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.

Also @Discovereads (while it’s not all about me) after school club seems like quite a fun job for kids of that age. There are a mix of older ladies and younger men and women who do it and several from the community have told me they do it because they enjoy it. Also given that many of the leaders are community elders I don’t think it’s a bad thing for the kids either. Takes a village and all that.

@Topgub

Unless you are the only one who can do your profession, are some esteemed world leader or athlete - or are the creator and ceo of a massive company, you are replaceable at work. That’s just the truth for anyone. It’s not an insult but it’s the truth. A parent isn’t replaceable by a nanny to their child, that it also the truth.

Yes I think this is it. Being an adult is not always easy but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

A parent is replaceable by a nanny for childcare not AS A PARENT. I’m a parent and I always was. Yet I have had a nanny. She didn’t replace me just liked after my children for a while (and now they don’t remember her at all).

Oh I agree, they’re not bad things. But I know many working mothers who feel the guilt for using them…guilt I think is mostly caused by socialisation stressing outdated views about what a good mother should do and feel.

Yes, and? That quote was a direct response to another poster talking about housework. In what way is ‘men work more hours’ is relevant to either that or the OP?

If you’re having a parallel conversation, that’s got sweet FA to do with me.

@Discovereads

I think most kids prefer to go home after school than spend more hours there. Seriously what kid wants a 9 hour school day, which is what your essentially creating by leaving them in after school hours care often.

I've had conversations about this topic with some men who grew up in other countries where, for many, the expectation is that men must bring in the money - or else. One was a carer to my son who comes from Romania. He said that men are expected to provide, to be able to pay for hospital care for relatives, to get the biggest and best, and the pressure is hard. The wives are often on their case insinuating that they are a failure if they can't pull in the pounds like other husbands. I don't like that dynamic.

It's fairer to share the load, even if one of you is part time working. Share the childcare duties too.

For me there are so many variations that this is not a big issue. If women want to present themselves as people who see men as a walking wallet, then they might find that the men view them as hard and emotionally unfeeling about them. These men might feel that, when an affair is offered on a plate, that they don't see why they should refuse, as their partner doesn't care about their feelings and health - only whether they are bringing in the money.

There are variations in partnerships and variations in children. Regardless of working, when or if at all, if you are in poor health, things will be hard. If you parent a disabled child who wakes up four times a night, life will be hard. I think pulling together as a team is most important to success, and not forgetting, if the man falls sick or incapacitated, the woman will need to work.

That’s fantastic. We need more men working in schools and childcare settings. That’s part of the later feminist step….that such work is of value to society and worthy of respect and therefore men can do these jobs too. My DH got all kinds of shit for being a SAHP twenty years ago. Cocklodger, deadbeat, sponger, etc

@Discovereads

They want to go home to their family, house, pets and toys and relax. They’ve already had the “village” all day long at school. That’s more than enough time.

Yes I agree. I felt awful when I got the nanny and went back to work but it was great really as young kids are so full on. I would have gone crazy doing it all day every day. That way they had an engaged caregiver all the time.

@TinaPoopsy52

I didnt say I wasn't replaceable. That's not the question I'm answering

You asked what difference would it make if a man did my role

It would make a difference in lots of ways.

That’s choices we all make as parents and kids are not all the same. As I’ve said my DH was a SAHD for years and so my DC weren’t ever in after school care. But then we had two DC with ASD and the other two had other LDs. So for our kids, they literally couldn’t be in after school or wrap around care. But if you have extroverted NT DCs, from what I understand many DCs are quite happy with it- especially DCs with no siblings. They get all their homework done with help on tap. They get to hang out with friends. Quite often there are activities and crafts…games they can play.

Mine don’t. They get to play, read, bake do whatever with their friends. There’s a corner to relax in if they want. My oldest likes to chat with the workers and reports back on things going on in the community.

It’s boring at home and they come home at 5:30 anyway.

to discoverreads I don’t really follow the logic of your argument. Yes, there were class differences in the suffrage movement, but working-class women were active in the campaigns, firstly, and moving away from suffrage, if you consider groups like the Women’s Co-operative Guild, women in the middle and working classes were actively involved in trying to improve women’s lives and campaigning for this. Yes, that needed a voice in political discussion (although whether women even really had power when most of the dominant political and public roles were held by men is another matter), and those arguments were couched in terms of what was considered feminine at the time (and still, women were decried for being manly daring to even encroach on male privilege), but how the heck do we know that women thought something other than what they wrote or argued? At the end of the day, we need to evaluate motives based on the evidence we have, which is what was written and published, not some speculation.

That’s terrible. My ex used to look after dds one day a week to make the nanny more affordable. Daddy daycare- he was called in the local community! Funny but of course because he was the exception as a man.

@Discovereads

I've quite a lot of literature around the question of whether having two working parents is a risk factor for delinquency and there just isn't any conclusive evidence for it. In fact I've just looked at a 2001 study published by the Oxford University Press (admittedly fairly old but well within the timeframe during which mothers have routinely worked), based on longitudinal data and its conclusion was:

Our findings contradict the view that maternal employment causes child behavioral problems.

There's a very good reason why people who argue that working mothers are bad for children rarely cite evidence for this and that's because there isn't any decent evidence for it.

So men who parent their own children are gender neutral?
WTAF have I just read ?!

What?????

It’s also not a 9 hour school day. It’s play time after school with their friends. Pretty much every kid wants that.

This thread has fast degenerated into farce.

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.

My youngest could not cope with childcare, he has sensory processing issues. Thus, he was never in FT childcare and I just did a juggle of work around looking after him. For this reason, I tend to be wary of seeing childcare as the way to solve all problems of equality - it is not. But it is also true that without childcare, women will never have equality in the way it is currently measured and valued in our society. It is why people are more likely to be in poverty if they are female.

And of course, my point about childcare can be substituted with another parent invested equally in their care.
In short, until the domestic and care load is equally split and equally valued, then there will not be equality. Women will never be equal participants civically, politically and publicly.

Essentially the old trope of he isnt a real man if he cares for his own children.
I cant believe women have these type of opinions in this day and age.

This thread has fast degenerated into farce
Absolutely!