Before I read this post, I was looking at the comments regarding "it takes a village to raise a child" and thinking that one of the problems is the proprietorial nature so many people seem to feel the relationship between parent and child is ("It's MY child", as if no-one else should have any kind of opinion on the matter). And was then going on to muse about how that proprietorial attitude extends to partners, and in the case of female partners, to a degree where ownership is a factor ("she's mine, I can do what I like"). While that may only become manifest in more extreme cases, I do wonder just how prevalent it actually is - women being prevented from being independent, going out, even going to work, because "my wife/partner does what I say".
And I suspect one of the reasons it's not more obvious is that, rather than have a stand up battle about it, many women simply small themselves down and fit themselves into the role they're being cast in, because the stakes feel just too high for them to feel safe asserting themselves. Which, of course, is going to spiral in to ever more restrictive "rules", and ever more entitled behaviours from their partners. (ETA: just to be completely clear about this, I am not suggesting that women who do this are part of the problem - on the contrary, the "problem" is that this should even be an option for them.)
And then I got to thinking that, for some men, ALL women are a kind of property - someone who doesn't really have the right to say "No", or "I don't like you doing that". Perhaps, in some cases, without the men actually realising how deeply embedded that attitude of ownership and entitlement is in them.
