Why Buy the Cow?

By

William D. Dannenmaier

Waiting for the computer to warm up, I play solitaire.  I lose a lot of games, many more than I win.  It seems that when I must choose between one of two or three alternatives, I always select the wrong one.  That reminds me of life.  We always have so many alternatives to choose from, and so many of them are wrong, leading us away from where we wish to be.

As a beginning psychologist, I was always amazed by the number of young women who found life not as they wished.  After we came to know one another, they often confessed they would like to marry and have a family with someone they could trust.  I recall one young woman who had had three husbands, all of whom proved unfaithful.  I asked her were she met them.  Guess.  In taverns.  I suggested to her that she might have better luck visiting some churches. 

While not everyone who attends church is trustworthy and dependable, I would be willing to bet that she would meet a much higher percentage of men who would make good husbands in church than in any tavern she could name.  Another who started coming for advice on college courses (she was intelligent and attractive) eventually admitted that she was dating a young intern.  She didn’t live with him, but she cooked his suppers, did his wash and slept with him.  I quoted the old saying to her of “Why buy the cow when the milk is free?”  She didn’t like that.  She quit coming to see me.

I am a “Judge Judy” fan.  An amazing number of her cases are “couples” who have lived together, anywhere from three or four months to three or four years and then separated – with recriminations, mostly from the women.  In a recent case a young woman was suing to get back money she had “loaned” to her former partner of a few months for either car repairs or bail.  Sitting next to the man she was suing was another young woman.  When Judge Judy asked who she was, she replied, “His fiancée.”  This reminded me of when my wife and I worked for the Census. 

After the first or second day of interviewing people – we had to ask how many lived in the house – Sheila asked me if I had noticed that if a woman answered our questions at the home of an unmarried couple, she always replied that she and her fiancé lived there.  If a man answered he would say, “My girlfriend lives with me.”  I began paying attention to that, and the people I interviewed who were living together, unmarried, answered in the same way, the woman would describe the man as her fiancé, the man would say his girl friend.  Sheila pointed out that the implication of this was that women in such situations typically saw “living together” as a prelude to marriage, the men never did.  I think she was right. 

Years ago, one of my sons had lived with a young woman for two or three years.  I wrote him a long letter saying that they had lived together long enough to know if they wished it to be permanent.  If she did, and he didn’t, he was stealing from her years when she might find a man who would give her the love, stability and family that she wished.  It was a long letter, one I didn’t wish to write, but felt it was my responsibility as his father.  I didn’t hear from him for a long time and feared I had alienated him (we are now close friends).  Several years later I told him of my fears and asked what happened.  He said that when he received it, he read it and handed it to her.  She read it; and moved out a few days later.

Nature has divided the reproductive opportunities for men and women.  Men can sire children well into their fifties and sixties – I ate a breakfast for seniors – legally – the morning following the birth of my youngest child.  But men cannot have children, only women can.  On the other hand, nature sets limits on women.  The best times, in terms of the health of the mother and child, for a woman to bear children, is in her twenties.  Research in the sixties found that women who bore their first child after the age of thirty-five, had one chance in five of the child having some kind of a birth defect: spina bifada, Down’s Syndrome, etc.  Men who simply live with women, with no intention of providing permanence or family, are stealing from those women their opportunities to have an enduring family.  Perhaps, to spread the blame, I should say that women who choose to spend their twenties sleeping with men who have no intention of permanence, signified by marriage, are throwing away chance for long term happiness.  Yes, twenty year follow-up studies at a major state university found the happiest people were married men, the second happiest were married women.  The least happy, divorced men led, but were closely followed by single women.

The old timers had it right, why buy the cow if you get the milk for free?  If young women don’t wish to think of themselves as cows giving free milk, they shouldn’t put themselves in that position.