SCARLETT WOMEN

Scarlett Johannson
(picture from Wikipedia)

Scarlett Johansson has just split up with her husband.  Movie star gets divorced - big deal, I hear you say.  So what, it happens all the time.  I have nothing against Scarlett, who I think is a very good actress and a pretty good egg, supporting a lot of worthwhile causes.  I hope she sorts out her personal life, although this divorce (her second) was not entirely unexpected - she has said that she finds monogamy difficult and even unnatural.  Maybe she just needs the right bloke, but she is way out of my league so there is no point in getting my hopes up.

What concerns me is the effect on her young daughter.  Most kids like their parents to stay together but are reasonably accepting of a divorce once it is settled and arrangements made so that they spend time with them both, occasionally even as a family unit.  This is what happened with me and there are no big issues, although I did feel that I coulda/shoulda/woulda spent more time with them when they young and I was more or less forced out.  Rather than have a big legal battle I chose to go quietly and do the best I could under the circumstances, making up for lost time later on.  If two people have loved each other and formed a family, then gone their separate ways, no-one looks - or feels - good if they start pouring acid over each other. 

Scarlett's (ex)husband may not go quietly, however.  She is an in demand film actress who has to be on set for long periods of time, while he works as a journalist which probably gives him more time to spend with his children.  Yet, almost certainly, she will expect the child they produced to live with her as the caring parent.  Commuting between two countries thousands of miles apart (France and the USA) is simply not practical for a kid of two or so.

In my more cynical moments I say that the three tenets of feminism are - equal pay and opportunities for women, abortion on demand and no fault divorce.  Oh, and there is a number four: motherhood is sacred.  We all know that.  Women have children inside their bodies for nine months so naturally they should continue to care for them for eighteen years afterwards and, if the relationship with the father goes sour, he can move on and see them at weekends if he is lucky, if he behaves himself and if he pays up.  

Actually I do not fundamentally challenge that assumption.  I just find that it sits uneasily with the fifty-fifty feminism espoused by women who say that, because they make up half the population, they should land half of the important jobs (like film directing) and always expect equal pay across the board.  They complain about the pay gap, which is around fifteen per cent between women and men, yet do nothing about the far greater and more obvious divide in time children spend with their fathers and mothers.

You can almost hear the explosion of outrage which this remark brings from women who feel overburdened with housework and childcare while their men are off pursuing careers and they are stuck at home.  Yet, as I said in a previous post, I have no problem with doing housework, most of which is just one step up from falling off a log, but am still expected to move on if (when) things go wrong in a relationship.  The childcare gap is wider and more pervasive than the pay gap and feminism is doing nothing to close it.  In fact, it often seems as if it is determined to widen it even further.  Feminism has nothing for fathers, it seems, and this is why it is deemed the enemy by many of them who might otherwise be sympathetic towards the cause.

I have avoided using the word 'custody' in this essay, which I dislike.  Custody is for criminals not for children and until we feminism stops treating fathers as criminals, we will continue to doubt its value.  Even if we still fancy Scarlett.