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.

Yeah it is nice while it lasts, until you realise you're completely and utterly dependant on what another person does.

And if a man has an affair and walks out, what will the woman do?

As we all know. A lot of men simply refuse to pay maintenence for the children after a break up

I would have thought most people would rather not work all things being equal. If I won a huge sum of money I would probably still use the skills of my job (I'm a lawyer) but very part time and for a nice charity. That doesn't mean I think policies should be set up to mean I have a prima facie right to opt out of supporting myself.

I suppose if AI took off massively maybe we could all have a citizens' income or something to enable us to live in a leisure filled utopia while AI and robots do all the work. Can't see that being the way it'll go though, I would imagine the fruits of an AI revolution will enrich a few at the top while the rest of go broke but I digress.

In my house my DH doesn't really work - he has a nice creative thing going that brings in (in a good year) about a tenth of my salary. This works very well for us as a household (he does most domestic stuff) but it requires me to earn a very high amount so we can manage on just one income. It would be nice if we could have a society where one minimum wage job can support a household but this would require a massive massive redistribution of wealth and I just imagine those holding the cards at the moment would allow it.

When i was young (the early 1980s) house prices / mortgages were also based on two wages and it was still expected that both would be working full-time.

Normality in 1984 was 3.5 x joint income or 2.5 x single income - but I only ever met one person that had bought based on a single income and that was a 1 bed bed-sit.

So in terms of what decade I can only assume you mean more than 50 years ago.

Exactly.
A life of domestic servitude might be your ideal OP, but it certainly isn’t mine. I always wanted a career and would have been utterly miserable if I’d been forced to be a housewife. I thrive on studying and doing intellectually challenging work, and endless housework is my worst nightmare. Fortunately women have choices now.

As we see so often on MN, women who rely on their husband’s income and have none of their own are in an extremely vulnerable position if the husband leaves or becomes abusive. I would advise all young people to never become financially dependent on a partner. You can become trapped in a bad situation.

Beside that, my DH is low paid and if I’d stayed at home, we wouldn’t have been able to live on his wage. So I’d have been forced into at least part time work anyway, or we would have scraped by on benefits. My earnings mean he isn’t under pressure to attempt a higher paid job and potentially make himself ill with stress.

Men definitely don't want to work either. I've heard so many men say they hate their job.

In the late 80s house prices and interest rates were going through the roof. I could just afford a small 1 bed flat with my partner, and the mortgage payments were all of my net monthly salary!
All the young people going on about how “boomers” all bought houses for next to nothing have no idea how it was for some of us.

I can appreciate how you feel, in fact I don't think it is 'anti-feminist' at all, as I think being a feminist is about having the same choices, opportunities and rights as men, and if you or a man had the financial support to be able to choose to stay home and be a homemaker / childminder it would be great.

I personally would not have wanted to stay home after having my child, as I really enjoyed the working environment I was in at that time, and found it stimulating and sociable, but I compromised by working part-time instead - even though the childcare costs up until 3 years old took up 2 x 3rds of my salary, as that is the cost of parenting (those parents with grandparents willing to take on some of the childcare are very lucky!)

I do not begrudge anyone, male or female, staying home but it is very rare, mostly due to tough economics which do not support this lifestyle - I think the greater incomes families recieve due to double income families have led to an indirect impact on economics, pushing costs up accordingly, which is really frustrating I feel particularly sorry for those parents who have to work in jobs they don't even enjoy in order to support their families, perhaps having to pay out for childcare costs to boot.

Has anyone on here thought of being a digital nomad?

Where you work full time remotely , and travel around the UK full time.

Or around the EU.

I've mentioned people in their forties fifties and sixties doing this.

Some of them are married with kids. Others are single.

I really admire them.

I was just thinking this. Train as a chef OP, then do dinner party catering.

Of course they did, and that work looked quite different to today.

Do you agree that there was a period of time before and during the transition to where we are today, probably 1900 to 1980's, when single income households were achievable for a significantly greater number of people?

Early 40s, south east England. Yes most did until kids at school, then some got part jobs.

Me too 🤣🤣🤣

I can't think of much worse. I had 4 months off a couple of years ago (paid) & would much rather be at work, I basically sat on the sofa watching rubbish daytime tv & almost lost the will to live

There's a lot of sense in this. A large number of people - and it is mostly women - feel the need to justify and receive validation for their personal lifestyle decisions on the www. We all, male and female, make the decisions which suit our own and our families' interests at any given time. In another place or at another time, those decisions might be entirely different.

What is strange is that when women make different choices from other women, it's too often interpreted as some kind of personal criticism. As you rightly say, these threads mostly go the same way, with WOHM vs. SAHM ones invariably leading to the same unedifying bunfight.

You don't have to care what people think, or take the smallest bit of notice of how other women tell you to live. The hell am I about to justify my personal lifestyle decisions to others - who cares anyway? - and theirs are similarly no concern of mine.

What I do think worth discussing is the reasons why men are never seen splitting hairs over what other men do or don't do in this way. This isn't because they're somehow a superior species. It's because they've never had to. This is the variable women would benefit from examining if we ever want these discussions to be productive. As is the fact that we don't make decisions in a vacuum, and might want to be thinking about the conditions under which we make them in the first place.

It’s not anti feminist to wish you had a choice! I’m a SAHM and feel incredibly lucky to get this time with my DC.
I also feel like an equal with my husband. I don’t understand these comments from women saying I couldn’t cope if my husband had all the power, they must have very unhappy marriages.
Although I also joke sometimes I’d like to go back to work for a break!

It isnt antifeminist to want this for yourself. It is antifeminist to wish that you and other women didn't have any other option.

Just out of interest.

Do you have a plan in place for what do, if you break up in the future?

When my cousin was married to her husband, she told me that she started a savings account, just in case she ever needed it in future.

They were married for six years. Then they did beak up.

It's good to have a contingency plan in place

You've pipped me to the post with this comment.

I'm sure none of us wants to see a return to the pre-1975 situation in which a marriage bar for professional women was still perfectly legal and, in some senses, still in operation?

Although women's equality has moved so far backwards that lately I'm beginning to wonder.

@Carly944 I am (mostly) a digital nomad! It took years of office-based jobs and then a long negotiation with my employers but now I work from abroad part of the year and mainly remotely when I'm in the UK (hybrid but flexible). It has completely changed my life for the better. I'm doing some training now that I hope will allow me to be fully freelance fully remote forever.

Well in 1983 I bought a one bedroom flat as opposed to a bedsit. One salary.

Are you serious or is this irony?

I agree OP. I have a toddler and quit my full time job for evening work so that I can be with my child during the day. It’s very long hours but I don’t want to miss out on this very short time with her whilst she’s so small.

When I went back to work so many people said things like “it must be nice to have something else to focus on” or “I’ll bet it’s nice to be doing your own thing again for a change.” I’m sure it’s well meaning, but I don’t understand this bizarre cultural obsession with thinking women need to be working out of the home to feel like whole people. My life fundamentally changed when I became a mother and my priority now is my child. I work because I need to but there are 1000s of things I’d rather be doing with the limited time that I’m not looking after her! I’m sure some people enjoy working but I’d love it if we could just live off of one salary so that I could give it up at least until my children are much older.

I'm pretty both me and my DP would rather not have to go to work. It's not a gender thing, particularly. We'd both be far happier pottering around the house.

I would add that even when it was the norm, being a 'housewife' meant that money was incredibly tight for most households. You're imagining being in a lovely home with all the nice things you enjoy as a two-income household and no money worries. But that was very much not the way it was for the vast majority of couples. For most couples, living on a single income meant an insanely tight budget, making do and mending and pretty much no money for the wife to spend on herself. So even if you quite enjoy cooking, for example, bear in mind that it was bloody stressful doing the shopping and cooking if you had to budget every meal to the last penny.

For my grandparents, making ends meet would have been almost impossible on one income. My grandmother worked full-time in a factory for most of her marriage and my mum and uncle were latch-key kids or minded by their own grandmother.

This is definitely not the life for me !

I have always worked & valued my financial independence & freedom

I have my own savings, pension, investments

I have my own friends, hobbies, travel, transport

Well said, I can't stand women who think working in a dull office is more meaningful than raising their children.