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.

To some posters in here - are you the self-appointed police on who women are allowed to be attracted to or form relationships with?

Would you tell a women she's not allowed to be attracted another woman or pursue that type of relationship?

I hope not. So here it is for you - women are all different and free to form relationships with whoever the hell they want.

Not all women want some kind of gender-neutral 50/50 type man or that type of relationship. It's not what they are programmed to go for emotionally, physically or sexually. Nothing you can do about that and why would you want to dictate to anybody about their choice of partners?

Some women are attracted to certain men largely BECAUSE of a difference in certain characteristics. My husband is who he is - he takes care of me and his kids; he provides for us and always has and this is an important part of who he is and how he identifies as a man. I hugely respect him for that. He respects me for who I am as a woman. He understands that the most important thing to me in my life is our children because it's the most important thing to him too. But he is a man - he is different to me AND THAT IS OK. He understands that I would hate to be physically away from them and he wouldn't expect anything less. He sees his job to provide the financial conditions so that I can be available and the best mum, day to day, that I possibly can be and that I want to be because he knows full well that the children will thrive best with their OWN MOTHER - which is totally normal and the most natural thing in the world. Why would a man want anything else? This does not mean he does not parent then either (before someone predictably interjects with that). But he has a different role that he feels he compelled to do - as an equal parent. Like two sides of the same coin, but that bonds us. We are a unit. As balance each other. Everything we do is in the interests of our children - first and foremost, always. We respect each other massively. 18 years - we rarely argue; still have amazing sex; still go on dates and laugh; he would do anything for me and vice versa ; we still make an effort for each other. He is kind, honest, a gentleman with manners and respect for women, unselfish and highly driven. He has integrity as a man and his role in life and we have 3 amazing children together. We are not afraid to be different because we are different and that is precisely why it works so well.

You might not seek that type if relationship, but nobody is asking you to. Do what you want. You don't have to understand.

Children with no SAHP are at higher risk of juvenile delinquency than children with a SAHP.

But you specifically - if you the individual didn’t work, what difference would it make to anyone outside your family? None.

Doctors, nurses, military, fire brigade etc etc, yes ok individually replaceable but all really valuable and we'd be screwed if there was a mass exodus, and to anyone who has had excellent service from someone in a professional context I can assure you, you can still be value in a work place or by colleagues and customers. I don't think many people would work in the public sector otherwise.

It wasn’t fantasy. You’re just outdated and still peddling Victorian era pseudoscience and pseudohistory. Research has moved on a lot.

This in spades.

If a higher cost of living and more women having to work is the price we pay for being treated as legal adults, having the right not to be raped by our own husbands and being able to walk away from an abusive or unsatisfactory marriage then I'll take that thanks very much.

@bob78

She doesn’t do any of those jobs.

no I don’t believe that at all. But lots of things you have said indicate you are using your dh.

and yes, he sounds controlling from this and your other posts. Not a symptom of a happy relationship

@Discovereads

Only some weird extreme feminist social science really thinks hormones don’t affect behaviour (even amongst animals ffs) or that there were a bunch of previously unknown (for some reason unrecorded) female warriors running about (all convienently from societies with little remaining written language).

Its pure fantasy.

@TinaPoopsy52 nor do I but I'm still valued at work. Ok I'm not saying it's the same as my value as a mother obviously, I could resign tomorrow and the job would get done, but I think I bring something special to my role that others don't, one of those MN niche skills lol, and yes I would be missed. I go to work feeling the value in what I do knowing I make a difference as many working people do. I don't agree what someone has said to you that you don't have value to society, that's not fair and I don't agree with that, didn't they say years ago the financial equivalent of a SAHM is £35k, not that it's about money. But I don't think it's fair to belittle what working people do either.

She did not, which is sad.

It makes me so sad my grandmothers lived when they did, it was the wrong era for their personalities.

@Discovereads

Children with no SAHP are at higher risk of juvenile delinquency than children with a SAHP.

Source?

@bob78 Well like I said, that poster took it there. Obviously I don’t look down on working people, that would be insane (especially as I married one, was once one and would have had to have been one had I not married one), but it was very obvious that she looks down on SAHM. I’m merely pointing out that in the big scheme of things even that big impressive job really isn’t important outside your own small circle and doesn’t give you greater value than a SAHM.

to discoverreads - how did first wave feminism devalue the status of traditionally female roles? i thought one of the key arguments in the campaign for suffrage was that women’s role as nurturers and their (perceived at the time) moral superiority would improve politics. In other words, the campaign for the vote - while on the surface about gaining equality - was grounded in difference between men and women, in what ‘traditional feminine values’ would bring to the political and public sphere. Campaigners also argued that women needed the vote, education and access to the professions to protect their children and promote welfare. One article supporting the extension of the franchise noted that ‘questions relating to morality, education, the care of children […] may be regarded as the surroundings of the home […] men can do some kinds of work better than women, who are in other respects superior’. This type of argument (written by a man) was based entirely on the idea of difference between the sexes.

Emmeline Pankhurst was herself a single parent to four children after the death of her husband.

Plus, in the aftermath of the First World War, women outnumbered men by 1 200 000. There was no way for all these women to take on traditional female roles within marriage. But even if you go back to the 1860s, the 1861 census showed that there were 500 000 odd more women than men. What were those women to do but seek education and employment? Why should they - and indeed married women - not be interested in the concerns of life beyond their own domestic sphere? But they had to make their arguments to gain access to the public sphere precisely around ideas of feminine virtues, not the absence of them.

@TinaPoopsy52

I'm a woman.

So yes. If I didnt work then that's 1 less woman doing my role which would make a difference to so much.

Oh, okay. I have no idea about that to be honest.

Indeed. Some women want a “daddy” and some men want a mum (well a mum they can have sex with). No one is saying that should be prohibited or policed - that’s all stuff you made up. Some of us are just pointing out that those relationships are not equal feminist relationships.

Using him is a crazy way to think. We are a family and our children love us both and we love them. If I worked out of the home our whole family would suffer, we'd have to pay for childcare or he would have to leave work early. He'd have to start making dinner, washing up, doing laundry, cleaning, he doesn't want to do those things and I don't want to work.

You frame it as "using" but it's utilising both our skills, desires, and time effectively for the benefit of all of us.

juvenile delinquency! Now there is a concept from the 1930s. Actually, even then, I don’t think working or SAHMs were blamed for this, but absent or unemployed fathers. See the 1944 film, Children of the City. It’s the child with the feckless, layabout father who ends up having to go to an institution, if I remember rightly. But dear oh dear - juvenile delinquency 😂

I find that unlikely or if it is it’s just correlation not causation. There’s a lot of negative data on single parents but once you control for relationship breakdown and poverty there is no difference in outcomes between single parent families and two parent families.

Yes they did write those things. But when I read them, I saw very clever middle class and upper class women trying to reassure these men in power that they were what were considered sane and reasonable, natural women for the times. I think they wrote their arguments in such a way because if they hadn’t said it was “for their children” and supporting good “motherhood” they’d quite literally be branded as lunatics. But the reality is most of the campaigners were not working class, and so they already had nursemaid, nannies, cooks, housemaids and so on. They weren’t doing these female roles. It was about entire lives of non working class women wasted on frivolities like fashion and crushing boredom. They wanted access to the professions and societies of men, to political power.

They weren’t really fighting to not do what their female servants did…that work was still viewed as beneath them and very much as work of little value, the lot of the working class woman.

You still see it a bit, with posters arguing that the “feminist” choice means hiring another woman to clean, childmind…

I think it probably depends on the age of the children re financial equivalent of sahp. I had to have a nanny plus cleaner when they were little but now just after school club plus cleaner so less than £1k a month. I would probably have the cleaner anyway though as I hate to clean.

Yes, that’s true for single parent families vs two parent families after the divorce aftershock period. But not the case for two parent families where both parents work FT vs one parent being a SAHP. The studies have shown it as a risk factor. So that means one of many potential causes.

Actually in dds after school club they try to have a balance of male and female staff - best for the children. They are also trying to generally encourage more men into nursery and primary teaching which is a good thing imo. I don’t think children going to childcare is anti feminist in itself.

@MsPincher

A nanny isn’t capable of being a replacement for an actual parent. Someone else doing the same job as you is capable of being your replacement at work.

@TinaPoopsy52

Youve no idea what role I do. None.

Do you have a link for your claim children are happier with a sahm?

@Discovereads

What's your claim based on?