Women end up being losers no matter what

[doireallywanttostartthisnow]

Situation A: well educated woman meets man, marries, has child, feels overwhelmed by childcare cost/ options, gives up work, has another child, finds it hard to get back into wink place now eldest is at school, needs to be around for the month of half days, sick days, strike days, nursery closures and so as not to interrupt husbands career so he can earn more 'family money'. Husband ends up resentful, doesn't pay into pension for dear wife, moans about work stress that she doesn't understand. Wife feels too belittled to return to work or goes into something way below her level of experience. She used to be a marketing manager but now she works at a local toy shop as it's shorter hours and flexible (but MW and business may go bust/ no room for progression).

Situation B: same woman does not give up career, goes back after mat leave, faces judgement, works for free due to childcare costs until eldest is 3. Uses holiday club and wraparound childcare. Feels like a hamster on a wheel and knows none of the parents names as she's never in the after school park club. Still has to deal with all the house/ life admin. Resents husband. Leaves the bastard. Now officially does everything alone (woohoo?). Ex DH pays a minimal amount which only covers some childcare. Woman may be financially better off but is exhausted and also faces judgement due to leaving the marriage.

The problem is that hardly anyone is in situation C meaning happy, less stressed, supported, financially independent and in a truly equal marriage. I know about three women who are.
So what do we teach our daughters? Don't have kids? Choose better men? So few men appear to be bellends when we first meet them at art school? None of them appear to be moany, vindictive, controlling, feeble, martyr like or miserly?
How do we ever move on from the fate of being either supported ('kept') or independent ('exhausted')?

Or Situation D: woman gets a good job, is financially secure and secures a mortgage on her own. Meets a sensible, supportive partner who also is financially secure. They marry, pool their resources and pay off her initial mortgage together (so faster) and buy a larger property. They have DC and split childcare (costs and actual care) equally so both can continue working FT, and both are supportive of each others careers and have equal input, access and decision making on how finances are spent and big decisions. This is my situation.

The main thing I find is that too many women are not aware of/interested in/empowered to understand the financial and legal implications of their choices e.g. leaving the workforce/going PT, having DC, not getting their names on mortgages etc. I know plenty of SAHM (married and not married) who are very secure because they’ve protected themselves financially and understand the implications of whatever set up they are in. Too many women put up with shitty situations because they are not economically empowered to just leave.

Basically everything @Zipidydodah said 😁

Alternative option. Woman picks a man to marry who shares her values, has children, even has long maternity leaves because she wants to, returns to work and splits childcare and housework 50:50, no guilt or mum shaming for working, enjoys having savings and expensive holidays, enjoys seeing her children develop in childcare, enjoys the appreciation shown by her partner.

Sorry you’ve had a shit time, that doesn’t mean everyone does.
Women are not meek little creatures, they are in control of their own life.

I'd rather receive judgement for being financially independent and having a career than depend on a stupid man.

Yes women have choices, they need to own their choices

Honestly nothing infuriates me more than this rhetoric on mumsnet, often from burned women!

I'm in Situation D: single parent (although I am in a non-cohabiting relationship). Raising DD alone. High-paid job, my own home. A lot of juggling. Works for me.

Yes it's draining and exhausting but I love the fact that I basically call all the shots and I say a prayer of thanks daily that I don't rely on someone else's money. In many ways divorcing my DD's dad is the best decision I ever made, even though I made no money out of it. It allowed me not to be dragged down by him.

Obviously in theory Situation C is the goal. It's the thing everyone wants. Lots of people will tip up on this thread and say you should have "chosen better" and "you should have found a man who shares your values" etc. But the problem is a very very small proportion of men actually genuinely want an equitable marriage and situation you don't really know if they share your values until the kids come along. If you have this and you're absolutely sure great.

I would far rather go it alone and take all the upside and all the downside. Men are nice to have around etc but marrying one is too risky for me.

Option D - don’t have children. Have a nice quiet life full of holidays, lie ins, restaurants. The dream!

To answer the question "what do we teach our daughters"? The killer lesson is just to make sure you can always support yourself and never never allow yourself to rely on a man for money.

@doireallywanttostartthisnow can I just check, are you me? Did I write this?

I have a new solution to air, (this one's controversial, unethical and only a fantasy to get you through the 100th mansplain of the day....OR IS IT?) what about the "Double Dodecahedron" scenario:Woman carefully studies humankind and all these scenarios unfold. Secretly has a chat to the mirror and decides on personal goals, vows to relinquish the ego and ever being celebrated for contribution and games the world to make it look and sound like she's unhappy, but is actually according to her personal agenda getting what she wants? A double bluff. Or is that just a bluff. E.g. to the school the woman works full time, doesn't see the kids much, looks exhausted, but secretly loves the fact that going into work is nice because they have aircon and coffee? Or woman stays home, massages ego of breadwinner, gets to secretly plot a master plan to take over the world in spare time?

In the self chat in mirror I forgot to add the obligatory self haircut/dye/wig, followed by a montage of prep.

Well.... it was supposed to be a bit of a dark comedy to soothe my absolute resonance with your OP. And express my resignation to the fact that no matter what I do, people seem to interpret me however the hell they decide. So plan number "whatever", could be "give zero f's"

My husband had all of those qualities too. Married, business together, three children. Great life in every way!
Except when my father died, and it became apparent that there was no family money, he literally ran off with a very wealthy friend of mine who was married to an awful man.
It had all been lies and an act, chasing the money.
Sociopaths and psychopaths hide their true selves very well.

DH and I are financially interdependent and that's fine by us. You'll notice I said interdependent, not dependent. In other words, both of us depend on the other. We have made various choices that involve having to trust each other - personally I'd never have married him if I didn't trust him. I also have a strange habit of meaning what I said, including wedding vows. So does he. In other words, the only reason I'd divorce him would be if he cheated or abused me, and chances aren't actually that high, and the same applies to him divorcing me. I could live my life in fear of those options, choose to work more and spend less time with my kids, choose to squirrel away money that would better be spent elsewhere, choose to be constantly on the lookout for whether everything is precisely divided up fairly. But I'd feel rather a fool if I spoilt my life like that and then he never did cheat or abuse me.

Those are my choices. Others have different priorities, different partners, and different choices and that's fine. For instance, if you actually like your job, it's possible you prefer to spend time working. I don't particularly like my job, the only reason I'm still there is that it pays well and I can do it part time with a lot of flexibility. No way am I working more than I need to! I do however love spending time with my children, which is never, in my experience, boring. I've seen other people express the view that they're bored while, for instance, off on maternity. It may well suit them better to work more than it suits me.

What annoys me is people acting like I'm the fool for doing a sensible risk analysis.

Do they? or are the signs there and people don't see them

My 6 years as a sahm were some of the happiest of my life. I loved not having to run myself ragged doing everything. My job pre kids was massive (City /crazy hours /random international travel). Resumed work when second at school. Going back to work would have been the wrong choice for me anyway. It’s not black and white.

Women should be empowered to make better choices, whilst recognising that choices will be different depending on life circumstances. Not every woman is capable of getting a job that pays enough to support a family, or has a supportive family around them. If the best a woman can hope for us so eager e slightly above living wage, it makes sense to pool resources.

We should not judge any woman who is doing the best she can.

Im sure some judge me for two ‘failed’ marriages, but the truth is one was abusive, and one turned into a man-child, and I was in circumstances that allowed me to leave the marriage. Not every woman is so lucky.

Now I am married to a great man who pulls his weight, is a great friend to my daughter, and is Mr Perfect, so I don’t give a shit if anyone judges ne.

People often say that, but there was definitely no signs in my ex.

Wanted children to the point of spending many thousands on fertility treatment.
Hand-painted a stunning mural in their bedroom.
Spent hours on Which? researching which car seats were safest in each of our cars.
Had a baby name book that he read most nights having a chuckle at funny names and circling serious ones. He used to talk to the bump and jokingly ask their opinion on names.
In the first months did night feeds willingly. Took over the bulk of the housework while I recovered.
Used to look like a proud peacock pushing the pram.
Set up finances so everything was fair and equal when I was on ML.

He was a seemingly very good partner who treated me very well and was excited about being a father.

Walked out when they were 6 months old saying he’d been trapped and it wasn’t the life he wanted… (including emptying the joint account, and trying but failing to empty my account)

Now when he came back when they were 4, and managed to get EOW access from family court, I wasn’t then surprised when he didn’t actually see them very often.

but first time round there were no clues at all.

Exactly. Mine accepted it and was great until he was made redundant in the 2008 financial crash thing. This seemed to significantly affect his attitude/mental state and he got a new job that wasnt even in the country. I didnt get a choice other than divorce if i disagreed or stay with him. Both scenarious involved me doing everything child related despite having embarked on the journey equal.
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I think posts like this are very naive and ignore the reality for most women. There isn't often the abundance of choice you seem to suggest and in fact many women have very limited options for a whole host of reasons.

To start with, most women don't get to 'pick a man to marry' that has all the traits and qualities that they are after. There just aren't enough great men out there that are truly supportive and happy to pull their weight domestically and with childcare. The statistics prove this over and over again and misogynistic attitudes are pretty entrenched in our society. There is also the problem that even if a woman finds a decent man that she wants to marry, he often won't commit to marriage and children in a timescale that would support her fertility. Men quite simply have the luxury of time that women don't have and this can mean that women can waste the majority of their fertile years with lovely but non committed men and find themselves in their mid/late thirties in last chance saloon. It isn't realistic to suggest women in this situation should be holding out for years, waiting for the perfect man meanwhile the chance of her actually having children becomes slimmer and slimmer.

Another problem with your proposed scenario is that a lot of families just can't function in a way where everything is split 50:50. If there is a higher earning partner who has to work extremely long hours or someone that is self employed and works anti social hours then it doesn't make sense to pretend that this shouldn't be factored into family life. I have friends who have quite intense and time hungry careers who are married to emergency service workers, soldiers, stockbrokers, farmers and run a whole host of businesses and once kids come along they simply can't maintain both careers in the same way they could pre kids. Even if you are fortunate enough to be able to afford childcare, someone has to do drop offs and pick ups, look after the children at weekends and during sick days. We also can't forget the fact that women tend to marry older men so often earn less when kids come along and this is reinforced by the maternity leaves they go on to take. If someone's career has to give them most often it will be the woman's to enable the family to survive financially.

Finally I think the biggest factor in all of this is that women are often more biologically driven to have the children in the first place but also to prioritise the children's welfare over their own. How many absent and useless fathers are there compared to the absent and useless mothers? Women are often the ones left holding the buck when it all starts to go wrong and it is a bit rich to suggest that they have any real 'control' over their lives when the men have buggered off to live a carefree existence paying a bit of child maintenance here and there whilst the woman is stuck with practical and emotional burden of being the primary parent.

Exactly this.

Loved my time at home, love my current, well paid job. Winner winner!

Good points Bumpity. Our jobs were so all encompassing the only family model that would work would be one steps back. We were not prepared to use day and night nannies and rarely see our own child as work colleagues did.

Maybe Dh and I are weird as we both wanted to be the one that stepped back but I did in the end. Good call as Dd was born 2007 and three quarters of my team lost their jobs anyway in the 2008 crisis Dh in different area got busier if anything. Dh is brilliant though. Find it sad that he is seen as such a marvel by pretty much everyone for being a normal involved parent who prioritises his family always ie like most women are. Need more like him world would be a better place.

I'm closest to option c. I earned a little more than DH pre kids. We both went equally part time after DC1, although I'm currently on mat leave he's actually planning to stay full time after DC2 and i will keep my part time hours (still 4 days a week) which will make our pay almost exactly equal. All money is shared as family income so it doesnt really matter who earns what. Neither of us earn high amounts, we have to be a little careful with money but weve never panicked about paying the mortgage.

We split the domestic tasks, he actually does nearly all the cooking now. This wasn't the case at the start of our relationship but hes a bettter cook and cares more about good meals so it became his task. I do more sorting stuff out for kids like buying clothes, day to day child care is generally quite equal. We both struggle with housework so we have a cleaner.

I think any men who out earn women and don't share their money as family income are actually quite selfish. So are women who do the same but that doesn't happen as frequently. We have a very small equal budget each of "spending money" that we can use how we please without checking with each other.

I don't know if my career has suffered from me going part time, I certainly can't prove it has. My work is quite family friendly and most of my colleagues have similarly aged children. I have no desire to be a stay at home parent, I like having work and also some time with kids.

You don't lose if you focus on your career and financial independence before you have kids/relationships.

It's the financial dependence on partners that mess womens lives up every time.

Nevermays option is no better than the others, starving with fatherless children? How is this any better?

Why are we not asking the question of how do we teach our sons to do better? Not to turn into the many DH’s of this world who think their career, life, mental load takes precedent over everyone else’s? Rather than asking how our daughters can weather the generational behaviour and come out the other side with her sanity intact. As a PP said, good men do exist, how do we teach all our sons, our men of the future, to take this path.

DD is only 3 and I’m already wondering how on earth I'm going to manage her teenage years, let alone how she navigates adulthood, with boys demanding sexts and this awful Andrew Tate style of misogyny that seems to be insidiously weaving it’s way in. Her peers are also only 3, maybe 4 - why am I not breezing through these younger years in the knowledge that my fellow parents have got this - that they’re going to teach their kids that this entitlement, abuse, discrimination, general disregard of girls is not acceptable and that they can do better? Yes, I will do my best to empower her but the onus should not solely be on girls and women to fix this surely?

Sorry, long one!

This. This attitude needs to change. Stop internalizing this pervasive, misogynistic idea that child care and causes are the women’s responsibilities alone, even when she is married/ partnered.

This mentality also stops women going back to work as ‘it isn’t worth it’. It really is.

The "man with a big job" attitude is the problem, I think

Better to have both parents working reasonable hours and sharing household tasks