Ehrenreich, Barbara. The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment. Garden City, NY, Anchor Press, 1983.
By: Brandon Locke
Barbara Ehrenreich’s The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment examines the economic agreement between men and women in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Barbara Ehrenreich earned a PhD in Cellular Biology, but has worked as a journalist and author for the better part of the last four decades. She is a noted feminist, democratic socialist, and political activist, best known for her 2001 book on the working poor, entitled Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. In The Hearts of Men, Ehrenreich focuses on the effects of the financial system that consumed marital life during the time, and the eventual flight from it. She argues that the single-breadwinner home is damaging for both men and women, though she focuses primarily on the ills it brought to men and the ways in which they responded. Through this examination, Ehrenreich examines the roots of the flight from marriage and shows that the well-studied Feminist Movement (which focused on work and fair wages) was only one side of a larger rejection of this system. She closes by showing that men were able to break the constraints of the single-breadwinner marriage first, but left women behind, stuck in the same economic prison.
Ehrenreich begins in the 1950s, with the breadwinner ethic that created the dependence of women upon men in a single-income family. Her explanation of the path leading to this system is a bit sparse, but she puts most of the blame on the rise of the industrial economy. The agrarian family of the pre-industrial era was a unit of production that was bound to each other for economic survival.[1] Following industrialization, men began earning a “family wage,” and women, generally unable to secure well-paying jobs, were completely reliant upon men for survival. Building on Claude Levi-Strauss’s gendered labor divisions, well paying jobs were labeled ‘male,’ leaving women dependent upon men for economic survival.[2] This social constraint made it difficult (if not impossible) for women to financially survive on their own.
From this introduction to the system, she moves into the social factors that were used to keep men restrained to this economic role. Although a number of government policies backed the institution of marriage, including welfare and social security benefits, she primarily focuses on the social side of the economic system that perpetuated inequality and forced the breadwinner role upon men. Psychiatry developed many theories that supported the idea that marriage and the breadwinner role were the only normal state for adult males, with unwanted diagnoses to explain men that desired other roles.[3] These men were often labeled as homosexual or mentally inept.[4] Homosexuals were thought to be in a perpetual state of adolescence and immaturity, and homosexuality was thought to be the ultimate escapism for men that just couldn’t handle the burdens of the family.[5] Riesman’s “other-directed men,” who exhibited feminine “softness” were deemed to be far too focused on their feelings to tackle the hard tasks that were required as a male breadwinner.[6] Because of the centrality of the workplace to masculine conceptions and economic needs, men who were feeling overwhelmed began complaining about the imposition of women in their lives, and talking about the strains of the growing American “matriarchy” rather than blaming the corporate world.[7]
Ehrenreich argues that men began to rebel against this corporate-matrimonial complex (my words) in a number of ways throughout the 1950s, and many influential social critics and respected scientists backed the cause. Hugh Hefner’s “Playboy,” first published in 1953, encouraged men to take their economic advantage and use it to pursue their own pleasures. Hefner and the writers at Playboy recognized the earning power of men, and depicted women as a needless limit on the freedom and fun that could be attained with earnings. Hefner created an image of women as money hungry and as controlling men. Playboy was among the leading proponents of the “marriage is prison” ideology, and did so in an incredibly misogynistic way. Ehrenreich places Hefner’s new male persona not in the realm of sexuality, but in male consumption and “freedom” from domestic life. Though many see Playboy as the harbinger of sexuality and sexual freedom, she places much more weight on its cultural impact. “Playboy was not the voice of the sexual revolution, which began, at least overtly, in the sixties, but of the male rebellion, which had begun in the fifties.”[8] She argues that nude women in Playboy were simply a counter-balance to the ideas they were pushing about leaving the marriage behind.[9] If a man were to do as Hefner encouraged, to brush aside women and marriage to pursue his fine tastes, he would be outcast by other men, accused of being homosexual, having a mental disorder, or having a serious lack of responsibility. By placing nude women amongst the encouragement to spurn marriage and enjoy wine and fine art, Ehrenreich argues that the magazine was bolstering the idea of heterosexuality for these new gender rebels.
The Beat writers also represented a major departure from the idea of single-breadwinner households. Unlike Hefner, they threw both the corporate world and the institution of marriage aside, and embraced the rebel ideal. In a departure from the machismo-ridden rebellion from the era, the Beatniks’ pursued free (sometimes homosexual) sex, the bohemian lifestyle, and the fine arts. The Beats were a target of ridicule from the mainstream, government, and even Playboy, charging them with all of the classic ideas about men who resisted the breadwinner role: childish, effeminate, criminal, and mentally ill. The Beats were widely smeared by many different facets of society, being labeled as anti-intellectual and violent, though both were resoundingly untrue.[10]
While many men were rebelling against the “confines” of marriage, scientists were beginning to argue that the standard male breadwinner role was harmful to men, both physically and mentally. The 20th Century brought a peculiar shift in the life expectancy between the sexes. Throughout the 19th Century, men outlived women. In 1920, women outlived women by two years, and by 1970, women’s life expectancy was 8 years longer than men’s.[11] Women, who previously had much shorter life expectancies than men, were beginning to outlive men at increasing rates, and the predominant medical opinion began to shift from genetic factors to social factors that influenced lifestyles.[12] Heart disease and unhappiness was blamed on the stresses of work and living up to expectations, lending credibility to the dissent away from the breadwinner economy and familial struggle.
Ehrenreich finds the (re)emergence of women in the workplace through the 1960s to be essential to women’s liberation, though it ultimately failed to re-center the gendered economic system. Through the 1960s, women were entering the workforce at about one million per year, meaning that, “…the old financial pact between the sexes could, at the very least, be renegotiated…”[13] Men remained attached to their privilege, and the male workforce was still central to masculine conceptions during the era, with men that avoided the burden of breadwinning labeled as a “failure or a faggot.”[14] Ehrenreich argues for a slight shift in this masculine binary during the late 1960s, owing to the unpopularity of the Vietnam War and the horrific stories of returning veterans. [15] Cold War machismo also began to die off, leading to an “androgynous drift,” where mainstream American men slowly warmed up to the traits of the counterculture, such as sideburns, art, and wine. Ehrenreich argues that the loosening of machismoist masculinity was the primary reasoning behind women’s emergence, rather than the acceptance of women’s skills or the acknowledgement of civil rights and fairness. Ehrenreich also suggests that homosexuals were distanced from heterosexuals; either as a distinct alternative lifestyle, or that of a gay people throughout the early 1970s.[16] This distinction made it easier for men to “soften” without being labeled effeminate or homosexual.
As more women entered the workplace, social forces against single men loosened, further freeing men from marriage and the breadwinner role. The men’s liberation movement allowed men to air their grievances about marriage as a criticism of the system, rather than a criticism of women.[17] In 1974, Warren Farrell came out with a successful book entitled The Liberated Man where he laid out twenty-one areas where men can benefit from women’s liberation.[18] Ideas about a “liberation from marriage” became much more accepted amongst the population through the 1960s and 1970s. In 1957, 53 percent of Americans believed that unmarried people were “sick,” “immoral,” or “neurotic;” by 1976, 33 percent had negative attitudes towards the unmarried, and many more were neutral or approving.[19]
Just as men were becoming more accepting of the feminist movement and an equalization of gender roles, an antifeminist assault began on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The backlash against the ERA, which would have rendered unconstitutional many state laws that limited women’s rights, was largely executed by women. These “antifeminists,” as Ehrenreich dubs them, hailed the ERA as an assault on women, which limited their “right to be housewives” and eliminated similar “privileges” that some women felt they had by not being expected to earn incomes.[20] Many of the women argued that the ERA would give men the full right to abandon women and no longer pay their way.[21] Ehrenreich compares several quotes from Phyllis Schlafly and other antifeminists to quotes from the misogynist Playboy, arguing that women spend all of men’s money and are dependent upon them to survive. Ehrenreich’s criticism of the antifeminist movement delves deeply into the movements connections with the John Birch Society and other right-wing organizations.[22]
Ehrenreich is, foremost, an activist and journalist, not a historian, and her background and focus do show through and cloud her historical analysis from time to time. She shows a lack of historicism, situating her narrative of ill-feelings, female dependence, and entrapment towards marriage as largely beginning in the 1950s. She blames this financial dependence on urbanization and industrialization, trends that began long before the 1950s, and she cites complaints that have been quite ubiquitous for at least a century, often flaring up during times of social change.[23] She doesn’t acknowledge that these predated her rebellion by quite some time. Though this may not derail her argument, she should acknowledge that these feelings existed for at least a generation, and these men may have had their own methods of rebellion that should be included or acknowledged. While her chosen time period may be the result of a tipping point that accelerated the issues or a variety of other factors, the past issues should not be ignored.
Ehrenreich’s study of the Beat Generation is a bit simplistic and underdeveloped, missing a very important aspect of their relationship with mainstream society. She cherry picks some examples of irresponsibility and rebellion against marriage (Kerouac and Cassidy abandoning women, Burroughs accidentally shooting his wife, Ginsberg’s homosexuality), and sums everything up by saying that they had their own sort of rebellious masculinity.[24] She ignores that these men were outcast by society at the same time that they were rejecting the socially prescribed responsibilities and norms. The three major Beat writers (Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs) were all disqualified from military service, thus alienating them from their generation, the “manly obligation” to serve their country, and the benefits that came to veterans. Although they did rebel against the corporate-matrimonial complex, they all carried these sorts of masculine suspicions prior to their rebellion, and were not subject to the “breadwinner subsidies” afforded to many other men of their generation. While this does not necessarily disqualify her argument, it certainly requires more delicate research and explanation than she currently has.
Ehrenreich’s final chapter on the ERA does something of a disservice to her overall argument. There is no doubt that her book is an appeal to men (and, to some extent, “antifeminists”) to pick up the feminist cause. Although her political motives are clear, her book is generally fair, well-researched, and informative. Her argument gets a bit lost in her section on antifeminists, as much of the chapter reads as a personal attack on Phyllis Schlafly and the other opponents of the ERA. Much of her criticism is focused on their ideas about women’s financial dependence on men and the “privilege” of not working, but the individual histories of antifeminists and their associations with the John Birch Society stand outside of the necessary arguments. Besides this slight departure, her argument stayed on track and was generally strong and concise. There were, however, a few places where she either missed an important topic, or could have scrutinized a topic more closely.
Although her focus was on the social and economic forces that created and upheld the breadwinner system, she fails to acknowledge the government’s role. Social security and some other welfare programs were only paid to men for much of this time, meaning that women were completely dependent for any public assistance.[25] There were many rules about property ownership that made it difficult or impossible for women to own businesses or land. Government support of the male breadwinner is an essential part of this narrative, and created a major barrier for women and excluded men to overcome.
Despite these shortcomings, however, Ehrenreich’s economic study of the family is a valuable contribution to the understanding of the changes that occurred to marriage in the 1950s and 1960s. Ehrenreich’s work certainly problematizes the long-standing idea of companionate marriage, which is largely based on the idea that marriage was becoming centered on mutual decision making, love, and affection. The historiography generally regards it as blossoming in the 1920s and coming to full fruition in the 1950s. However, Ehrenreich’s work places the financial bond between spouses – not shared decisions and emotions – as the underpinnings of marriage. Ehrenreich’s work clashes with the existing companionate narrative, showing that women were yet to have financial (that is, earning) power, and were tied to marriage by the system. Her work therefore calls for a serious re-situation of companionate marriage; reinserting the economic and necessity of marriage to men and women alike, with the companionate turn as a function of the slow undercurrent of a feminine presence in the public sphere. Once this economic and social dependence was loosened, companionship could more truly flourish.
[1]Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1983), 4.
[2] Ehrenreich, 7-8.
[3] Ehrenreich, 15.
[4] Ehrenreich, 24, 34.
[5] Ehrenreich, 24.
[6] Ehrenreich, 34.
[7] Ehrenreich, 36.
[8] Ehrenreich, 51.
[9] Ehrenreich, 51.
[10] Ehrenreich, 58.
[11] Ehrenreich, 70.
[12] Ehrenreich, 70.
[13] Ehrenreich, 99.
[14] Ehrenreich, 104.
[15] Ehrenreich, 105.
[16] Ehrenreich, 128.
[17] Ehrenreich, 118.
[18] Ehrenreich, 118.
[19] Ehrenreich, 120.
[20] Ehrenreich, 146.
[21] Ehrenreich, 149.
[22] Ehrenreich, 157-60.
[23] Michael Kimmel’s Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: The Free Press, 1996) describes the way in which men in the 1920s complained about demanding women and the supposed feminization of the workplace. Sharon Ullman’s Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) finds that men during this time period created the “nag” archetype in movies that depicted women as overbearing and demanding in response to anxieties about the constraint of men.[23]
[24] Ehrenreich, 54.
[25] Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 132.