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!

You are absolutely naively deluded if you think that women can easily take 5-10 years off and be able to enter the workforce again in a new industry or role at the same or more money than they made before. It just doesn’t happen.

If they’re so wealthy from having a rich husband that they have a silly little job just for entertainment then I still believe that power imbalance is a huge thing.

@iabr so basically this whole thread was just for you to tell everyone that you’re so wealthy you’re not financially vulnerable. Good for you

FrangipaniBlue - do the women who can't afford childcare still not work once the children start school though? I'm not talking about SAHMs who take a couple years out because iIf the prohibitive cost of childcare. This is quite common. Leave it to the individual to assess the risk and how this will affect her career. Regardless, a few years out is not the same as being a longer-term SAHM ten years (in which case you're almost certainly never going back to what you did before) or never returning U.K. work at all.

I have posted previously about having the reverse problem. In my family my DH has only worked for around three years. I absolutely wanted him to, but he could not get on with colleagues/managers at work and having walked out a series of jobs early on he felt it was important that he had the right job to go back to. Many years later the right job never quite turned up. There have been positives. He did stop at home after I went back from Mat leave and he did do the school runs and other things. TBH though, after they were all at school I have struggled to understand what he spends more than say a day a week on. I work, sometimes under quite a lot of pressure. His weekdays do not- Pilates, hobby classes and at least one weekday pub trip make up a typical week.

I do not criticise anyone who stays at home, but IME sometimes this does feel like a good deal for one partner- and not the other.

I'm not talking about myself. I'm not a SAHM as I said. It's about MN and the accepted discourse on here about SAHMs.

If a.SAHM comes on and tells you she is financially vulnerable, then by all means give her advice in that context.,

But if a SAHM tells you she is not financially vulnerable - then just accept that and stop insisting she is!

Hold on, you're not 'living off a man' if you're caring for a child. He couldn't work without childcare so his wage belongs to both parents (or her wage if he does the childcare).

I think a lot of people on MN think that the only contribution of value to a relationship is financial.

My DH and I did not bring children into the relationship until we were financially stable - both of us contributed to that. When I became a SAHM we both insured that I had a pension and savings in my name, which was also advantageous from a tax POV. The house was in both names. I probably understood our financial situation slightly better than DH because I was in charge of day-to-day admin.

If we had split or one of us had died, I would have been in roughly the same financial position as DH because of the way our finances are arranged, but he would have been in a worse position than me because I knew how all the children's lives and life admin worked and he didn't.

But we both valued the other's contribution to the relationship. And we worked as a team in the best interests of the whole family. So many people on here seem to be in some kind of competition with their OH, which looks stressful to me.

You have to understand that on a wider European, let alone global scale, being able to be a SAHM is something restricted to a small subset of women, social class wise, in a small subset of countries (country wealth wise).
Hence the reaction from other people who look on at the phenomenon.

Also, people need to stop projecting their own feelings about "power dynamics" onto total strangers. YOU may well feel that working less or earning less that your husband would affect the power dynamic in your relationship. That's for you to decide and act accordingly.

But again, if any woman on here tells you that who earns what is a total non-issue for her and her husband in THEIR marriage, then try to actually hear that and just accept it for what it is. That's her experience and her reality. She's not making it up.

But if a SAHM tells you she is not financially vulnerable - then just accept that and stop insisting she is!

can you give examples of where you have seen this?
I’ve seen posters warn others and offer advice but I’ve never seen anyone insist that a sahp is financially vulnerable.

Again, this is such rubbish.

SO MANY threads on here where a woman is brainwashed in to thinking that SAHM = muggins who has to do all the work around the house, never gets time to herself, basically just accepts that she is on duty all the time whereas prince husband the earner gets to clock off at 7pm and zone out of doing bedtimes / loading the dishwasher etc. In those cases, women say “oh it’s fine it’s how it’s always been” and I think it’s very useful to point out how it’s not fine and how they are being taken advantage of

Once children go to school SAHMs are usually restricted to working school hours/term time/part time/evenings and weekends, because outside of that childcare would be required.

Jobs with those sorts of hours are hard to come by and what are available are usually NMW in things like retail or hospitality.

None of this would give a woman financial independence.

Is this stuff really that hard to comprehend?

Oh my god TabithaTittlemouse, it's all the time! On any thread remotely about SAHMs it's the same thing. It always goes like this -

You are financially vulnerable
You are lazy
You are useless
You think you are a better parent
Your husband will trade you in for a younger model
You are a bad example to your children
You are basically the scourge of society.

Every single time. It's true a lot if the posters do sound very bitter to the point of deranged, but this kind of shite is unfortunately rife on AIBU and I think it's a bad look for the site. Makes women look very bitchy and insecure.

The few posts I have seen have been from women asking for advice following either the breakdown of a LTR or the potential breakdown. Has anyone actually posted about how they are a SAHM and financially stable? If so, what did they need advice about? What a woman (or man) chooses to do with parenting (staying at home or not) is up to them. A lot of us have spent years in university and with post graduate training - why give it all up? It is possible to be a mother and also have a career! "Staying at home" is hardwork too and I doubt anyone is sneering.

Here is the very latest thread on SAHM. Please could you point out anywhere on this thread where anyone has told this poster she’s lazy, useless, a bad example to her children etc?

Everhone is incredibly supportive and pointing out how vulnerable she is because of her partner putting her in that position. Even though she said she feels ok with it. This seems like a very typical thread on the subject IMO.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/legal_money_matters/4584142-sahm-living-on-parents-income-how-do-you-work-it-out

I think OP is a man who has an axe to grind as his partner has been on mumsnet and has realised she’s being taken for a mug and OP is determined to tell her she’s not and that the evil bitches on mumsnet are the marriage wreckers. I have been on mumsnet for ages and I’m a sahm only recently back in work thankfully but I have been on here for years and have never seen these threads OP speaks of. Occasional poster making flippant remarks probably but nothing memorable.

Or OP is a woman from a conservative or religious background where they’ve internalised the misogyny that tells them the best place for them is in the home and women who tell them otherwise are troublemakers.

Sounds like my ex who didn’t like me talking to certain friends as he felt threatened by them giving me good advice.
I could be wrong but I just can’t get my head around why a woman would want to start a thread about something like this.
Surely a woman can see what’s it’s like for many women who give up their jobs and realise they’re fucked.

Ofcourse NOT ALL women are vulnerable but isn’t it better to err on the side of caution rather than just stick fingers in ears and say laa laa laa not happening to me so shhhh.
I mean of course it happens to working women too but the key is the sahm is most likely having to do the lion’s share of the child care so will have to find alternative arrangements whereas a working woman was already paying childcare expenses. And other things.
It’s not a competition I don’t know why pp think women are trying to compete, again this is something I hear from misogynist men who are accusing women of trying to compete and feminism etc women aren’t trying to compete they’re just trying to protect themselves as the problem in society is men leaving women with children financially fucked and not the other way around.

That thread was not an AIBU one Pyri.

Have a look at the thread from the other day which something like "AIBU to not want to work?" The whole thread was designed to incite the sentiments I outlined above.

There was another thread just before that. I'll try to remember what it was called. There is at least one most weeks.

So what that it’s not an AIBU? You literally gave a list of exactly how all SAHM threads go and I’m showing you that it’s just not true. I didn’t even pick that one out to make a point, I just searched for SAHM and that was the latest thread to come up

My only concern is when a woman has children by her partner with an idea of marrying at some vague future date then they come here to say he suddenly doesn't want to get married.

Or they come on here to say that he wanted to put off having children for X,Y,Z reason the years go by, he finally says actually he doesn't want children.

Those stories are heartbreaking

I'm a solo parent.

Your rant is just not part of my reality.

Bloody hell. What a load of self-indulgent wafflle and faux outrage about people trying to help other posters.

We are not stupid. People know people have different circumstances. In the absence of details they will respond based on probability of outcomes. If the woman involved happens to be independently wealthy then presumably that would be mentioned in the OP so as not to drip feed so the specific responses to that thread would be different based on their information.

From the perspective of a single parent who supports my family with no help at all, I think you need to wind your neck in and wobble your head, OP.

Are you really bored to have managed to get this wound up about the fact that different people have different circumstances? It's hardly news.

My only question from this thread is why you are so defensive and angry about this. If it's such a non-issue to you, why does it put your in such a rage? It seems very odd and I think there must be something undelying it, which it would be more productive for you to examine.

Rule #1 is “don’t be a dick” so I don’t sneer at SAHM parents or otherwise. Same as the majority of posters.

As long as finances are equitable, how that’s determined within individual households is all good with me.

OP - I’m really pro-sahm’s as I felt my mum was able to spend time with me and benefit my education (she was educated and good at tutoring but never been a teacher).

but I think that sahm’s in general are more financially vulnerable than wohm all things being equal (so if someone had x amount of assets and worked they would be in a better position financially than someone with the SAME amount of assets and didn’t work). If the right precautions are taken (pension, savings, retaining skills/CV), then you can mitigate the risk and get the benefits of sahm.

the fact that many working mums are also screwed over by their partner leaving/becoming ill is neither here nor there. In many cases they would be more screwed if they had the same situation but were sahms. So it is good be cautious.

The trouble with being aSAHM is that you'll always face criticism due to... well... jealousy.

I have never needed to live off a man. I would be too proud to. So, no, not jealousy. I have always been independent and proudly so.

Even when I had the offer to stay at home, I declined. And it's paid dividends. Everything I own is MINE and I'm proud of that fact. My house, my car, and everything else.

I would hate to be a kept woman..