[Huey]

(01-11-2017 01:03 PM)Rob Banks Wrote:  

First of all, the option should be "his wife," not "his spouse." "Spouse" is a feminist, gender-neutral term that we should avoid using.

In my opinion, the reason you should put your wife first is because if one of your children dies, you can still have more children. On the other hand, if your wife dies, you can't have anymore children (at least not by the same wife). Furthermore, if your wife dies, you become a single father, and this deeply affects all your children.

Maybe it would be different if your wife is post-menopause and your children are all grown up.

Calm down, tough guy. I used "spouse" because at the time of writing it up, the question I initially had in mind was "Whom should a partner put first?" In that context, "spouse" made the most sense, but I just ended up going with "Who comes first in a man's life?" and forgot to change "spouse" to "wife." But regarding the rest of your post, that's pretty much my reasoning as well.

In response to the guys asking why I left out "himself" as an option: I didn't include it because I didn't think it was necessary to. Any person, man or woman, should always (most of the time, at least) seek to take care of themselves first. I didn't think something as self-evident as that needed to be included in the poll.

Some of the responses have definitely made me reconsider my position a bit but I'm still not fully convinced.