I would say I have to agree with you 4FoW2. Having defined roles has absolutely nothing to do with whether there is respect in the relationship or not. Respect is a separate thing and happens whether there are roles or not. Society is too eager to interchange the use of the term slave vs partner and control as opposed to respect, where as in reality, there is a reliance on both sides to fulfil a role to have a good functioning family. A woman not working does not mean she is automatically a slave. Both are fulfilling roles to facilitate a family, which is important as one person trying to do both roles is near impossible. In the most traditional sense, the man gives up his time to generate money for the family, and the woman gives up her time to keep the running of the house and children in order. In a respectful relationship, this can have huge levels of mutual appreciation and respect for each other, especially if each tries the best to fulfil the role that you have. In addition, this can easily be changed in part or in full if the woman has a better capacity to earn and maybe the man is happy to be with the kids. I have a female at my work, who just had her second kid and she earns more than her partner, so she and her partner had a sit down and agreed that it was better for them to prioritise her work and for him to contribute a bit more. The point is that they appeared to at least have a starting point to discuss from. Where I see it all goes pear shaped, IMO, is that with the expectations of today's feminist movement, woman have this expectation placed on them to get out into the workforce and in a lot of cases to be better than their male counter parts. There is not enough emphasis on the woman who stay at home and who do a bloody good job at it at that. There is no respect for that in society and this ends up leaving woman who choose this to feel like they have "failed" and "done nothing with their lives" where as in reality, that could not be further from the truth. I think the starting point should be set roles, but where the earlier years went wrong, was in the cases where there is a situation that is different that suits someone else, that should be celebrated rather than ostracised and the traditional role would not have been cast to the gutter as it has in todays society.