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.

No one has said we arent attracted to different types of men.
I think perhaps you dont understand what gender neutral means, bit rich to say Im wilfully misunderstanding you when you are a tad confused yourself.
My DH looked after our DC 50/50, he is still a man.

Not read the full thread - there's a lot of posts. So, sorry if this has already been discussed.

But I'm always a little confused when people say that only wealthier families had SAHM situations.

I live in a village and my elderly relatives and neighbours were all SAHMs in the 1960s - though a handful worked a few hours a week for "fun money". All the men were miners (it's a typical pit village). Whilst they were all careful with their money, most of them didn't really ever want for anything. Holidays every year, money left over for decent long-term savings, all the stuff that today people feel quite lucky to manage with two full time salaries.

Is this just a rural vs urban thing?

@runwalk you're being obtuse, people don't count nappies being done. As has been said when mentioning 50/50 no one is splitting down the middle exactly, as I say I have chores I prefer more than others, that tends to be our go to. And actually yes it is important the dad can do exactly the same as the mum (and vice versa) because you just don't know if you'll be in situation where you both won't be there. Also really important for me to model to my son dad being able to do that stuff, otherwise it just becomes a cycle.

@Tsort - oh - I thought the op was about if women were better off now or in 1970s? I just thought that women now have more leverage in relationships now, because in 1970s they had more limited working options (due to discrimination, gender pay gap) so might feel more trapped. but now they have more options for work and study, so easier (than before - though no one is saying that being a single parent is easy) to leave relationships (eg if men don’t do enough domestic labour or turn out to be bad people) - so it is better now?

if men want to stay in a relationship with a woman who won’t put up with laziness, then they have to up their game or live on their own and do their own domestic labour or pay more CM.

Most WOHP are far more organised than this, it sounds like a nightmare!
No one counts nappy changes - petty and ridiculous to reduce it to that.

Have you, as requested, actually read my posts on this thread?

Absolutely no one has suggested that you do a running total of nappies changed. We are all different from each other but men and women are equally human and equally valuable. You shouldn’t be threatened by that. Men are well capable of child care and women of paid work. Stereotypes are just that. A man doesn’t have to be controlling or abusive to be a man. Quite the opposite I would say.

Mining was always quite well paid though. Hard work and dangerous but well paid. One side of my family have lots of coal miners (other are immigrants).

By 'gender neutral' I obviously mean a relationship dynamic where there are no discernible gender roles or behaviour. This is what certain posters seem to be striving for on here as the ultimate ideal marriage . It's not to me - I would find it highly restrictive - so that's why I mentioned it. I'm not talking about someone who actually identifies as gender neutral! Ffs.

So a marriage where there are no role distinctions - tasks are all neutral, eg. a woman is just as likely to be fixing the plumbing as a man and a man is just as likely to be doing more traditional female tasks day to day. No difference. And he expects her to be working as much as him because he feels no compunction to be a sole provider. This kind of thing. Not my bag, but if that's what people on here want, I've no issue with it whatsoever. Each to their own. Just don't assume everyone else wants that, that's all. Because I can tell you they do not.

@runwalk how is it restrictive?

"A man doesn’t have to be controlling or abusive to be a man."

Where did I say he did? How on earth did you get that from my posts?

It would be very restrictive to me to be in a 50/50 relationship because there is less freedom to 'specialise' in what makes you happy and gives you a sense of purpose in life.

In my marriage we support each other, just in different ways. We don't measure equality by being the same. We don't relate to each other like that. You can't force things just for the hell if it.

If I had insisted in working out lives would be much more hectic and juggling. We didn't want or need it to be like that. It didn't occur to either of us to use any form of childcare. Literally never discussed it. He had had more freedom to pursue his career which is unusually demanding. I can focus on what is most important and interesting and motivating to me in life which is my family. I'm not ashamed of that. When we're together, we come together as parents, He doesn't enter the house and go instantly into a sealed room.

We both have more freedom and space and I think we value each other more because we have more defined roles..

Stereotypes are not meant to be real though. No one fits into them exactly. Tasks are all neutral.

If you want a sexist man that’s your right but don’t expect others to support you and say that’s a great thing. It’s not.

@runwalk I don't think you understand how a balanced relationship works, it's the opposite of restrictive, it's freeing because WE decide what we are happy to do, not what my great grandmother would expect us to do. We don't deliberately do the exact opposite of our "gender expectations" we are actually quite traditional in many ways in that he does the car, garden and bins and me cooking and meal prepping, but the difference is we are both capable of all the tasks and when we need support the other one can give it, so if I need to work late I don't need to write a descriptive list to my husband telling him how to use the cooker and the bedtime routine, he knows it. And when he's away with work I know how to check the tyre pressure and mow the lawn. I honestly don't know how you're interpreting this to be stressful, it's really quite simple, we are both just capable adults, it's not anything more than that.

I am beginning to think that I must have grown up on a different planet to some on here. I was a teenager through the 1970's, in and out of friends houses on our street after school, some wealthy but mainly WC in council houses. We all had modern kitchens with fridges, freezers and automatic washing machines. Some mothers worked and others stayed at home. I may have been more fortunate than most because both my parents worked full-time in MC jobs and had their own cars - my mother passed her test, went back to work and got a car when I started school in the mid 1960s. I passed my driving test in the 1970s and got an old car to get to college every day. I started work in a very male dominated office but it was not noticably sexist - women were in theory given the same opportunities as men although some of the older generation were skeptical, assuming we would leave when we got married so the training would be wasted.

It really wasn't so much different from now unless you were stuck in a bad marriage or got pregnant out of wedlock. Divorce and single parenthood were much more difficult and there was a stigma attached to it. I was fortunate that my parents had a very happy marriage as did both sets of grandparents. As a child I was completely unaware of DV and probably believed that marriage led to life-long happiness as that was my only experience. Unfortunately I was not so lucky personally and made bad choices so am very grateful that I didn't have to stay in an unhappy marriage.

I also had a bank account (and Premium bonds) in my own name in the early 1970s and earned my own money in Saturday and holiday jobs from the age of 14. It was not the 1950s!

I imagine you both had quite a traditional upbringing then? Why did it not even occur to either of you to use childcare rather than just for the woman to give up work permanently. That’s really unusual. Are you from the uK?

im from a minority religion in the uK. Some of my extended family have traditional set ups (usually with very large families). Some are happy or seem to be but many aren’t. I don’t think there’s any of them that never considered that there’s another way to live though. And they are in a pretty closed community.

All I can tell you is this - if we had both been working over the years, we would be in a position now where we have considerably less money, considerably less family time, considerably more stress and considerably less personal satisfaction all round. That's all there is to it.

"Why did it not even occur to either of you to use childcare"

Why would it?

I looked at it through my kids perspective - would they choose to be in childcare? The answer was "no." So that's all there was to it as far as I was concerned.

Where I live, it's not uncommon to be a SAHM at all. I never felt unusual, put it that way. Nobody has ever mentioned it, man or woman. It's just not remarkable at all.

@runwalk the WOHM vs SAHM discussion is like weaning and breastfeeding and all the other "contentious" parenting issues online, I've never seen them discussed much in person, and when they do I nod and smile like most others I've personally never seen a heated discussion, but I guess that's the thing about online, it's somewhere to vent and test those thoughts anonymously even though we may not say it out loud. I skirt two communities, military which has a lot of SAHMs and my professional career which has largely 2 x FTM working parents, and yup no one cares in either one.

I think that's why I find this discussion fascinating because it never occurred to me that anyone would even take a view about SAHMs, let alone a whole concoction of suppositions and stereotypes. It's like a parallel universe on here sometimes!

My DGM worked as a children's nurse and DGF worked down the sewers she had a job and 5 children. She used to leave the dinner out for the kids when they got home. I don't think life was as easy for the working classes no way.

Im really intrigued as to where you live as I dont know any SAHMs at all and no couples where the old fashioned male/ female stereotypes are really entrenched , even my MIL is more modern
Obvs not trying to out you but its a toss up between SW London or NE ?
Am I close?

@Tsort - I’m not sure I get your point - I’ve read all your posts. I think life is better now than in 1970s as women have more choice as to whether to put up with men’s behaviour. Obviously it’s a tough decision as to if/when to break up and what is the straw that breaks the camel’s back (life as a single parent I imagine is really hard). Why do you think life is no better despite having more options to leave bad situations?

If you’ve actually read all my posts and still think that what you’ve said is in any way relevant to what I’ve said then, no, (rather incredibly) you do not get my point. As I’m not going to repeat things I’ve already clearly stated, I fear our discourse is at an end.