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that is so dumb. your promoting abuse? morals can be a bigger reason why marriages end.

I discipline my husband when he gets out of line. Maybe?

Hi:

I so old I even remember the 50's. Women were treated like second class citizens. Most could not work, did not own property not even their own bodies. Without birth control they were subject to pregnancy after pregnancy. If you look at the death rate for mothers back in those days it was pretty sad. Abortions were deadly for the mother and the baby. If a man abused his wife the police did not care. I saw women in church every Sunday with black eyes. So there were a lot of hypocritical Christians. Children were property too, and men abused them without anyone in society caring. Women were not also welcomed in bars, unless they were prostitutes. At least it was that way for most of rural America. And oh yes, let's not forget black women. They had it even worse.
I've been married for 37 years to my sweet husband. It took me quite a while to undo some of the things like this that he was brought up with. But I'm not the leader in the family and neither is he. We make our decisions together, from buying big things like cars and houses to little things like what's for dinner.
Marriage is a partnership. Spanking your wife doesn't make you a man, it makes you a bully.
Let's not go backwards.

Were the answers ignorant, or just something you didn't want to hear? I don't know where you heard about those practices in the '50's - maybe the 1850's? Divorce is not trivial and not usually an easy decision to make - you must not have ever had to make that decision or your spouse divorced you for what you think are trivial reasons. I am a woman and I am a widow. Marriages are team work, which means both partners work at it, not just one - a strength in one may be a weakness in another - ideally, the man and woman balance eachother out. The marriage should be the power and authority between 2 adults that love and respect eachother, not a power play by one alone.

LOL this is not Ricky and Lucy ok? My dad never spanked my mother and I have not heard of such a thing except on I Love Lucy.

The reason marriages of past worked out was due to the fact that no matter what couples didn't rush to Reno and get a divorce. Couples back then - our grandparents time - went to church and religion was very much a fundamental part of the household. Also discipline was much stricter then we had no cell phones or hardly any tv's to distract us - we worked. After school we either played in the yard or had an after school job. Kids now don't do this. In fact, in the late 50's we were the first people in our neighborhood who had a color tv and people came to our house to look at it!! They had not seen it and no one else had one. But now we have alot more to spoil us. Selfish behavior causes ALOT of divorces in the country now. People need to have more patience and treat their spouses like they want to be treated.
I'm a woman 53 yrs old been around the block married now 13 yrs. Very happy too I might add. :)

did you know that in the 50's and before, it was common place for husbands to spank their wives as a way to discipline them? If they were disrespectful or otherwise disobedient and rude, most husbands would take their wives over their knee and spank them to settle the issue.
Think what you will about this practice, but it was common place not too long ago.

So, do you think that the disappearance of this practice is part of a larger issue of women increasingly competing for power and authoritarian status with their husbands in the home today?
DO you think that marriages would last longer and not end in trivial divorce these days if the man (or the woman for that matter) was deemed the "head of the house hold"?
It is true that marriage should be a team, but isn't it also true that all teams need a leader?
What do you think?
Please answer each of these questions and identify yourself as a man or woman and whether you're married or not.

Sorry to re-post, but I only got a few answers last time and they were for the most part- ignorant

Ha! Everything in today's world is disposable so why would marriages be any different? In the past divorce just wasn't allowed so people suffered in unhappy marriages. Today, couples divorce at the first sign of trouble. I'm not saying there haven't been times that I'd have loved to have left my husband but in the end we stuck through it and worked it out. Many people don't have that same view. There is just not as much long term commitment in anything any more. People change their jobs continually, their cars, their wardrobes... why not their marriages?