To wish woman didn’t have to work

[Blueberryancakes]

I think I was born in the wrong decade.

Somedays/Most days I wish I lived in the days when once a woman got married she would give up work. Stay at home have children, cook and clean.

I know it’s such an anti feminist opinion but I guess that’s how I feel.

I enjoy cooking and cleaning. I hate going to work. I wish we lived in a time when 1 wage would pay the bills.

Anyone else think like me?
I know woman now have so many career options nowadays but house wife seems to be a very privileged one.

The USSR had a version of UBI but it wasn't enough and women still had to work. The State was meant to provide childcare but it was rubbish and inadequate and basically amounted to sticking children in a small empty room and occasionally forcing them to sing songs about how wonderful communism is.

The crisis in living standards and lack of childcare meant by the 1960s and 70s that women as well as men were working ridiculous hours, so much so that the trope of feral and under-cared for children wandering the streets were as much a well known phenomemon of Soviet cities as the angry, frustrated vodka soaked men.
Like all socialist ideas, sounds lovely on paper, promptly turns to shit when it comes into contact with reality.

Great. I’ll have two houses then.

I would have absolutely hated it if I'd been expected to become a housekeeper/nanny on marriage and give up any work outside the home. Much as I adore my children, I didn't enjoy being at home on maternity leave because I felt like a lesser person, seriously bored and unstimulated. I hated being dependent on DH financially, too.

@Tumbleweed101
There isn't any state money. Head teachers are all having to give the talk to staff about the complete lack of investment in schools. Staff are leaving in droves. Why should jobs like teaching, health care, traditionally done by women and statistically still composed mostly of women, continue to do a job when contemporaries can work from home or not work at all.
Some posters on here can naively suggest that house prices and rental prices be based on one salary. One poster glibly suggests more social housing. Since COVID more people are choosing not to work. A significant number of those are women. Not women in their twenties but women in their fifties. They just want an easy life.
In 2022, net migration in the UK was 720,000, most of these to do jobs that people in this country, women in this country, don't want to do.720,00 is equivalent to a city the size of Sheffield or Cardiff. The number of social housing built last year was 220,000.
No political party can sustain this level of immigration to support people who don't fancy playing their part in supporting society.
Both Conservative and Labour have policies about getting unemployed people into work, playing their part in doing jobs that society depends upon.
So many women on here suggesting pie in the sky ideas about making a law so that family finances depend on one salary. It is not going to happen. There will always be ( and no doubt always have been) women who marry for money. The UK cannot afford to sustain immigration because rising numbers of people think it is nicer to doss about at home.
Of course many women want to be around at home when their babies are little but to suggest that they never work again because they don't want to, is not sustainable.
Who is going to do these jobs that you don't want to do. How can we sustain a new city every year for the foreseeable future because some of you coyly assert you would rather stay at home and potter?
Women are a huge resource and until someone invents a money tree and AI provides human like workers, it is never going to happen.

YANBU. I hate my life aswell. I work a full time job, mediocre pay and years spent trying to start a family. In a previous 1:1 meeting with my manager I said "Meh" in response to them asking how I'm feeling. "Well that's not very positive." "What's there to be positive about, <manager>? Locked away in my home for 2 years and forced to put my whole life on hold, got furloughed, almost lost my job in a company restructure in the run-up to an egg collection, colleagues going on maternity leave seemingly in tandem with every miscarriage I've had while working here, and you expect me to be positive?" There was an awkward pause and then a desperate attempt to shift the conversation to work. Because all I do is work. Work work work work. I'm fed up. Once I no longer need to work, I'll be happier.

SAHM for over a decade.
If I didn't have so many kids and the dog I would not want to be a housewife, I would be too bored. I think you need to have lots of hobbies (most cost) and friends who are in same position, I don't know any ladies of leasure.

I think it's great that many posters have fulfilling careers, are stimulated mentally, have great colleagues etc however that is not the deal for most women (people in fact). Many are in very challenging roles or boring roles that aren't rewarding and aren't paid enough. Many work part time in jobs to fit around family life. Always compromising. They go out to pay the bills, then come home and start their second, unpaid, job.

This is so true. Joint mortgages must have pushed house prices up because people can borrow more.

You're looking at things through Rose coloured glasses.

It is not down to boredom being a SAHM, it is down to playing your part in being economically active to ensure institutions are able to survive. How are you lot going to potter at home when there are no teachers, health workers etc etc because pottering takes precedence over the survival of society?

Look at the policies for the main political parties. They make it clear that their intention is to cut immigration and ensure that people play their part in doing these jobs.

No thanks, can’t think of anything worse, I like having rights and independence. You’re sugar coating the past.

I agree with this both of these points completely and I see that most replies seem to be accepting of the OP’s wish.

However, would people still be so accepting if someone wanted to be a housewife but had no children? I wonder if the line is blurred between ‘housewife’ and SAHM. The work of the latter is another job in addition to housewife.

I resent going to work. My mum was a SAHM for my entire childhood and my grandma - her mother- was the same. I'd have been glad to stop when I got married. I get zero satisfaction or fulfillment from work... but at the same time I won't stop because anything can happen in life and I may need it.

Economics 101: Fail.
It is demand that pushes prices up. Not sure mortgages have become more affordable over the past few years…

This is why I've always worked. I just don't trust men. And I have good reason not to. First husband dumped. Me and newborn " cant cope with being a dad and husband". 2nd husband dumped me out of the blue after 20 years when I thought we were happily married. Everyone was shocked.
If I hadn't had my career I'd have even stuffed.

Truly, I wouldn't like to rely on that 'norm'. Much more likely to have at some point to sell the house and split the profits. Maybe when the last child hits 18 or similar. Man has more money? Better lawyer. Friend of mine was told by judge in divorce case, 'get a proper job, Mrs X'.

I was coming in to say this - my grandmother’s generation all worked, and OP likes doing housework with a washing machine and hoover, probably not so much with a copper and mangle and beating her carpets over a line in the yard.

Don't think so. Demand has pushed up prices.

I'm sorry for your awful losses but.....I'd never say that to my boss. I just stick a smile on and lie.

With 720,000 new migrants here each year, most invited in to do the jobs that people choose not to do because they would rather potter at home, there is so much more demand for housing. No wonder there has been a dramatic increase in house prices. If you have to build a new city each year to house migrant workers ( they deserve to be housed) because so many people would rather not do their bit.

77% of work in the health and social sector is done by women.

70% of teachers are women.

Not to mention all the hairdressers, veterinary nurses and doctors. What happens if they all stay at home to clean? It seems that people only have an issue when women work in certain jobs. I was once told as a young engineer I was taking away a job from a man!!!

I love being a stay at home mum - I would definitely have fitted in to a buy gone age. I get to raise the kids myself, look after my bees and keep the home organised. I just married someone who could provide. I have a degree and options in the future, but also make sure half our investments are in my name so that I can get the income from those. I'm fortunate my husband has a great job, I'd hate to have to go work and not enjoy it - the time with the kids is too short.

I had a "boiling bucket", then an electric burco boiler and a mangle in the 70s, no fridge,milk in a bucket in the shade. No vacuum cleaner,a Bex Bissel carpet sweeper. I still worked outside the home. Didn't drive,lived in a village, hourly bus, none on Sunday, got myself a push bike

I'm 70, my granny was born in 1903 and always worked, her mother also worked as she got a tied cottage for her and her children looking after cattle on a farm, before that she was a cook. My mother worked in a mill and then in the war worked in a munitions factory. I wonder how far you'd have to go back to find a time when women didn't work. It was often cash in hand with cleaning or doing laundry or working on the family farm/shop or whatever. Of course domestic work in your home was considerably harder. I was born in a house with no running water, to do the washing my mother had to light a fire under the boiler in the wash house, agreeing with other women in the yard about which day was hers, then hand wash everything, put it through the mangle and then try to get it dry on a wet day. Bath night was also backbreaking and no wonder it was only once a week, going out to work was probably light relief.

Nothing wrong with you not wanting to work but it is wrong to assume women didn't always work.