Feminism sold a lie - Women, today, are worse off than ever

Their Dad can provide for them whilst she focuses on nurturing them at home. Many women are still perfectly happy and understand the benefits of dividing up responsibilities clearly. Way less conflict and arguments, everyone knows what they are doing. I would never marry a man who didn’t understand that.

It's not about the job. It's about the options the job provides. It's also about the protections that have been enshrined in law. Without your own income, you're vulnerable. And if women's rights were rolled back a few decades, a sahm without money could be left in dire straits.

Feminists supported mothers by fighting for maternity leave and childcare. We aren't turning up on your doorstep asking why you aren't back to work yet.

@ThankYouNigel So.how is she paying for her own kids?

Because she’s got different priorities and would rather she had her own children and spent time enjoying motherhood free from badgering about a job, which is just a job after all.

"Strangers" is such an emotive and misleading term in any case. I mean, it's not as if working parents are just thrusting their dc into the arms of any random passers by. Most people invest a huge amount of care and thought into selecting childcare for their kids.

@Ubertomusic You wouldn't want your own daughter to get a decent job and be financially independent? Why not?

Strangers don't have to care about your child to care for them. All they have to care about is doing their job as a professional, whether that's teaching, nursing or childcare.

Well, yes. You're obviously right, but it's so ridiculous for people to make sweeping statements about how much better things were in the past without having any idea of what they're actually talking about!

I suppose that's OK but I, on the other hand, couldn't care less if my DM was independent or not. I'd rather I could spend more time with her when I was a child.

@Ubertomusic For me what is most important is that my daughter sees me as an independent woman who works to provide for her (alongside my husband). I would hope she will do the same.

If you think strangers would care about your children better than yourself, I don't have anything to add, sorry.

Because their knowledge of the time in question is limited to the anecdotes of the women in their families. They think because their nan didn't work or their mum worked part time, this is how it was. If you were actually there living it then you observed a much wider range of lifestyles. You knew that the shops were full of women working on the tills, hospitals were full of women nurses, you were taught by female teachers. That we had a woman prime minister....

Indeed - there weren't magical mythical time when all men just earned enough money to keep a family. Read any history or fiction from before the 1950s and there is a lot of focus on whether a young man can afford to get married and young couples waiting, sometimes years, to get married until the man had got a promotion or more secure job (and waiting for the woman meant remaining living with her parents and have little or no sexual relationship with her fiancee)

As people have said those who didn't do that, or had husband who had little prospect of better wages relied on women's wages and in the earlier part of the 20th century children's wages too.

So your sister has accepted this, and lives with it - thats as much on her if she wants to stay with him?

Is it? I disagree

All the women in my family worked. The men couldn't have managed without their wages but it was always disparagingly referred to as 'pin money'. They were responsible for childcare as well.

@childofthe607080s i agree with you to some extent. However one earner in a household on minimum wage now actually can't afford a modest two up two down house in most areas of the country let alone live off basic food and the niceties of life. Whereas in the 70's things may have been tight but it would have been affordable with a little amount of saving for a deposit and pulling the purse strings tight for a few years.

I agree. This isn't new! Millennial women aren't the first to experience this - it's just that they're the ones with babies and young children right now.

nor is the struggle to get men to do at least half of the wife work new, or to get society and the government to recognise caring as a valuable part of the economy. I remember reading Wife Work and Bitch in the House when I first had children.

I also agree with the points previous posters made if in the past (and this didn't happen in my family or in any family I knew in the 70s and 80s) the mother did stay at home, the lifestyle of the family was really basic - one car, no foreign holidays, hardly any new clothes, shoes. Certainly no constant trips to Ikea, no Farrow & Ball paint, no expensive clubs (I went to Brownies and went to a swimming club), or expensive children's parties (I had my friends to my house for a tea and games) , no soft play (I went to the park), hand me down bikes, no gadgets, phone contracts and the rest. It seems that Millennial women want to be able to give up work, but they want the lifestyle that they currently have. And you really can't have it all in that regard

Most men back in the 50s-70s worked very long hours and spent pretty much all their money on their family. It was hard for everyone, but I think women were more empowered then than now.

We're too busy doing half the work and all the childcare and all the housework to worry about fixing your issues.

I agree agree entirely that everything took longer and housework was certainly much more physically demanding and arduous. No washing machines/tumble dryers/freezers/robot hoovers, etc.

However, I think modern mums, whether working or not, have increased demands in the form of:

• Not feeling they can let their children out to play freely in the street/local parks/drop them off at birthday parties, etc. Either because they don’t feel safe to due to increased traffic/less closely knit communities, or because others disapprove.
• Constant school emails and increasingly complex homework for increasingly younger children, which really does rely on some level of parental overseeing.
• Pressure to book multiple clubs and transport children to and from these. Again, often pressure to stay at them. More different clothing required to buy, maintain at the correct size and wash.
• Way more party invitations at weekends. So way more presents to buy, outfits to sort, etc.
• Screen time to manage/worry about/argue about.
• More pressure to organise ‘big’ days out for every occasion.

Of course, you can opt out of a great deal of this, but the pressure is undeniably there, and tends to be more keenly felt by mums.

Same experience, my DM worked in the same STEM job as DF and has been overworked all her life. I'd rather she had more joy than just work work work with no end.

Another feminism bashing thread what joy! You’re chatting shit for the reasons mentioned by PPs.

Women working doesn’t make life shit today compared to the past

it gives us freedoms that previous generations did die for

that you feel you have to have two incomes to make life what you want - gosh even in my lifetime holidays, cars , central heating, eating out, double glazing , multiple pairs of shoes , and oh the variety of food - we didnt need two incomes because we only had basic food and a very basic home - you want a LOT more than the average family had in the 1970s

I saved pocket money for weeks to buy an album

average means that you might have had foreign holidays I am not denying that , just that living standards have soared

I really don't agree that "real equality" is harder now. We haven't quite got there yet, but we're closer than we've ever been!

Millennial women really aren't the first ones to have juggled work, childcare and household responsibilities - women have been doing this for years. I genuinely don't understand why some younger women seem so oblivious to this?