to feel short changed by feminism?

[ThroughTheRoundWindow]

So here's the thing. Back in the day the young women of the baby boom generation demanded the choice to work or care for their babies. some of them went out to work, and because their families had two incomes they could afford to spend more on their houses and on filling them with consumer goods.

But more families with more money pushed up the price of houses.

Roll on a generation and it is impossible to afford a mortgage on one moderate income. To pay for a house you both need to work. Well that isn't true, we could have either bought a ex-council house on a dodgy estate, or I could have married a much richer man. (But we couldn't bring ourselves to raise a child on an estate and I fell in love with a council employee).

Had a been born a generation earlier my husband's local government salary would have paid for our modest house in an unfashionable suburb and I could (if I had chosen) have given up work to care full time for our family. Instead I have no choice - I have to return to work and leave my baby in daycare.

Without feminism I could have done what comes most naturally to me and been a homemaker. Feminism stole that option from me. Now I have to leave my baby to be raised by a stranger and go out to work in a job I care nothing for and get nothing (except a salary) from.

Ok, a little maudlin from too much beer, but someone explain to me why I am genuinely unreasonable to feel this way?

That's a shame, people who have delusions about what words have been used would be better ignored. I'll just have to discipline myself not to respond to delusionals.

On the plus side if this thread is a huge issue for you, lifes going well. :o

Interesting point garlicnutter. And I wonder which is the more popular site, this or Facebook? Hmmm, you've got me thinking now!

Oooh, I like that

Can you think of a new "garlic buttery" nickname for me that includes 'delusional'?

tia.

i see the ruckus

i don;t understand it

i shall leave you to debate the semantics and particulars of spelling, grammar and the use of former and formal

eats, shoots and leaves.

FGS, the last thing we need is another statussey networking site. If any more of my apps demand 'updates', 'friends' or fucking circles, I'll have to kill myself.

Of course, I'll video it and upload it to all 3,739 networking sites.

Ha...OK CUSTARDO. The thing is, I'd have appreciated the use of "former" and "formal" being pointed out if I'd actually used either word!

very semantic, custardo

Given that some of your posts have been deleted - what's more likely, that you did use the wrong word or that HereB chose such a random thing to tease you about?

YANBU but I agree you don't have to be a sheep and you could choose a cheaper area/house/ex council. I am a SAHM and love it, I worked with my 1st and it was only after being a SAHM (with some initial adjustment!) I realised what I was missing. I also feel most childcare isn't as good on the whole (from what I see all the time with some childminders etc.) I also am a skeptic when it comes to alot of societal issues. I am lucky to be able to SAH but this is because we made choices to live on one income (we initially both worked but DH got a better paid job) and always started on a low income and worked up rather than starting with a dual income. If you want to SAH and can find a way-go for it! I am a different person, less competitve etc.

I think MNHQ should tell us

moonferret, I'm genuinely interested as to whether you think you've contributed anything meaningful to this debate with your shouty rantings at other posters. Perhaps you might be taken more seriously if you engage in debate rather than personal attacks.

Anyway, I'm going to take my own advice and stop engaging with you now.

Back to the debate in hand, have the posters who agree with the OP got any comment on the argument that, while women could possibly have prevented house prices going up by staying in the kitchen, men could equally have prevented it by taking on an equal share of childcare and domestic responsibility instead of putting in longer and longer hours at the office and earning more and more money?

stripeybump...the fact is that I've already quoted the exact post from which that person imagined I'd confused the two. That post has not been deleted.

Here it is again, for your benefit:

HereBeBollox, are you the same person as "HerBex" or something like that, as you sound similar.

It is about half-way down page 3. Some cyber-warriors are so anxious to have a go about something, they convince themselves that something has been said which hasn't.

Do you understand yet stripeybump?

And Annie, I wouldn't bother any more, you'll get no more response from me.

I think that's called a "nub", Annie.

As always, most people find it way too difficult to consider real questions when they can just blame the wimmin moan about stuff that's already happened.

I take issue with the "what most comes naturally to me" argument the OP made. I know many people - of both sexes - who do jobs which are not what their "most natural" calling is. Because - without wishing to be too cynical - only a very small minority will have the talent, luck or money to devote their lives to their "most natural" calling. Most of us have to compromise somewhere along the line. I am thankful that I was born into a time and place where that compromise could allow me to earn my own living and live with a man I chose to be with and challenge that job if it fired me on spurious grounds or leave that husband if he was a dick or we just didn't get along. That right, of fundamental integrity and dignity, is to me much more important than purely doing what "comes most naturally" and I am hugely grateful to the feminist movement for that.

< just a quick confirmation that the OP has no idea how the world operates. Thank you.>

I would also say that in an earlier age - the age in fact just before the baby boomers - most aspects of household management were much more of a "job" than housewifery now. Household laundry, for instance, in the days before washing machines, or even boiler washers would have taken up at least a day a week. Ignoring other tasks such as creating meals from scratch, beating rugs, scrubbing front door steps. There was no golden age of devotion to childcare and the more fulfilling aspects of housewifery before feminsim came along. The reality was work just as demanding as that which keeps you in a double-income mortgaged life, probably much more backbreaking, and without greater time to enjoy your children.

BTW the above post is not intended to denigrate any current SAHP, just to throw relief onto fantasies of a pre-feminism dreamtime

OP you have a point

Indeedy. Back in the Stone Age Fifties, when I was a small - with younger siblings, all under five - our house didn't have hot water on tap. There was an electric water heater, which was a single element you had to immerse in the bowl, and a copper - a big metal tub with an element underneath it, which took hours to heat the water. The copper had a paddle in it, used for laundry. No disposable nappies; all the terry ones had to be boiled in the copper, rinsed out by hand and put through a mangle. Dad needed a starched shirt every day; the starch was in his terms of employment. We got a spin dryer and a vacuum cleaner in 1961. We were considered Respectable (a very big thing) and had our own house instead of living with parents/sibs/aunts.

There were no supermarkets - self-service had just been invented - but there were deliveries of coal, bread, milk and basic groceries. Butter, sugar and chocolate were still on ration. Mum did the shopping on a push bike, kids in a buckle-on seat behind the saddle, shopping in the front basket and handing off the crossbar. It took hours. Instant cleaning products had yet to be invented; everything was done with soap and disinfectant. Mum had a permanent blistering rash on her hands. No ready meals, microwaves, freezers or slow cookers, obv. Stinky stock pot always on the hob.

My mother was a qualified professional, but had to give up her job. Paid maternity leave was a distant dream and it wouldn't have been possible to fit in the full-time housewifery and the job. It could have been achieved, if my father hadn't been a bully, by hiring someone to do the home stuff.

Which would be pretty much the same equation as today, wouldn't it, only with fewer in-between options?

gn

We have short memories and expect so much. Not as women but as humans. Life is so much easier now and we can be grateful for that while still striving for better.

Feels like a Four Yorkshiremen sketch coming on - but yes some of garlicnutters post I can immediatley relate to, growing up. "The Pill" was a real shocker, and equal pay was a bit of a joke.

I blame Sarah Beeny and all that nonsense on telly for encouraging people to treat housing as a way to make a quick buck. Not to mention Brown, then chancellor, for relying on house prices to keep th UK economy thriving.

I was a bit worried about "we lived in a sardine tin", Pan

True, though, and we were average, money-wise. As stripey says, we do forget. Still a ways to go; it'd be insane to think Fings Was Better In The Old Days or that we can't carry on improving.

Thank fuck for feminism and consumer science!

gn . I occasionally tell stories of how things were, and then find myself laughing at myself whilst doing it.