To ask if you are a 'housewife' with no children?

[crochetmonkey74]

I know the term housewife is outdated so first off apologies.
I've always wondered about this , I had a great aunt and uncle who never had children but she never worked. I've always been interested in how this would be (been a bit of a fantasy of mine)
Do any of you have this life ? What is it like?

I don't think anyone is arguing being a SAHM isn't a valid choice. Or being a carer, or retired, or unable to work for health reasons, or volunteering. The choice being questioned is the choice to be unemployed, kept by a husband, and do nothing outside of the home but pursue leisure activities. While it might be valid if the definition of valid is that it does no harm, I personally think doing no harm is a low bar to set for a lifetime, and that most of us would prefer to think we had contributed a little more than that.

There is plenty to do!
Walking
Going to the gym
Exercising/ cycling/ jogging etc
Yoga
Shopping
Meal planning, cooking from scratch and meal planning, trying out recipes, planning dinner parties.
Volunteering
Gardening
DIY
Art
Playing a musical instrument
Amateur Dramatics
Learning a language
Crafting
Driving
Managing money eg stocks and shares/ property
Looking after pets/ animals
Caring for relatives/ friends
Wild swimming
Meeting friends for lunch
Visiting museums etc
Reading
Writing
Listening to the radio
Managing a social media account
Activism
Genealogy
Collecting
Buying/ selling online
Home decorating

Sounds fine!

People have swallowed the red pill of capitalism.

We do not = our jobs.

@felulageller - great list, but how on earth do you then occupy the afternoons?!

I kind of am. I took some time out to study after a redundancy, and then became unwell. I'm now working part time again from home.

It suits as well as DH goes away to work so when he's home we can do stuff together rather than me having to go into an office and barely seeing him.

I’m pretty sure lots of people could fill their days but I’m cautious about the balance of power. It may be a partnership but it’s not an equal partnership. The person who brings home the money and funds the lifestyle holds the key cards. Yes it’s nice to have a tidy house and a dinner cooked from scratch but if the one at home ( typically the wife) withdraws her labour the man is hardly likely to flounder - he’ll outsource the cleaning and live off ready meals til he gets sorted. His shirts might be a bit crumpled but he’s still getting paid. His firm may offer the company lawyers to help with any court case ( as has happened to a relative) The man withdraws a labour or no longer wants to fund the lifestyle for whatever reason ( mental health crisis) and the wife is hastily knocking up a CV trying to make x number of years Marie Kondoing the drawers and decorating the bedroom sound like “Household Management”. And let’s face it if he’s clever enough to earn enough to keep 2 people in comfort he’s clever enough to hide the money. So yes we can all imagine a lovely lifestyle but how do you get around that issue.

"There is plenty to do!"

Then you mention a load of hobbies and no housework except one thing, when housework is actually what a housewife does.
If you mean you want to be unemployed and a kept woman, fine, but that's not a housewife is it?

"People have swallowed the red pill of capitalism.

We do not = our jobs."

Well, I wouldn't work if I didn't have to either.

"I’m pretty sure lots of people could fill their days but I’m cautious about the balance of power. It may be a partnership but it’s not an equal partnership. The person who brings home the money and funds the lifestyle holds the key cards. "

Yes, but this could be the case for someone who works full time outside the home too if the other person earns a lot more.

@Gwenhwyfar

Agreed although the working person who earns something is less vulnerable than the person who earns nothing. It’s different of course if you have income from other sources like a pension or inheritance.

So much judgement on this thread 🙄 each to their own. Since when has other people’s life choices affected the people judging on here. There’s certain choices I wouldn’t make that are not right for me, but I wouldn’t judge others for making that choice if it suits them and their partners.

[quote Divebar2021]**@Gwenhwyfar

Agreed although the working person who earns something is less vulnerable than the person who earns nothing. It’s different of course if you have income from other sources like a pension or inheritance.[/quote]
Only 'vulnerable' if you didn't choose the right husband/wife perhaps? Or if early in the relationship you didn't insure against this, for example, by having good life insurance and all savings in the non-taxpayer's name? This is what we did when I was a SAHM.

Communication and trust are key.

Those who stay at home for whatever reasons do need to have some nous if they feel vulnerable, and set up safeguards. Being a non-working person in a relationship seems more vulnerable on MN because this is where all the horror stories are posted!

@thepeopleversuswork @Waferbiscuit Superb posts, thank you.

@Zahra07

There is nothing wrong with wanting to SAH your own children. It should be a basic human right.

Should it really be a basic human right for women as opposed to men to be able to SAH with their own children?

Let's just unpick that a bit. A basic human right for one sex to demand that they are supported indefinitely to stay at home with their own children?

There should certainly be a right for a families to decide that one person should stay at home with the children if it is affordable and it suits the needs of the family. I have no problem with that.

But I'm uncomfortable this idea of a "basic human right" for several reasons. Firstly why should it be that women as opposed to men have this desperate human need to remain at home which needs to be provided for?

There's no biological evidence that I'm aware of that women in particular have an urge to stay at home and that men don't, Many women do want to stay at home for a period but that surely is a product of conditioning in most cases with a large practical dimension in that they typically earn less than their partners. I think characterising this as a basic human need is misleading. It if were a basic human need why don't men have it?

Secondly I'm uncomfortable with the position that anyone plans to be entirely dependent on another human being for their financial security for most of their life. I can totally understand that many people go through periods where being with their children is the greater priority and when that makes sense for the family that is fine. But the idea of setting out to spend your entire life being in a state of dependence on someone else is not something I aspire to, I don't think its particularly healthy and I don't think its helpful to describe this as a human right. What about the right of the providing partner to have some financial support from the non-providing partner?

I'm not disputing that it suits many women quite well to stay at home tactically for various reasons at various times. But a "basic human right" seems a stretch to me. At best its something which you need agreement from your partner on.

I'll stick my neck out and say that I think most women are more bonded to their babies initially than men - I don't think you can go through growing and birthing a human and being utterly responsible for its every need during that time and not be. Our hormones kick in to make us want to do it.
That's not to say that dad's don't love their children or feel extremely protective, but I think their bond grows over time.
There's a reason that women rarely abandon their children and fuck off with an affair partner and I don't think it's all social conditioning.

I want to say that I think it should be a human right to sah when a baby is small and that men should be made to take far more responsibility in terms of what fathering a child actually obliged them to do - that their responsibility extends to supporting the mother of that child for a while. But the knock on effects of making sah initially a human right is that employers will just avoid hiring/promoting women.

@Aderyn21

I want to say that I think it should be a human right to sah when a baby is small and that men should be made to take far more responsibility in terms of what fathering a child actually obliged them to do - that their responsibility extends to supporting the mother of that child for a while. But the knock on effects of making sah initially a human right is that employers will just avoid hiring/promoting women.

I’m fully supportive of the principle that men should face tougher consequences for failing to support their children and that a woman with a small baby should not be forced to go back to work until she is ready.

But as you making it a “basic human right” for a woman with a child to be supported is highly problematic. For the reasons you point out. But also because it embeds further the idea that being at home with children is the “natural” and “correct” state of being for women which would have negative and restrictive consequences for those women who have to or want to work. We don’t want to go back to a world which perceives mothers who work as unnatural.

I do see the difficulty - I don't want any woman to feel that her choice to return to work is being judged negatively. Not everyone's life and circumstances are the same and people should be free to make the right decisions for themselves without anyone looking down on them for it. It's just that I don't want women to feel compelled to return to work when their babies are still tiny, if that's something they aren't comfortable with.

@Aderyn21

I do see the difficulty - I don't want any woman to feel that her choice to return to work is being judged negatively. Not everyone's life and circumstances are the same and people should be free to make the right decisions for themselves without anyone looking down on them for it. It's just that I don't want women to feel compelled to return to work when their babies are still tiny, if that's something they aren't comfortable with.

I’m just curious, at what age do you think women should no longer be supported to stay at home with children?

Honestly I don't know. Probably the first couple of years. But I know this will probably result in women not doing that even if they want to because of implications career wise. No employer is going to happily support that level of staff absence and for all the talk about support, the reality is that they would avoid hiring women. In an ideal world there would be plenty of good quality, state subsidised childcare, that supports women returning to work when they are ready.

I think its a "valid choice" if that choice doesn't hinge on your relationship status.

So if you would give up work if you were single- fair enough, go for it.

But if you're only giving it up because you can because your partner is earning the money for you - maybe not.

I disagree with that - getting married makes you a unit and it's not unreasonable to divvy up different responsibilities within that unit, so long as both parties are in agreement

@Aderyn21

I'll stick my neck out and say that I think most women are more bonded to their babies initially than men - I don't think you can go through growing and birthing a human and being utterly responsible for its every need during that time and not be. Our hormones kick in to make us want to do it. That's not to say that dad's don't love their children or feel extremely protective, but I think their bond grows over time. There's a reason that women rarely abandon their children and fuck off with an affair partner and I don't think it's all social conditioning.

Plenty of it is social conditioning. You only have to look at adoptive families. They often also have traditional male and female roles when hormones, carrying the baby, giving birth, etc. have nothing to do with it.

is this fred still going?

time to start a new one...

but not by me.