But you may not realize that mother-in-law- jokes and their disappearance are a sign that your point in earlier post that the “patriarchy” has waned is quite wrong, because what has happened is that the ‘matriarchy’, or perhaps it should be called the ‘matronarchy’ (rule of old mothers and old women) has waned.

For a very long time “western civilization” cultures have been run for the benefit of women and in effect by women, and in particular by mothers-in-law. There have been two separate social hierarchies, for women and for men, and being in the women’s one has always been a lot easier than in the men’s one, as your WW2 stories remind us.

But the main point is that for a very long time most all women have considered men as livestock: properties, tools, objects to be acquired and controller for their benefit. In particular children, male children, to be raised and controlled as pension investments, and husbands to be acquired and domesticated as the providers of funds for those pension investments (and “alphas” as the providers of sperm to have the best pension investment).

Because the power and comfort of a woman was proportional to the value of her male livestock, the husband she could control, and the sons whe could make work for her; and they competed ferociously to acquire and raise the best livestock.

With obvious “features” as putting enormous pressure on the male children to become more valuable pension investments (which still happens with Japanese/Italian/Jewish mothers), and extensive abortion of female children as they could worse less hard and longer than male children, and would be rivals in sharing the profits of her pension investment in her sons.

Mothers would only accept willingly their son’s wives when they generated grandchildren for them (more pension investments) and would work hard along with their husbands for their benefit, and often required dowries to accept in their house a less productive son’s wife. This still happens in India (see recent Economist article) and in China where women pay gansters to kidnap other women’s male sons to add them to their investment portfolio.

While the matriarchy/matronarchy was ruling western world cultures wars were common and ferocious (fought by men, with women as the main beneficiaries), and ‘civilization’ happened, because women like the comforts of civilized life, and made men work really hard to build it.

The inducement the matriarchy-matronarchy offered was reliable paternity of the first-born, by keeping virginity or at least monogamy until marriage: IIRC until 1950 95% of women in western world countries were virgin on marriage or engagement. Because most males, but surely alpha males, knew very well how monogamous women are when the tingle drives them. In other words women’s matriarchy allowed men to have patrilineality (which is not the same as patriarchy).

For a couple of very different reasons women in the last century have chosen to abandon matriarchy, and to push for patriarchy (and matrilineality). Because the current culture is all about women benefiting “alpha”s. There has been a giant transfer of power and resources from women to men *overall*, with “dutiful bores” getting completely shafted and “alphas” becoming able to pump and dump as much as they want and have children entirely paid for by their adoring pumpees and the taxes paid by “dutiful bores”.

It is this loss of power and resources by women to (“alpha”) men that has made mothers-in-law disappear. They no longer matter that much (except in India, and some other traditional cultures).

Society was harsh back then. I wonder if he became disillusioned.