Would you like to be an 'old fashioned' housewife?

[SloaneStreetVandal]

Or a househusband (though we're mainly women on here). And I suspect that most men would say no...

I was reading the ultra processed foods thread, and it struck me (as it often does) that working families are so pushed for time in this era that preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner from scratch is nigh on impossible (and that is the basic premise of what a UPF is; its something you couldnt prepare in your own kitchen). I'm not talking about removing that opportunity, nor harking back to bygone days when a woman's 'place' was in the home (though I think that, whilst women's rights have thankfully progressed massively in the work place, they've not progressed so much in the home/society at large; some bygone views/expectations of women persist. I think, for example, running the house and organising children are still largely female pursuits...). It strikes me that having the 'healthy' ideal lifestyle of cooking from scratch, exercising and spending quality time raising children is a pipe dream when both parents have no choice but to work full time.

I know its complex, and theres a bigger picture (interested to hear thoughts thereof too). I'm just curious (I'm not a researcher! Genuinely just interested) to hear honest takes (few women would be happy to publicly admit in RL that 'running the home', whilst their husband earned, would be their preferred choice to working). Do you think the opportunity for one parent to be at home full time should be a choice available to us all (as it once, generally, was)?

YABU - I want to work, its not just necessity.
YANBU - I'd prefer to be at home, running the show full time.

I thought back then it was called Gin

Women have almost always worked historically. Apart from a tiny privileged elite that didn't have to work - but that applied to men as well as women.

The idea of the stay at home wife is a post-Industrial Revolution concept from the 19th century onwards when it became a status symbol for middle class people that the wife didn't need to work - which applied only to a small minority of women until very recently. And even then a lot of those non-working women were active in the community (when communities were often smaller and closer knit than now) as well as charity work, and were often entrepreneurial.

So those bygone days of leisured housewives were very short and limited indeed, it is all a bit of a myth really. I have to say that being the 'angel in the house' would drive me up the wall. I understand that it may suit some people - but it's not for me, I value being able to work and am so grateful for living at a time when professions aren't closed to me as they were for women in the past.

taking the sexism aside my first thought is who would pay for it all?, and with only one pay coming in there would possibly not be extra money for all the lifsyle choices we have these days

our lives are generally different to back then children or not

And people use the idea 'women are born to it' but are they really?

Yes the same ignorance is always trotted out on these threads. Poorer women have always worked.
No OP. I didn't study for years only to sit at home cooking and cleaning.
Why the obsession with one parent at home 'full-time', which only perpetuates inequality, compared to both going part-time and doing their fair share?
We fought for a 5 day work week. Why not 4? And then eventually 3... you see where I'm going with this.

But then again I came from a culture where women were expected to quit work and stay home. So we rebelled. The grass is always greener on the other side.

The key here is respect and equal partnership so many women are burnt out 'juggling' because their men refuse to lift a finger. Claiming it's 'women's work'. I don't see how us giving in and quitting is going to solve this.

I wanted to write about women having historically worked but this is so much better put than I could have worked!

I couldn't be a stay at home mum. I became very mentally unwell during maternity leave and it was only going back to work and having that mental and physical space from the day to day of parenting that I started to become better. Plus I like earning my own money, like my job and like being able to contribute financially. I would like to work part time though.

This is just me though. Other mums might love being at home as we're all different!

DH and I both worked PT when the kids were small and both work FT now they are at secondary school. We have a cleaner but have always eaten home cooked food. It's just about priorities, we love food so we have homemade, someone else might work longer hours or play with their kids more or do more exercise or have a better social life.

Like it has already been mentioned my Gran (on both sides worked, my Mum and aunties all worked. It may have been in many cases not best jobs and usually low pay. Between us we have a few nurses & teachers very valuable and needed! To us it’s fairly normal to be working - some part time, I have a cousin who both work reduced hours.

We have a friend who recently suffered a heart attack - he works bloody hard, His wife has been a SAHM raising the two children and during their marriage he has asked for her to return to work so he could take a step back - she said no. Both the children are at uni now and she still refuses. He is counting down the years in the hope he can retire.

People need to do what works for them though without judgement while raising a young family. At some point though I think financially the other person has to work in some capacity.

Another one who was utterly miserable by the end of maternity leave. We discussed DH being a SAHD but he wasn’t keen so we both work FT. But we’re in the privileged position of earning good money and so the DC have the same childminder now they did a decade ago when I went back to work. And a cleaner and money for good food that can be cooked fairly quickly.

My DGM was an object lesson in why some women shouldn’t be forced to stay home. She was primarily miserable and resentful and unfulfilled despite DGP being in her own admission the best possible husband.

We live in a city in the south east. My Mum passed away in 2022 and always maintained the opinion that property prices started to rise exponentially in the 80s because both parents started to work.

So before, mortgage lenders would lend a percentage of one person's income but were now able to lend way much more on a joint mortgage with two people working, and so on until we've reached the ridiculous situation we're in now.

I think she actually had a really good point.

Whenever I see this 'topic' I can only relate to this via my late Mother. She was a SAHM until I reached the age of 10 (I was born in 1964) - I was the youngest and had two older brothers who were 2 and 5 years older. In that time my late Father earned enough income to pay the mortgage to pay on his own salary. My Mother went to work PT as they realised his private pension was going to be PP. Even 50+ years ago this was a pipe dream and if you go back to Edwardian era you will find alot of women had to work with children,

As PP have pointed out, women have always worked, and a quick Google highlights other major factors. Such as the baby boomers all coming of age.

My grandma was the stereotypical 1950s housewife.,She gave up work when she got married, had 2 kids and never went back. She lived a very boring life and was the least interesting of my grandparents. She'd just got no interesting things to talk about

So no. It wouldn't be for me

@SheerLucks House prices started to rise because the Conservatives changed the rules on mortgage lending in the 1980s. Before then lenders by law could only lend fairly modest multiples of salaries. Once the law changed they could offer higher multiples and 100% mortgages. It fuelled house price rises.

I was a SAHM for about 5 years when my kids were little. I liked being home with them and I’ve always enjoyed domestic tasks. I love food and cooking, genuinely enjoy grocery shopping and take satisfaction in cleaning and gardening. However I soon was bored when they were at school and returned to work. I work 4 days a week now which is perfect for me.

If people want and can afford to SAH OR to work full time, that’s fine, but I don’t see why it has to be extremes. For many, the ideal is to both work part time and share chores. If families live more simple lifestyles and can spend less, part time work becomes more possible.

The trial of the four day working week was a success but our corrupt Tory government 🙄 ignored the positive findings. God forbid that a few hours are freed.

It depends on the nature of the agreement and expectations, in principle I would have no problem being a house husband.

The household is the forgotten part of the economy and society, economists have generally considered it not their concern as if somehow everything domestic required for a person to be able to work full time happens automatically, by magic, with zero labour costs. For the father of modern capitalism, Adam Smith, it must have felt like that as he lived at his mum's house only able to write his famous book because she provided a roof over his head and fed him whilst he worked on it

Anyone suspect that part of the reason women were given greater access to work in larger numbers was more about increasing labour supply and lowering wages than equality? The average number of hours labour provided by a household has doubled, yet poverty is still a problem, so much of that extra income goes into paying for labour saving devices, convenient low quality food and paying other people to do jobs that there's no time to do. It's only above an average income it begins to add up

I don’t really recognise the time you’re referring to? In my working class family women have always worked. It’s never been an option financially to carry an adult of working age. My great grandmother was still working at nearly 80, as she had done throughout her childbearing years whilst having five children (only one of whom
survived to adulthood).

The concept of staying home was invented around the time the middle class was invented. It was a status symbol designed to indicate a man earned so well he could afford
to support non-working adults.

It’s absolutely fine to organise your family as you wish and as you can afford. But I simply don’t recognise this world people seem to think has changed

They took 'mothers little helpers' = Valium (Diazepam).

I used to think this was the ideal scenario and I did it for a few years but was much happier working (very) part time.

I grew up in the 1980s in a London suburb which I don't consider a mc area. My mum worked pt as a Ta and dinner lady. Almost none of my peers mums were working ft. One classmate had a childminder (although I think it was a fairly informal.arrangement) but there was no breakfast or after school clubs.
Now I do live in a mc area and there are lots of housewives and SAHMs but also a lot nurseries, and wraparound care for parents who are working ft

I would stay at home in a heartbeat. I hate working. I resent every second. It's time away from the people and things I love. I get no satisfaction or fulfillment from it. Not the way I do when I feel content at home. I also have very bad anxiety which is work related (different work places so it's the fact I have to do it at all that does this) so I can truthfully say I don't think it does me any good to work. I go but it honestly feels like I'm deliberately heading towards a burning building every day, against all advice and common sense. I accept that having GAD will always give me something to worry about but I refuse to live like this til I retire and nothing has EVER touched the way it makes me feel about work.

I love my home. I didn't work through lockdown and I loved it. Wasn't bored at all and I can easily fill my days in and out of the house. I resent squashing everything else in round a long work day and a monster commute; even with DH to help, he's full time too. I am dyspraxic and can't cope with disorder - my coping strategy is routine and order so between running the house, working and ensuring we have couple time where I lose out atm is self care. I hate the me I take to work but I have no time to fix her.

If we had children, I want to raise them and actually be with them. My mum was there for me and I honestly thank her all the time for it. I loved it. Again- I can't do it all ... so work should go.

The only thing I like (and obviously we need) is the money- and I'm looking at ways to supplement my income that aren't dependent on wages so I can maybe cut down. DH is also looking at moving roles so we can move stuff around a bit. Truthfully I wouldn't want the whole burden on him and I know circs change so I'd probably be p/t rather than off entirely but eventually I do want to stay home and he'd love me to as well as he knows I'm utterly miserable.

I wish my choice was easier and more acceptable, esp having seen some of the judgemental smuggers on this site. I feel like I'm letting people down by being old fashioned. Especially all the people who saw a high achiever at school and thought I'd soar. Instead I'm a tired, resentful, anxious lump with excess weight and stress induced disordered eating. I am not thankful for the "opportunity" to live this way.

I think we're all different. My ideal would probably be part-time work, which seems to be a popular choice among parents if they can afford it.

Personally I found maternity leave very stressful in its own way, but then the first time round I had a baby with colic screaming several hours a day and waking to feed every 1-2 hours a night for over a year. The second time round happened to coincide with lockdown, so I had to look after two young children on my own, without any adult company allowed during the looong days, and nowhere to go to escape.

I would rather work less hours than I do, in the ideal. I’d still want to work. I think it’s very important to be on an equal footing in your relationship otherwise resentment and expectation starts to come through. Really quite surprised more than half of people when asked anonymously would stay at home though; wow.

Oh god no. The boredom would drive me mad.

The “old fashioned housewife” is a relatively new thing (post war really) women have worked out of the home for millennia. They had to.
I also think it’s easy to look at it through rose tinted glasses. Mothers cooked from scratch because there was no 24 hour Tesco with ready meals and takeaway pizza, they made clothes because there wasn’t next day delivery and clothes were so expensive. Life has become cheap and convenient and throw away. Child rearing a dozen kids bowing 20-50% wouldn’t make it through childhood sounds heartbreaking.
I wouldn’t want traditional where a whole day was spent over a washing dolly and mangle. I wouldn’t want to be a husbands property, I would not want a situation where I had none of my own assets.

I would like more balance though and less commute and running around. I think modern life does give us the opportunity to know our children as their own people more. My DD is my favourite person, we have so much fun together, she is so loved. My fathers father has never told him he loved him.
id take 21st century thanks. Including the flexibility of shared parental leave and dads that share the parenting