"I don't think men are raised to do dishes or to pick up clothes. I think they get mothered and their moms don't know that they're doing a great disservice to their kids and future wives by not telling them to wash up." - Jennifer Aniston
It is relatively simple to figure out what Jennifer is trying to say in this quote, but she has worded it in such a manner that her meaning is open to more than one interpretation. Jennifer has used several nouns that can interchangeably serve as the antecedents to the various third person plural pronouns in her statement.
This is what Jennifer probably meant:
- Men are not raised to do dishes or pick up clothes.
- Moms mother men.
- Moms do not know that they are doing their kids a disservice.
- Moms do not know that they are doing the future wives of their kids a disservice.
- The disservice is a result of the moms' failure to tell their sons to wash up.
Jennifer refers to four groups of people ("men," "moms," "kids," and "future wives"), and she uses three third person plural pronouns ("they," "their," and "them") in five instances in her quote. However, the pronouns do not all clearly refer to the antecedents in the statement. These are some possible interpretations of Jennifer's quote:
"I don't think men are raised to do dishes or to pick up clothes. I think they (the men) get mothered and their moms (the men's moms) don't know that they're (the men are) doing a great disservice to their (the men's) kids and future wives by not telling them (the kids and future wives) to wash up."
"I don't think men are raised to do dishes or to pick up clothes. I think they (the men) get mothered and their moms (the men's moms) don't know that they're (the men's moms) doing a great disservice to their (the men's) kids and future wives by not telling them (the kids and future wives) to wash up."
If Jennifer had replaced some of the pronouns with the nouns she intended them to represent and restructured her words to avoid awkward syntax, her meaning would have been clearer. This is one way to word her statement to avoid confusion:
"I don't think men are raised to do dishes or to pick up clothes. I think boys get mothered. Moms don't know that by not telling their kids to wash up, they're doing a great disservice not only to their sons but also to their future daughters-in-law."
This structure introduces two new groups of people ("boys" and "sons"). It is clear that "boys," "sons," and "kids" refer to the same group of people. The use of the correlative conjunctions "not only" and "but also" strengthens the message of the statement. The replacement of "wives" with "daughters-in-law" serves two purposes: it removes the potential of ambiguity of the final pronoun ("their"), although it is unlikely that the antecedent of this pronoun would ever be considered to be "moms," and it creates parallel structure between the correlative conjunctions.
This is parallel:
- not only to their (the moms') sons
- but also to their (the moms') future daughters-in-law
This is not parallel:
- not only to their (the moms') sons
- but also to their (the sons') future wives
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