To think that a career / work is not the be all and end all

[Cantz]

I am 38 now, no children and I haven't worked a job since I was 29 and even the it was just part time. My husband works but I don't I have a blog that makes a little money and I sell some art work which brings in something but I don't have a career or a job I am mostly at home cooking, gardening and doing my own thing. It works for us and we are happy after 21 years together.
Lots of my friends have careers some are Doctors, others work in TV or in IT and we still have plenty in common. I want these women, my friends to have what makes them happy and of that is a career then great. I absolutely support the right of a women to do what she wants with her life but I am finding more and more that for me to choose not to have a career, especially as I don't have children is a total taboo.

It often feels like there is huge pressure to go out and get a job, that you cannot be fufilled unless you are in paid employment and that worse by not working you cannot possibley be contributing to society. There are lots of ways a person can make a contribution it isn't all about money or even having kids for that matter.

Surely paid employment isn't the be all and end all?

Ellie, the thread and the OP are not about sahp.
It may make sense, financial or otherwise., for one parent to stay at home and contribute towards their family by raising the children. They are hard work.

The op is about choosing to do very little on the way of earning, with no children, and little on the way of contributing to the family.
And criticising the people who are working and feel the need to work (earn money) - in that sense she is actually criticising us who do it and her friends too (going back to another pp)

When in fact, she's sponging from all by benefiting from their work.

And while a marriage is a unit, both should contribute equally for it to work. In effort, in money, in work, all combined.

The marriage the op is in seems very unequal in her favour.
It's OK because you spend very little. That shows that you feel that he is paying your way. But what if you want to spend more?

And in fact you are not spending very little. You are costing half of rent/mortgage, of food, of gas, electricity, water. Half of holidays, food, and so on.

If you needed, could you walk out of the relationship and support yourself?

Maybe it would be a good exercise to try and start earning your own keep.

The vitriol is because people like the op, just by doing what they do, challenge the idea beloved of some other people that you 'have' to work. Whether for necessity, or personal fulfilment, or because you owe it to society to become something really really valuable and worthwhile like a marketing executive.

Some people can't cope with that, so they snipe and lash out and throw stones. I don't know why they find it so difficult to see people live their lives according to different priorities, but they seem to.

Posters have repeatedly said they couldn't give a Castlemaine XXXX what the OP's work arrangements are. But she asked for opinions on her set up and she got them.

What irked many posters (including me) was the references to, for example, the "fetishisation" of work. Not everyone is "lucky" enough to have a husband happy to go out to work everyday and support their partner's blogging/veg growing/arty projects.

OP is entirely dependent on work. A job and career is her be all and end all - just not her job, her husband's.

She should "fetishise" her husband's job, because it's what keeps her afloat.

Moreover, I suspect OP has underestimated how difficult it could be for her to re-enter the workplace should life intervene and her current arrangement goes tits up.

" I always think that people who couldn't find enough of interest and value to do with themselves outside paid employment must be really dull."
But if I didn't need the money I'd do something like I do now in a voluntary role. Would that be less dull? As it's outside paid employment

Sleepy, the OP is not living away from society, supporting herself. She is withing that society reaping it's benefits, while considering her self superior to those who support her lifestyle. Who read her blog, keep the Internet going, taught her in her courses, bring most food to her table, make her clothes and so on.
She choose to live with someone who supports her lifestyle. She is not saying no to a nice bed, a safe roof, a computer.
She is, in fact, a hypocrite.

She should be thanking and being grateful to her husband and everyone else that is working.
You're welcome, btw. How about you give some back?

Bloody new phone.

Within ... its benefits. (There may be more and can't be arsed to re-correct them)

I love how everyone is getting their knickers in such a twist pretending to base their disapproval on the fact that 'but she's just painting and gardening, it's not even like she's volunteering for charideeee to make up for the fact that she's not in worthwhile paid employment'.

Oh well done all of you. Are you also then going to have to a go at everyone who a) works but isn't doing to genuinely society-improving job like being a dr or teacher or b) works but in something very low paid and takes more out of the tax system than they put into it.

No, didn't think so. But logically, that's where you have to go with that line of argument.

It would be deemed ok if the husband was supporting her to look after kids. It would be ok if she just said she was a self employed artist (a lot of people call themselves this even if they make no more money out of it than the op) even if that meant she was still in practice dependent on her husband. If would be ok if she declared that she had plans to create an as-yet-unprofitable blog/art/gardening business and her husband was supporting her while she got it going. But having someone else willingly support you pursue your hobbies is apparently a betrayal of feminism, society as a whole and god knows what else.

People can't cope with such confident lack of ambition as the op's can they? It's like it's taken to undermine their own life choices as being self evidently worthwhile.

The phrase fetishisation of work was mentioned up thread. Yup.

I doubt that anybody really cares what the op does. They are just responding to an AIBU.

I don't see the op being ungrateful to her husband...where does that come into it? I presume the op is bright enough to recognise that her husband's job provides for her.

And as for being grateful to everyone else in society. Well, yes, obviously, but I think it's disingenuous to start demanding this of the op. Is avenue one on here a carer, a street cleaner, a brain surgeon etc? Or do, in fact, a lot of us do fairly valueless jobs that no one would really miss if we just stopped tomorrow? We should be under just as much pressure to express our gratitude to those who genuinely to keep society running. Say that and I'll agree with you. Keep piling illogical and disingenuous pressure on the op and ill question the logic and fairness of it.

I work full time btw and always have. No vested interest in defending the op, apart from the aforementioned logic and fairness.

Very funny post, sleepy.

People in low paid jobs often do very important work that keeps us all going. They should be paid better and I have no problem that they pay no tax.
Paid work of any kind is valuable to the society, which is why it's paid. (We may disagree on the worth, but society puts value on work done and if it's paid, then it's considered of value).

With sahp, the husband isn't working to support his wife being with the children. They could instead be paying childcare. That costs money. So, sahp (and dads!) may not be producing money, but they are producing valuable work. And saving a lot of money.

If the op was investing in a failed career, she would probably be advised to drop it. But it would still be investing and giving her best, not purposefully pottering about.

Read what the op said about people who work and it's clear she's not grateful to anyone. And in fact she criticises them and puts them down. That means her husband too.
She's convinced she contributes equally and spends very little, so she's not a burden, but she is more than she recognises.

People can't cope with such confident lack of ambition as the op's can they? It's like it's taken to undermine their own life choices as being self evidently worthwhile.

I don't think anyone gives a toss about her ambition, or lack thereof.

It was OP who raised the subject of contributing to society in her, er, OP. She stated that it was possible to make a valuable contribution to society without doing so through paid employment or child rearing. That is perfectly true and I doubt many would dispute that.

In subsequent posts she then talked of wanting to be free to pursue her own interests and elucidated what those were (the blogging, arts, astronomy, etc).

Unless I've missed it, I can't see how any of the pursuits OP describes contributes to the wellbeing of society (a claim she introduced in her own OP).

She hasn't even claimed that her blogging or other hobbies have some inherent value to the wellbeing of others. Everything described has the sole purpose of fulfilling the OP.

I guess I'm sitting here wondering how she contributes to society (her position).

If I had the same confident lack of ambition as the op, my son and I would be living in a hovel and starving or living off benefits, from someone else's taxes and hard work.
I don't consider her confident lack of ambition a threat to me or my choices at all. :)

Im not sure the OP should feel gratitude to society's workers, apart from her husband. Any service those workers provide, her family unit is paying for, either via her dh's taxation or directly.

I guess she could be grateful that other people have different mindsets/ambitions than her. But truthfully, few people go to work because it benefits society. Mostly people do it because they have to and if they are lucky, they get to work in a field which satisfies personal ambition.

I think you're asking to end up in a logical pickle with the argument that paid work is de facto of value to society, that's why it's paid.

Prostitution and similar is paid. A lot of essential charity work is unpaid. Our economic system is actually spectacularly bad at placing appropriate value on things.

I don't disagree with the fact that the op seems to be contributing nothing either morally or financially to society, but my argument is that there are millions of people who are either not contributing morally (pointless or even actively unethical jobs) or by working but still being net takers of tax not net contributers. Or both.

And I've read the op again. There's nothing in there that's remotely derogatory about people who work. Totally the opposite.

Any service those workers provide, her family unit is paying for, either via her dh's taxation or directly.

Yes, but there are people there to actually do that work.
Whereas the OP isn't.

I'm grateful that my cleaner comes to do that work. And I always thank her for coming. Because otherwise I'd have to do it.
Just because I pay her, I don't think I don't need to thank her.

Ok then lweji, if not threatened then jealous I assume. The op doesn't work and doesn't have to. And is neither living in a hovel or leeching or the taxpayer ( by the sounds of it). Since the arrangement between her and her husband is none of anyone else's business, what else is there there to trigger such a torrent of emotive (and extremely tenuously argued) disapproval (not just you)? Any arguments that she's a drain on society are logical minefields. She's not really, is she? You just really want her to be.

I think the reaction entirely proves the op's point.

To my mind the only obvious reaction is 'lucky her how nice'.

Ok then lweji, if not threatened then jealous I assume. The op doesn't work and doesn't have to. And is neither living in a hovel or leeching or the taxpayer ( by the sounds of it). Since the arrangement between her and her husband is none of anyone else's business, what else is there there to trigger such a torrent of emotive (and extremely tenuously argued) disapproval (not just you)? Any arguments that she's a drain on society are logical minefields. She's not really, is she? You just really want her to be.

I think the reaction entirely proves the op's point.

To my mind the only obvious reaction is 'lucky her how nice'.

Ok then lweji, if not threatened then jealous I assume. The op doesn't work and doesn't have to. And is neither living in a hovel or leeching or the taxpayer ( by the sounds of it). Since the arrangement between her and her husband is none of anyone else's business, what else is there there to trigger such a torrent of emotive (and extremely tenuously argued) disapproval (not just you)? Any arguments that she's a drain on society are logical minefields. She's not really, is she? You just really want her to be.

I think the reaction entirely proves the op's point.

To my mind the only obvious reaction is 'lucky her how nice'.

This thread has made me think about this financial independence people on here seem so fond of

It's never occurred to me as being relevant so I have asked myself why. The answer, I think, is that I have never considered myself tied to a man or reliant upon them for anything, so I have no need to be independent from them.

So I am declaring financial independence as anti feminist

Sleepy- fwiw I agree with all you eloquent posts.

My reaction to OP was 'why do I give a rats arse' followed by 'I prefer routine in my life' and finally 'this place is full of people conflicted between lefty ideas tied into capitalism'

I'm not financially dependent on DH, neither is he on me. Our finances are joined so you wouldn't describe us as financially independent either but we could be if we wanted to be. I don't understand your point.

I'll tell you what the problem here is, 99% of people have no choice so are angry that OP has this freedom. She is doing no harm and is not sponging off anyone other than her hubby and so what if she is letting him support them, obviously he earns enough in the same time that other workers don't, to fully support 2 people so he might as well.

I think its wonderful to have that freedom OP. Its like early retirement, something most of us would love. I am one of the very few 1% I would say who works because I find the work enjoyable and money nice to have even though my DH could support both of us easily and still have a nice lifestyle. If work got crappier and/or the money decreased, I'd consider what to do next. Most likely another paid full time job but who's to say I wouldn't enjoy doing more with the horses and garden! I also have 3 kids under 3, but don't think I would want to look after them full time unless I really had to. At the moment I get to see them all day, at the nice parts like after naps and for lunch, and a few hours every morning and evening and all weekend. I feel blessed I can escape to a comfortable well paid job. I might resent OP more if I had to leave them from morning till night and work like a dog for less money.