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.

If you’ve actually clicked on ‘see all’ and read my posts, you’ll see that I’ve responded to all of that. Or you can choose not to. 🤷🏽‍♀️

but it’s anonymous so for all those judgmental people out there

Frankly one of the most judgemental posters on this thread seems to be you.

My grandparents were older than your father, my father only about 15 years younger - neither my father nor my grandfather treated their wives in the way your father did, nor did they excuse other men who behaved badly.

You have written long posts which boil down to NAMALT and trivialising /justifying what women have endured whilst perpetuating the fiction that women just walk away from marriages on a whim and that whilst doing so they have the temerity to want their share of the marital assets.

If more women are leaving marriages now then you need to look at the behaviour of men and what drives women to end a marriage where they have an actual choice. Because in effect you are saying that men's behaviour is so poor that they are unable to maintain a long term relationship without locking the woman in.

I…this post has descended into farce. 😂

A BRAND NEW FORD FIESTA! 😂😂😂

@Tsort
If you’ve actually clicked on ‘see all’ and read my posts, you’ll see that I’ve responded to all of that. Or you can choose not to. 🤷🏽‍♀

Yes I did and no you haven't responded to all that but I foolishly thought you were looking for a discussion rather than performance posting.

The conversations have happened. I have zero interest repeating myself to someone who hasn’t bothered to read said conversations and is seeking to rehash what’s been thoroughly examined over more than 800 odd posts.

If that’s ‘performance posting’ in your book, I guess I’ll live.

My mum had that set up with my dad. It was her choice and that's what feminism is to me women having a choice. He worked outside the home, paid food, mortgage and all bills. She ran the home, prepared meals, looked after the kids although dad would help equally when he got in from work. It worked for them at that time. Now she works part time and he has had to get used to doing more chores around the house (kids all adults now and flown the nest). He does so without complaint as he recognises she gets knackered too.

I work part time and do most of the cooking and pay bills. Dh takes care of all other expenses and works full time. He gets in and chips in as soon as he gets home, so will feed baby dinner as I sort the other two out and then gets baby changed and ready for bed or does the dishes whilst I bath the other two. He cooks at the weekend and has changed his hours to accommodate me going back to work. He is an equal partner and parent and I wouldn't have settled for anything less than this. We discussed this before we got married and had he changed after the first child then the second and third wouldn't have arrived.

My sister is married to a man who expects her to cook all meals and serve them to him. He won't make his own lunch or seve himself food she has cooked ever. She also works part time and has a baby. She is worse off in that because she works he expects her to contribute financially and she basically takes care of all the baby's expenses as she gets child benefit and is expected to pay for takeaways and meals out.

I would day having a job is always beneficial to a woman because money gives you choices and a good choice would be for her to ditch her husband but that's just my view. She is actalually happy with her set up.

So to answer the original question I do think many women are worse off.

My mum and gran worked. But then I do not come from a middle-class background. I think my grand marriage was okay, but if it wasn't she was stuck in it. Divorce was not an option.
My mum was a single mum with me before eventually marrying. She was treated like absolute shit because she was an unmarried mum and I was a bastard.
My Aunt had recurring miscarriages and a stillbirth. No one talked about it and she was not allowed to see her stillbirth baby. The attitude was the quicker you forget about it the better. There were no memory gardens or memorial services. Just hurried whispers that she had lost another one.

If you are a middle-class woman with a nice husband your life might have been better in the past. But many of us are not and were not in that position. The middle class used to be fairly small and for many jobs pay was higher than today in real terms. Life may have been better because the middle class were in a better position economically then in comparison to now.

Neither women nor feminism are to blame for men being so childish that they refuse to pick up after themselves.

Op Thankyou for the thread. Su entertaining - from the "SAHMs are the downfall of society" posters to the "BRAND NEW FORD FIESTA!!!" Love it!

@runwalk just confirms it doesn't, it's women that are the problem in general, excuse us for existing 😂

And others are better off. There are so many variables and hard to balance them all. My big issue in 1972 was having the money to get my prescription for the pill filled every month. You had to pay for a private prescription and then pay for the actual pills every month. In 1973 or 74 the Brook came to my city and I got the pill for free. That was an incredibly liberating moment so for me a giant improvement 48 years ago compared to 50 years ago.

I don't know how old you are but I do know how badly single mothers were treated in the 70s. In my city the standard thing was if you got court ordered support for the baby you had to go to the court office on a Friday afternoon to get the money. Nightmare for working mothers, I knew someone who was allowed to take her lunch break late so she could queue after the rush but it was always a worry for her as if the clerks were running late she would be late getting back to work.

I knew someone, working class girl, who got pregnant. Her very posh boyfriend got his dad to go round and explain to her family that if she went to court his friends from the rugby club were prepared to go to court and swear they'd all had sex with her and with no DNA she wouldn't be able to prove otherwise.

I hope your mother didn't have things that bad but she might well have.

@WrapAroundCover

I feel like every time someone challenges you you wheel out yet another long-winded example of either your mother or your wife having engaged in some flagrantly scarlet behaviour, none of which amounts to a coherent thesis, simply (amusing) personal anecdata.

But in each case its quite clear that the source of the frustration which led to the cheating is that the women were pissed off by feeling trapped with men who expected them to be grateful for being housed and fed but for very little joy.

Obviously none of this justifies cheating or lying but can you not see that there might be a connection between these women being expected to be grateful for a miserable and unfulfilling life and their resulting behaviour. And wouldn't the logical conclusion be that it might have been easier for all concerned to just let them get out of these dreadful marriages as opposed to trapping them there due to a vague sense of their "matrimonial responsibilities"?

Why are you being so abrasive? Did you want to start a discussion or an interrogation?

😂😂😂

@WrapAroundCover - do you think if you grew up in today’s society (with more options for women working, independence) you would still have preferred your parents to stick together despite difficulties? In the past I guess there was stigma and harder for women to make money independently.

I have relatives who stuck together for the kids. They are v unsuited in personality and bicker a lot. I think their kids think it would have been better to split - but it was another time. Grand aunt was cheated on and her husband didn’t bring back much money preferring to go drinking. She tried to mend clothes at home for extra money, but few other opportunities. Kids are bitter at what she had to go through. I think I would prefer my parents to split than cheat on each other - but I guess sometimes kids aren’t told the whole story.

WrapAroundCover - thanks for sharing.

May I ask, if you are happily married for 35 years as you say, what is particularly troubling you about the rise of online dating? How is this affecting you at your stage of life?

Gosh feminism is yet to come to so many. Prostitution actually doesn’t tend to work out all that well for women. But better for creepy men apparently.

The 'choice' thing is overrated, and as an outcome of myriad different schools of feminism but not their primary aim of challenging and dismantling patriarchal systems, structures, stereotypes and assumptions based entirely around the perceived interests of men. Note 'perceived'. Some of these - the stereotypes and assumptions in particular - have been actively damaging to the interests of men, hence the concept of toxic masculinity has risen its head in recent years. Toxic, that is, to men, given that's often misinterpreted as a statement that men as a species are toxic.

There is usually little choice, and that's leaving aside the empty definition of gender here, which is nothing more than a series of baseless stereotypes about particular modes of behaviour, action, clothing etc arbitrarily attached to the sexes. It's bunkum, and on that basis there's no such thing as a 'gendered' role. Women give birth and breastfeed: that's the extent of our biologically exclusive contribution. After that the choices are simply: either, or both, parents need to bring in the money. Both parents contribute to childcare. Or, you can throw it all up, flog off your house, go off grid and join a commune in a campervan, but I'm assuming this is a tiny minority so leaving that option off the table. When it comes to family structures and the entire legal system set up around them, the choices are not that extensive, or liberating. The real issue is the pay gap between the sexes, statistical lack of senior roles for women, legislation relating to leave, ratio of full- to part-time work, and other issues, primarily set up to benefit men.

The free choices you're making might not be as free as you think. And that includes mine. Nor will they ever be completely free until the above inequalities are redressed. If they ever are.

😂

I think Ford Fiesta may have been the point at which we jumped the shark. This thread has been quite the unexpected journey!