About Love Critique - Essay Example

A Critical Analysis of Danielle Crittendens "About Love" What Danielle Crittenden wrote about love is quite interesting although I beg to disagree onmany of the points that she has presented. No, I have nothing against women who choose to give up their careers and focus all their energies in making a home for their families but I cringed at the thought that marriage is a kind a of light at the end of the tunnel that all of us must embrace in order to be happy. Although I have high respects for the author, I would rather not call marriage as a liberating experience as she would want it to be nor do I agree with her implications that our generation today is self-absorbed, less committed than the previous generation whose capacity for love has shrink and withered as we wait for the perfect one to come along (196). For many generations, women have been forced by society to conform to sets of norms. Even in this present generation, many people still believe that women need to get married and have children to be complete. As Crittenden kindly put it "A woman will not understand what true dependency is until she is cradling her own infant in her arms; nor will she lively achieve the self-confidence she craves until she has withstood, and transcended, the weight of responsibility a family places upon her – a weight that makes all the paperwork and assignments of her in-basket seen feather-light (976)." Yes, motherhood is a big responsibility and caring for a family is something that should never be taken lightly by any woman or even by a man for than matter but the point is, womanhood is not just about making babies and caring for the family. Such idea is too simplistic. Its like putting a woman inside a box and limiting her potentials and capacities. The sense of wisdom and maturity does not only come when woman gets married and have children of her own. The author may not be aware of it but a lot of women and men for that matter get married, have children but never really grow up both emotionally and mentally. Growing up should never be tied to the idea of marriage and having children. We are not cows that are grown so that they can breed when they reach maturity. We are human beings and we a have a choice when it comes to these things. Another thing that the author failed to mention here is that marriage is not a means to and end. You do not get married to grow up, to be become more responsible, to be "stronger" or to be happy as the author would like to believe. Besides, a lot of people who are married are not happy at all. Just look at the staggering divorce rate that we have and you will get a good idea of how married as a social institution is doing nowadays. This just goes to show that marriage in itself does not bring about the kind of stability that the author would like to see. People are dynamic by nature and they tend to change a lot as time goes by. Are those people who change their minds about something immature and irresponsible? I must say that not all people who change their minds are immature or irresponsible. People change their minds along the way and not even marriage can stop people from changing their minds. Stability and consistency is more or less like a myth when it comes to marriage. If you want consistency and stability, try the computer. It will always give you the same information that you inputted into it. Marriage is something that comes as a consequence of falling in love. This means that you only get married because you have found "the one". I therefore strongly disagree with the authors contention that we should "begin preparing ourselves to settle down." Fine, we all need to take dating seriously but that does not mean that we should always see dating as a tool for settling down. Dating is our modern time is a means of socializing. Just because you dated someone that does not mean that that person already qualifies as a prospective lifetime partner or something. You can date someone because you want someone to talk to or you can date someone because you feel the need to be in touch with another human being. You dont have to make that poor chap marry you after you have dated him a number of times! I also disagree with the author when she said that we need to start early in our quest to find the right partner to settle down with. I do not believe that love has a deadline. Just because you age is already way past the number of days in the calendar that does not mean that you are no longer entitled to go dating and be romantically linked to the opposite sex. You cannot hurry love and no, our reproductive capacities as women should not be used as a gauge as to when we should get married. As I said before, marriage and womanhood is not just about making babies. Just because a woman cannot have a child that does not mean that she is less than a human being or that she is not complete. We must understand that completeness and contentment are relative things. Yes, a marriage can be a lot more fun if we children but even a childless union can be very meaningful if you love the person that you married. A lot of married people stay married to each other till the end even though they did not have any children. Although I disagree with a lot of things that the author said in this article, there are also some points that I like in her discussion. First, I agree with her when she said that fear limits the capacity of people to love. In believe that the fear of losing oneself has become an excuse for many people not to give a piece of themselves to others (977). Many of us are afraid of letting other people get too close to us because we fear that they will lose interest in us when they know our weaknesses. We also try to keep other people at bay because we fear that ones these people get to close to us, they will break out hearts or cripple our style. Unfortunately, our fears can make our lives more miserable. A lot of people are content with living on their own but there are even more people who would like to be in a loving relationship. Second, I agree with the author when she said that a lot of women feel that marriage entails with it a lifelong domesticity that is why many women would like to put off marriage as long as possible. Even in our present generation when equality between women and men are being actively promoted, not all families practice shared parenting and shared household work. Our society still looks on the women to run the home despite the fact that most women nowadays are already actively practicing their career. The idea of balancing time and energy in running a home and practicing a career often make women turn their backs on marriage. No, it is not that these women cannot be bothered with having children; it is just that these women simply cannot handle both the task of raising a family while trying to break the glass ceiling at the workplace. Unfortunately, by the time these women reach the heights of their success, the good men around them are already married and having children of their own. Finding the perfect mate at this point can be quite difficult that even these women would want to get married, they wont be able to find a suitable partner. As a whole, the article of Danielle Crittenden is well written but its arguments are mostly based on the sentiments of the author and less on facts. It appeals on the emotion rather than on the logical thinking of readers. Unfortunately, without strong factual basis, the arguments presented by the author about love and marriage are nothing more than lip service. Work Cited Crittenden, Danille. "About Love". 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