A 23 year old wants to be a stay at home wife?

[Ludlow2]

Friend's son had a girlfriend and both are 23.
She was keen to marry. Friend's son not so and his parents agreed.
Told him sort your career out,save up, find somewhere you will live. He agreed.
They split.
Both his parents work. My friend, his mother has always worked full-time and has a side business too. She is a great role model an although she is the breadwinner the father also works considerably hard.
Their children have and will benefit from this. They have also instilled good work ethic in their children too.
The friend's son and his ex girlfriend remained friends. She is keen to be with again and said she is happy.to wait and will continue with her studies maybe get a masters etc. She has then said that after marriage she does not want to work.

She thinks work is a want and not a need?

Obviously son Friend's son has run for the hills.
He did tell her it is impossible to survive on one income bla bla. But she just responded with we can move to a cheaper area and I'm not materlistic?

Im.just surprised at this attitude.

The girl's father left the family (Mother and siblings) whilst they were young.
Mother found another partner who comes and goes. Maybe it this why she is craving to be looked after by a man.
However, it sounds all so sad.

Stop twisting words to suit your agenda.

Very ironic coming from one of the many posters who have derailed this whole thread away from the original points in the OP. Turning this into yet another SAHM vs working mums argument when that wasn’t even the original point the OP was talking about

@ailsamaryc My friend is leaving because she didn’t want to do night shifts and part time not viable. Her DH works in a different sector so having alternate shifts wasn’t an option either, she also wants for them to be able to spend time together as a family.

All of this and the poor pay was what led to her retraining.

From the ensuite because you can see the TV in the bedroom from there...😂

instead his response was 'because it makes you happy'.

That's what she's telling us.

I think you were on to something earlier when you said some women like to make out that they are so special and desirable that their husbands have no wishes or motivations except to facilitate them in everything they want, somehow above others.

I can't believe he doesn't expect her to do anything in return except Be Happy. He's happy to come home every day to his kept wife to a shit tip, no food in the fridge, no dinner, an overflowing laundry bin, dirty bedsheets and a list of life admin as long as his arm? As long as the kept wife is happy?

I really doubt it. Even if he were happy to be completely taken advantage of like that because he lurves her... doesn't she also love him? And who treats someone they love like that?

Yet you seem to be implying I'm saying it will be easy when I've never claimed that it will be.

I still won't be giving up my career. I will never live off of my husband's money excluding a few options outside of my control.

Champagne taste on a Tesco Value lemonade budget.

Indeed,it was about how a 23 year old wanted to be dependent on someone else.

Who wants to be dependent on someone else for the rest of their life, unless they have no choice!

It is tragic how these influencers and #tradwifes brigade are having a negative impact on young people's lifes.

I don't really understand this idea that birthday parties and taxiing kids around between extracurricular activities is somehow supposed to be exhausting? DD did every activity going and got invited to lots of parties but none of It was ever a big deal. More complicated if you have lots of kids going in different directions, I'm sure, but I usually had about a handful of other kids in my car whenever I took dd anywhere so it's usually easy enough to sort things, surely.

It really isn’t the done thing within their circles, they think BF is restrictive, exhibitionist, may impact sex life negatively.

They don’t want to be chained and want to enjoy the 6-9 months maternity they get - for themselves - because they will be back at work doing a 50hr week asap.

Never said they don’t look out for their kids, they love their kids and would do anything for them. They just have a different perspective on feeding.

In the leafy area we’re in, the mothers think bottle feeders are ghastly, adore breast feeding and talking about it at every given opportunity and feed young Matilda until she’s 2.

I am a carer for an adult and a child and I am also a landlady… but don’t consider that my “job” because it isn’t.

I am not looking down on any body.

There are different viewpoints. My relatives do not want to be leached upon for an entire 6-9 months when they could be out having fun and having everyone feed the baby. They would very long hours and incredibly hard so personally I think it’s up to them what they do!!

I think you underestimate how much they like a drink… when one child was born they had wine smuggled into the hospital to celebrate!!

Before my time but still talked about. They just really don’t want the hassle.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves

I dont find it exhausting either

It certainly isn't how I particularly want to spend my weekends but it's what generally happens when you have my kids. With my husband doing his fair share and neither of us working weekends, exhausting or not, it can happen without me giving up my career.

But what do I know? I only have a baby.

The issue I have with all the arguments on this thread is that I see the overall problem being one of abuse of power. For millenia, men have been in a position where they have had power over women and all too frequently abused it. Feminism very rightly fights against this, but where some of the arguments fall down, imvho, is that feminism has not been hugely successful at reducing abuses of power, although it has had some success at enabling more women to join in with it. It is therefore hard to keep faith with a work in progress which retains so much tolerance for the inequity built into society, which women are unintentionally validating by joining in with it just as much as women are unintentionally validating it by individually opting out of it. At least some of the women who opt out of it actually have managed to establish personal lives and relationships where power is not abused and partners do actually perceive themselves as each other’s equal. This may not help improve the wider world, but if you don’t even recognise it when it happens on a micro-level, because you are so busy fighting the joining in fight, I don’t see how you can be equipped to help bring it about in a macro level, either.

I was simply commenting that to some people any work done for no financial reward is seen as lesser.

Something being completely different to something else and not comparable doesn't make it lesser.

What is better, a whisk or a watering can?

They serve entirely different purposes so it is a nonsensical question.

Most people value the time they spend with their family. Most people also recognise that they need money to live and as an adult it is normal to provide that for yourself. Most people care about both of these things and don't compare them because they are separate issues.

My kids have grown up. However,
We did many many clubs and 🥳 parties. This was never exhausting.

Worked full time never left my career.

You know we even manage to cook from scratch and have a clean house.

So I think the nonsense that it impossible to do or we must all be knackered and exhausted and secretly wishing to sahm is just that nonsense.

Going back to the OP (which didn't involve children btw) ...if work is a want rather than a need, why would either partner need to work?
Why could they not both plant trees, read books, run marathons, write poetry etc. Because there is value in all those things.

If the working partner became ill/had an accident at work and couldn't work for a period of time....that wouldn't matter ...right? Because its not a necessity but a want?

And fine not to be materialistic....but material things are kind of essential...like accommodation or clothes or food for example

She is still young, probably naive. Her mindset will more than likely change as she gets older and views her peers

@Fizbosshoes

No one who chooses not to work because they think there's more to life than beumg a wage slave has squared that circle

Xactlee.

Also heating...

Why take government student loans If your intention is to be a #tradwife

Why do we the public have to fund this.

This money could be usefully spend elsewhere in society I.e the NHS.

Who the hell wants to be dependent on another human for the rest of their existence even if they do find someone willing to do it.

Fizbosshoes
That's the answer we will be waiting on for a long time.

It's much easier to deliberately, and repeatedly, pretend that a WOHP/SAHP arrangement is the same as a 23 year old women seeking to never work and be financially maintained by a husband for life.

If she graduates with her masters and has the ability to work and earn enough for her partner and children to be secure why would he need to work? Similarly if he has a job that will easily support them all why is it better for her to work? If the family works better with one person at home regardless of sex surely it’s sensible to do that?

Because right now, it isn't 'one person regardless of sex' that's at home, it is almost always the woman. It isn't a coincidence that it aligns with sexism and stereotypical gender roles.

Some luck, some design, we didn't over extend ourselves on the mortgage so that we could always survive on one wage.

We lived in a relatively cheap area even though that meant longer commute. We shopped in Lidl and Aldi, I meal planned everything. I think the big difference was having DCs quite young when Dd was 2 and DH came to take some time out I was only 32, so plenty of time still to build my career. When the children were young no-one was earning 6 figures.

Whilst I absolutely agree that men are the advantaged group in society generally, I’m genuinely not sure they are the fortunate ones in this scenario. I’ve posted upthread about how I think patriarchal constructs are mutually damaging - but the idea of feeling under pressure to work full time for life to fund an unemployed adult sounds miserable to me.

Whenever women who don’t work post on here saying that women who work outside the home are bitter and jealous of them, I always think there’s a contradiction. So all women who work are jealous and resentful and desperate to be at home - but husbands of SAHWs absolutely love working and are more than happy to carry the responsibility of being the sole wage earner? That doesn’t stack up, unless you’re saying that men love paid work and women hate it - and there are all kinds of problems with that statement.

Either earning money can be unpleasant and stressful, in which case it isn’t fair to make someone else do it for you. Or earning money and developing a career can be rewarding and fun, as well as necessary to support oneself, in which case it makes perfect sense that both women and men would want to do it.