Love Between Equals: This Book Changed My Life Write-Off
Written: May 20 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Interesting and practical
Cons: None
The Bottom Line: This book showed me that what I wanted for my marriage was possible and that it was worth making the effort to achieve.
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| murasaki's Full Review: Peer Marriage: How Love Between Equals Really Work... |
I am not quite sure when I bought Love Between Equals by Dr. Pepper Schwartz, though I think it was shortly after I became engaged to my husband. I do remember cruising Amazon’s marriage section looking for a couples book recommended to me by an Army chaplain. I didn’t buy what the chaplain recommended, but the full title of Dr. Schwartz’s book really grabbed me: Love Between Equals: How Peer Marriage Really Works. That’s exactly what I wanted and had not been able to articulate to myself: a peer marriage. I did not want to spend my life working and taking care of children and doing housework and basically running myself into the ground. I didn’t want to be superwoman, I wanted a true partnership, that split the housework, split the childcare and both provided financially for the family. Love Between Equals showed me that the potential exists for every marriage to have equality and equity and the respect that those terms engender.
Overview
In Dr. Schwartz’s research for a previous book, American Couples, she discovered three types of marriage: traditional, near-peer, and peer. This discovery became the basis for Love Between Equals (originally published as Peer Marriage).
In a traditional marriage the husband works and the wife stays at home to raise the children and take care of the household. The roles are fairly clearly defined (and frankly, a left over from the 19th century separation of the domestic sphere from the public sphere that glorified motherhood and kept women “in their proper place”). The husband in the role of provider also has the financial backing of his income. Dr. Schwartz found that, in marriage, money does equal power, and in a traditional marriage, that power resides with the provider-husband: he is the ultimate decision-maker on how money is spent for the family; the family must accommodate his job schedule or relocate for his career; and the provider-husband expects more in the way of services from his wife, such as laundry and cleaning.
In a near-peer marriage, both spouses usually work. However, the wives tend to hold lower-paying jobs and have less fast-track careers than their husbands. Because of this, the near-peer wife must often relocate or change jobs to accommodate her husband’s career needs and choices. She also has the role of primary caregiver for the children and the additional household duties. In this marriage, the power still resides with the provider-husband, backed again by his higher income, while the wife has all the responsibilities of a traditional wife plus a job. (Since I knew that I would continue working after I married and had children, I did not want to fall into the near-peer trap.) Though some would argue that a near-peer wife does bring in money for the family, her smaller income frequently becomes subsumed into the larger household income and Dr. Schwartz found that she still has less power over how money is spent for the family, especially on big ticket items.
In a peer marriage, both spouses tend to work, but not always (the book gives a few examples of peer couples in which one spouse stays at home). One career is not more important than the other which often means both spouses make sacrifices at work for the good of their family. Peer couples share housework; they are co-parents; even if one makes more money, both spouses decide how to spend it. Since peer marriage eliminates the provider role, neither spouse has veto power and they must negotiate a compromise when their wants conflict.
Challenges of Peer Marriage
Dr. Schwartz noted several challenges facing couples who wanted a peer marriage, the first of which was eliminating the provider role. Most of the time, among white or Asian couples, this was more difficult to do; black couples, on the other hand, seemed to approach marriage as a partnership from the start. Peer marriages seemed to result in the following situations: one or both spouses had been married before and been very unhappy with the traditional or near-peer set-up and wanted their second marriage to be different; the woman was an ardent feminist; or the man did not want to be as distant as his father or treat his wife as like a servant.
My husband and I make nearly the same amount of money since we’re the same rank in the Army so I was in a position to negotiate for a peer marriage. After we became engaged, my husband nearly immediately, albeit unconsciously, tried to slip into the provider role. He wanted to know how much money he should give me every month for my mortgage. I was rather confused by this since my housing allowance paid my mortgage and I’d been just fine financially since I’d bought the house a few months before we became engaged. I told him to not worry about my mortgage and start saving for the wedding since we would be paying for it ourselves. I didn’t really understand what had happened until I’d read Love Between Equals. Traditional roles are difficult to shake, as Dr. Schwartz points out, because we’re comfortable with them, they’re familiar. Overcoming these roles is one of the greatest challenges of peer marriage.
Peer couples also face the challenge of co-parenting in which neither parent is the primary caregiver. Peer couples knew they had to hash out their discipline policies and how they wanted to raise their children. Women in peer marriages especially had to learn to resist the siren call of motherhood and not completely take over the childcare--even if the woman thinks she can do a better job. Most women grow up with better care-giving abilities through baby-sitting, etc., and have had more time to develop their skills. Men are perfectly capable of taking care of their children, but they have had less time to learn how to do it as well as women. It’s very important for women who wish to co-parent to step back and let their husbands have equal time with their children. In peer marriage, the marriage is the most important aspect and women have a tendency to lose sight of that when they have children. Additionally, society has a difficult time dealing with fathers who are co-parents. Schwartz related several anecdotes from co-parents who had to deal with teachers, doctors, neighbors assumptions that the wife was the primary caregiver. In one instance, a father took his child to the pediatrician. The doctor said things like, “Tell your wife he needs to take his medicine at this time.” The father was very frustrated and finally told the doctor, “I’m right here.” Co-parents often take turns meeting with teachers or going to school functions and this leads to confusion. Other mothers particularly tend to treat fathers as temporary fill-ins and exclude them from the “club.”
Lastly, peer marriages face the challenge of maintaining a passionate sex life. Sex in a “leaderless democracy” seems odd to many of us and once again clashes with our comfortable roles: men have traditionally reserved the privilege to initiate sex while women have reserved the right to refuse. In peer marriage, both partners have more equality and the right to initiate or refuse sex. Sometimes men are put off when their wives initiate sex more than they do. Women have to learn how to handle rejection when the man says no. The intense companionship of a peer marriage may also lead to feelings of familiarity that sap the passion from sex.
Benefits of Peer Marriage
Despite the challenges facing couples with peer marriages, I think that the benefits more than outweigh the effort. Peer marriages tend to develop between friends whose friendship becomes more and more intense over time. The companionship and the emotional support in a peer marriage are, as Dr Schwartz found, much more fulfilling. Men learn to become more emotionally available and how to hold up their ends of the conversation. Women feel that they get the emotional support they need.
Neither partner becomes exhausted with taking on all or a majority of the housework, all of the child raising, all or most of providing financially for the family. Both partners feel needed and respected and that their work has value. I have found that while many traditional and near-peer marriages among friends espouse philosophies like “raising our child is the most important job,” that job, usually falling to the woman, is less valued and takes a back seat to accommodating the man’s career because of the financial ramifications of not taking a promotion or relocating. Dr. Schwartz’s research bears out the conclusions I had already reached about marriage.
Peer marriage sexuality can also have a profound effect on both partners because of the intensity of their feelings for one another and the deepness of their emotions. In many ways, sex in a peer marriage, over the long haul, can be much more gratifying and intimate than sex in traditional and near-peer marriages.
One of the most striking aspects, to me at least, that Dr. Schwartz discovered in her research is that peer marriages, especially when the couple co-parents their children, have a much lower divorce rate. Dr. Schwartz hypothesizes that men who are as involved in their children’s lives as co-parents are, tend to be more emotionally attached to their children and less likely to leave the marriage because they do not want to be separated from their children. In traditional and near-peer marriages, it’s easier for men to leave because there is the feeling that their kids do fine without them anyway and it’s easier for men to detach themselves from their families. Even if I wasn’t a feminist, if nothing else had convinced me that I wanted a peer marriage, this fact would have.
This Book Changed My Life
While Love Between Equals is not specifically a how-to book, Dr. Schwartz does outline the characteristics of peer marriage and gives some practical suggestions for achieving one. I knew that I would not be happy in a traditional marriage because I intended to keep my job until I retired. I also knew that I would not be happy in a near-peer marriage in which most of the responsibility for the family fell to my shoulders. I wanted a partner, an equal, and I had the strength of will and financial backing to negotiate for it. This book showed me that what I wanted was possible and that it was worth making the effort to achieve.
This review is an entry is the This Book Changed My Life Write-Off conceived and organized by lyagushka, whom I would also like to thank for inviting me to participate. Please check out the reviews by other participants: 4rhodes, azielinski, cletta1201, darkhoney, dedemw, dramastef, faireheart, fionablackwolf, greatpilgrim, gungian, jankp, KatM, kurt_messick, kuuleimomi, lyagushka, mkp51, mothermeatloaf, snpmurray, and vormancian.
Recommended:
Yes
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murasaki
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