ABSTRACT
Stable marriages are rare, women believe, due to the inevitable failings of men whom they consider to be hopelessly unreliable. For their part, many men do their best to live up to their reputation as insensitive macho scoundrels who owe women no explanation for their intemperate behavior. Spoiled and pampered as children, men grow up to expect servitude and obedience from their wives. Women are socialized to fulfill their subordinate, long-suffering roles passively, accepting male irresponsibility, wickedness, and foolishness as their destiny. This they do with fatalistic consent, buoyed in their martyrdom by the firm conviction of the supremacy of their sex in matters both mundane and spiritual. At all class levels, the Latin American family is marked by a patriarchal structure maintaining that a woman's proper sphere is inside the home and that she must defer to her husband in all public matters.
