“It is tough for a lonely rural wife” says, erm, a man

It’s difficult what to make of this piece by Max Hastings, which includes paragraphs such as the following:

For youngish marrieds, it is bad policy to embed a wife in the country all week to turn into a couch potato, or maybe Pony Club potato, while a husband week-nights in town. The secret of fidelity is relentless supervision. It is tough for a lonely rural wife, for whom mucking out is the highlight of the day, to sustain the sort of scintillating weekend chat that an urban careerist can offer.

Points suggesting we should give him the benefit of the doubt:

• It’s written for Savills’ Barometer magazine, which I suspect has quite a narrow(-minded?) target audience
• It could possibly be written in jest and/or as a parody
• Max Hastings is a tricky character to pin down.

Points suggesting we should give him the detriment of the certainty:

• Sexism is sexism

Either way it is surprising Savills let this sort of thing go out in their name, disclaimers about “author opinion only” or not.

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