicians they want done.

Have I made wise, good decisions? No. Should I, therefore, have gotten married? Uh, erm………no. Pretty much everyone I knew at the time, told me to do something, I said I shouldn’t, and in the long run I turned out to be right. But I’m not proud.

Others have done the same thing. And for reasons that escape me, they are proud.

Stephanie Flanders Now, do you know what is going on in jolly old England? The time has come, once again, to put some floral wreaths and candies on the graves of the gentlemen who threw the tea into Boston Harbor…and maybe think about tossing a few more boxes in. Across the pond, they’re having a row and a ruckus about how everyone should live.

On a Newsnight programme in August 2007, [Stephanie] Flanders interrogated Conservative Party leader David Cameron about his proposed policy of tax breaks for married couples while questioning him with other journalists, asking him whether he had ever met anyone who would get married for an extra £20 per week. As an unmarried mother, she also asked Mr. Cameron whether the Conservative Party would like her to be married.

So. We got this nanny-state pro-marriage guy who wants to give a stipend to married couples, and he is rightly upbraided by a single mum.

Lashing out at him in honor of the libertarian spirit of the individual, and the God-given right to live life as you choose?

Erm……no, it doesn’t appear so….

Meet the Credit Crunch Crumpet: The unmarried mum who clashed with Cameron on Newsnight

…Next Tuesday Stephanie officially takes up a new job as economics editor of the entire BBC. It is one of the most senior jobs in broadcasting, and about as authoritative as it gets without actually being Sir David Attenborough.
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Quite a responsibility, then? “Hmmm. Immense,” she says. “It’s all extremely exciting – this is the best job in economic broadcasting, without a doubt – but it’s daunting, too.

“It’ll mean treading that fine line between being accessible and authoritative. I’ll have to get across very complex economic ideas in a way that is easy to understand and interesting.
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She gives a half-giggle. That she is the first woman to become one of the BBC’s senior editors – she is taking over from the flamboyant Evan Davis, who is off to present Radio Four’s Today programme – seems slightly shocking in this day and age, but good news all round. Isn’t it?

“No one can remember there being a woman in any of these senior positions before,” she confirms, choosing her words carefully. “I’m sure the BBC would admit that’s not ideal.”

That she is up to the job doesn’t seem to be in doubt. She is widely regarded as one of the most capable economic analysts in the country. Her clever-clogs qualifications are second to none – degrees from Oxford and Harvard – and she spent time speech-writing for the U.S. Treasury under the Clinton administration, before working for the Financial Times.

But aren’t we afraid of overly clever women in this country – unless they bring out diet books on the side? Isn’t the nation going to be intimidated by her?

She smiles again. “I’d prefer them not to be intimidated, but if they think I am talking with authority, then I’ll have got it right,” she says.

Perhaps surprisingly Stephanie hasn’t encountered that much sexism so far, “although there will always be men who simply think women aren’t up to the job”.
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Yet I’m astonished at how open she is about how her sex will, or won’t, affect how she does the job.

Indeed, she asks for this interview to be conducted at her home, where her 22-month-old son, Stanley, is running around. This makes it inevitable that we will talk about her new kitchen and the perils of finding a good nanny. She is pregnant, too, which makes things even more tricky. Baby number two is due in June.

I don’t know why we are motivated to treat women this way. By asking the rhetorical “aren’t we afraid of overly clever women in this country” — and then later eeking out “Stephanie hasn’t encountered that much sexism so far,” the article seems to me to be ‘fessing up to looking for discrimination where it doesn’t really exist in meaningful volume. She’s a child born into privilege, perhaps more energetic and ambitious than most, I don’t see anyone anywhere fighting her. Why do we have to imagine her battling some unseen force in her every waking moment when efforts to define said resistant force culminate in such a lackluster presentation? She seems to be swimming downstream, not up. Who — on the entire planet — has any hostility to this woman’s career, whatsoever, with any kind of ability to influence it?

If the story is all about her battle with day-to-day obstacles and barricades, then I’m still waiting for the story.

The other thing that’s funny about how we treat women, is we seem to imagine they don’t really have a “choice” to do anything until substantial energy has been depleted championing that choice, cudgeling other women into making the same one. Where, I wonder, did we get this rule? Stephanie is all about choosing to remain unmarried if that’s what you want to do. But Stephanie has to become a celebrity. Stephanie needs a splash page.

But Stephanie, according to the article itself, wasn’t born into humble beginnings. Stephanie has connections. Stephanie has friends and relatives. Stephanie went to schools that not-just-anyone can attend.

And Stephanie has a stud. He’s mentioned in paragraph 23. And in the context, it would appear he is expected to do some things about daddy stuff, childcare, bringing-home-bacon, whatever, to lighten Stephanie’s load a little bit.

Why paragraph 23? Why not in paragraph five? Why isn’t he in the splash picture with the hen and the chick, if the rooster is part of making it all work? What’s this drive to make the story read like a story of “we made it all work without a man.” I mean, it doesn’t come out and say it in those words, but can anyone deny that this is an intended central thrust of Stephanie’s story? She did it, girls, so you can do it too…except Stephanie isn’t really doing that. She depends on her man — and wherever she doesn’t, she depends on a lot of other resources she has in her personal life, that millions of single mothers don’t have in theirs.

Or as Richard Littlejohn wrote,

“If Stephanie Flanders speaks for Britain, then I’m a gnu ” (recalling a famous song by her father [Michael Flanders] and Donald Swann).

Meanwhile — the European tradition continues. Everybody’s nose is in everybody else’s business. Every couple that gets married is a victory for Mr. Cameron and his friends. Every couple that doesn’t is a victory for Stephanie and all her friends.

Mass communication is a wonderful thing, but sometimes I think over the course of its relatively short history it can be shown that we really haven’t used it that well. It has become very popular over the years to use the medium to bludgeon those among us in the most rustic circumstances, to make decisions that aren’t going to pan out very well for them or their children in the long run.

Here’s the question I’d really like to have answered:

Is it by sheer accident that we use mass communication this way? Or does that have some sort of appeal to somebody somewhere? It seems like we’ve been really working at it. Pregnant girls should stay single…kids should think of their daddies as idiots…if your boss doesn’t give you four months vacation out of the year, you should strike. Every single nugget of this modern-day electronic “advice” seems to be advice that is wonderful for someone else, that no one with a brain would accept as their own.

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The Single Mom ProblemSaturday, March 29th, 2008

The Single Mom Problem
Saturday, March 29th, 2008