the problem is that it poses a question to the supposed lover considering marrying her: "if she says yes would it be because she wants to be with me forever or because she wants to be a wife?", it makes the whole sentiment seem disingenuous. this dramatically decreases her chances of getting a boyfriend to commit to be her husband, and yet the entire aspiration depends on a man choosing to do just that.
I think it depends on what someone means by "my dream is to be a wife". You could say that with any dream. People choose a role thinking it will fulfill certain desires & needs. I'd ask someone who says that "why wife?". What do they expect to do and receive in that role? If it's 'cause their primary aspiration is a genuinely loving, formally committed relationship, then they won't want
just anyone.
If someone wants to be a "writer", what does that usually mean? Do they want to compose warning labels for jars? Probably not.
Growing up I thought of lots of stuff I wanted to be (all kinds of NFy impractical stuff) - but they were just roles I
associated with being able to use my strengths & fulfill my needs. In reality, they don't necessarily mean that though. Sometimes people can't see past a role, because they don't know how to identify it outside of some already predefined external role or its unacceptable to put it in more direct terms. Or maybe the role really works out for them.
I think people assume the latter a lot with the "wife dream". They think she wants money & status. But what's odd to me is that's what most people want in a career. I think with the wife thing, maybe people think it's "easy money & status", just hanging onto someone else & taking their success, and that's partly why they scorn it. The problem with this is a diminishing of value of the private things I mentioned before and assuming WHY someone chooses a certain role as their dream.
I think I'm making a defense here because my ISFJ mom has pretty much said that she only ever wanted to be a wife & mother & that when she gets to really do that fully, then she is most happy. I used to think this was sad because I saw it as mundane, but that was really projecting my own needs as something universal & denying someone else the validity of their own. There's nothing less significant about her dream than my dreams.
I really like these posts.
I also have to say: I'm sorry, what you've described here makes women look really bad.
It makes them look swept along and dominated by whatever is currently the cultural paradigm.
Ironically, their desire for autonomy seems, on the whole, to be largely non-autonomous.
But men in general are swept up in it also. I think windup rex made that point. To me, it's a human issue, and it's not
always bad to be influenced by such things or to adapt to them & work within them. Sometimes there's a good point to some of it.