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?

I'm not really sure what this thread is trying to achieve.

The op doesn't work and is happy. Some people on here don't work, work because they need to (financially or from a purpose point of view). It's like the SAHM / WOHM debate. No one ever agrees!

I have worked full time, full time with a Saturday job, part time (18 hours), part time (30 hours) and not at all. I think part time was best for me but I got very fed up with the comments when I was part time/not working as to when I was going to go full time (as we don't have kids). At the end of the day, it is no one else's business except mine (and DH's!).

I really couldn't give a toss what anyone else does. They don't have to justify themselves to me!

If there's a genuine question here it might be 'why do you work'

In which cae my answer is (a) I never considered an alternative; (b) I found a way of doing it which gives me flexibility and a wonderful work/life balance (c) my career development is very saisfying to me (d) the money I earn supports a family of 5.

I enjoy he day to day of it but that wouldn't be enough for me long term

All that said, I'm plotting an early retirement because I anticipate reaching a peak in my mid 40s (5-10 years away) and cba with the bit where I'm not on an upwards trajectory

I think the OP doesn't understand that other people genuinely wouldn't be happy with her life choice. While pottering about sounds lovely actually, if I were doing it because my dh was working to fund it, it wouldn't make me happy long term. I think I would become depressed. It's all tied in with the pride you feel in being able to provide/ treat friends and family/ create your home... because YOU have enabled it to happen. It makes people happy. I don't think its simply jealousy that is driving people to say they personally couldn't live like that. I obviously do come across people who don't work due to their partner's wages enabling that. I just think good for them if it makes them happy. It still doesn't mean I would want it for myself.

What Lweji and Pumpkin said.

I'm not remotely jealous of the OP - but her post about work not being the be all and end and sneering at work fetishising while living off the income that another adult is bringing in through - y'know, paid work - is utterly laughable.

I have absolutely no idea why she even started this thread (was her blog lacking inspiration?)

I think the OP is very lucky :)

The why do you work? thing is very interesting. DH and I differ on this a lot as he would rather work more and have nice things and I would rather work less and 'make do and mend'.
I'd love to have a giant vegetable patch and to grow most of our own food.

I'm probably biased though as I know a lot of women that never really worked after they got married and no one said they weren't contributing! But then again they're all much older, in a different country, and live more rurally.

Yes, in days gone by women left work when they got married - it was expected. Nowadays we look back and say "wtf"??

It's really interesting that there appears to be double standards from a gender pov here - a man who hadn't worked for years and expected his partner to work to support his pottering while sneering at work festishising would be called a cocklodger.

When people talk about work fetishising, I dont think they are saying that work isnt important. Obviously, it is. I think they just kean that we've been sold an idea that unless you are earning money, you are a lesser human being.

This is why people on benefits are seen as fair game for derision (see all those benefit bashing tv shows and the govt banging on about hard working families as a way of digging at those not on employment).

It's also why carers and sahp get a bit of a rough ride sometimes. They dont directly generate income and it gets overlooked that they might be saving money by doing what they do. If carers didnt exist then it would cost the state a fortune to buy in that help. Sahp might enable a hrt payer to contribute more in tax than if both earned the same salary split between them.

Everyone's circumstances are different and it's too simple to say work = good and not working = bad!

I think it's probably culturally subjective as well. I think even now 'looking after the home' has some status in Italy. It's good self-esteemwise in a way because there's such high unemployment that at least you can feel you are a 'housewife' as oppossed to 'unemployed'.

OP is a lazy arse. Too idle in fact to return to this thread and post on it

I don't agree. I think that when people start talking about work fetishising they're talking about work in a derogatory way - that by working you're lacking in creativity, have sold your soul to the corporate devil, and are neglecting your children's emotional welfare. Conveniently forgetting, of course, that paid work is what allows them that lifestyle.

I wonder what OP's blog is about? A blog about gardening and pottering about isn't going to be massively unique, I wouldn't have thought, but a blog about the 'fetishisation of work', almost entirely made up of quotes from a well known parenting site? hmmm...

I'm going with your latter suggestion fancy

Now I am definitely going to go and do that ironing. If I appear on this thread again will someone please kick my backside off it

Not sure much wrong with being a "lazy arse"

sounds good, op, enjoy

I don't think you can compare the OPs position to early retirement. I am intending to retire early ( and can do so because of having worked full time in a good job!) but I think the pleasure will be in it being a new phase of life. If I'd never worked, it wouldn't be retirement would it?!

I liken it to having children... Each phase is rewarding in different ways. You can enjoy babyhood without wanting it to last forever. You enjoy it, then embrace the next phase

For me it still comes back to most adults probably wanting a good work/ life balance, and getting fulfilment out of many aspects of life. I imagine couples where one is happy never to work, and the other is happy to always work (because realistically its very hard to just swap roles and step into interesting work from nothing) are few and far between. If it works for you then fine; like others have said, the OP isn't relying on the tax payer and she says she and her DH are totally happy with this set up, so I don't see the problem.
I just take issue with her thinking those who work have some 'fetish', and also with her belief that doing perfectly ordinary things like gardening and crafts, and enjoying her own company, make her inherently mysterious and interesting!

The concept of 'work is fetishized and this is harmful. With increasing automation there simply aren't enough actual jobs to go round, yet the Government (and unthinking people) cling on to this idea that everyone must Get A Job, which means a load of effort being expended on forcing people to engage in tasks that are either pointless, unnecesary or actually harmful to society as a whole. Yes, there are jobs that need to be done - the building and maintenance of hospitals, schools etc, the production and distribution of food, the disposal of waste; teaching the young, caring for the unwell, burying the dead. Much of the buying and selling and marketing is also necessary to keep everything moving along; even the most primitive societies have always had some concept of trade. However, a whole lot of jobs that people do now are a waste of time and effort.
There's no virtue whatsoever in expending effort for the sake of expending effort.The stupidity of this mindset is best demonstrated by the way people looking for employment are treated. They are now expected to spend hours doing 'work related activity' ie applying for jobs they do not have the relevant skills or qualifications for which is simply a complete waste of both their time and that of a would-be employer who has to look at all these unsuitable applications.

And look at the fucking intern culture, where people are expected to work insane hours for no money, just the possibility of a wage at some point in the future.

The current system is utterly unsustainable, and the most feasible and sensible solution really would be to introduce a Citizen's Income, with waged work available for those who want it (and sensibly waged, so the essential jobs get the higher rate and the creative-jobs-you-love a bit less.) But too many people are still set on the idea that the lower orders need to be forced to expend effort, however uselessly, obeying their betters.

.... So what sort of people would want the essential, but boring/ unpleasant jobs? I'm intrigued to know how you would incentivise people if everybody had access to all the necessities of life through citizens wage... I can totally see that many people would want more money, so would work on top of the citizens wage but those with intelligence, skills etc are going to be perfectly capable of generating an income through creating their own business, or some such. It'd be the so called 'lower order' who would end up doing the less attractive jobs.

It would thus be great with live in a society where only necessary tasks are assigned to people and paid.
Unskilled work is distributed between all unskilled people, and everyone works the same amount.
Some people become skilled workers through training and are distributed skilled tasks.
This way all contribute equally and no waste of time looking for work.
Except something like this has sort of been tried before and has reverted to freer arrangements.

What is wrong these days is people having to work longer hours to earn the same. It's wrong that some people don't earn a living wage.

It's good that society allows some people not to work, particularly those who can't work for some reason. But this also means that we also end up putting up with those who don't want to work. At the expense of those who would like not to work (as in submitting to work rules and times) but still have to do it to earn a living. (including OP's husband, who, given a choice, I bet would work differently)

Well, for one thing, there will always be people who get satisfaction and a sense of moral superiority from doing jobs which are 'dirty' or demand physical strength, especially when those jobs are clearly essential.

There are always people for everything, but would there be enough?

Plus people enjoy different things, a friend of DHs who is a plumber recently posted a picture of a flooded basement on facebook with the caption 'my job is more fun than your job' whereas I would hate to sort out a flooded basement!

Solid, I have to disagree about there always being people who get 'satisfaction and a sense of moral superiority' from doing dirty but necessary jobs. I married into a family where my FIL, his father and uncles, and three of my MIL's brothers are/were bin men/road sweepers. Not one would have chosen this had they not been educationally disadvantaged, with the other 'family alternative' being benefits or petty crime. DH and I were the first of either family to finish school. Yet it's a necessary, even an important job, but - more so in the past before wheelie bins etc - filthy, repetitive and backbreaking.

But (again) given that there are more people than there are necessary jobs, if the dirty-but-essential ones not only carried a good pay rate but were part time, enough people would be happy to do them. The 'long hours' office culture is utterly ridiculous given that it's most prevalent among the jobs that are actually the most useless.

OP... I think you DO work. You have a blog and produce art which makes you some money. (And I'm sure you do other "work" in terms of housework, organisational work, etc.) To put it another way, I think you are self-employed/freelance but that your husband's income allows you the flexibility to take "work" when it interests you rather than feeling that you have to do it. And interestingly (to me) I suspect if you'd phrased it that way you might have had less negativity - which kind of emphasises your point about some people seeing "work" as being the only valid life-path.

Anyway however you see it, I agree with you. How you choose to live your life and what you choose to do with your time is yours and your husband's business and nobody else's. And while I understand people's concerns about "what if your husband left you", it's up to you how you deal with that. There's nobody else relying on you if that happens so how you manage that situation if it should arise is entirely up to you.

Lweji. To be clear I wouldn't criticise DM or DF for working or having a job. It the 'Career' bit. Wanting more and more promotion for more glory when it wasn't financially necessary and someone else suffered.