Living off a man!!!

[iabr]

If you are among the posters on here who always sneer at SAHMs for 'living off the husband,' do you also -

• sneer at women who work PT and therefore earn less than their husbands - so are, by definition, also 'living off the husband" to a greater or lesser extent?

• sneer at women who work full-time, but still earn significantly less than the husband, so the house and other expenses are largely funded by his higher income anyway?

• sneer at any woman who has a dual income lifestyle that she couldn't maintain on her own salary / wealth?

I really don't want to get into endless personal anecdotes of - "Well I earn £x and DH earns £x..." This is about the issue of 'financial independence' within families per se. - ie . recognising that it's accrued family wealth that determines financial independence and it's not necessarily always as simple as who earns what. A SAHM may well have greater financial independence than a woman on a high salary, depending on that family's underlying financial circumstances.

So AIBU to say to MN - Stop telling SAHMs they are 'financially vulnerable' - unless you know the details of their unique financial family circumstances!

@BessieFinkNottle

I think the comments about lack of work ethic etc are not directed at you. They were primarily directed at @Comedycook with her simplistic and insulting assessment of the motives behind mothers who work.

Nobody is suggesting that there is anything reprehensible about raising your children FT. They are (well I am) saying that women who work mostly don’t do so to fund frivolous things like fast cars and other status symbols. And that anyone suggesting otherwise is either stupid or being deliberately antagonistic.

If you are a carer, either for your own child or for someone else, I'm sure there are few people who would suggest you don't work very hard.
But that is a particular circumstance, and different from SAHMs who are not also carers.
Quite frankly, unless they have a particularly demanding partner who believes himself entitled to a certain level of return for his support, those in the latter category can work as hard or not as they please. We all have to run homes. If you have all day to spend on it, you could make a pretty easy life for yourself if you chose. (And once again, that doesn't mean you personally if you are also a carer)

@5128gap I have to say, it's not just people with disabled children who work hard. Looking after babies and young children is hard work too, especially if you have more than one.

Parents of very young children, and of children with additional needs, make up a significant proportion of SAHPs, I would think.

Also, many mothers I know tend to work part-time while their children are in primary school (which finishes at approx 1.30pm for 5 and 6 year olds or 2.30pm for 7 -13 year olds here.) It does still seem to be mostly mothers who go part-time unfortunately, although this is changing slowly.

Yes, I don't disagree. All this really arose from a poster portraying a very different lifestyle, and congratulating themselves on their superiority in choosing a life of ease.
I don't think that poster, or indeed the OP with her descriptions of SAHMs as wealthy privileged women, living the dream, has done much to demonstrate that though.

Caring for dependents is part of life. No one gets paid for it. (If you don't count carers allowance)

Its hard work at times but it's not relevant to conversations about employment.

@Topgub

Caring for dependents may or may not be relevant to a conversation about employment, depending on circumstances. It's certainly relevant to a conversation about work ethic though.

You said upthread you believe that SAHPs - because they're not in paid employment - most probably have a poorer work ethic. Simply put, I don't accept this assumption.

@BessieFinkNottle

I said if they choose not to work, then they most likely don't have a great work ethic.

They're choosing not to work. It's kind of a given

Not being in paid employment doesn't have to mean you're not working, it simply means you're not paid for your work.
Lots of SAHPs work very hard indeed.

@BessieFinkNottle

So do wp. Who also have caring responsibilities.

Yes, of course WPs work very hard. I'm not disputing that for a moment.
My issue is that you can't seem to accept that many SAHPs work very hard too.

Exactly, giving up a job to look after small children is giving up paid work to do unpaid work.

Women don't choose poorly paid work, there's nothing on the second X chromosome that gives us a preference for being poorer than men.

Yes, but they also don't have the pressure of being the main breadwinner which a man can be 99% sure he'll be.

@BessieFinkNottle

Some sahm might work hard. Some don't

That has nothing to do with work ethic really.

Work ethic is defined as attitudes towards your job.

You can work hard at home and have a poor work ethic because you've chosen not to have a job.

It is entirely possible to have caring responsibilities and a job/career.

Suggesting those who don't have a job/career through choice have a poorer work ethic than those who do.

I would dispute that it’s as high as 99%. It’s definitely a majority but female breadwinners are more common than they were.

But many men often choose that scenario because consciously or otherwise they prioritise work over family life because they find family life to be a drag.

They tell themselves its about being a “provider”.

But actually quite a lot of the time it’s an opt out of family life and it proves to be a double negative impact for the woman, a) because it’s harder for her to advance in her own career due to lack of engagement from the father and b) because she gets very little help at home.

Certainly if men did more on the domestic front it would go a long way to redress this imbalance.

@Thepeopleversuswork I think the bottom line is that there's positives and negatives about both scenarios: WOHP and SAHP. Lots of benefits to working- using your skills and experience, the social interaction and of course the financial independence and long term security. But in most jobs there's downsides too, and even in the most interesting job, there's days you probably don't want to drag yourself out of bed at stupid o'clock for the nursery run.

Similarly, looking after young children can be an absolute joy, but it's also relentless, there's nothing exciting about changing the 8th nappy of the day or refereeing screaming toddlers. And the SAHP inevitably ends up doing more on the domestic front because they're in the house to do it.

All this is the reason DH and I have tried to carve things up as evenly as possible. It hasn't been ideal (I said upthread, our babies were born long before transferable leave which is something we'd have loved) but we've done our best. Neither of us wanted to be funnelled into 'provider' or 'carer.' I'm as good at my job as dh is at his. He was equally good at changing nappies, reading stories and refereeing the toddlers as I was. Probably better than me at cooking dinner!

I hope for my own children the balance gets even easier to achieve. I don't think men and women are really so far apart that 99% of men just want to be breadwinner and 99% of women want to leave the workplace. And when you look at the things which attract a couple to each other it's often similar levels of education and standing in the workplace as well as shared goals and values.

@missdemeanors

I hope you’re right and certainly there seem to be more men around who consciously want to play a more active role in family life than in the past which is great.

But I’m afraid I still think in the majority of marriages and relationships men default to a more limited role which doesn’t go significantly beyond being a provider and doing a bit to “help” their wife/partner when they see fit. In the vast majority of relationships women, regardless of whether they work or not, do the lion’s share of domestic work and childcare.

The scenario you describe in your own marriage is great but it relies on the man having had a relatively progressive upbringing and being comfortable with his wife being an equal partner in the relationship and while this is more common than it used to be I don’t think it’s the default by a long shot.

I hope that’s changing but you only have to log onto these boards once a day to see that lack of domestic support is probably the biggest single bugbear for women.

@Thepeopleversuswork

Mostly because women choose for it to be that way.

You only have to read a cleaning thread to see nonsense like oh doesn't know how to dress kids/load the dishwasher/cook/hang washing out etc

@Topgub

I think the 'territorial' thing can come from both sides. Some men see the workplace as 'theirs', it's more comfortable for them to have a wife at home taking care of things so that they can abdicate responsibility. Equally, some women can be territorial about the children and sideline their husband from being as hands on as he might want to be. And yes, some women are even territorial over housework! ('He can't load the dishwasher properly ...')

I guess where couples have this dynamic, it then becomes entrenched over time and even if one partner is no longer happy with the status quo and starts feeling resentful, it becomes harder and harder to shift to a more balanced dynamic.

@Thepeopleversuswork interestingly my DH was brought up in the opposite of a progressive household... it was traditional dad going out to work, mum staying at home, barely expecting dad to lift a Finger round the house. So perhaps the choices we make are sometimes a reaction against our own experience.

Equally, some women can be territorial about the children and sideline their husband from being as hands on as he might want to be. And yes, some women are even territorial over housework! ('He can't load the dishwasher properly ...')

I was thinking this. Breadwinner might be secure that they're not easily replaceable, but a non-working partner might need to engineer things to feel irreplaceable, since arguably, anyone can do the domestics (which is not to say it's not tiring or real work, but it's not "skilled" or selective in the way most jobs are).

@Topgub

"It is entirely possible to have caring responsibilities and a job/career."

It's entirely possible for some people to have caring responsibilities and a job/career.

"(I'm) suggesting those who don't have a job/career through choice have a poorer work ethic than those who do."

Maybe some.

But "through choice"...what does that really mean? There is little in your hypothesis to suggest the range of situations women find themselves in when they become mothers.

A mother with two/three young children who can only earn minimum wage and literally cannot afford childcare fees? Does she really have much choice? Is she off the hook or do you judge her too?

Mothers of disabled children are disproportionately likely to be SAHMs...I think something like 16% work outside the home versus the usual figure of about 60%. Because specalist childcare is even more difficult to access and even more expensive. But some manage it so technically there is a choice of course...I suppose the 84% who are SAHMs just have a poor work ethic.

And what about a mother who gets her one chance of motherhood after years of trying and wants to stay home and experience her luck and her baby for a while. Is that just laziness too?

You speak about "choice" as if life were the same for everyone. And of course it's not, nowhere close. Women make decisions for all sorts of reasons and maybe you haven't considered many of them. Do you really judge others who haven't been as lucky as you, or who simply have a different way of living their life?

I certainly think men should play a more active role in family and domestic life, but its a bit of a chicken and egg situation. I imagine the man who is going to get in at 7pm in an evening and immediately turn his hand to hoovering and cooking tea when his partner has been home all day, without any resentment, is a rare man indeed. With very small children who arguably can take all day to care for, maybe, but not as a long term prospect. And in all honesty I'd have some sympathy. A SAHM with school age children has plenty of time to do all the domestic work, so it's difficult to justify requiring the working partner to share it. And so roles get further reinforced.

@BessieFinkNottle I agree; not everyone has equal choices, far from it. And a child with a disability throws a whole other level of difficulty into the situation.

I also suspect there will always be some couples who do have choices available to them where they'll opt for the set-up of husband being sole provider and wife being a SAHM long term, maybe never working full time again. But now that (disabilities and other specifics apart) society has progressed, I would expect those traditional provider/carer models to become fewer and fewer. Going back 50 years when I was a child, that model came about largely through lack of choice. Women weren't encouraged, in fact in many cases actively discouraged from having a good career and of course regulated childcare was almost non existent.

Nowadays, with girls outperforming boys at school and having higher aspirations, I would imagine more of them are likely to want to hang on to their career. And parallel to that, aren't we encouraging boys to be more nurturing, and to feel able to demonstrate that side of their character?

So all in all, where possible I think a balance of providing / caring between mother and father is the optimum set up for everyone, including the child.

@BessieFinkNottle

In all of your examples why is the childcare solely the wonans responsibility?

Are there no men in these scenarios?

Is your mum of 2/3 young children a single parent? Why did she choose to have 3 kids close together if she can't afford childcare?

Being a carer for disabled children isn't the same as being a sahm but again are all female carers for disabled children single parents? There's literally no scope for sharing the burden?

I also haven't mentioned laziness. That was your word.

But yes, I'd say someone who choses to stay home with a baby rather than work too has less work ethic than someone who chooses to do both

How many men give up work because they want to stay home to experience their luck and just be with their baby?

I don't know. There's certainly a lot of very self assured statements about 'what men think' but were it the other way around I'm not sure we'd be so accepting that they know exactly how we experience life. In fact, I usually read statements to the contrary on here.

I also feel like this is very middle class/professional framed, with all the talk of 'career progression'. Is a woman on NMW going to be quite so wary of stalling her career or is shacking up with a financially successful guy actually much more likely to raise her quality of life?

Work ethic is important in that money needs to be earned in order to support children and life in general. But is it important for its own sake if, as a couple, one of you is happy to do that bit and earns enough to support the family? And the other one wants to provide the day to day care? Going to work isn't the be all and end all. It rather depends on a)how much you need it to finance your life and b) whether you derive personal satisfaction from it. Not everyone does.