To think you are very lucky if you dont have to work?

[malificent7]

Dp is amazing but not a high earner and also i want to be a bit independent howver i haul my butt out if bed to work a 12 hour shift where i get told off as i havn't been trained properly...i am very jealous of those who don't have to work.

[DonutMan]

'Woken up' not 'women up'.

(I need to 'man up' and proofread my posts better). 😳

[Thoughtlessinengland]

guess what I'm partly saying is that I've encountered many women who feel that part of attaining equality with men is to be able to 'do what they do'.

Yeah.... nope. Getting excited about my research isn’t me chasing after “what men do” - it’s about me going to bed curious about stuff I have been detangling about research questions which have exciting me, which have consequences for society and which I am looking forward to chewing through with couple of others. It means being genuinely excited about putting internet away, sitting with coloured pens and paper and mind mapping the start of something new. It means the total pleasure of getting together with colleagues who’ve become friends to celebrate joint successes. Genuine pleasure. Not a desire to “do what men do”. It means reacting not particularly nicely to all and sundry telling me to enjoy staying home, to everyone from MIL to the neighbours cat asking me (not the father) how hard it was to leave DS at Childminder’s (it wasn’t - it was the start of the end of my PND and the beginning of my gorgeous bond with my superb son). It means not caring too much for assumptions made about what i should enjoy and what I should leave behind. Fuck all to do with”what men do”. The man next to me snoring away would happily quit work tomorrow by the way if he won the lottery and says he only works because he has to and how happy he’d be to stay home, look after house and DC. but that’s by the by.

[CosmoK]

donutman you're looking at this from a very narrow viewpoint and making some huge assumptions. You're assuming people are talking about careers where you work for large corporations making huge amounts of money either for yourself or shareholders. That's not true for everyone. For lots of people money isn't the main driver for their career choices.





I don't do my job 'so I can do what men do' As an academic my sense of identity is very much tied up in my job. My research, my course, my teaching ......it's not about money it's a subject and a job I'm deeply passionate about ( ironically, one of my research areas is the career development of women).





My DH has no desire to be 'businessman' but he's equally passionate about his career - tbf he earns a very, very good salary but as he also works for a university it's never going to be that high.





There are always assumptions on threads like these where people assume women are working for the luxuries in life ( men never get that criticism). While having two salaries can mean a more comfortable life it's not always the main driver.




I made it very clear I would be returning to work full time after maternity leave. It wasn't because I was demanding equality it was because I love my job and didn't see why I should sacrifice my career just because I'm female. There's a difference.

[Thoughtlessinengland]

To echo CosmoK - the bizarre association of women’s aspirations for full time work with money and fancy holidays is - well - bizarre. Here’s a thought: sometimes it is passion and drive. I am an academic. My career is inside the contexts of university and my research compulsorily needs to engage with society, research social phenomena along my area of expertise and to build impact on policy and practice affecting society. I have made rapid progress through the academic ladder at a relatively young ish age but even then the money is never going to be comparable to the top boss of Microsoft even when I become professor with my next promotion. I am an academic and I am driven by my research interests for fuck all to do with fancy holidays. My brain is an integral part of my identity. Giving a talk on something I feel passionately about gives me bliss and joy and esteem.

My female cousin is in an entirely different field. But also an academic. Just in biomedical sciences, not social sciences. She spends ages getting excited about amoeba or some such in her laboratory - not because it wins her piles of money from big pharma but because she inspires teams, loves making progress in her chosen area of medicine, and she continues to still draw an acadmeic’s healthy but not spectacular salary.

For both of us - this is who we are. For neither of us this is valuable because fancy holidays, or because this is “what men do”.

[tired206]

Being a stay at home parent would bore me. I'm just not that into craft and housework.

I’m not into craft but as strange as it sounds, I absolutely love housework and find it really relaxing. I’d love to be a SAHM but it’s not an option for us sadly due to finances.

[Namenic]

I switched career recently, so need to gain experience. Our ultimate aim is for both of us to go PT. The tax system favours this and it makes a difference to mid-high earners. It’s not a binary choice - both people can (try) to scale back - though not all industries are amenable to this currently.

[tired206]

I sometimes feel a bit uncomfortable being financially dependent on my Dh.

Hmm, I think I would struggle with that too. The ideal situation would be a decent lottery win (£2 million?) to give me an independent income while being a SAHM!

[Radicalradiator]

Having gone through an unexpected divorce after a 20 year marriage i would encourage everyone to ensure they are not financially dependent on their partners. You do not want to suddenly find yourselves penniless and starting again over 40. Also, yes it could happen to you, my relationship was strong and happy until he suddenly decided it wasn’t.

[DonutMan]

Thoughtless

I should've added a disclaimer that my entire post wasn't about your one above (I almost did). It more just got me thinking about the whole topic.

I've no doubt some people (both sexes) just enjoy the challenge of a job and genuinely feel fulfilled but what they do, but there are also others who wouldn't be a SAHM out of principle - I think this is daft as people should have the choice to do as they please. If parenting is seen as a woman's job it doesn't necessarily follow that more women need to be successful in
business any more than it means that more men need to be SAHP.

The man next to me snoring away would happily quit work tomorrow by the way if he won the lottery and says he only works because he has to

Exactly what I said most men are like IMO. I read so many posts on FWR saying that it's a male privilege to be able to forge a high power career, but IMO most men strike your partner. I think the privilege is in having the choice, not grinding away in endless boring meetings.

[DonutMan]

'are like' not 'strike'.

[DonutMan]

donutmanyou're looking at this from a very narrow viewpoint and making some huge assumptions. You're assuming people are talking about careers where you work for large corporations making huge amounts of money either for yourself or shareholders. That's not true for everyone. For lots of people money isn't the main driver for their career choices.

I agree, and I think we're talking about slightly different things.

There's a huge preoccupation with male CEOs, but my view is that while most CEOs are men, most men aren't CEOs. They're a tiny proportion of the population and usually very atypical individuals - for starters, studies have repeatedly shown that CEOs and business leaders have higher testosterone than most men.

We always hear about the 'men at the top', but these positions aren't much more attainable for the average man than for the average woman.

[TheNavigator]

This thread isn't about working v being a SAHM, this is about working v not working. I think most people would happily give up work if they won the lottery/inherited a fortune. It is certainly the desire for the better things in life that keeps my nose to the grindstone, not any particular work ethic. Yes I could live more frugally - but I don't want to.

[CosmoK]

Well, that's a whole other thread in itself. Yes CEOs (or similar senior jobs) are unattainable for many people however, men are more likely to be found in these position and white men even more so. That is the same across senior positions in a range of sectors. Women are still represented unequally in the labour market. There is far more than testosterone at play here....far more.

Quite often on threads like this comments are made about why women choose to work if they didn't need to financially - why wouldn't you choose to be at home with your kids if you could? and the very predictable ( and incredibly offensive) why are you letting others raise your children? Funny how men are never asked these questions.


Personally, we could afford for me not to work but I chose to work and chose to return full time. Not because I was making a point about equality but, as i've already said, i love my job, i'm passionate about my job and it's a big part of my identity......and that's okay. It doesn't make me less of a parent. Just as working full time doesn't make my DH any less of a parent. Although, society still seems to judge us differently.

[Thoughtlessinengland]

The entire point is that men are not asked to justify these choices, men are not asked these questions. It's always women. Highly successful women are often asked how they balance family and work, when, on the same panel, a man with more children is not asked this question (the assumption being that his kids are obviously looked after by a female partner). Women continue to be under-represented in the work-place, they continue to have lower earning professions, they continue to under-achieve in the sciences. To write this all off as - that's all fine, women must not want to be "like men" - we have begun with a false premise. Why is wanting to be "like men" for both sexes to be at par with such things? Why is wanting to be "like women" for a man to stay at home? We can only argue such a point if we have accepted that there is a core, fundamental, biological (?) reason for the male protector/provider and female carer model. Sure - it is the model on which society operates and socialises kids - from Toy Shops to books to social discourse. But let's at least recognise it. let's not fool ourselves that there are innate roles that are "like men" and "like women" and it is a race to the bottom for women to randomly want to be "like men".

Situations often seen here - "I makes loads less than DH anyway", "DH is far more trained than me", "it wouldn't make sense for our family for me to work because my wages are too low" - these situations did not randomly transpire. Each of these people were little girls and little boys at one point. They came out with a penis and a vagina, and knew nothing about anything. Then something happened along the way where it became understandable/acceptable/normal (with exceptions) for the boy to excel in numeracy and science and go into a profession with fantastic earning prospects, and it became equally OK for the baby girl to grow into a teenager opting for choices which would leave her with the lack of training/lower wage she then goes on to speak of in the 20s/30s. At which point - hey - sure it "makes sense for the family for me to stay at home - my DH was totally ok with it".

In the workplace too, leave policies are heavily geared towards keeping women at home and men away from home (14 days paid paternity leave - how shocking is that? what message is it sending to our boys and girls?). my spouse found it unbearable to be torn from baby DS. I found it unbearable to be forced to stay at home for 6 months attending baby groups. Not one person in the family was happy. Neither myself nor spouse have any enjoyable recollections at all of that period.

To not scrutinise the structures which create these conditions - both in the workplace for adults, and right from get go at home and early years for babies, to write these outcomes off as solely individual choices, to accept as random coincidences the countless accounts of "he earns more anyway, so that's what made sense for us" - is to be naïve.

[LightsInOtherPeoplesHouses]

I think most people would happily give up work if they won the lottery/inherited a fortune

I wouldn't, though I would like the opportunity to go part-time. If DH could go part-time that would be good as well.

Never going to happen though.

[DonutMan]

The entire point is that men are not asked to justify these choices, men are not asked these questions. It's always women.

I agree with most of your post. However, whilst men aren't as likely to be asked why they aren't raising their children, they're much more likely to encounter raised eyebrows for being the SAHP. Of course, both options should be available to either in an ideal world.

[Thoughtlessinengland]

However, whilst men aren't as likely to be asked why they aren't raising their children, they're much more likely to encounter raised eyebrows for being the SAHP.

Well. Of course. That’s two sides of the same coin. Men = stay at home/childcare is not considered a regular thing. Hence neither are they asked about it, nor are they resources at work for it, nor do their participation in it go without ridicule/raised brows. Same point.

[BenjiB]

I haven’t worked since 2006. I’d love to go out to work but it doesn’t work with my disabled son. I hope to train to do nails in the New Year to fit round him.

[Namenic]

Ground is shifting though @Thoughtlessinengland. Paternity/shared parental leave is getting better in some sectors - as well as flexible working. Hope that more men will take it up.

[Tenpenceabag]

I think there are 2 sides of a coin. There is, as pp have said, an underlying expectation in a lot of cases that the male partner's career or job will carry on regardless, and then the mother (in most cases, not all ) has to choose between pursuing a career, going pt, taking an extended period of time off or becoming a SAHM. I know of 2 drs who, after having children both decided to be pt. Apparently the father had a much more negative reaction to saying he wanted to be pt, whereas it was somehow more expected/acceptable for the mother to be pt.
However where I live I know loads of SAHM who have very high earning husbands. Most of them now have tween/teenage children at high school, and spend their time mainly exercising, shopping, having beauty treatments and going out for meals/coffees. A lot are degree educated and would have had a good job before having children but I am curious what they would, or will do once their DC adults.

[The80sweregreat]

I haven't read the whole thing but in my experience the women who could continue to work full time with Children had a lot of family help. One acquisition had so much help she had hardly any time off and now has a great pension and her and her dh have millions in the bank as they both had well paid jobs and grandparents to bring up the kids for them.
Good for them, but it is rare.
Most women struggle and not much in the way of free childcare which is a killer in the paying out stakes ! It's a fortune.

[CosmoK]

I've continued to work full time and progress in my career with no family help...so has my DH. You don't need family help but you do need a support partner who treats you as an equal. And that works both ways.

[flirtygirl]

I think that yes, the discussions about the underlying societal and biological structures and why more women still stay at home is good but the current UK society thing of looking down on women who choose this role is wrong.

They is a ace for all mothers who woh or sah.

If I had to do my life again, I would choose to stay at home more, ie I did not with my first so I made sure I did with my second.

But the point is that we can only choose for ourselves, we should be making it easier for mothers to continue to work if they choose and also to stay at home if they choose.

The horrible comments are on both sides. Why can't people just let other people do what's best for them? You enjoy your secular career great whilst I enjoy my homemaking career. But it's never allowed to be like that.

You will always get someone say you must be so bored, isolated, not using your brain for anything vs you are not raising your children, you must be materialistic. Both stupid ignorant comments made from those with narrow viewpoints.