Prenups

[Sheena815]

Having a successful lineage is one's true legacy...

 

Nah, not to me its not. I'd rather my legacy be the good life I've lived myself and the contributions I will (hopefully) make to medicine, the world, etc. One should never presuppose that their children will be successful, or even decent people (much as we wish they all were). And what if they don't have kids themselves? What if you or your wife ends up infertile and you have to adopt? Just askin.'

[ploughboy]

K-Fed terrifies me. Point illustrated.

 

Who would have thought that he'd turn out to be the sane, stable, sensible one in that marriage?

 

[mcater2006]

Jokes aside, my plan for this summer is to read lots about same-sex couples and how they handle parenting, household chores, etc, compared to traditional couples. My women's studies prof (who's in a same-sex relationship) gave me a ton of resources, so I'm looking forward to learning more.

 

Way to go Jochi! Your actions are very Canadian. You have my unwavering support!

[mcater2006]

Having a successful lineage is one's true legacy....But without procreation one can't have that.

 

I wouldn't be so sure, Wolvenstar. With all the cloning and genetic engineering going on, I am inclined to think that our days of chance-based sexual reproduction might be numbered.

 

And I also think the church might like that, since nowadays they are always condemning "pre-martial sex" and such, with these new technologies, sex becomes unnecessary, so church is

[mcater2006]

One should never presuppose that their children will be successful, or even decent people (much as we wish they all were).

 

Totally agree.

 

And I would also like to point out the ironic fact that it is usually the children of successful achievers like us who ends up doping, ganging and becoming big losers.

 

The reason being that they are born into families of such incredible material wealth, that they become spoiled brats early on and will not listen to anyone but themselves.

[Wolvenstar]

Totally agree.

 

And I would also like to point out the ironic fact that it is usually the children of successful achievers like us who ends up doping, ganging and becoming big losers.

 

The reason being that they are born into families of such incredible material wealth, that they become spoiled brats early on and will not listen to anyone but themselves.

 

 

 

That comes from a person being a poor parent. If all you have is skills in business than, ya your going to be a ****up of a parent and your kids will be complete failures.

 

Being Successful doesn't not mean that one is a poor parent, or that one's kids will become completely useless. It's not the amount of money that one has that determines a child's attitudes and beliefs, it is how he or she was raised and parenting skills of the parents.

 

 

If your successful or not, the success of your children is dependant on how good of a parent you are. Sure there are other factors that can affect this, but parents are the first and biggest influence. If you grow up in the crappiest family conditions possible, it doesn't matter what kind of school you attend, you will be a spoiled brat.

 

One of the problems with society today is the poor skills of the parents and the fact that they won't take responsibility for their children anymore. Back in the day, family actually meant something and people made sure that their children were behaved enough as not to dishonor the family name.

[jelly31]

That comes from a person being a poor parent. If all you have is skills in business than, ya your going to be a ****up of a parent and your kids will be complete failures.

 

Being Successful doesn't not mean that one is a poor parent, or that one's kids will become completely useless. It's not the amount of money that one has that determines a child's attitudes and beliefs, it is how he or she was raised and parenting skills of the parents.

 

 

If your successful or not, the success of your children is dependant on how good of a parent you are. Sure there are other factors that can affect this, but parents are the first and biggest influence. If you grow up in the crappiest family conditions possible, it doesn't matter what kind of school you attend, you will be a spoiled brat.

 

One of the problems with society today is the poor skills of the parents and the fact that they won't take responsibility for their children anymore. Back in the day, family actually meant something and people made sure that their children were behaved enough as not to dishonor the family name.

 

Oh man, don't even get me started on this!!! It truly does come back to the family of origin and the messages children learn from their parents.

[clive]

Totally agree.

 

And I would also like to point out the ironic fact that it is usually the children of successful achievers like us who ends up doping, ganging and becoming big losers.

 

 

I think it's quite the opposite... high SES is correlated with better health, education, etc.

 

If you go Jane & Finch I think there will be a higher proportion of ppl doping, becoming gangsters and losers than in Forest Hill...

[SpanishFly]

"If you wanna keep a man, you have to shut up and play by the rules" Charlotte York, Sex and the City.

 

Lol sorry, its just so fitting with the whole idea of some of the guys on here talking about how men are, well intimidated by ambitious and successful women. I came across a show today called "The real housewives of orange county" (yea i was really bored) and basically, it unfortunately echoes what the guys here are saying: they want their wives to stay home and take care of the kids. In fact many of these women were talking about how they used to be succesful career women until they married their fortune 500 husband who then wanted them to stay home and have dinner on the table by 5. And none of them were really happy, in fact one lady got so bored from being home all day that she got a boob job

[Zuckman]

A lot of men are not 'intimidated' by an ambitious, successful woman. Some men just make smart choices for something 'better'. I would rather date a woman less ambitious, looks after the kids, and works decent hours. To me, a woman who works as a doctor or lawyer etc. is a far worse wife.

 

A woman with a family focus over a career focus is HOT! It's simply more attractive to me! The reason I probably find it so attractive is because I am so career focused myself. Someone family focused calms me down and is a compliment to my life. I feel she'll be a better mother and wife. I can also imagine starting a family with a family focused woman. These thoughts never even enter my mind with a career focused woman. I instinctively know that a career focused woman would never work with me.

 

Zuck

[Wolvenstar]

"If you wanna keep a man, you have to shut up and play by the rules" Charlotte York, Sex and the City.

 

Lol sorry, its just so fitting with the whole idea of some of the guys on here talking about how men are, well intimidated by ambitious and successful women. I came across a show today called "The real housewives of orange county" (yea i was really bored) and basically, it unfortunately echoes what the guys here are saying: they want their wives to stay home and take care of the kids. In fact many of these women were talking about how they used to be succesful career women until they married their fortune 500 husband who then wanted them to stay home and have dinner on the table by 5. And none of them were really happy, in fact one lady got so bored from being home all day that she got a boob job

 

 

 

Oh god, please don't tell me you actually watch either of those shows. Ugh, anyways well I can't speak for everyone but I think i made it clear that I would like marry a woman who would stay at home with the kids for the sake of the kids, not because I am intimidated by her intelligence. I also said that once the children got older than it would bother me if she worked part-time and slowly increased in her hours.

 

It's really quite funny but I have actually heard that same ruled applied for men in a traditional (man is breadwinner, wife stays at home) household. Lol I may be stubborn in many aspects, but I do know how to say "yes dear,".

 

 

 

You must be asian.

 

 

I am not sure if I should take offense to that, but no I am not asian, nor do I have any asian blood in me.

 

I am of european descent, although my exact heritage is unknown, as I am adopted. Many people say that I look Russian....cepts my pol friends but they are biased.

 

As to what you quoted, I was raised with stories of white knights, honorable conduct, and the belief what one does reflects upon ones family. My family is very close, and we help each other out very much, sharing wealth and making sure everyone owns their own home, gets an education and attains a well-paying job.

 

I have always loved the more archaic views of family, considering family back then was more close-knit, etc. Mind you I don't expect to be arranging marriages for my daughter or anything. I am the traditional type to ask a father for his daughter's hand in marriage, before asking her....although if he said no I would ask anyways, lol. But ya I still love the stories about knights, and the way they live by a code of honor. Just like the social norms, I have not adopted all of these rules, but I do have what I consider my own code of honor.

 

It's probably the reason why I hold everyone around me to such high standards, although it should be stated that I expect even higher standards from myself.

 

 

 

Clive you are right and wrong. Lower high class and higher low class you tend to see less of those problems, it's when you get to the higher ranks of the high class where I think you see alot of parents who are business moguls, but couldn't raise a rock much less a child. That's where this idea of spoiled rich kids coking out come from.

[mcater2006]

Back in the day, family actually meant something and people made sure that their children were behaved enough as not to dishonor the family name.

 

Hmmm...somehow that brings up mental pictures of Pakistani Tribal fathers honour killing their daughters for "dishonoring" the family name. I think that would be giant step backwards for Canada if we started to apply that mentality to our society here.

[Jochi1543]

Hmmm...somehow that brings up mental pictures of Pakistani Tribal fathers honour killing their daughters for "dishonoring" the family name. I think that would be giant step backwards for Canada if we started to apply that mentality to our society here.

 

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought of honor killings when I read that, lol.

[Jochi1543]

I am the traditional type to ask a father for his daughter's hand in marriage, before asking her....

 

This is a nice-sounding tradition, except for it essentially makes a woman a man's property. I'd be really disturbed if the man I dated asked my father to let him marry me before he asked me - I'm not my father's property.

[mcater2006]

I have always loved the more archaic views of family, considering family back then was more close-knit, etc.

 

Yep, and wives back then cannot withdraw money from her bank account without husband's permission, and when husband wants to have sex, wife cannot say "no". Between your "archaic" family and the modern egalitarian North American family, I would pick the modern egalitarian North American family, hands down, any day.

 

But ya I still love the stories about knights, and the way they live by a code of honor.

 

Actually I had heard from my high school English class that the historic King Arthur and his knights of the round table were probably nothing more than bandits that also looted the hell out of British peasants. The problem with medieval studies and chivalry is that ppl tend to develop these romanticized notion of that period in time. Whereas the reality is anything but. Ever wonder why we had the Renaissance? -- ppl got sick and tired with the middle age and feudalism and crap like that, they wanted modernity!

 

Although I'm against communism, but this quote from Marx is still one of my favorite:

 

"Gunpowder, compass and the printing press -- these three inventions heralds the era of modern capitalism. The gunpowder blew the knights into fine dust..."

[mcater2006]

Wolvenstar:

 

There are two places where I think you should go look for your ideal wife (and to stay there after you got married):

 

1. FLDS' YFZ ranch in Eldorado, Texas.

 

2. Saudi Arabia (if you don't mind not being able to see how your wife looks before the marriage night, and also the fact that you are forced to convert to Muslim).

 

The wife you will get is about as close to your model of the "ideal" stay-at-home look-after-the-kids wife as possible. As a bonus, you get to marry more than one wife, at the same time. So the chance of you passing on your genetics/having multiple successful lineages/leaving multiple legacies/being an Abraham is maximized. The only caveat is you cannot come back to Canada, because the Canadian authorities will have you nabbed on polygamy charges.

[Wolvenstar]

Sorry guys double post

[Wolvenstar]

First off, I am probably the least sexist person you will meet. Why do I say this? Because I don't care what gender a person is. I look at it this way, a person's actions and what they say tend to be independent of their gender. Both gender's have an equal chance of pissing me off[MCATER] (or conversely, earning respect from me). When I deal with people I do not notice, or at least actively think about what gender they are. So stop thinking I mean something sexist everytime I say that there is some part of the old ways that I like. To put the final nail in the coffin, here is one last reason that I can not be sexist. I am spiritual and the diety I worship is female. This is called Wiccanism and it is highly individualized, and now I am not going to start discusssing it. I am also going to ask that you do not say anything derogatory about my beliefs, as I try to as polite as possible when it comes to all other religions.

 

And yes I am highly offended that you just instantly assumed i was speaking about ridiculus honor killings when I mentioned honor, especially after mentioning that it was associated with the fictional "White Knight".

 

Arandill was a million times closer asking me if I was asian, when I mentioned honor than you were asking me about honor killings. First off I will again state I am caucasian...THE FARTHEST THING FROM PAKISTANI!!!! Secondly I already stated I viewed honor as a personal code of conduct. Just because I say the word Honor, doesn't mean you can just make assumptions as to what I mean. You should have read the second post where I associated it with the european fictiona; "white knight" of the medieval times.

 

Now again you should realize that when I say stories, that they weren't accurate. But to a child hearing a story, historical accuracy doesn't matter. Nor does it matter when i am talking about the ideals I picked up from a story as a child, such as "a code of honorable conduct" aka "honor". So as to what your highschool teacher said, I don't care, since it doesn't have any impact on what I saying. Idiot.

 

Bear with me I am pis**** and trying to stay calm.

 

Jochi,

 

I can understand that you can find the reasons behind the tradition offensive. I would do it to honor the tradition of a father giving away a woman to her betrothed. This does originate from old gender-biased views, but so does a father walking his daughter down the aisle, which was a symbolic gesture of a father giving away his daughter to her betrothed. But no one sees that as sexist.

 

Perhaps I should reword what I said:

I would ask the father for permission to ask his daughter for her hand in marriage.

 

It's kinda like that country song, "stealing cinderella" where the singer speaks of going to the father's house to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage, I see it as a romantic gesture, one that is very oldschool.

 

 

MCATER

 

There are so many thing I wish to say to your right now. For the sake of civility, just stop making rash assumptions, before I blow a gasket.

 

For the sake of continuing the discussion I will make a very broad overview of what the values I liked about the oldschool way of life.

 

The traditional view that I always enjoyed were that a husband and a wife were expected to cooperate and work together as partners to create a successful marriage. There are certain values that empasize this partnership that are not gender biased. These values are the ones i tend to highly regard.

 

As you say, in today's "modern egalitarian" family structure (and remember modern mean's today not the family you were raised in when you were a child ten years ago) the husband and wife are competitors rather than partners, and I believe this is one of the main causes for divorce.

 

It does not make sense to just assume you know what I am talking about. It makes even less sense that what I am talking about is the old values of gender bias. Lastly when I say archiac, I don't mean old, I mean archiac. That means pre-catholic.

 

You know back in the pagan times...when women could be priests...when there were religious sects that were exclusive for women. People always think that the entire past was always gender biased, but i believe it is the catholic church and all of its christian branches that stressed any gender issues that were previously were. Let's not forget that egypt was once ruled by a woman. Now before you make some hugely wrong assumptions. I am not saying these times were perfect. I am not saying that these times were all about equality. I am saying they are not as bad as the christian/catholic church. I believe that we would have reached gender inequality alot sooner if it wasn't for the rise of the catholic church, and that we would have a lot less gender issues than we do now.

 

 

 

 

Arandil, I hope I haven't offended you, nor you Jochi. Both of you make reasonable points without making crazy assumptions. I have respect for both of you. Jochi, while you might have thought firstly about crazy paki honor killings I am glad you were reasonable enough to think that It might not have been what I was talking about.

 

 

 

 

Now I have mentioned honor as being a personal code of conduct. Again this doesn't mean that I honor kill my daughters. If you were a fanatic of the old literature surrounding white knights and honor, you may have even read a few books that list the sort of rules a knight lived by.

 

Never raising a hand against a woman was one of those

So was defending the poor and helpless.

 

When it came to the family dynamic, it meant raising your children properly, so they would not be corrupt; partaking of drugs, dishonoring thy partner, breaking the law.

 

I am not completely rigid, I understand that kids always try stuff once, and can get into trouble. But i believe that if one has good family values and strong parenting skills that they can raise their child(ren) to be a good person (people).

[Wolvenstar]

btw don't ever call me middle-eastern again. And just to stop you from making a bigger mistake, don't insult me by calling me american either. I don't consider being called middle eastern to be an insult as I am not racist, but in the context you used it, it most certainly was.

[mcater2006]

Sorry Wolvenstar, it's nothing personal, I was just trying to make a point. I think it's the same point that all the other people in this thread (especially the ladies) tried to raise, but did not do so in a more forceful and frank fashion. I might have exaggerated some parts of what I wrote, but all I'm doing is driving the point home -- the values you are trying to espouse here are very unCanadian, and they don't belong to this forum which talks about medicine -- one of Canada's most prestigious and dedicated profession -- and a profession that will shortly see the number of female physicians overtaking the number of male physicians (in fact women's enrolment into most Canadian medical schools already outnumber those of men's). And frankly your notion of stay-at-home mom offends me and pisses me off even more than I might have pissed you off. What if you died in a traffic accident? How then do you expect your stay-at-home wife, with no education and no marketable skills, to make a living and provide sustenance to your children?!

 

The rights, freedom and independence of women have become a standard weight-bearer in measuring the progress of the countries of the world. It's what separates us from third-world countries. I hope that in the future you might understand a little of the rationale behind that.

[Zuckman]

As you say, in today's "modern egalitarian" family structure (and remember modern mean's today not the family you were raised in when you were a child ten years ago) the husband and wife are competitors rather than partners, and I believe this is one of the main causes for divorce.

 

I totally agree. Btw, I'm caucasian, totally raised in Canada.

 

I believe if there are kids in a family, one of the partners should be more the breadwinner than the other. I think in most cases the woman should spend more time at home. I believe this is more natural (I know this statement is going to cause a fuss). I think a baby should develop that emotional contact with the mom...partly done through breast feeding and this is just not possible through the father. If this is not possible, then having the man spending more time at home is alright too.

 

Zuck

[mcater2006]

o_O oh god, can I stay single instead?

 

I think staying single back then is even worse -- you don't get to have any bank accounts (let alone any credit cards).

 

The part about the credit card is a true story. It was the personal experience of my ancient civilization teacher in the Mississauga high school I went to who one day recounted her difficulty in getting her credit card application through after divorcing her husband in 1970's Canada. So as you can see, Wolvenstar, even we Canadians are not so far off the Stone Age ourselves, we've left that now, and we are NEVER going to go back to it again! Ever!

[SpanishFly]

Just to bring this heated discussion down to a simmer, I thought I should mention that there really is no reason to be bringing up ethnicity into this, because as Zuckman and Wolvenstar have so adequately expressed, a diverse range of ethnic groups can actually share beliefs (shocking, I know!). Anyways, I think it comes down to family values and not so much ethnicity (obviously on the whole, your culture has an impact), but my family is a good example of the fact that you don't have to be pigeon-holed into the standards of your culture.

 

secondly, I think its pretty juvenile to assume honor=honor killings. First of all (I'm not pakistani or asian btw), not all families who believe in family honor necessarily believe that if one of their daughters does something wrong, that the only course of action is to behead them, nor does it mean they are fanatical for holding family honor in esteem. I think its important to try and uphold your family honor, but I would NEVER consider killing or banishing my child for making a mistake...it seems like we're forsaking some very important values in the name of progress, when 'progress' itself can sometimes be very backwards.

 

To Wolvenstar: nobody's trying to attack you, you just have to remember that some people feel very strongly about their independence and freedom, especially women, because for so long we have been held back (and still are). I get that your spiritual beliefs lead you to value women, but you need to remember that your idea of equal treatment may not be shared among some of the girls on here. I personally have no problem with men who would liek to work for a living and would like their wives to stay home, because i'm sure there are women who would like this as well. I just don't think its right for a man to think that all women should feel this way (and I know you don't feel that way). As for the who your attracted to question goes, its a personal choice, and as far as I'm concerned, if a man isn't attracted to me because I'm just as successful as he is, or more, than I don't really want a man who can't handle a girl like me anyways.

[supafield]

 

And yes I am highly offended that you just instantly assumed i was speaking about ridiculus honor killings when I mentioned honor, especially after mentioning that it was associated with the fictional "White Knight".

 

 

 

Bear with me I am pis**** and trying to stay calm.

 

 

Take your own advice

 

Too bad this is just a online forum and no one should really give enough of a damn about what is said to get upset. Well at least people in the world can still surprise me...even if it's in a bad way.

 

 

You're consistently challenging anonymous online opinions and then getting angry when the come backs are argumentative and derogatory. Quit stirring the pot so aggressively if you want civil responses.

[ghostgirl123]

it's interesting that the discussion of family/gender roles is being had here, in a premed forum, obviously, everyone of us wants to become doctors - a highly demanding career. so whoever's being the devil's advocate(i.e expressing the traditional view of family life, the woman staying home, etc.) shouldn't be surprised or offended by the kind of responses he got. while I'm not offended by the "woman should stay home and take care of the kids" ideal, it does annoy me a little. "Career moms" are either praised for their ability to "do it all" or more often, scolded(by society) for putting their career before family. I mean, you don't hear the term "career dad" often do you? it's normal for a man to have a successful career and a wholesome family, but when it comes to a woman, there's always that grey area of whether or not it's possible to have it all. and I honestly don't konw the answer to that.

what do you guys think??