Can you make up a topic for me - Essay Example

Response to family readings Engels talks about monogamous marriages in a positive manner downplaying its importance in a woman’s life but I disagree with his explanations about monogamy. Even though history as he depicts it is laden with men who are polygamous having sexual relations with their slaves and even taking up more than one concubine, the trend has not ended. The men may be in monogamous marriages but they still take up illegitimate sexual relations with other women outside of their marriages.

The worse thing with the monogamous marriage is that the husband most of the times still carries out illicit affairs but they are done secretly and the wife may never be aware of what is happening and when a discovery is made, it completely shatters the marriage. In this type of marriage just like in a polygamous one, the woman is still the one to suffer and do it alone as she is expected to remain faithful. Engels does not see anything wrong with such an arrangement which I also disagree with as it is not only unreasonable but it disregards the woman’s sexuality as well downplaying it to no importance at all.

The question heavy in my mind is whether monogamous marriages are really worth it if the men are still picking up the polygamous culture but doing it secretly (Engels 2004).I agree with the explanations Yuval-Davis provides about how women and their decision making ability even on their own reproduction is denied to them. They are made to listen to the policies being made and follow the directives given to them but not to complain. Women are not given a choice when it comes to their reproductive system as they are forced to have babies to continue the bloodline, fill a nation or even for social status.

In cases where Malthusian theory is being practiced, the female children born or unborn are killed and only the male survive and this is decided by the man and not the woman. Women simply have no powers whether it is productive or reproductive roles and they are simply like automatons controlled by the men and made to do what the men want and this is absolutely unfair (Yuval-Davis 1997).I agree that the society has continually put pressure on women to agree with them about each and everything concerning their lives and have even moved to their reproductive life.

Reproduction is the one thing that is and should remain private in a woman’s life and she should therefore hold all the reins when it comes to decisions about her reproductive health. She should be the one to make decisions about whether she wants a child or not and what time she is ready to have one and not be forced into it simple because a country wants to be filled or a bloodline extended.I however disagree with the Malthusian context of killing the girl and leaving the boy child alive as this is also another depiction of how unjust the society is towards the women from the time they are conceived and discovered to be of the female sex.

Work CitedBrady, Judy. I Want a Wife. New York: HarperCollins Customs Books, 1993. Engels, Friedrich. “The Monogamous Family” in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (eds.). Broadway NSW: Resistance Books, 2004. Kang, Miliann. The Managed Hand: Race, Gender and the body in beauty service work. California: University of California Press, 2009. Yuval-Davis, Nira. Gender & nation. New York: Sage Publications, 1997.