Like a number of other commenters, I don’t think I’ve claimed more than that I can acknowledge where MRAs are coming from and that they bring some valid concerns. I don’t support the conclusions MRAs have reached based on these concerns though. As has been commented on upthread, there are a number of issues that men encounter in a sexist society that make their lives very difficult - I don’t think MRAs articulate this well, but as someone with a family who had a choice to live almost anywhere in the world, the US was one of a handful of countries that we eliminated out of hand. Sorry, but having spent about half a year living in the midwest I find it difficult to know where to start explaining why I wouldn’t want to live there for myself and my family (it’s a big and diverse country, but it wasn’t just for midwestern reasons). The amount of time people spend at work, the dependence on cars and money and lack of interaction with strangers, the oppositional nature of a lot of politics, the racism, the violence, the fear of losing your job, getting sick etc. As an American evangelical herself, my wife is very negative about American evangelicalism and its effect on the country. Talk radio deserves its own category. There were many good things too, but the negatives got to me and we are much more comfortable in Europe.
Where I talk about a 50/50 split, I think the work culture in the US is important. If I need to work to support my family, I’m happy to do that because they are very important to me. If this puts me on a track where I am expected to put in unreasonable amounts of time at work to support my family with the risk that if I do get divorced, my partner will be considered the primary caregiver and I will have to pay for the privilege of not seeing my kids, that is a really crappy outlook that I want to avoid, and I will actively seek to structure my working life to stop that from happening. If I expect my wife to go out to work while I stay at home, I care enough about her and her relationship with the kids not to put her in that situation either. Some women may be reluctant to have a family because they’re worried that they’ll be left with the kids and no support in the event of divorce, some men are also reluctant because they’re worried that their family and home will be taken from them and they’ll be left with a bill. 50/50 may not be possible in most cases, but the father’s role in a family should not be underestimated during the marriage and in the divorce afterwards. Maybe the father is trying to avoid child support by wanting 50/50, maybe he’s resisting the stereotype that a father’s contribution to a family is mainly financial (and you can get that from him after the divorce in any case).
In any case, I think having more humane working hours and more time with the family is a good way to avoid divorce in the first place, and to keep things fairer if it does end up that way.
ETA: one example of a culture with a lot of divorce and kids but good quality of life is Iceland - the Guardian has an interesting article on how the system works there:
‘[The high divorce rate] is not something to be proud of,’ said Oddny, with a brisk smile, ‘but the fact is that Icelanders don’t stay in lousy relationships. They just leave.’ And the reason they can do so is that society, starting with the parents and grandparents, does not stigmatise them for making that choice. Icelanders are the least hung-up people in the world. Thus the incentive, for example, ‘to stay together for the sake of the kids’ does not exist. The kids will be just fine, because the family will rally round them and, likely as not, the parents will continue to have a civilised relationship, based on the usually automatic understanding that custody for the children will be shared.
