B. Mixing Marriage and Gender Roles
Other aspects of Banks's critique of mixed marriages also raise concerns. According to Banks, such marriages often fail because the wife, with her college degree and professional status, wields greater economic power and control in the relationship. Saddled with the responsibilities of family breadwinner, the power wife resents her less-accomplished husband (pp. 100-02). Perpetually emasculated and eclipsed by his wife's education and professional standing, the blue-collar husband lashes out (pp. 93-95). Their twin resentments fuel marital discord, ultimately dooming the relationship. Though Banks notes that one issue for these marriages is the absence of common values, like a shared commitment to education and professional development, an equally challenging problem, it seems, is that “the partners [are] cast in the roles of husband and wife but without the shared script that guided prior generations” (p. 97).
Some might celebrate this gender-role inversion as a progressive development, as proof of how far women--and black women, in particular--have advanced in the workplace. But, according to Banks, this role reversal prompts anxiety and discord rather than celebration. Feeling inadequate, black men resent their wives for “usurping” the breadwinner role (p. 98), while black women chafe at “being the sole support for their famil[ies] ” (p. 100). Though the book professes an optimistic faith in marriage as an institution, it is nonetheless informed by a more pessimistic intuition that African Americans are incapable of change, clinging stubbornly to the traditional roles that marriage prescribes.
Though Banks does not bemoan black women's economic advances, implicit in his critique of mixed marriages is a tacit acceptance of the male breadwinner-female dependent model that has traditionally served as the marital model. This is curious given that this gendered model is one that has always had a more tenuous foothold in the black community. Unlike most Anglo-American families, where the male breadwinner-female dependent model is common, black families frequently have departed from or modified this model.
Then, as now, black men's economic prospects have been shifting and uneven, requiring families to rely on two incomes, rather than one. Accordingly, black women, unlike their white counterparts, often worked outside of the home, assuming a critical role in providing for the family. Because they worked outside of the home, many black women were unable to assume the traditional female role of full-time homemaker and family caregiver, enlisting the assistance of extended family and fictive kin in this task. In view of this history in which black families routinely deviated from prevailing gender scripts, improvising on extant gender norms but nonetheless managing to build strong marriages and families, it is curious that Banks matter-of-factly concludes that “[h] owever enticing improvisation may seem, it often produces discord” (p. 101).
To be sure, Banks attempts to distance himself from the normative weight of traditional gender roles. For example, he notes that though these gender roles might seem “sexist” to modern sensibilities, they “reflect an enduring cultural script” arising from a “social and cultural context within which many adults were raised” (p. 98). He muses that fidelity to these roles may fade in successive generations (p. 101), but at no point does he challenge or disavow these gender scripts or the retrograde vision of marriage that they undergird. Indeed, Banks credits the breadwinner-dependent model for setting forth clear roles to guide spouses, and in so doing, he implicitly underwrites their normative value.
Banks's tacit acceptance of this dated model is a counterpoint to those who have denounced it because it impedes women's equal citizenship and advancement. Many have called for the disruption of the model in favor of one in which both partners assume more equal responsibility for breadwinning and carework. Others point to the changing demographics of family life, noting that the proliferation of families headed by same-sex couples and dual-earner spouses challenges the continued primacy of the male breadwinner-female dependent model. With this in mind, regardless of the troubles mixed marriages may face, the departure from extant gender norms could be seen as a progressive move to be lauded and supported more robustly, rather than challenged or questioned. Indeed, one might query whether these economically mixed marriages would be more successful if the inverted model of the female breadwinner-male dependent were more widely accepted, encouraged, and supported.
Critically, greater acceptance of and support for an alternative gender script is not just a feminist pipe dream. Even before the Great Recession, more American families were shifting from the single (male) breadwinner model to one in which families relied on two incomes. As women continue to outpace men in pursuing college and postgraduate degrees, many families likely will resemble the economically mixed marriages that Banks chronicles. Perhaps Banks is correct that “white follows black,” and these relationships will buckle under the weight of a lost gender ideal. Or perhaps this new reality will compel us to give up the ghost of marriages past, allowing us to embrace the ways our family lives have evolved to confront a new economy and its challenges.
