Or do they just fear American women? A frequent diatribe of American women is that supposedly “men are afraid of commitment.” Like most other feminist criticism to which we have been subject, this bit of prejudice displays not only a lack of understanding of men but also an avoidance of the truth. Anyone with normal powers of perception can see that men have been consistently stalwart in making commitments to lifelong, sometimes life-threatening ventures. Despite long odds against the highest levels of success, men make commitments to law, medicine, arts, professional sports, and military, among other things.
Although a gratifying career and respectable income are expected outcomes, the commitment to four or more years of post-graduate education leaves men with the law or medical degree but also with school loans the size of a home mortgage and more time ahead as overworked interns. The feminist who goes to the hospital must be able to simply ignore the commitment of the doctor who treats her—unless, of course, the doctor is a woman.
Many men make commitments to the arts with virtually no promise of fame or fortune. The many young men who make a commitment to sports have a better chance of ending up with the lifelong effects of physical trauma than with National Football League contracts.
My own commitments to writing and the sport of weightlifting have produced trophies, books, bylines, and aching joints, but very little in the bank. During World War II, my father fought with the United States Marine Corps in the south Pacific islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Okinawa. After serving his first tour of duty, he volunteered for a second. Fortunately, he came home alive, having been wounded twice. Evidently the feminists forgot the men who made the commitment to fight in that war and others to preserve the very freedom they use so cavalierly to condemn us. “But,” the feminists say, “we’re talking about commitment to a family, not that other unimportant stuff.”
My grandfather married my grandmother when he was eighteen years old. He remained in that committed, loving relationship until he died at the age of seventy-five. Needless to say, my grandmother was no feminist. She, in fact, held feminists in low regard. But, let’s move the calendar up. The United States 2000 census reported: “The number of single-father households rose 62 percent in 10 years” Does any of that sound like commitment to a family? In the same article, “Thomas Coleman, executive director of the American Association for Single People, attributed the rise in single dads to several reasons, including . . . more women choosing their jobs over family life.” Who seems to have been showing the commitment in recent years?
Men Are Making Commitments, Just Not With You
I know of several men who are committed to their marriages. They have all been married more than ten years, and they all have several children (by the same wife) whom they love and support in the home. Significantly, these men all have foreign wives from Canada, Costa Rica, and Colombia. Two of these couples live in the United States; the others live in South America. They are all happy; I have never heard any of the men say a word of complaint about their wives (by contrast, in recent years, I haven’t met a man married to a United States feminist who hasn’t complained about his wife). In fact, I can see for myself that those foreign wives are sweet, loving, and loyal to their husbands and also that they are just as beautiful after having four children as they were in their wedding pictures.
Perhaps we have arrived at the crux of the problem. “Men are afraid of making commitments,” American women claim. I have twice seen American men visiting Colombia make lifelong commitments of marriage to Latin women they had known for only two weeks. But Colombian women have a reputation for honesty, stability, fidelity, sex appeal, sex drive and for treating their husbands well. A man evaluating a commitment can look at an experienced doctor, lawyer, professional athlete or married man, balance the pros and cons honestly and make a decision.
That same man can look at Thai, Colombian, Peruvian, Filipina, Mexican or Canadian women who have been married for ten or so years (and/or talk with their husbands), and he can see how they treat their husbands and how they take care of themselves; then he can confidently make a decision about a commitment to the young foreign woman he loves. That’s how people make commitments: they weigh the potential rewards or moral necessity of the venture against the pros and cons of attempting it. Then they commit, or they don’t.
Committing To American Women Is A Mistake
A man in the United States has a problem with this strategy. The slim, long-haired, affectionate woman whom the man loves and who is screwing his brains out and promising him a lifetime of marital happiness doesn’t look or act at all like the married women around him. The married men around him aren’t happy. None of them are doing what they want and a lot of them are broke. They’re not getting laid at home. Their wives are fat. The divorce rate suggests a coin toss as a valid measure of success in a marriage to a United States woman.
The divorced men he knows have had everything they worked for (and committed themselves to) taken from them by their ex-wives, many of whom are “ex-wives” because of feminist oppression or cheating with other men. And, most unsettling, his instincts detect a level of selfish hostility beneath the veneer of kindness affected by his girlfriend, who additionally seems to have a lot of men around who are “just friends.”
Men are not afraid of making commitments—they are afraid of making a commitment to the wrong woman.
Read More: Single Women Want Your Money