So Kate and I just finished watching The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio.  It was an OK movie but it spawned a discussion that I would like to share.

The movie is based on a memoir about a family and their life in the late 50’s and early 60’s.  I won’t get too much into plot details, but the interactions of Mom and Dad sparked much thought.  The hero is Mother and her goal is provide for her 10 kids and send them off into the world better humans and simply survive the day and live to the next.  The antagonist is her husband who is quite the stereotype loser 50’s dad.  He drinks away his paychecks and would never be caught dead making dinner or cleaning a toilet.  He never beat or abused his family.  He genuinely loved them as much as he knew how What struck Kate and I was that their marriage, at least from Mom’s point of view was one of endurance.  Graceful endurance to be sure, but only of endurance.  Self sacrifice for the sake of the children and all that is good, but as for the dad he was just another person to be taken care of.

We decided we would like a marriage of mutual engagement rather than one of endurance.  Poor dad in the movie was working, sure, but his wife really didn’t encourage him much or engage him to try and effect change.  Sure change is not always going to happen, but she just seemed to check out of the marriage for the sake of the children.  This is a movie so my assumptions may not reflect events that happened and I could be totally wrong, but from what I saw the marriage was not one where Mom and Dad actually cared for each other in any but the most superficial sense of the word.  Mom only just endured her husband.

So what do you think?  A marriage of mutual engagement or one of mutual endurance?