To think a lot of women are worse off than 50 years ago?

[Tsort]

A certain type of person is nostalgic for the old days when ‘men were men, and women were women’. I am not. However, it must be noted that at the time when women were expected to be docile acquiescent homemakers, men were expected to foot the bill. They paid for dinner, sorted the mortgage and brought home the bacon. Not for me, but a fair division of labour.

Now, we have a generation of women who ‘pay their way’, go Dutch and refuse to let men pay for them as they don’t want to be indebted. Grand.

But, these same women also do the lion’s share of housework, because ‘men don’t see it’ and shoulder the emotional labour because ‘that’s just the way men are’.

So, women are now shouldering some of the traditionally male burdens while the traditional female burdens have remained firmly in place. How is this an improvement for women? And why do so many tolerate it? This is a profound misunderstanding of feminism and it hurts so many of us.

@keepmywifesnameoutchagoddammouth comes back to that shared vision doesn't it, it makes all the difference in how a marriage works and no matter what generation you're in, if you're badly matched, quality of life will be impacted.

Exactly. I honestly wish people would take that on board if nothing else, I want everyone to be as happy as us.

As a single mum with a full time career I just want to say that it’s absolutely untrue that sahp “enable” their working partner to do their job. Certainly not any more than a nanny or cleaner does.

i work with many men who have a sahm yet I don’t and none of the other women do either. I really appreciate my cleaner but if she retires I can get another one.

it’s not generally an equal relationship imo if one party is long term wholly financially dependent on the other. In my peer group I do see a few women like that and it’s not a life I want for me. Their choices and lives are limited.

also your partner chose a housewife and you chose a provider. Were either of you looking for an equal relationship? It doesn’t seem like it to me.

Why would being gay prohibit a relationship where one party doesn’t work?

Yeah I agree @KweenieBeanz this is particularly noticeable to me as a female but the more slovenly one in most of my relationships (platonic and non platonic). Tbh in a lot of cases I think it’s fair enough to say “you do it if you want it that way”.

I'm not not calm
I'm very calm

Typical though to tone police how a woman responds.

Calm down dear. Don't get hysterical

🙄

Lots to address there.

I enable him completely because there are things he never has to worry about which frees up time and energy to focus on work. You can't deny he's enabled to focus on work when he never has to clean anything or cook any meals.

He enables my freedom by taking all the financial burden.

I suppose you could say I'm limited, I'm tied to those school gates for sure, but my time is very free and personally I value my time.

When I worked full-time I felt very limited even before children, because I had to be at my job for 10 hours every weekday, including commute.

Those days, that's five days a week, were for work and nothing else. The weekends were for recuperation.

I don't know how I would have fitted in childcare and nurturing around that but if you can I applaud you. I don't see how it's possible but I believe you when you say it is, I'd need to see it in action to understand.

Being homosexual would eradicate the sex roles is what I meant, because you'd both be the same sex.

I feel very free not having a job. Does your job not take up every weekday?

Then it must be something else causing you to misread my posts.

You can have different roles and still be equal. Utter nonsense to think otherwise.

@keepmywifesnameoutchagoddammouth

What are the inherent differences between the sexes?

What's a beta male?

@keepmywifesnameoutchagoddammouth I suppose the inequality in your set up is your vulnerability though, you are sacrificing more in that if you were to break up you would need to find work (although it sounds like that may not be an issue for you in what you've previously stated, but is for many that give up work), hopefully you'd successfully gain half his pension and property (if that would be enough for you to buy again) I know that's a really negative sentiment and I'm not saying you'll break up, but talking generally it's not an equal set up if things go wrong.

As a working mother who had their DH as a SAHD for several years, I disagree. It

You wouldn’t know if it’s true or not, because you were never in the shoes of breadwinner with SAHP for a partner. It’s not within your lived experience at all.

My career had lots of anti-social hours and weekend work- good luck getting child care when in a 24/7 on call job and you’re called in at 10pm (and we were never rich, a live in nanny not an option). Good luck finding a place for your DC to live while you’re being sent to Africa for 90days…and double good luck when that’s extended 3 days before you’re due home for another 2 weeks.

Not to mention the being relocated anywhere in the world every 2-3years with a thirty day notice as to where you’re going next. Try wrapping up work and finding new home, schools, doctors and preparing the children for a move all on your own. Him being there as a SAHD was the anchor of their lives.

My DH as a SAHD absolutely enabled my career. The above things were not parts that I could have been exempted from and still done my career. Like other women, I would have been put on the mummy track and passed over for the best projects, and with it the chances at good pay rises and promotions.

It wouldn't be worth it to him, our wider family is so huge he would lose more than just me and our children.

But yes, I do think it's important to get enough life experience before marriage to future-proof your options if divorce happened. but again, this takes planning and foresight many lack.

@keepmywifesnameoutchagoddammouth

I'm not misreading your posts

@MsPincher

SAHM don’t enable their husbands job - they enable the happy family and the husbands job enables their role in that (just as they enable his). I suspect you know this but are just looking to dunk on SAHM.

Yes a high earning working husband could have kids and hire a fleet of Nannie’s and cleaners to look after them. But that would be a loveless and joyless family life so he wouldn’t bother. That’s the whole point, his job enables his wife to stay home if she wants to and give the kids (and him) a great home life, which (if she wants it) is what she wants out of life (as well as other things she does with her free time or things in the community).

What you don’t seem to understand is that those types of men could get a wife who you would see as their equal who works and earns similarly- and then they would be constantly both working, juggling career and family responsibilities, both tired from it, neither fulfilled at home or work etc.

A SAHM and a working husband are equals. It shouldn’t need explaining but people don’t need to be doing the exact same thing in all areas to both be equal. If you can understand that.

50 years ago I was 12. In my early teens I recall the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) being hotly debated and celebrated by my friends. Having said that many young women of my age were still being prepared for traditional roles: cooking, flower arranging, looking pretty and did stints doing City lunches, working in galleries, etc.

50 years ago is a time upon a cusp and was a turning point in society's values. It marked the end of university not being regarded as the be all and end all, the end of the slide rule and log book, of being allowed to fail whilst still being celebrated for skills rather than qualifications. It was an easier yet harder time. My age group, who hit 18 at the end of the 70's was the end of a different era. I'm surprised more hasn't been written about it.

Having said that my role models weren't 50s type housewives. My mother worked and at something glamorous at that. She was young and well dressed/trendy compared to class mate's mothers who were housewives or a bit downtrodden (even at my naice school). My parents divorced (twice each) in the 70s. My grandmother was the backbone of the family farm and handled the books and business interests. Both my grandmother and mother had firm views about men who abused women, both were clear that if a man laid a hand on a woman but once, that was it. At the same time I also see those views were easy to hold when there was always a secure family to return to. But nevertheless my independent views were formed by women born in 1912 and 1936 respectively.

A little over 40 years ago I bought a flat, had a good job in the City and was totally independent. In many ways I think things are harder now - I had no degree, and very little help with a deposit. My 24 year old dd could not contemplate buying where I did then, on her own, without a 75% deposit - not for a comparable property at least.

Regarding women taking on all the domestic burden, I think that's a question of choice. I did more house stuff than DH but he did more work stuff (both full-time for the last 20 years) but overall our contributions were equal and we had equal leisure time. I'd rather work an extra day a week and pay a cleaner/ironer/oven cleaner, etc, than spend time cleaning.

@Tsort I think you have it in a nutshell!!

I listed some above. Including biological parental roles of the mother, but you will not like my answer anyway.

evolution is real and men are hunters/providers and women nurturers.

A beta male is a man who needs his wife to provide instead of him and spends his days wiping surfaces and making instagrams of cleaning hacks.

it’s not generally an equal relationship imo if one party is long term wholly financially dependent on the other.

rubbish. Partners can be dependent on each other for more than just cash money. I depended on him for childcare, running the household, doing the medical stuff, orchestrating house moves, managing the finances, managing family outings and holidays, doing the cooking cleaning and shopping. All I did was work stupid hours and chuck money into our joint account. The relationship was equal because we both contributed and both depended on each other. 50/50 doesn’t mean 50% of each thing. It means 50% of the sum all things, even if that means one partner does 100% of one thing.

The men are hunters/providers and women gatherers/nurturers was debunked almost a century ago. Your spouting what Victorian-era anthropologists assumed due to their own biases than any actual scientific fact.

Yes, it's called a family.

I don't know why people bother with a family if they want to just carry on acting as though they were single entities anyway.

@keepmywifesnameoutchagoddammouth

This is so true. Men are the hunters and will never have the same desire to stay home, I don’t know why people are trying to force it. Yes it’s great for more femininely minded men that they aren’t laughed at for doing that now, but it’s just not the way most men are.

Thats why the pay gap and all that will never really close unless you force it so hard constantly. And why would you? And how could you forever? I think it’s unnatural and won’t work long term.

But it’s great people have more choice

Meh, I've observed this and it's very evident on here.
So many men enjoy being providers. There's something in it.
We have different levels of different hormones and they greatly influence our behaviours.

@Discovereads

No it wasn’t. It’s that way in all the old tribes that have been found. Men and women are biologically different in mind and body, that’s a fact. It’s only modern nonsense spouted off by women who get insecure about it that can’t handle it.

Agree with all that.
Most of the family have the wife who works less and does the childcare. It's a very close and large family and it's great.
Why would you want anything else?

Then you get people on here whose parents are in care homes, children don't call, the stress through the roof.

And they profess it's just better because they have all this independence.

I got married specifically to benefit from a family unit and relinquish my independence. I made full use of my independence and now I rely on my husband, happily.

So what about all these career minded women, admittedly we don't see as many men choosing home (I guess time will tell if that's nature or neuter whilst societal expectations remain strong) but we are seeing a huge uptick in successful career women, what does nature say about that? Are we anomalies? Because I know enough of these women to challenge it being a "blip".