Equal Couples

Times are changing, but in ways that can make recognizing and understanding gendered power in couple relationships confusing.  Consider these examples:

Recently our clinical research team was discussing a young heterosexual couple that was seeking therapy.  The female was upset because her male partner quit work without discussing it with her and seemed to expect that she would support their young child.  The male partner seemed very attached to other aspects of masculinity such as building up his physical strength and did not seem to know how to listen or attune to her.  But he is actively involved in caring for their son.  The female partner wants him to carry his weight. 

Another student was describing a father who also wanted to quit his professional career and be the full time caregiver for their children. As we explored the case, it became clear that he expected to make the decisions in the family, including this one.  The wife objected to his decision because she said that when he has previously been the parent-at-home most of the household tasks were still left to her.

These cases illustrate both a trend toward gender role flexibility and the tenacity of male dominance.  In her history of marriage Stephanie Coontz reported that most men no longer wanted a submissive partner. But living up to these ideals takes more than shifting who does what in the relationship. It requires relating to each other from positions of equal worth and entitlement to shape the relationship.

Posted by Carmen

At the top because the US is always Number One?  Top ten?  Below Rwanda?

The answer helps explain why couple equality is sometimes so difficult. Nancy Folbre, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst gives us the scoop in her recent blog  Economix. There are at least four different published rankings that consider some aspect of gender inequality that include the US. None of them places the US among the top ten.

The best the US did was #13 on the Human Development Index which takes into account life expectancy at birth, enrollment in schools, adult literacy and per capita gross domestic product. It ranked 19th on the Gender-Related Development index. On a third measure, The Gender Empowerment Measure, which takes into account relative levels of political participation and decision-making power, economic participation and earnings, the US ranked 18th. On the Gender Equity Index, on a scale of 100, the US ranked 74th in 2009, below Rwanda.

We have written in earlier blogs about the ways in which corporate culture and social policies in our country continue  to work against gender equality in families. These statistics show how far behind the US is regarding gender equality relative to other countries, both developed and developing.

Post by Anne

Kirstee Williams, M.S., is a doctoral student in Marriage and Family Therapy at Loma Linda University in Southern California. She is part of a clinical research group that focuses on how to work with gender, power, and cultural issues in couple therapy.  Kirstee is particularly skilled in working with the emotional process between intimate partners and is currently conducting an analysis of infidelity treatment models to determine to what extent they may reproduce gender stereotypes (early conclusions suggest that they do, but that is a topic for another day).  Here Kirstee describes what she is learning about working with vulnerability in distressed relationships.  

 As a family therapist interested in inequality in couple relationships, I have been surprised by how subtle equality processes are. Our clinical research group uses a model of equality that focuses on mutual accommodation, power, vulnerability, and attunement.  As my eyes have been opened to these aspects of equality, many forms of unequal relating are easy to spot. For example, it now obvious to me how important mutual vulnerability is.  I have come to see facilitating male vulnerability within the couple interaction as a particularly important achievement in most successful couple therapy.

 Yet, the subtly of the equality process that follows male vulnerability becomes complicated. Most therapists would move toward helping the female respond in equally vulnerable ways in that moment. Although female vulnerability is just as significant as male vulnerability for equal relating over the long term, it is important to note that societal process have created different “starting places” for gender. A man’s willingness to be vulnerable (and take in other emotional experiences) may spark what has traditionally been considered to be “less vulnerable” emotions such as anger from females. Gender stereotypes tend to suggest that women should not be angry, or should have to keep the peace by privileging male experience over their own, often losing their “honest” voice in the process. Thus when a couple is transiting to more equal relating through a male’s willingness to be vulnerable, honest emotionality (including anger) from the female in response to his vulnerability may be the first sign of equality in the couple interaction and the first step toward more honest, sincere connection. I am learning how important it is to make space for this expression and help male partners accept and take in her experience.

 For example, I was working with a couple who had been coming for reunification after the husband had left the relationship for several months. He desperately wanted the relationship to work and was very interested in learning all he could about what it meant to be “relational.” His wife also wanted the relationship to work and was terrified to challenge him for fear that he would leave again. As a result, she tended to be extremely supportive and accommodating of his efforts. Throughout the weeks and months that followed we worked on many aspects of relationalty, but one particular aspect seemed to hold the energy to move the relationship forward—his vulnerability. As I coached him in becoming more vulnerable I could feel his wife responding differently to him. In session I explored this dynamic, and asked the husband to invite his wife to share what her increasing anger was about. She responded, “For the first time he is safe enough to be honest with.” Then she turned to him and said, “your leaving was devastating, I am very angry that you could disregard me and our relationship like you did.” The husband responded by nodding his head and acknowledging her right to be angry, actively staying in the vulnerable position in that moment. He then moved toward her to apologize again for his actions. For the first time since his leaving this couple had a sincere connection regarding the “incident.” 

 If I had expected this wife to meet her husband with the same amount of vulnerability he was displaying in that moment she would never have shared honestly what her experience of anger was. Several weeks later the husband commented in session, “I fall more in love with her every day, she has an energy there to get excited about.”

 Posted by Kirstee Williams

As I was reading about the intentional way Marc and Amy Vachon  create their own relationship (see my previous post), I was struck by their conscious resistance to falling into predetermined gender patterns.  I’m not sure we’re used to thinking of equality as resistance, but it really is.  Resistance is necessary in the face of established power dynamics that do not necessarily serve the needs and interests of individual couples.

Just today a student was describing a couple that he interviewed for a research study.  The husband said that he put family before his work.  But by default he ends up focusing more on his work than on what is important to his wife.  This happens because he does not intentionally focus on her and the old patterns take over.  To live by his ideals, he needs to intentionally resist old gender norms that invite her to focus on him, but not him to focus on her.   It takes small acts of resistance every day–at least until new patterns become ingrained.

Let’s hear it for resistance!!  How do you resist? What are your acts of resistance?

I just returned from giving a presentation in Puerto Rico.  Family researchers there described a very high rate of  sex with “secondary partners” among young couples. Their focus groups reported that women also claimed the “right” to extra-sex—non-emotional sex outside their primary relationships.  This seemed to be a way to gain equality. I’m all for women enjoying sex.  But I worry  about a model of equality that focuses only on individual freedoms without also including shared responsibility for the relationship.

Some of the questions  the Puerto Rican researchers had not yet explored were whether women were adopting a masculine model of relationship and if their relationship ideals and preferences were being compromised—in other words, were they playing by relationship rules defined by men?  These are important questions for women and men everywhere. In the old model of relating sex was often viewed as something men wanted and women didn’t. Women could use the “giving” of sex as a bargaining card. Women claiming their right to sexual pleasure for themselves as well as their partners is important to equality. But women simply becoming more like men seems to me a very limited answer. Sexuality between equal parterns imvolves so much more.

This topic is pretty new territory—one that Anne and I want to explore in more depth.  We need your help.  What does an equal sexual relationship look like? What issues are involved? How is equal sex part of a mutually supportive couple relationship? 

posted by Carmen

I suppose partners could be equally selfish or equally disinterested in the other.  Who would want that? Most couples aspire to mutually supportive relationships.  Next week at the annual meeting of the American Association for Marital and Family Therapy Doug Hunergardt and I will be presenting our model for helping couples achieve this ideal.  A key goal is fostering mutual attunement. We’ve taken this concept from Daniel Seigel’s work. According to Seigel, if we are really tuned into another we literally take on the other’s experience and are changed by it. This is a physiological process as well as an interpersonal one. As we tune into another our neurons begin to mirror our partner’s.

When we are genuinely tuned into another, we are more likely to be motivated to accommodate his or her needs and interests. However, changing ourselves for the sake of others is typically considered a feminine trait, and not a good one. Old psychotherapy models suggested that to be healthy we should not be so easily influenced by others. Siegel’s work suggests a new way of thinking about health. He shows how being tuned into others is good for us and for our relationships.

But if one partner is more tuned in than the other, a power difference results. This is not good for either partner. In our model of couple therapy, Doug and I help couples overcome stereotypic gender patterns that interfere with mutual attunement. The concluding chapter of Couples, Gender, and Power: Creating Change in Intimate Relationships also provides an in-depth illustration of how we do this work. 

We’d love to hear your responses to the idea of being changed by the other.  How do you address this issue? How do  you transform the gender and power issues involved?

posted by Carmen Knudson-Martin

Equality isn’t about making men and women alike. It’s about letting go of old stereotypes that limit options for both sexes. Most scholars who study gender differences conclude that stereotypes exaggerate the differences between women and men. Stereotypes make individuals less able to express their unique and interesting differences. Equality, on  the other hand, encourages each partner to be the person he or she uniquely is. The give and take and emotional sharing between two whole, different individuals give spice and fun to their relationship. Yet often, especially after we have children, we slip into the old pre-designed gender molds and invisible inequalities without even realizing it.

Marcia and Clay, for example, were initially attracted to each other because neither fit stereotypic gender behavior. She was outgoing, independent, energetic. He was emotionally expressive and caring. They started with ideals of equality, but after they had been married a few years they fell back into more stereotypically male and female roles. What had originally attracted them to each other closed down. They became less multi-dimensional people, less interesting to each other. Marcia, feeling, though not seeing, the expanding invisible inequality in their relationship, felt angry and depressed without knowing why. The bond between them diminished.

They had to take fast action to get back on the right track. Each partner needed to develop relationship habits that support equality. As they consciously worked toward expressing their whole selves, rather than the sex stereotypic roles they had fallen into, they began to enjoy each other more and sexual energy revived.

Posted by Anne

Most people think relationship equality is a women’s issue—or that equality comes at a cost for men. Not true!! We have known for a long time that men benefit from equality.  John Gottman got folks at the 1989 American Association of Marital and Family Therapy conference really stirred up when he reported that men who did more housework were physically healthier–and least likely to get divorced!

Equal relationships are good for both women and men.  Janice Steil found exactly that in Marital Equality: It’s Relationship to the Well-Being of Husbands and Wives. Partners who were equally able to influence each other experienced more intimacy, fewer feelings of depression, better well-being, and greater marital satisfaction for both men and women.

In my work with couples, once men recognize  the benefits of connection with their partners most are interested in relating more equally to get it.  Let’s stop thinking of equality as something that is only good for women. Men also have a lot to gain.

Posted by Carmen

Judith Warner, in her recent book, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, describes a “culture of total motherhood” that requires the suppression of the professional ambitions of many mothers and a total focus on their children. She portrays mothering demands so intense that women who can afford to do so often leave work to give full attention to child raising.

Warner observes that couple equality for many of these affluent couples has become a “pipe  dream.” After a generation in which sexual differences were downplayed, the “fact” that men and women are “just different” has again become a rationalization for women’s difficulty in managing both work and family. Now, however, this appeal to natural differences seems to be coming from women themselves.  Mothers run the home show. Men provide. Middle class intensive mothering, with its focus on perfection, control, competition, and the need to constantly work with children to prepare them for a successful future, leaves women little time and energy, not only for work, but for their husbands and shared family activities. Even sex seems to slip away.

Perfect Madness is the third book I have read recently about how the expectations of intensive mothering have narrowed middle class women’s lives down to a small part of their former selves. The equal marriages both they and their husbands expected and no longer have is just one of the many losses from this shrinking process.

Warner concludes that we should articulate – and find politicians to promote – a Politics of Quality of Life. Perhaps our current economic upheaval and political change will give us an opening to take stock of what really matters. How much is enough? What makes us happy? Do we all have to strive for the top? Couple equality is about more than making sure family tasks are divided up evenly. It is about an atmosphere of mutual connection and caring, the conscious working out of a family life that gives a sense of well being to every member of the family.

Posted by Anne

Why do we fall back into old gendered ways of thinking and acting when we really don’t want to? What keeps old attitudes and actions in place in spite of our desires to the contrary? In my last post I described two of the four social processes described by Schwalbe that help keep inequality in place. In this post I want to lay out the other two. If you haven’t read the previous post you may want to check that out first. The descriptions of these four processes gave me a better understanding of how “invisible” forces keep inequality in place. The forces aren’t really invisible, just so much a part of everyday life, so ordinary, that we don’t easily recognize the messages they carry.

3. Boundary maintenance refers to the ways in which powerful groups and individuals protect their positions by ensuring that their resources and power are transmitted to members of their own group. The “old boys’ network” and the “glass ceiling” still serve as barriers to many women, especially mothers, who want to work in fields traditionally dominated by men (Mason and Ekman). Boundary maintenance shows up in homes too. Husbands “help” their wives with housework and childcare. As long as they just “help” they can keep intact the boundary between men’s and women’s work. Men who do cross the boundary and engage as equal partners in family work may face pressure from other men or even loss of advancement opportunities.

4. Emotional management by superiors helps keep subordinates’ feelings of shame, anger, resentment, and hopelessness under control so they won’t erupt and cause problems. Subordinates are given tokens of appreciation or the appearance of status to distract them from awareness of their real lack of power. This is often done through language. For example, wives are told that their work is noble and that they are queens of their households. Mother’s Day is a big deal. Yet even in the home, a woman’s power may exist only where permitted by her husband. Today motherhood is publicly exalted at the same time that American policymakers and corporations balk at creating programs that support mothers and their children.

As I mentioned in my previous post, these four processes are theoretical. Do they ring true to you? Can you think of examples of how they work?  Are they helpful in thinking about gendered power?

Posted by Anne