To be shocked that in the 21st century there's still a staggering amount of women who rely entirely on their husbands?

[EllieRosesMammy]

I see it far too often on MN, women saying their husbands have been cheating on them for years or treating them absolutely terribly, but saying they can't leave because they are entirely financially dependent on their husbands.

Is it just me who finds this mad in 2022? Or is it still normal for men to be 100% the provider of the household?

I just couldn't imagine being stuck in a rubbish situation simply because of money

I am absolutely in no way slating stay at home mums, or house wives here either. I just believe all women should be self sufficient enough that if they're in a bad situation they can walk away

@PrincessMeg

The world would be fine without female politicians, teachers, nurses, police, lawyers, doctors. Fine without female scientists and researchers? And and on

You can't actually be serious? The idea that women should chose men who can provide for them rather than providing for themselves is abhorrent

For me following my dreams meant a relatively low paid career.

I don't want to leave my husband but if I did it would be very hard financially. I couldn't afford to buy a house in the area we live in even with half the equity in our house. Maybe i could buy a two bed flat which wouldn't be ideal for 3 children who are used to having their own rooms. I might have to accept that my children would be better off living with their dad or I might choose to stay in less than ideal circumstances.

As a mother of girls I want them to raise their expectations in the life they want.
Partners they choose - not lower or if they have a career feel they have to give it up as the partner job is too important. I want them to follow their dreams and achieve whatever they want (and that includes being a SAHP if they so wish)

Someone else said on this if finances or the wish to have one parent at home - why can’t both parents work part time - around the children so that both parents and children are active in the upbringing. We then bring our sons and daughters up equally and that the responsibility does not fall to one person. And neither party vulnerable.

Maybe my husband career has been held back because as a team we both had children and I expect him as does his daughters to share the pick ups and drops off, take time of when children are sick and be at every school event - which he has done (as I have)

Maybe it’s my upbringing - I have a large family and all the female (aunts etc) worked as did both my Grandma’s. For some of them they did night shift around the children and often in low jobs. The fathers all stepped up and knew they had to help.
I probably have that fear of not being able to provide and want that independence as it’s been installed in me from a very young age! My Gran was a nurse and my Dad has some lovely memories of his Dad and him - rare for that to be the case back in the 50/60s. When my parents divorced it meant my Mum wasn’t in a vulnerable position has her own pension and was able to get a mortgage on a small home and they shared the care of my youngest sister - as always had been the case in our home.

Your first point..generalisation. You're also continuously directing this at me. Someone who doesn't share that pov.

Second point. Another generalisation that I've seen time and time again. If you're a sahm your OH must surely not want to parent? Wrong.

Third and fourth point. Why would everyone's OH be incapable or unwilling to do both? Yet you can. Where's the logic?

That's brilliant you feel you have a balance that works for you. It may come as a surprise but OP doesn't represent everyone in relishing in other people's perceived failings.

You can't come at people with incorrect assumptions and generalisations about their personal, financial and family life because of a few mumsnet threads.
As I said previously sahm aren't going to start threads about how happy their life is. People who don't need advice don't seek it out. There are also mums who would love to be able to spend more time away from work and with their children but circumstances don't allow it.

You are deluded. Totally deluded.

I was with a man for eight years. He adored me and worshipped me. Treated me like gold. Everyone told me how lovely he was. Everyone said what a great person he was. Guess what...he turned 30, started on some sort of early mid life crisis where he let his friends convince him he'd 'wasted' his twenties in a relationship and that their life of Tinder and festivals was what he wanted. Then The Script started. How he'd been miserable for years, yadda yadda. He left me and immediately had a fling with his beautiful assistant at work, the one he'd told me repeatedly he had no interest in and I had nothing to worry about.

His entire personality changed. He went from being a lovely, kind, generous man to a mean spirited, selfish cunt in the space of about six months. I had given up so many opportunities and made so many career sacrifices to be with this man, believing we'd be together forever and he was The One.

Thinking it won't happen to you because you're somehow superior to other women and know how to pick a partner is the height of arrogance and delusion. Pride comes before a fall. Everyone thinks it won't happen to them until it does.

@Change123today

Why should we both have to play the same part time work part time parent equal role? What is wrong with doing what we are inclined to do and finding a person who compliments that (and we compliment them)?

Seems to me that in the rush to denigrate SAHM to try to make working more viable and the rush to “hold men to account” to do more parenting to make working some womens lives easier - we have forgotten that quite often one partner is inclined to want to work full time and this is often the man and one partner is not inclined to want to stay at home and raise happy children and this is often the woman. And when these two DIFFERENT types of people meet in a relationship it’s actually complimentary not adversarial and it wouldn’t work as well trying to both make them do an equal amount of working and staying home, it would be trying to fit a square peg into a round hole on both accounts.

Some posters on here just can’t seem to accept that it’s actually a lot of peoples inclination (shockingly even in the 21st century) to live like this. I know that comes as a surprise to some seeing people live as humans have always organically organised their roles but there you have it.

Really baffled by the number of posts assuming that:

• you need to be employed and unavailable for your children in order to be financially independent
• The only reason to want to be financially independent is out of fear of being left by one’s partner.

@Topgub

I believe we should have a chance to be all those things and women that are inclined to them wouldn’t be happy without that chance - but yes it would be fine. Are we just pretending that the world didn’t go round for thousands of years with stereotypical gender roles and would collapse if that was all there was? It wouldn’t because it didn’t - it was fine.

We're not talking about love. That's not the question.

The question is whether the work of a SAHM is equally valuable and the answer is no, it isn't. That's why so many women end up up shit creek without a paddle when their partner leaves. Because their 'work' has no intrinsic value. Nobody else gives a fuck that they look after the kids and do the housework. Nobody else is going to pay them for it.

If I lose my job, I have a set of skills and experience I've spent 15+ years building up, so that I am attractive to other employers. The SAHM is relying on finding another man happy to take on another man's kids and fund all their lives. Unless she happens to look like Shakira, that's not very likely, is it?

Some women have their heads screwed on, like the one who posted here who has bought investment properties in both their names. Her partner can walk out and she'll still be fine. But most SAHMs aren't in that position, are they? They're depending on the whims of a man. Telling themselves 'oh but he'd never hit me/cheat/leave'. That is not a safe or secure place to be.

Financial independence is all relative anyway. For instance, £40k would be an average / good salary in most parts of the U.K and if your husband earns similar, then obviously your salary is fundamental to your lifestyle; the home you live in; the bills; pensions - everything really. Including being able to stand in your own two feet if he left you. So I can understand why any woman in that sort of scenario would find it hard to relate to being a SAHM.

But imagine if the same hypothetical woman on £40k who happened to marry a hypothetical man who earned £400k and why was based in central London. That £40k would be much less significant in the context of their lives. Chances are, she will be living in a house she could never afford in a million years on £40k and the trajectory of her life and her kids life will have been determined by his income anyway, not hers. Even if she carries on working for the £40k and they pay for childcare, if he ever leaves her, and decides to screw her over financially, chances are she'd not be able to live where she has been living. She would still have to move out of London; her kids schools would have to change (particularly as she would never be able to pay the fees herself on £40k). Would she even be able to do her £40k job elsewhere - maybe, maybe not? So really, in that context, even though she was working, she was still largely financially dependent on the DH.

The point I'm making is, 'financial independence' is all relative and just having a job per se might not make much difference anyway if you happen to be married to a much higher earner (or depending on where you live).

Obviously, not all women have the mentality to SAH, even if they are married to very wealthy men, and this is absolutely fine. But it's not hard to understand, why for many women, their salary might seem more and more negligible as the years go on and so they might decide to put that energy into their kids instead. It's just a different context for that decision.

Maybe my husband career has been held back because as a team we both had children and I expect him as does his daughters to share the pick ups and drops off, take time of when children are sick and be at every school event - which he has done (as I have)

Surely your aware not all jobs allow this kind of flexibility though. In the early days I could have expected DH to do pick ups until I was blue in the face but his employers wouldn't have allowed it, his working hours were the hours the business was open and that was that.
In order to gain the flexibility he has now he's had to put in serious commitment and work away from home for the majority of the week for years.

@OrangeSamphire

IKr? Like if you want to work work, but a lot of posters are sounding like the only reason they even want to work is fear of being dumped by some bum of a man.

Thinking it won't happen to you because you're somehow superior to other women and know how to pick a partner is the height of arrogance and delusion. Pride comes before a fall. Everyone thinks it won't happen to them until it does.

This is true @pixie5121

It's also a too common theme on the relationships board here, sadly.

@Foxgluv

I'm directing it you because you made the generalisation that wp can't do both. Can't have balance

Yet you have no experience of being a wp

So what are you basing that on. Not your oH who you say works at a high level and is still 'hands on'

So I'm confused as to why you said its not doable.

I don't know why you're surprised. A lot of women I meet are absolute airheads and would consider that completely fine. They'd love it if men did all those boring hard jobs so they could focus on their hair and nails. Yes, plenty of women were brought up to be like this. I often work from cafes on my laptop and have the misfortune of listening to their vapid, inane conversations. I despise that women like this are still holding us all back.

I expect to be disagreed with here but IMO women in our society will not achieve equality until SAHM as a default option for women ‘just because they can’ becomes a thing of the past.

Also, people take risks in all areas of life - business and personal. Everything is a risk to some extent, including having children or being married. Some people are more risk -averse than others in different areas. Some women may very validly prioritise their financial independence, whatever this means to them. But other women may prioritise being around for their children and the risk of having to 'start again' in the future (whether this means getting back into the work place or a new life after divorce) seems, on balance, a risk worth taking. If that's how some people feel, then so be it. You can't tell women how they should feel once children come along any more than you can tell women who they should be attracted to, or what jobs they should want to do.

You're missing the most important factor in all this - the CV gap.

It's not that the £40K is needed. It's that by continuing to work, the woman is continuing to build skills and experience and move up in her career. She could get promoted, so she's on 50K, 60K, 70K. Often while also being able to negotiate things like flexible working or a four-day week. If her partner leaves, she still has her career and is employable, in nice cushy roles.

The woman who gave up work to look after the kids and hasn't worked in ten years is no longer employable. She's not going to get a job as Head of Finance, is she? She's going to be scrabbling around for shit minimum wage work in a supermarket or working as a cleaner. Long hours, hard work, all for terrible pay, while also having to continue looking after the kids and the house alone.

So many women don't realise how vulnerable they've made themselves until it's too late. They all think their husband would never abuse them/cheat/leave until does.

It's also shocking to me how many women also seem to assume their partner won't die. It's not all that uncommon...I know a few women who were widowed by 40.

pixie5121 - But not all jobs are corporate and many / most don't offer that many opportunities for progression, or there is a cap on what you're going to earn. It is what it is. A teacher is never going to buy a house in Knightsbridge, for instance, unless their income is supplemented by something else. The 'gap in the CV' issue is more relevant in some areas than others. Not everyone is interested in the corporate life. Many find this mind-numbing. Many women (and men) have career changes anyway at some point, SAHM or not. Not everyone wants to be locked into one career path for their entire lives.

You can't do the job of a sahm while doing the job of an advancing career woman. Time needs to be sacrificed somewhere. That's the last time I'm explaining that.
I know plenty of working mums who are doing their best to juggle it all, I'm not clueless.

You're spoiling for a fight here. You have an issue with sahm and for some reason 'well groomed ladies'. I'm sure you said earlier you don't need a man, good for you. Neither do I. There's nothing wrong with a woman raising her children without the help of a nursery. There's nothing wrong a woman raising her children without leaving for work. There's nothing wrong with women in stable relationships. I can't see why it bothers you this much.

You're full of judgement, generalisations and finger pointing, yet you're reluctant to answer questions directed at you. You sound bitter.

I became disabled after having our DS, struggled on to work full time until he was 9 and was then finished on medical/capability grounds.

I haven’t worked for 7 years and am reliant on my benefits and predominantly DH’s salary.

If anything ever happened to him then I would be screwed.

I didn't plan things this way, quite the opposite, but it is what it is.

@pixie5121

Before all that happened to you did you want to be a SAHM? Because if so that would explain your opinion now.

If not then you have to realise that the kinds of men who value and are attracted to the type of home life and family values of a SAHM are radically different to a man who really is just drifting with a woman and they’re both doing their careers with no real reason to stay together and no excitement over the life their building together and nothing to talk about when two different world meet at the end of the day (because they both live in exactly the same way). Yes there are obviously men who cheat on SAHM but to act like no one can possibly know is just false.

I don’t think a lot of commenters understand just how strong the bond between a working partner and a SAHM can be - it’s the very fact they’re doing different and complimentary roles which brings that closeness and support. I guess people who haven’t experienced it won’t know or appreciate what I mean, or worse try to crap on them. Let them, I don’t care, they don’t know what they’re missing.

How is any of this remotely relevant?

Any kind of 'career' is a hell of a lot better than a non-career job. Would you rather be a teacher or stacking shelves in Asda?

Which will be never because it’s a normal and natural way to live and is good for kids. Who are you to force everyone into your lifestyle? That’s no better than some man insisting that no women can work anymore.

@Pretzerella

Thats why I think we need employers and father’s to stop seeing one parent as the default. It’s the same when mens parents may need support, structure still seems to be the females default as the carer role. My husband is an only child he lives a distance from his mum - when he needs to step up when his mum had a fall recently he did and his work allow that without question.

So why don’t more Men ask? Because it’s already assumed women will just do it??