[dougmwne]

This is taken out of context somewhat, so I'll offer it just to try to keep things balanced. This appears to come from Walter Isaacson biography on Einstein. At the time, Einstein's first marriage had deteriorated and they were already living apart. This was an offer to move back in together for the sake of their children. His wife didn't accept these terms and they divorced in 1919.

Also we're talking about 100 years ago in Berlin. It's a bit perilous to judge their relationship by our modern standards. I would say things have changed vastly for the better. I shudder to think how people in 100 years would view my lifestyle.

[throwaway_pdp09]

Not sure I agree. There were a couple of books I picked up as presents, they were reprints of a book ~100 years old, called something like 'advice for husbands' and 'advice for wives', something like that. They were ~2/3rds the same advice, and of course, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and frankly most if it was surprisingly sensible and relevant today (some still has the assumption that the man is in the superior position, and some is a bit painful, but perhaps not as much as you'd think).

OK, found it https://raffertysrules.blog/2011/04/18/donts-for-husbands-do...

Extract, make of it what you will:

Advice for Wives

Don’t interpret too literally the ‘obey’ of the Marriage Service. Your husband has no right to control your individuality.

Don’t let your husband feel that you are a ‘dear little woman’, but no good intellectually. If you find yourself getting stale, wake up your brain.

Don’t keep your sweetest smiles and your best manners for outsiders; let your husband come first.

Don’t grumble because his idea of work differs from yours. If he works hard at anything, let him do it his own way, and be satisfied.

Don’t refuse to see your husband’s jokes. They may be pretty poor ones, but it won’t hurt you to smile at them.

Don’t allow yourself to get into the habit of dressing carelessly when there is ‘only’ your husband to see you. Depend upon it he has no use for faded tea-gowns and badly dressed hair, and he abhors the sight of curling pins as much as other men do. He is a man after all, and if his wife does not take the trouble to charm him, there are plenty of other women who will. [Ouch!]

Advice for Husbands

Don’t refuse to get up and investigate in the night if your wife hears an unusual noise, or fancies she smells fire or escaping gas. She will be afraid of shaming you by getting up herself, and will lie awake working herself into a fever. This may be illogical, but it’s true.

Don’t be surprised, or annoyed, or disappointed, to find, after treating your wife for years as a feather-brain, that you have made her one, and that she fails to rise to the occasion when you need her help.

Don’t belittle your wife before visitors. You may think it a joke to speak of her little foibles, but she will not easily forgive you.

Don’t refuse your wife’s overtures when next you meet if you have unfortunately had a bit of a breeze. Remember it costs her something to make them, and if you weren’t a bit of a pig, you would save her the embarrassment by making them yourself.

Don’t chide your wife in public, whatever you may feel it necessary to do in private. She will not easily forgive you for having witnesses to her discomfiture.

Don’t call your wife a coward because she is afraid of a spider. Probably in a case of real danger she would prove to be quite as brave as you.

[dougmwne]

This "advice" makes me want to barf, but probably because I hold convictions about gender and sexuality that would have been extreme or unheard of 100 years ago. For me gender, is a flexible construct and sexuality is fluid and this "advice" reinforces abusive gender stereotypes.

So I am not claiming that Einstein's demands were normal 100 years ago (We can surmise that they likely were not given that Maric asked for a divorce instead). I'm not saying that we should look to their personal life as any kind of positive example. I'm only saying that I know they were working on an incredibly different set of cultural assumptions than I am. In their time, I don't know if they would have been judged by their peers as progressive or regressive. I judge them regressive, but what the heck is that worth?

[throwaway_pdp09]

I'm not discussing Einstein but saying that decent behaviour towards spouses evidences itself, up to a point I agree, back then. That's all I was getting at.

"Your husband has no right to control your individuality // Don’t belittle your wife before visitors // Don’t call your wife a coward because she is afraid of a spider. Probably in a case of real danger she would prove to be quite as brave as you"

This makes you want to barf? I mean, this is as good advice now as it ever was, and there are plenty of men & women who fail to follow it today. Other items are poor by today's terms, but you're dismissing it all as barf-making.

> I judge them regressive, but what the heck is that worth?

It's worth lots. Those who don't judge permit bad stuff to happen. Keep on judging, and change the world for the better.

[dougmwne]

To me it was almost all patriarchy disguising itself as benevolent wisdom and all the more insidious because it dresses itself up in father knows best clothes. Every bit of it is heavily gender stereotyped. It's not clever manners to refrain from controlling your spouse's individuality! Yikes.

Anyway I'm not offering this in the spirit of debate but in sharing. As a minority myself, I understand that we all stew in the pot of the majority and the powerful. In order for someone to extend an olive branch and offer you back your humanity, it had to have been taken from you first.

[throwaway_pdp09]

I don't get you. You want perfection and aren't willing to give any leeway to a book that is over a century old. Things were very, very different back then and I'm not sure you recognise that, or seem willing to recognise that.

> ...in father knows best clothes

Both books were written by a woman https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blanche-Ebbutt/e/B0034NHXDW

> It's not clever manners to refrain from controlling your spouse's individuality

I just don't know what to say. It's not acceptable, but people tried to then, they try to now, what is your complaint about pointing out it's wrong?

Your last sentence doesn't help - what minority are you in and why does it matter? The rest seems so negative and helpless

Not meant personally but I am confused by your response.

[dougmwne]

My entire point is that we need to give people from centuries past some leeway and make an effort to view their lives through the lens of their time. And we should view them through our current lens as well but we're not likely to learn anything but that we think our morality is the best morality.

My chain of responses is meant to highlight this tension. That I can personally find something reprehensible in 2020, but taken in it's cultural or historical context, also find it enlightened or inspiring. In the USA we have an increasingly militant progressivism and we close ourselves off to our own history if we can only judge things by one set of standards.

[watwut]

Nah, it was not normal by standards of 100 years ago either.

Edit: the "it was different time" is popular retort, but it rarely takes into account actual customs and realities of the time back. People just tend to assume that whatever someone else criticizes was unopposed standard back at the time, because it would feel good and was convenient. Societies back at time were as complicated as ours, often had strong standards of behavior - which just like in ours was often not followed in practice or lead to problems.

They were not "just like us except worst". Case in point, even if intra-family violence was way more common, both against kids (I don't mean light spanking I mean actual sever abuse) and women, it was criticized and seen as wrong too (and as such meant to be in-family secret).

[BlargMcLarg]

Its in bad taste, but I don't get the downvotes in this thread. Are people eager to hold an ego measuring contest against our ancestors?

The only things I know from my own experience: people resort to violence more quickly when stressed, and when its easier to hide. This doesn't really seem to have changed over the years. Its just easier to suppress yourself and others with the abundance of toys, media and tools available today, and its easier for people to find out you're mistreating others. Heck, if the current crisis is showing anything, its how tons of families can't stand being together for a long time, from complaining about kids to complaining having to share your room with your spouse. Culture has changed, but we're still the same animals we were 100 years ago.

Similarly, when it comes to emotions and social skills, what made a good spouse back then still makes a good spouse today. Treating each other like people, being supportive, allowing the other to excel instead of setting them up for failure, stimulating joy instead of frustration and sadness. The same goes for being a good parent, in supporting your children and stimulating positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement. Sure, our understanding on an academic level has increased, but that doesn't explain the similarities between then and now.

And frankly, I don't need a comparison between "the worst then" and "the worst now" to realize you should do your best for someone you share your life with a majority of the time. That 'best' has barely changed.