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.

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

Our provider do clubs like gymnastics, cooking and gardening. It's great because it's childcare but is also ticking off the obligation of extracurricular! My youngest loves it but will admit it was tricky with my (then) year 6 who had outgrown it but school wasn't walking distance, that's a tricky age to sort childcare. It wasn't for long though and I managed to flex my hours so he wasn't there much, he's loving walking to high school now. Just to balance it so I'm not making out our way is the perfect way!

Sorry I didnt quote

My 50/50 childcare provider husband is in the military in probably the most masculine role you can get, with a rather lovely masculine muscly physique...I can assure you it doesn't get any more attractive than that to me, a man who can throw you over his shoulder, defend your life whilst doing the ironing and taking the kids to swimming

@runwalk 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?

Yeah if you want to be married to a neanderthal, knock yourself out and take as many of them off the streets as you can. But don't kid yourself it's got anything to do with "programming". And please don't expect those of us who aren't married to neanderthals to believe that the world is a worse place because we aren't married to men like this.

@Tsort - do you think women married to gamblers, cheats, lazy at work were better off now than in 70s?
In my opinion, you can’t really do much to change some men.
But you can leave.
Now for social and financial reasons, I think it’s easier to leave.

I do value caring and sahm role and I think the devaluing of it is causing big issues with social care and childcare.
However I think we are in a much better position now with expecting men and women to be able to do it.
You can’t force people to care for kids or elderly. And if you live in a partnership where you agree to split caring/earning roles asymmetrically - great.
But if someone is not doing their fair share - what can you do except leave?
And I think now we have more options when leaving a partnership than they did in 1970s.

But don't kid yourself it's got anything to do with "programming".

Hmm, I wouldn't be too sure. But not in the sense I think that PP was suggesting!

Yes, don’t disagree but you cannot analyse what was written without looking at the wider context of who was writing it, when and how they lived and the power dynamics present in society at the time. It’s not speculation to observe that if these female writers had not presented their arguments in the context of socially accepted feminine desires of improving their children and improving their ability to be mothers, that they would quite literally have been dismissed as madwomen and perhaps even put in mental asylums.

That really happened then. I’m not exaggerating.

Women were diagnosed with “brain fever” if they crossed the line. One early feminist was Elizabeth Packard that this happened to. She was committed to an insane asylum at age 19 by her father diagnosed with brain fever for refusing to marry and wanting to be a teacher instead. Her medical notes say the “mental labour” of teaching made her mad. She comes out and marries and abusive man 14yr her senior, a match arranged by her father. Later on she is again committed by her husband for the temerity of disagreeing with him on the abolition of slavery and religious matters. I read a very good biography of her and the author included statistics from the U.K. and US evidencing that this was very common for families to do to force girls and women into the marry, motherhood role. Elizabeth Packards own writings of women she was imprisoned with also evidence this. Any desire of a woman to have a professional career for the sake of a career was literally viewed as madness. A medical condition. The suffragists of this time period HAD to make their arguments in such contexts if they were to have any chance of being listened to.

Aristocratic women are an interesting case as they also pushed these boundaries but without being regularly locked up, but then aristocrats had always been allowed a certain level of “eccentricity” which in other classes were deemed to be “madness” and punished.

There’s consoles and stuff for older kids at mine. That said mine are not at that age yet. They will be able to get home alone at that age tho.

Neanderthals weren’t like that…perhaps read up on them?

I genuinely don’t know what part of that you think relates to what I’ve said.

@Discovereads

You know perfectly well what I mean. I don't feel the need to do a bit of part-time anthropology to identify a knuckle-dragger.

Lol nice one. My one my best friends is an extremely rich lawyer who does iron men competitions and pushed to get flexible work so he could be a good dad. It’s not being a “sissy” to look after your children- it’s actually pretty manly.

Anyone got that evidence yet that kids of sahms are happier and less likely to be delinquents?

Absolutely. How awful that there are people who think like that.

I didn't make that assertion but you know you can just use a search engine to find out what research exists?

www.verywellfamily.com/research-stay-at-home-moms-4047911

www.newyorkbehavioralhealth.com/are-stay-at-home-moms-better-for-our-kids-than-working-moms/

I've not read these nor care to, I'm just showing you that it's easy to find research, you don't have to wait for a person to cite anything. Also, looking for yourself will mean you can read around the subject, rather than rely on one article that could be chosen from bias?

Oh wow, this thread 🤣

to answer the OP, on average, I think women have the better now. The average woman has more work, more stress, face a double workload, but also has completely different opportunities. She has more influence over her own life and more freedom to make choices, including to leave a horrid man.

as for the rest of the thread, seriously??? Can we not agree that different set-ups suit different women and different families? And support each other?

To discovereeads, in the UK, women were far more likely to be institutionalised in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century for being so-called ‘feeble-minded’ or having children out of wedlock, than wanting to be teachers or expressing a views. You need to bear in mind that by the 1890s, married women had rights to their own property, they had rights to judicial separation and divorce, and they had the rights to go to school and colleges were opened for women (so not comparable to the 1850s in the US which is when Elizabeth Packard was institutionalised by her husband).

but of course women wrote in the context they lived and with the norms and values of the time they lived in - which was that women had a greater moral virtue than men and that their role in public life could be predicated on and could expand their domestic nurturing role. I am not saying they didn’t write in that context, I am questioning your suggestion, as I read it, that they didn’t mean this and they just used these words to get the vote and actually, they devalued traditional feminine roles. The fact is, without further evidence (and I mean something beyond the 1850s in the US), we need to assume that women were citing values (nurturing, moral virtue) which they also believed would bring good to the public sphere and not merely as some rhetorical strategy to get power. The fact that many suffrage campaigners were mothers, some organisations provided crèches, other campaigners fought for maternal and infant care, suggests that women, and what women did, mattered to them.

*when I say, had access to divorce, there was a double standard in the grounds which could be cited.

@keepmywifesnameoutchagoddammouth

You haven't even read those so how do you know if they back up the claims pp were making?

Thats kind of the point of asking them to.

I have read around the subject.

That's how I know there's no such thing.

Yet again, the same posters are wilfully misinterpreting what I said. Taking 1 plus 1 to make 6 in the usual hyperbolic, defensive style.

I did not say a man looking after his children is 'gender neutral.' But of course, you know this.

What I said was, as can be seen in clear print, is that women are attracted to different types of men. Some women will prefer the kind of man where traditional gendered behaviours are less pronounced. This will probably be evidenced in the dating stage - eg. would you prefer a man who pays on dates, pulls your chair at dinner picks you up, etc or one who is 'let's split the bill" and this type of thing. Do you want a more 'traditionally' masculine man, or one who is more gender neutral in his behaviour? Different women respond to different behaviours in men and this is likely to translate into their marriage dynamic. So if you want a man who keeps his own money and you keep yours; who will expect you to work asap after children and who has no particular identification with a traditionally male 'provider" mentality because he sees this as 50% your role as well, then you are probably not going to attract or be attracted to a man who displays more traditional behaviours in the first place. Isn't it astonishing that we can all be attracted to different things in a partner? Who knew?

@runwalk men can't be put into boxes like that. There is no "alpha" "beta" male BS, as I say my DH is the epitome of masculinity, is dominating at work, strong, but equally knows how an iron works and changes nappies. And tbh, more fool anyone who accepts less than that. Even if you are a SAHM, a man should still be a care provider if he is a father, and do domestic stuff too. That isn't about attraction but just being a decent human being that is tolerable to live with!

you did actually say that awful thing about men being “gender neutral” if they cared for their children 50/50. You are saying a variation of it above.

whether or not some women and men like sexism and subjugation of women is irrelevant. It’s still not a good thing.

Absolutely. And a woman who looks for a man to provide for her and control her is not a healthy individual imo. Coming on a woman’s message board to promote a “traditional relationship” where a man gets to tell you if you can work or not is to promote abusive relationships imo.

of course people make arrangements to suit themselves. If they are equal relationships fair enough. However, I don’t agree with “trad fem” type relationships or women who are prohibited from working by their husbands. I think that’s abusive and I don’t support that.

Of course a man is a care provider when he's with his kids, but frankly, I don't need a man thinking, behaving and doing exactly the same as me on a day to day basis. Its not what I particularly need in life. I'm not threatened by having some differences to my husband and owning them. More gets achieved that way because you're not limiting each other. All this, "you have to be home at 4pm as I'm doing a shift and you need to be here next Thursday as I can't get the day off and have we changed the same number if nappies and by the way, do your own washing ..," day in day out. Can't be doing with that, to be honest. It would do my head in after a week.