AIBU to think many women put themselves in a bad financial position?

[Sunflowers095]

So there's a lot of talk about the gender pay gap and also how women have been more affected by the pandemic and had to take on more caring responsibilities. While I understand there are single parents etc. in most situations what I don't understand is:

• why don't women go for higher paying careers or marry lower earning men, therefore being the main breadwinner
• why don't women choose partners who will take on 50% of caring responsibilities, chores, etc. rather than have kids with someone who doesn't contribute and just put up with it?

Another thing I see often is women deciding to be SAHM, come back part time, extend maternity leave. Nothing wrong with this choice but in the context of a career surely it's not the best way to support that goal? Especially when many SAHM say that they decided to stay at home because their wage would barely cover childcare. That's not the point! Long term it increases the earning potential if a woman stays in work.

While I agree that a lot of inequality still exists I feel like many people make conscious choices that make their financial situation worse. Women I know who decided to take shared parental leave, go back to work full time, make their partner take on equal responsibility etc have all had great careers. Am I missing something in this conversation?

I'm not trying to be judgemental in any way towards non career driven women or women who want to be homemakers as I think it's great people have a choice and being a SAHM is an important job! I just mean purely from a financial/career perspective here.

I find it really crap how much people blame women for men’s misgivings.

That said, I wish women would work and set themselves a bit before having children so they have some financial independence and somethjng to go back to once the children are older. It’s difficult to offer advice for people who have had kids in their late teens / early 20s on account of having married an older, established man and then the relationship breaks down it’s hard to start again.

Women choosing a low earner partner is not a problem. I guess if we want equality in other areas, we have to accept higher earner can be either gender. I agree about the staying at home after having children thing. Of course it’s choice, but it comes with huge disadvantages to women. Why give up your earning power, future pension prospects and general financial independence. It’s far too if a risk.

If you're in a crappy, low-paying dead-end career in your 30's, then staying home probably looks like an attractive alternative.

If you want to know why women are in this position in their 30's, you need to look way back to the way women are socialised, why careers that attractive women are so low paying, and why women choose to accept this.

In short, it's incredibly complicated and can't really be reduced to "personal choices".

I have happened to marry a "lower earning" partner and so am the "breadwinner" and I feel like I am drowning.

Although DH takes care of the household and our kids equally, he seems to not have faced the same level of discrimination that I have.

Although, his employer did tell him "that's your wife's job" and was suspended from doing extra shifts when he had to take emergency leave due to our son having an anaphylactic reaction at nursery.

Currently I am attempting to return to my previous position post maternity leave (I took the maternity leave instead of my husband as our son is breastfed with a host of health conditions that I feel I am better equipped to help him with due to his hospital stays) but am being told I am being made redundant. This is the 3rd job I have lost which I feel is a result of discrimination. My industry is very male dominated.

Due to being the "breadwinner" I feel I am frantically trying to find a job that pays enough to allow us to continue paying our mortgage. As previously said, this is the 3rd time I've had this frantic worry and my CV looks terrible with all the "job hopping".

I don’t it’s as simple as you suggest. A lot of the ‘high paying careers’ don’t work for everyone - it’s often long hours, only in select locations of the country etc. Not everyone is built for that, or is able to move to areas to do so. And even people who do the right qualifications don’t just waltz into those roles, they’re very competitive. And of course once you have children it’s not always possible to go back to long hours and travelling etc, even if you managed it before. Some women manage it of course, but it’s not a solution for the majority.

Then sometimes you meet men who seem great when you spend your first years together and get married etc, and turn into slobs when the children come and don’t do their share. Most women aren’t merrily having children with men they know will screw them over.

And then there are people who just aren’t driven by money or career progression. They work to live. They just want to pay the bills, and spend time with their kids. That’s perfectly valid too.

I assume your in a high powered career yourself and that’s great if that’s the case, but it’s naive to think everyone is able/willing to do the same.

Most women want to have children and there aren’t enough men to go around who are prepared to pull their own weight in a relationship, so very many women put up with selfish men.

Many jobs are dead end. It doesn’t matter how many years you work in them, so it doesn’t matter if you take years out to be a SAHM.

And many women believe that the benefits to kids of being a SAHM or working part time far outweigh the financial rewards of full time work.

I’m not even sure it’s about being in dead end jobs.. in fact I’ve seen it in corporate law.

So many colleagues who are solicitors, often their husbands are fellow lawyers or similar.

When the woman is pregnant they always took off the full year, and why wouldn’t you? Enhanced maternity pay (when often the policies have not been updated for enhanced shared parental leave) and the chance for a year away from the stress of a busy job... bliss!

And then a year has gone past and the dynamic in the family is that the mother has been at home and the dad has continued his career. So why change that now? The dad isn’t suddenly going to be permitted to lower their working hours, he’s climbing the ladder and it would be frowned upon, so the mother asks to go back 4 days a week... and so the gap begins.

I was self employed by the time I got pregnant so the issue never came up for me. But I can guarantee if I had still been an employee in a city firm I would have jumped at the chance of a year off from the stress.

The vast majority of jobs are crap. They are not corporate law.

Like me a lot of people have low paying jobs because their mental health can't cope with the pressures that a higher paying job entails

I think what would help a lot is for more 'career' jobs to be available part time, and also more socially acceptable for men to work part time.

I work 3 days a week and it's a really good balance but it is an entry level job rather than anything where I can use my qualifications.

(I have a DH rather than DP, pay into my workplace pension, and DH has generous death in service benefits so I have thought about my finances, maybe when the DC are older I will go back full time but atm I think its better for one of us to work part time).

A mixture of societal and structural inequalities e.g. the caring professions are made much less than other ones etc. But also because most people are fairly conservative and like to do things the same way as other people i.e. men are valued more due to their ambition and women their looks etc. Statistically few women marry down etc. Now am not suggesting that I support this setup but it's very common and most people are happy with it.

Breaking the mold is often hard etc. e.g. I asked most of my partners out, asked DH to marry me, my partners have followed me/moved as a result of my career etc ( I have also done the same for theirs) and DH does at least 50% of 'women's' work in our house (but probably more) - all of my previous partners would have done the same. However, I have never lived with any Alpha males precisely because I calculated that they would not support my career in the same way - as a result, none of my current/previous partners are at the top of their profession etc and are happy with an ok but not exceptional income. So you win some, you lose some.

@Sparklesocks has it in a nutshell. Some men turn abusive when a baby comes along where previously they will have seemed fine. The abuse starts when they think you are trapped. No one has a crystal ball and hindsight always gives you 20:20 vision. Please stop blaming women!

I agree Op. Im so glad that I've always worked full time and built up a career. When dh fucked off after 25 years of marriage, I'm able to support myself financially, pay the mortgage and have a good pension. I earned more than him or equal to him for the marriage and wouldn't have had it any other way. I saw my mother end up with nothing, no home or pension after her 25 year marriage ended so wasn't going to end up the same way.

I've wondered this myself but concluded:
A lot of women prefer to take a long ML and not share it and then be the primary parent/work PT. There is a lot of muttering about "sacrifice" but if given the chance they wouldn't swap places.
A lot of men are happy with that traditional set up and have no interest in being primary parent.
There aren't enough egalitarian men to go to round anyway.
Women are keener than men to have children. A lot of men would rather not bother if the other option was to part time and do half the childcare and housework.

I left a very well paying job to become a SAHM and haven’t regretted for a second. For me it’s just been about what makes everyone in my family the happiest and where I feel most fulfilled.
I did go back to work initially and it was fine really, I could do the job and wasn’t facing discrimination so I know it can be done but much (MUCH) easier in the early years before school. School made everything much more complicated - school holidays well in excess of holiday days and short days which wrap around care still didn’t make quite long enough.

So there are people like me, who make a conscious choice and are not forced into it due to childcare costs. I personally wouldn’t have shared parental leave. Breastfeeding was/ is incredibly important to me as well as acknowledging that it was me who grew the baby inside me and birthed the baby and had a different bond with the baby, especially in the first few years.

That’s one perspective. It’s not mine.

A couple raising a family need to work together to gain synergy. If you both limit yourselves, all of you have less money. If the woman takes on childcare to support the man’s higher earning career, they both benefit. In fact, everyone does as children aren’t put into institutional care at a very young age. Childcare costs are lower. There is greater flexibility to move around for higher paid jobs.

If the woman is initially the higher earner, as I was, it is fine until you find yourselves needing to survive on maternity pay after the second child is born. That may well be unrealistic; better the man keeps on his high earning job.

My perspective only works if the couple both commit for life and respect child rearing as being worthy of as much respect as being a CEO. You need equality of access to money and AVCs for you both, not just one. There needs to be support for the woman to step up in the world of work again.

It can work using a very traditional model.

My DH changed his hours when I went back to work. I work 2.5 days a week and he covered the 0.5. But he had to do this by working another hour on the other 4 days, which left me doing all the dinner/bath stuff. We have ended up adding another half day of nursery.

It wasn't even that he was massively higher earning, but honestly? Bosses don't expect men to ask to go part time. Many even hire them over women "knowing" they won't.

This is very much tied in to how caring /raising children is completely devalued.

Especially when many SAHM say that they decided to stay at home because their wage would barely cover childcare. That's not the point! Long term it increases the earning potential if a woman stays in work.

In an ideal MN world where 90% of people earn £100k plus I'm sure that's great. You can outsource cleaning, gardening, ironing etc and afford a nanny but back in the real world where many of us are on £15k - £20k and you're trying to work FT and juggle everything else yourself, can you really not see that this is the point for a lot of women? To struggle with all that and still not be any better off doesnt seem like a good idea to many women. Many of us are in low paid admin or retail jobs often with little or no progression.

Also, I see a lot of very "AHA!" posts about how posters could have shared parental leave, but in our case I was the only one who had been with an employer for the requisite 26 weeks.

I didn’t marry my husband because he wasn’t more than me. I married him because I love him.

I actually went part time and subsequently gave up work to spend more time with my children and to support my family at home. I could have earned lots of money in the private sector but I simply didn’t want to.

I may be one of those women you clearly look down on and in a vulnerable financial position but we made the choices we did because it was what worked for our family. I was not thinking about protecting myself on the off chance that we’d split up 5 years later.

Earned, not wasnt. Silly autocorrect.

Women in workplace are subject to misogyny, sexual harassment and general bullying, directly due to being women, combined with an excessive burden of domestic responsibilities societal expectations ...eventually women burn out and/or give up. They settle for making the bills rather than advancement or end up choose a domestic role they perhaps wouldn't otherwise have chosen.

Women don't choose mediocrity, the structure of our society funnels them directly into it.

Because I didnt want to put my dc in nursery so I could work, that's before you get to the financial issue.
That was our choice for our family though. My own dm went back to work and family looked after me. I just wanted my dm at home so I always vowed to do that for my dc.
We are both also quite traditional and both happy for dh to have a career while I stay at home.

So many different perspectives, really interesting! I guess a very valid point is raised on women who are now in their 30's or 40's were a lot more pressured/expected to take on these roles rather than work on their career.

The concept of women wanting kids more also makes total sense. I think though sometimes women feel disadvantaged but equally don't really want to deal with more hours/pressure/time away from their kids whereas a man would be okay with it.

Personally I'm not very family oriented and I am quite career focused but the reason behind my post was wanting to hear out other perspectives. I'm not usually to vocal in these conversations because I don't want to come across as tone deaf or take away from anyone's experience. But I remember watching a documentary on netflix (I think it was called "explained") where they examined data about the gender pay gap and said that actually if you look at all the data it's more of a motherhood pay gap than it is gender, if you consider people without kids/with kids. I do wonder how common it is to have a real work life balance with career advancement and family time.