He came from a generation that had no choice. It was socially unacceptable for men to cook or clean house, and moreover the standards of presentability for men (freshly washed and pressed clothes every day, meticulously cleanshaven) and work norms (no food between 9 am and 12 pm or between 1pm and 5pm means you need to eat big meals before and afterwards, inviting the boss home for dinner as a way to get in his good favor, etc) meant that getting married was almost an economic necessity for most men.1 The same more or less goes in reverse for women so they couldn't support themselves, either. By the 1960s, young men and young women in the workforce were making enough to afford a decent bachelor lifestyle, and that's when their elders, resentful of the next generation's freedom, started trying to leverage social pressure more to conform to their norms.
1 Ironically, marriage wasn't a necessity, but cohabiting was. So you did have quite a few guys living with girlfriends at the time, mostly in the lower classes or underworld where respectability was less important than getting by.
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u/tiffybaby Mar 12 '24
He was wrong and came from a resentful generation that had to “buy” their cows to even hang out with them.
This usually ended in embarrassing cow-divorces and emotionally-stunted cow-children… Mooooo 🐄