A Modern Traditional Marriage
Consider the statement: A husband should rule over his wife.
It is a scissor statement — that is, a statement that tends to divide people into two neat camps, with few people sitting on the fence. For much of history, the statement would have been pretty uncontroversial. Men undoubtedly had higher status than women. But in modern society, we hold it as an axiom that men and women are fundamentally equal. Traditionalists/conservatives hold that our ancestors had it right, while modernists/progressives believe that we need to move on.
On the one hand, a hierarchical family structure has been tested over time and we should be wary of rejecting the wisdom of many generations. On the other hand, many things have changed in recent history. Perhaps most pertinent to this question is the fact that women have gained much more economic power recently. There is still something of an income gap between men and women, but the vast economic power differential between genders that existed for much of history is more or less gone. This is a major change, and it makes it almost inevitable that gender relations will adapt accordingly.
So who do I think is right? The traditionalists or the modernists?
In my view, both are correct. A husband should rule over his wife, and husbands and wives should be equal. There should be a hierarchy and equality. It is a paradox. The traditionalists and modernists both have excellent reasons for answering the way they do. Whatever argument you would make to convince me of your correctness, let me assure you that I believe you — I am on your side. It’s just that I am on the other side, too. So the real question is, how do I reconcile these beliefs?
A Normal Beginning
Let me start by saying that I don’t actually believe all of the arguments of both sides. So here are a few things I do believe. If you disagree with these I am not saying you are necessarily wrong, just that the discussion below may not apply to you. You are not my audience. So here they are, my primary axioms:
Reproduction is the purpose of the husband/wife relationship. Human beings have many different kinds of relationships, but for the sake of this discussion the terms ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ refer to a male and female, respectively, who cooperate for the purpose of reproduction. If a man and woman get together for another purpose, say mutual pleasure or companionship, their relationship might be valid but this discussion just doesn’t really apply.
Men and women are biologically different. Many, if not most, of these differences are related in some way to optimizing for different reproductive roles. Importantly, men and women think differently. Male brains tend to have relatively more connections within hemispheres, which favors analytical thinking. Female brains tend to have more connections between hemispheres, which favors holistic thinking.
From these axioms my thinking proceeds as follows:
Raising children requires different kinds of investment/attention. For example, they need to be financially supported, and they need emotional investment.
Families operate more efficiently when a husband and wife assume specialized roles. Although the specifics can different greatly based on the individuals involved, it is often worthwhile for the husband to specialize in earning more income while the wife specializes in providing for the emotional needs of the children.
So far I would say the argument is proceeding along pretty traditional lines, so I want to take a moment to say that role differentiation does not necessarily imply hierarchy. Take a basketball team, for instance. If one person is playing the role of point guard and another person is playing the role of shooting guard, the point guard will probably get more assists and the shooting guard will probably get more points. Both can be of equal status on the team. And in fact, on some teams the facilitator (i.e., the point guard) is more prominent and on other teams a shooting guard (or an inside player) is more prominent. On some teams it is hard to tell.
If I left the argument here, I would expect you to be pretty disappointed. So let’s take a left turn.
Orthonormal Progression
Since the next part is going to get a little esoteric, I want to start with stating the main idea up front: the reason a husband should rule over a wife is that the role the husband should play in a family looks hierarchical from a male perspective. Specifically, the word “rule” implies a masculine type of power. An equal but gender-differentiated relationship, seen from a strictly masculine lens, will look hierarchical.
Let me explain. And forgive me if the explanation itself is largely male-coded. I am, after all, a man.
Male and female power exist in a relationship comparable to the relationship between real and imaginary numbers. Imaginary numbers are a different dimension of numbers that stick out at 90 degrees from the real numbers:
These numbers are useful for many things, including in modeling situations where one part of reality is more easily observed than another, hidden aspect of the same phenomenon. Take the forces of electricity and magnetism. These are actually two aspects of the same force. When an electro-magnetic wave travels through space it can be visualized as a force spiral that alternates between the two manifestations:
Like imaginary numbers and electro-magnetic, masculine and feminine exist in a yin-yang relationship as two aspects of a single, fundamental power. Let’s call the masculine aspect of power “control” and the feminine aspect of power “influence”. The term “control” reflects an analytical, focused kind of thinking while “influence” represents a holistic, motive-based way of thinking about power.
If you measure power from a control perspective, you should expect to see a power differential favoring the man, just as a sensor that only measures electric force will only see the electric part of a electromagnetic wave. The magnetic part is there, but you will only find it if you have the right sensor.
Evolutionary Psychology
One way of understanding the difference between masculine and feminine roles is that men are evolutionarily predisposed to take big risks, with the potential for high rewards. Successful men tend to want a wide influence (i.e., many children or disciples). But in achieving great success, men are more likely to focus on the arena that brings success to the detriment of the original reproductive purpose.
Women, on the other hand, are evolutionarily predisposed to take the more conservative approach of waiting to see which men are successful, and trying to extract resources from them and direct the resources toward their children.
Thus, men are more likely to be outliers in terms of intelligence and physical capacity. Furthermore, they are more likely to focus their competence on achieving economic success. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to be wise and focused more directly on the success of the children.
Another important part of the story is that men have a harder time recognizing their own children. A big part of this is that women actually carry the child during pregnancy, whereas men have a harder time keeping track of their sperm. Furthermore, a man focused on extracting resources from the environment might spend less time with his children, which can reduce the sense that he is passing on his cultural/spiritual identity. This presents a problem for a mother who wants to extract resources from him.
The point of bringing this up here is that giving men “control” can be a tactic used by women to influence men. More specifically, a woman can 1) give a man more confidence that the children are his, genetically speaking, and also 2) convince a man that her children are his spiritually/culturally. Thus, giving a man control can be an important way to manipulate him (i.e., cause him to feel good about investing in children).
Modern Traditional Marriage
In a modern traditional marriage, both the husband and the wife know about these evolutionary tendencies and they embrace them. Both the husband and the wife adopt the intentional project of raising children together and specialize in ways that suit them. The details will differ, but some patterns will appear based on common differences among men and women.
One healthy pattern is when a husband takes pride in providing economic security for the family and the woman takes pride in caring for the children more directly. But they also strive to ameliorate some fundamental insecurities that they each have. In many cases, the wife is insecure about the economic future of her children, while the husband is insecure that the family is his to begin with.
Since a man naturally doubts his position as father, he needs to put his stamp of identity on the family. By giving him enough analytical control to ease these doubts, the wife can secure the influence that she desires. Thus, the husband tries to increase the security the wife feels by maximizing her budgetary autonomy, while she attempts to make him feel confident that he is passing on his legacy.
In other words, an economically secure wife will naturally want to pass on resources to her children. A man convinced that he is passing on his legacy will naturally want to give resources to his wife. Thus, a man can have control (and thus “rule” over his wife) while a woman can exert an equal amount of actual power by influencing the ultimate use of the resources a man is able to extract from nature.