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.

I work 9-5 and even though I work full time with a wish to go part time, I still think I have the better deal. I think a relationship where a women has full control of her children and men has full control of the money sounds absolutely hellish for both parties. My DH would hate to have no say in our child's upbringing, I'd hate have no saying in our finances.

And I'm not alone in my job. What a bizarre thing to say! I'm a lot less lonely at work than being at home. And children are only at home for a very short time before going to school. Certainly not a lifetime!

I agree with you op. It’s the need to earn money for the family isnt it and one salary not being enough anymore.

housewife work is plenty and I always feel women have been tricked

come on ladies fight for the right to work like men!!!
all the ladies- hooray yesss!!!!
me- hang on a minute

I think the problem now is due to the costs involved lots of families need two working parents to afford to live. Housing costs are the biggest factor in this.

In the 70's my father in law was a mechanic and managed to buy a house have 2 children and a wifw who didn't work.

A mechanic's salary today would not buy that same house.

Life is so expensive that for most people there isn't the choice and trying to juggle children/homework/clubs/school holidays is very stressful whilst trying to work.

If mortgage company's had only ever considered 1 salary I doubt we'd be in the situation we are now.

And yes in lots of families women work and still do more of the housework.

It's all a bloody con

Women have a sight more intelligence than you give us credit for. Oh, except for you, of course ....

The reality is that other women are well able to make up our own minds how to organize our working and domestic lives in the way which we, personally, view as best fitted to our interests.

I think someone's been reading too much Petronella Wyatt.

on my mums side - my mum and gran and my great gran always worked, as well as my grandad

on my dads side my gran was a single mother to 8 children she had no choice but to work several jobs to keep a roof over their heads, there was only one wage!

Some days I wish I didn’t work other days I know I wouldn’t be the kind to stay at home.

Perhaps I’d just like to be stinking rich and only work when I need to

Women have always worked. Even wealthy, married women who were not allowed to take up paid employment still had a hell of a lot to do in terms of running the household. I suppose women who were kind of in the middle financially (not poor, but not wealthy enough to own an estate) probably had the most free time, but they weren't necessarily 'free' to do as they wished. I wouldn't want to be caged like that.

I don't think a lot of men want to work either.

I think the overall concept of work needs to change.

Working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week , is too much for most people.

We should have more options of a four day work week.

I understand completely how you feel, but you're fantasising. Only well off women used to stay home all the time. Poor women had to clean, take work in or slave away in the fields to put good on the table.

What we all need is a society that not only values the (traditional) work that women do but expects men to do it too.

I think this is an incredibly romanticised vision of the past. Working age women have always worked and the children were cared for by elders or older siblings, or largely left to their own devices as the mother worked nearby. On top of that children often begun working themselves at very young ages. This idea of SAHM actively raising their children was only for a narrow segment of the population for a narrow segment of time.

I love being a sahm and hated my previous job (so even before a baby/marriage I worked part-time from the age of 30).

But I wouldn't wish to be back in the 1950s because I think choice is what matters. If you want to work, or want to be a housewife, you have the choice.

In the past I think a lot of women DIDN'T have the choice. They were forced to give up their job upon marriage, and fewer jobs were open to them. But now I think a lot of people don't really have the choice to stay at home because everything is geared to need two incomes.

My unpopular opinion is that a lot of people could manage to have a sahp if they wanted it enough, but don't want to give up their current lifestyle. I know three couples where the woman gave up work whilst the children were young and the husband is poorly paid, but they made it work.

Nursery fees would have been my entire salary and I'm sure that's the case for many people, so I do wonder why, if someone can afford nursery, they apparently can't afford to be a sahm? I hear that from people quite a lot.

Mortgages used to be calculated 3 x 1 salary plus 1 x the other salary. When MIRAS was removed and banks started taking both salaries fully into account house prices rose.

For posters saying 'who's going to do the jobs, it's selfish' do jog along. Perhaps if jobs like teaching were better paid then more me would do it. Let's calculate all the free caring women do, they make up most of the volunteer network in this country. Also many don't want to do what is predominantly low paid, zero hours boring jobs - why should they. Lots of people getting benefits and working no or low hours.

I would guess that the majority of women in this country have a job that fits around family so their DH/DPs can sail through their careers and earn more. The pay gap is very real.

A better point to make is when is society going accept that men and women need to be responsible for their children, share drop offs, expect that both will need time off when a child is sick. Women are still taking the burden of this in most cases so even when they do work they are not building a big pension, not getting promoted until later.

110% wish it was an option to stay at home. I have a good career and I’ve cut my hours for a bit of balance but I’m much happier when I’m home with the kids.

Work is evolving for the better, I think. With more employee rights.

I was just talking to some people, where I thought, wow their job sounds really nice.

They said they work remotely for EU companies. It is in their contract that they can work remotely from any EU country.

So they spend two months in Italy, two months in Spain, two months in France.

Go look for a job with more flexibility maybe.

What in the actual gobbledefuckinggook are you talking about?

There are loads of reasons why UBI is a bad idea and why capitalism has successfully lifted billions of people out of poverty. I can talk in reference to my country of birth and also in empirical terms across history.

I'd be happy to have a respectful and intellectually mature debate with you on PM.

Well if ‘society’ needs those jobs doing then maybe ‘society’ should start valuing them a bit more highly, granting them a fair wage and better conditions - might even get a few more men interested in those roles that way too.

I used to teach. If society wants me to go back to doing that, it would need to start making some big changes because what was once a vocation (that I was bloody good at) nearly broke me.

I promise the country would survive if I chose to stop doing my current job. Outside of my organisation and the specific set of customers we provide services to, nobody would be any the wiser. I’m good at my job and my employers value my contribution, but it’s not a role that’s exactly vital to the continued function of society. To one part our business? Arguably yes. Though a man could do it at a push.

I’m not looking to give up work and have no particular yearning to be a SAHM, but if I was I don’t think the ‘your country needs you’ bit would be convincing enough for me to change my mind.

As women, we can only really give up our jobs, ,if we find a man willing to provide for us. At the moment.

But do you think that men want to work?

No man that I know likes his job.

What would be a better system for all would be if we had universal basic income.

So both women and men could survive without working.

Also what I think keeps people trapped financially is this idea that we have to have a mortgage for a house for forty years.

When we could just live in a caravan for 10000.
Or house share and rent with our friends into our seventies. People don't have to get a mortgage

My mother, grandmother's and great grandmother's all worked.
The idea that women all gave up paid work after marriage feels like a fantasy from American 1950 telly.

I don't have children but I don't think I should have to work.

I only work 25 hours a week but it's a pain having to. I've been off work on annual leave for 11 days and I have so much lazing about left to do.

If I was born in another century I would marry for money, but not necessarily for love, and spend my time crafting, gardening, eating cake and taking in the sea air.

Who's Troy?

If no one was working, where would the basic universal income come from?!

This post is crazy.

Women have always worked.
I am now retired, but my DM took 6 weeks off when I was born. (She worked in the evening).
Our next door neighbour, a nurse, worked nights.
I think the OP must be referring to a specific middle class woman.
A lot of women's work is unrecorded; ie shop work, especially if a joint venture.

It depends on the country too.

I know in Ireland there was a "marriage bar" in place until 1973. When a woman became married, she wasn't allowed to work anymore.

This marriage bar said that when women became married, they must give up their jobs. So if a woman was well educated and had a good Job, she wasn't allowed to continue the job after marriage.

This didn't work in women's favour at all. And lot of women complained about it.

It was seen as abusing women's rights.

The danger then was that women became completely dependant on their husbands.

And if he was abusive they had no financial means to leave.

Work is shit in many many ways, but as least we now have the option and freedom to earn our own money.

The issue imo for many women isn't "work/no work", it's that life looks very different for a working mother versus a working father.

This is generalising (although backed up by the statistics), but life too often looks like this for families with young children.

• Dad - secure, well-paid job, regular hours Mon-Friday, comes home, cooks dinner a couple of times a week, runs hoover round now and again, takes kids to the playground for an hour at the weekend. Hobbies x3 a week. Sleeps through the night and 1 lie in per weekend.

• Mum - often insecure lower-paid work, works around the kids (condensed hours, school hours etc.), does overtime/answers emails around the kids, constantly running round like a blue-arsed fly juggling work, school/nursery drop-offs and pick-ups, kids' activities, kids' appointments, playdates, parties. Has a second job as the family PA and operates as a walking diary. Weekends are just more work, with a lie-in if lucky. "Hobbies" are cleaning up vomit and supervising homework.

You can tell the roles parents play in a family with how they respond to the news that it's World Book Day next week.

Parent 2 - "That's nice. What do you want to dress up as?"

Parent 1 - "Kill me now! 3 fucking costumes. You can't go as a Martian because they don't have it on Amazon. You're going as the Hungry Caterpillar because your brother was that last year and the costume's somewhere in the loft."

I am sure that there will be many people saying their family structure and division of labour is completely different and I'm happy for you, but there's a grain of truth in this parody for too many women even nowadays.