The WRONG woman is a hindrance to success
Too many people get together with partners who don't share their goals and they end up picking at each other and subverting one another's efforts. If you can find someone who shares your goals and you each know your roles within that shared vision, a partner can be both a pleasure and an asset. There are plenty of examples where hugely successful men credit the women in their lives for helping them achieve greater success, find balance, and hold things together: Ronald Reagan, George Patton, and Bill Gates, to name a few...Granted - not everyone is lucky enough to find that quickly. Or ever.
As far as gender roles are concerned...tradition becomes tradition because something about it works. In this day and age, women DO need to have the ability to support themselves and function independently, but the problem is that the people who fought for women went WAY too far and vilified pretty much anyone who wanted to adhere to traditional roles - many of which are positive and highly functional. The result is that most people seem to be aiming for some unnatural gender-neutral existence that leaves a lot of people unsatisfied.
Threads like this one are part of the problem, though. Until more people can show a little respect for traditionally female roles, there will be a tendency for women to want to avoid being associated with them. When women feel appreciated in those feminine roles, however, they'll spend more time "being women". It's simple conditioning, and it goes both ways.
