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

brookstar - I don't think my attitude to being a SAHM is that different to my own mother in the 70s/80s, or any of the mums I knew growing up.

Its possibly true that parents feel more pressure to "do activities" now with their kids., whereas when I was a child, children could play in the street more. But that applies to all families, not just those who have a SAHM.

As I said, there is more pressure on kids educationally these facts than I remember. But again, sign of the times rather than anything to do with SAHMs.

When I was a child, it seemed like loads of lower / middle income families had SAHMs. These days it's either the preserve of more wealthy families or, at the other end of the spectrum, women who can't afford to work or who have children with additional needs.

In any case, it's obvious that since the beginning of time, on a worldwide level, women have been predominantly mothers looking after children. Even if it meant carrying babies in their backs while they went out to work. If anything is "a relatively recent phenomenon" its daycare centres that will take babies for 12 hours per day.

@Foxgluv @limemintice

What do you think 'people' are bitter about?
How is it mysoginy to want equality for women?

To acknowledge that men shouldn't be the only ones to be able to chose to have a career and to be parents?

That in order to have equality we have to get men to do traditionally female roles?

@brookstar

Imo they already have that opportunity we’re just going into overkill now. The problem is that some women as seen here don’t want to admit that men and women will often make different choices so they have to try to force the issue in a direction which they think is right, based purely on what they would want for their own personal lives. I’ll going to leave it here but your fighting a losing battle for nothing imo, as soon as people aren’t getting forced into things they don’t want to do and gender equity isn’t forced in everything or men in business or whatever decide they’d rather not for whatever reason it will all just go to pot.

And let’s be serious, totally equal opportunity is directly affected by inclinations so even that’s probably a pipe dream in the long term.

What I think is that we will always have the opportunity to work and so on from now on, just because technology and the industrial revolution created jobs that we can do, but I don’t think things are going to end up “equal” in the way some people advocate for. I think it’s a delusion that it would last. But like I said I still think I can be SAHM if I want and you can work if you want so ultimately what do I even care?

Im all for fighting for rights to an abortion and similar but I can’t get passionate about exact gender equality in all things, I find it nutty.

I didn’t slate your profession but if what I wrote is true - that the research is both carried out and reviewed by people with similar beliefs in similar departments for subjects about equality and women at work etc. who have a similar belief about how such things should work in society then what I said about it not really being unbiased is true.

It's not as simple as you are making out. While research is reviewed by other academics who broadly work in the same field as you it doesn't mean you all agree. If you had ever spent any time with a group of academics you would know that their sole purpose seems to be to argue against what you've written! But in all seriousness, our job is to challenge, to be a critical voice. Just because I write about and research a particular area of career development it doesn't mean that other academics in my field will agree and our whole job is to look at things though a critical lens.

When we research an area, a huge part of that is acknowledging our own biases and how they might impact on the research.

No research is completely unbiased but as long as those biases are addressed then you can usually trust the research. Academics are trained in this.

The reality is that it’s far from a fact that women have always worked in a comparable way to today throughout history, in fact it’s a flat out delusion based in wishful thinking. It’s like believing Wonder Woman and the Amazons is real history or something.
That's the point I'm making. The role of women has changed and that has had an impact of how we work and live our lives. The role of a SAHM mum today and one a 100 years ago are vastly different.

I think we’re talking at cross purposes when it comes to outcomes, I never said children with SAHM would get better paying jobs and I don’t believe that’s the truth at all. I do believe that a constantly present parent is a source of both comfort, guidance and happiness for children and they carry that through with them into adulthood. Well sometimes they do anyway. The point being if it doesn’t exist for them they don’t.

But children of WOHM also have that. We also provide comfort, guidance and our children are just as happy! Are you suggesting that the children of SAHMs are happier? Again, there is no evidence to support that. It is pretty insulting to suggest that working mums aren't present for their children.

Im sure a filthy rich orphans who went to Eton would likely have would would be recognised a a successful “outcome” as well, but would be quite sad and deprived in some ways.

Which is why we look at trends not individual cases.

That’s what I’m getting at - the positive inner emotional outcome of having a loving SAHM, both in childhood and adulthood. Say what you want you’ll never tell me it’s not real.

Again, can you support this with evidence? DO you think children with working parents don't have 'positive inner emotional outcomes'? I can tell you from a professional and a personal perspective that that is simply not true.
That doesn't mean I'm saying that the role of a SAHM isn't valuable but it doesn't make you a better parent and it doesn't mean your children will have better outcomes.

mo they already have that opportunity we’re just going into overkill now
They don't.

The problem is that some women as seen here don’t want to admit that men and women will often make different choices so they have to try to force the issue in a direction which they think is right, based purely on what they would want for their own personal lives.
Why do you think men and women make different choices? Do you think societal expectations play a part?

I’ll going to leave it here but your fighting a losing battle for nothing imo, as soon as people aren’t getting forced into things they don’t want to do and gender equity isn’t forced in everything or men in business or whatever decide they’d rather not for whatever reason it will all just go to pot.
And let’s be serious, totally equal opportunity is directly affected by inclinations so even that’s probably a pipe dream in the long term.
What I think is that we will always have the opportunity to work and so on from now on, just because technology and the industrial revolution created jobs that we can do, but I don’t think things are going to end up “equal” in the way some people advocate for. I think it’s a delusion that it would last. But like I said I still think I can be SAHM if I want and you can work if you want so ultimately what do I even care?
Im all for fighting for rights to an abortion and similar but I can’t get passionate about exact gender equality in all things, I find it nutty.

And I think it's 'nutty' that people, and women in particular, think striving for equality is delusional.
You're happy to live a life that benefits from other people striving for equality though I guess?

@Topgub

Why do “we have to get men to do traditionally female roles?”

Who is “we” exactly? If you want a man who will do this kind of thing you can find him, but trying to bonsai all men into that shape is weird and I have no idea why you even think it’s a good idea to try. Why should anyone have to do traditionally either genders roles?

brookstar - I don't think my attitude to being a SAHM is that different to my own mother in the 70s/80s, or any of the mums I knew growing up.

I'm talking much further back than the 70/80's... people seem to think that women have always stayed at home to just look after their children. That's not true.
The introduction of machines to carry out domestic chores changed to role of women in the home and the role of the SAHM.

@brookstar

I think societal expectations are a unfourtunate result of of natural inclination. The chicken came before the egg here - we have our human nature which as men and women is different, with some overlap and exceptions but with broad trends which hold true and unfourtunately that brings about expectations which some find constricting. But societal expectations don’t create the differences between us, they’re very real and can’t be erased as though they were created by some idiology. Unfourtunate they may always produce some expectations even if those expectations are only to be like most people.

@brookstar

Women who weren’t doing domestic work who had help always also stayed home. Where do you think all these women in the past were?

My daughters will be raised with the expectation that they are self sufficient as adults. They are still little but we give a clear message that you need to work hard and sometimes take the hard road in order to create choices and have freedom in life.

@PrincessMeg

I said if we want equality

You dont

I do.

I'm a SAHM, but also a carer to my disabled son. My DH has always been the higher earner, different degrees, different careers, different earning potential. Both my DC are school age now but my few attempts at trying to restart work have failed. The thing is, amongst other challenging behaviours my disabled DS is a chronic insomniac, he's on medication, the sleep team are stumped and there's no help left, he's not safe to be left alone. I get three hours sleep on a good night, some nights none. My DH is great with helping out, and would do it all if I asked him, but I take on the majority of it because my DH needs to be able to think to work, and to drive safely on his commute. I use the day time to recharge, attempting to work and not being able to rest has left me at breaking point before, and I need my sanity to take care of my DS, who requires vast amounts of patience. I hate not working, carers allowance is a pittance and if I could work I would, I would love to use my brains to progress up a career ladder. I already feel shit about it and smug posts like this don't help. The sleep deprivation has ruined my short term memory, made my brain feel like lead and slowed down what was once a pretty sharp mind. But it is what it is, and I'm not sure why I feel the need to defend myself for something out of my control, but this just hit home for me. Short of putting DS in care, I have no other option, I would love to see how anybody else here would handle it.

Also, I do have the same qualifications as my DH. You could argue I had greater equality of opportunity than him because he spent his early years in a war-town country before escaping to the U.K. But I am not the sort of person who was interested in going into banking it that type of thing and I can't get motivated by the corporate types careers because, to me, it means nothing really. Even when I was working, it was direct work with people. But unfortunately, those kind of jobs in the public sector are not where the money is. Nevertheless. It takes all types and someone has to do those roles. Just as someone has to look after your kids if you're doing something else. To me, the real scandal is that those women in nurseries are the among lowest paid in society. If a banker takes his eye off the ball, ok some money might be lost. But if a childminder takes her eye if the ball, a young child could choke or fall or anything. Yet these women are on £9 per hour for looking after the most precious people in our lives. While people are paid hundreds of thousands for sitting in meeting chatting some advertising bollocks for yet another brand of shampoo or whatever nobody even knew they wanted.

@brookstar

You missed my point about the orphan who inherited wealth and went to eton having a likely positive outcome as it’s defined. The point was that “outcomes” as your measuring them really just take into account the sucess your set up for by position of wealth, rather than inner feelings - and they totally ignore the actual childhood of the child whose outcomes are being studied as though it only mattered what happened once you are an adult and the first part of your life didn’t have just as much meaning.

I think societal expectations are a unfourtunate result of of natural inclination. The chicken came before the egg here - we have our human nature which as men and women is different, with some overlap and exceptions but with broad trends which hold true and unfourtunately that brings about expectations which some find constricting. But societal expectations don’t create the differences between us, they’re very real and can’t be erased as though they were created by some idiology. Unfourtunate they may always produce some expectations even if those expectations are only to be like most people.

What differences are you referring to? Yes, there are physical and biological differences BUT there is a lot of evidence that any psychological differences are a societal construct and that how our brains develop is a result of socialisation.

So, on the whole men are physically stronger than women which does give them an advantage in certain situations but we often mitigate for that.
Obviously there are biological differences but again we have laws to protect women from being discriminated due to differences in biology and while we still have some way to go ( I'm thinking in regards to how menopausal women are viewed and their experiences in the work place) we are making progress.

With regards psychological differences, I remain to be convinced that these are innate and not the result of societal expectations around the roles of men and women.

Women who weren’t doing domestic work who had help always also stayed home. Where do you think all these women in the past were?

What do you mean 'where where they?'
These women would have also had help with childcare. They weren't at home for the sole purpose of being there for the children. They were at home because society expected them to be there.

I absolutely empathise with your situation.

I have two disabled DCs (one with learning disabilities, physical disabilities and epilepsy - he needs complete 247 care, and one who is autistic).

If I didn’t run my own company (and hire freelancers to do the things I can’t), if DH and I didn’t both WFH most of the time, and split the caring and home education equally, and if we weren’t in a position to pay for hired carers, then there is absolutely no way we could both work the way we do.

This is why I am so passionate about parent carers’ rights both in the workplace and in terms of the benefits and support this is available to us. I will never stop campaigning and lobbying on this issue because parent carers deserve equality too.

You missed my point about the orphan who inherited wealth and went to eton having a likely positive outcome as it’s defined. The point was that “outcomes” as your measuring them really just take into account the sucess your set up for by position of wealth, rather than inner feelings - and they totally ignore the actual childhood of the child whose outcomes are being studied as though it only mattered what happened once you are an adult and the first part of your life didn’t have just as much meaning.

I gave some examples of the outcomes that are measured. It wasn't an exhaustive list.
There is lots of research on 'children voice' and experiences of childhood. My specific specialism is career development so of course I'm looking at it though that particular lens. It doesn't mean there isn't other research going on.

I know you are really keen to discredit me even though I'm not saying anything controversial or ground breaking!

@brookstar

So in your opinion biological differences start from the neck down lol? Sounds quite wishful thinking to me. I think that “evidence” of psychological differences being because of socialisation are really just beliefs disguised as research of the type before discussed. Convienent for those who hold them to hold, which is why they are generally held by the type of women with a vested interest in their being no psychological difference between the sexes, ie those who are pushing for a gender parity as the right way to do things.

We have different hormones in our bodies which affect the way we think and feel and interact with our brains in different ways, that is biological, pretending otherwise is a fantasy. If you don’t believe that perhaps you shoot yourself up with male levels of testosterone and see if it makes any difference to your mental state. In addition we have recognisably different brains which can be accurately identified as male or female most of the time, it’s silly and a delusion to think these things don’t affect us psychologically.

Are all the psychological diffences in the animal kingdom simply there socialisation as well or are we special in that regard?

But you have your beliefs and you will stick to them and that’s ok, but imo in some forum 1000 years from now someone like you will be asking why women and men don’t have equity in every role and using the same argument as you are using. But still it won’t have happened, because we are different both physically and mentally and that can’t be changed, not by socialisation, not by anything.

I think making use of the opportunities technology makes for women to work in new fields and to have new freedom is a better use of time than trying to force people to accept the delusion that men and women are mentally the same or ever could be. No more than the rooster and the hen, or daddy and mummy gorilla.

"These women would have also had help with childcare. They weren't at home for the sole purpose of being there for the children. They were at home because society expected them to be there."

What do you mean? Pre-contraception, women could not exactly avoid being there for their children. Yes they may have had some other local women to help out on an ad hoc basis, but so what? Their daily lives are focused on looking after children.

@brookstar

And why did society expect them to be there? Because it’s where the children were raised. And who is society? We are.

PrincessMeg

Are all the psychological diffences in the animal kingdom simply there socialisation as well or are we special in that regard?

Yes, we are special. Jesus, I can't believe you are actually asking that question.

Try reading the following books if you'd like a different perspective which has an excellent evidence base:

Invisible Women - Caroline Cirado Perez
The Gendered Brain - Gina Rippon
Delusions of Gender, The Real Science Behind Sex Differences - Cordelia Fine

I'd highly recommend all of them.

Their daily lives are focused on looking after children.

Their daily lives focused on the running of a household. That might have meant doing it all yourself or managing household staff. Yes, children featured in that role but you weren't planning your days around classes and NCT meet ups. In large working class families older children often took care of younger children and we lived in communities and multigenerational households which meant there was a 'village' involved in the raising of children.
The role of a SAHM has evolved, as you would expected it to. I can't see why that is difficult to understand.

@brookstar

Were special and not another animal lol? Only we alone in the animal kingdom do not have psychological diffences in gender created by our biology - for the animals it’s biology for us it’s socialisation? Oh lol, ok, sounds plausible

No we are not special, we are another animal just with a bigger brain. I can’t believe anyone would think otherwise, it’s like travelling back to some alternative feminist version of the year 1200 AD.

Those sound like books slanted with a feminist perspective inclined to prove their is no difference (unsurprisingly all by women and a cursory google search confirms there interests in these subjects), exactly my point. Does any actual geneticist or biologist who isn’t putting an ideological slant on it believe there is no biological differences at play in the psychological of the genders which would be in direct opposition to every other animal? Or course not we are another animal and the hormonal and brain differences between gender are directly responsible for psychological differences. These differences are what’s behind socialisation, not the other way round.

@PrincessMeg

In addition we have recognisably different brains which can be accurately identified as male or female most of the time, i

This is absolutely not true.

All research shows there are no observable differences between male and female brains

There are biological sex differences. Men and women are different. But people are different.

I'm as different from you as I am from a man.

Societal and cultural norms have huge impacts on behaviour.

They're informed by a multitude of things including sex differences but that doesn't mean they're inescapable or innate