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.

Feminism is about equality rather than "choice".

The thing is, anyone, male or female, can choose not to work as long as they have another way of supporting themselves, whether that's independent wealth, benefits or being financially supported by a partner or family member.

Yes, sure, let's go back to the times when women were slaves to their husbands.

I disagree.

I am fortunate to be in a well paid job.We need women in the workplace. We need women across all levels, being visible in public life. Every time I hear a woman talking at a meeting, no matter what her style is, I feel proud of what we have achieved. The fact that she is there, speaking up.

Women have a different angle on things. We generally have a great sense of collaboration. Men like to be factual (and be always right) while women bring others to achieve a better outcome.

No men likes to be dependent on others. OP you don't realise how vulnerable you make yourself by staying at home and not making your own money. That's the one thing we should learn from men.

Contrary to some posters I don’t think it was a case of only the rich women didn’t work. My family and friends aren’t rich but when I was growing up (born in late 60s) none of my friends mums worked outside the home. My Aunts didn’t work once they’d had my cousins. Both my grandmothers gave up work after having my parents. The difference was that a mortgage could only be obtained on one salary back then. When the rules changed so borrowing could be based on two salaries all that happened was that house prices increased - it didn’t make it easier to buy a house at all.
I did give up work when started my family but it meant sacrifices and I was married close 10 years before we could afford for me to stop work. It was a very conscious decision that I wasn’t going to work while our children were small and I LOVED it. I did go back to work once our youngest went to secondary but still only part time as I rather like being a “housewife”.

I agree. It’s so important to have women in boardrooms, in schools, in the civil service. I do really believe it’s our duty to amplify our own voices, for each other and for the generations to come after us. You can’t be what you can’t see, and if we’re all packed off into the home then our sphere of influence will shrink.

I also agree with the poster who said feminism is about equality, not choice. Choice feminism is a misunderstanding that’s rotting our society I fear - not every choice a woman makes is feminist.

It's not unfeminist to think this, but it is ahistorical. Staying at home was always a privilege, not one accorded to most working class women, who were often, in the North of England, the main breadwinner. And even if W/C women stayed at home it was not what you imagine but days of hard-graft. For example (I did a study on this) a tram-driver's wife in the thirties would have a day that started before six, feeding her baby and getting her husband's breakfast, getting children ready for school and taking them at least to the end of the street, cleaning the one room they all lived in, making up beds, doing the washing by hand, feeding the baby in between, cleaning out the coal fire and re-making it, making a midday meal for the children who would come home for lunch, more cleaning in the afternoon, maybe a walk in the street for 'a bit of a blow' in the fresh air, then cook an evening meal, get the children to bed, maybe (probably) mend their clothes for the next day, get a meal for husband, mend his clothes, do the ironing, feed the baby, go to bed about 11 pm - and she needed to buy food daily so had to find time for that as well. The schedule I describe was helped out with by the woman's mother, so was 'unusually easy' (the woman also had her own tap). Feminism was mostly a M/C movement with women who were educated wanting a job that matched their qualifications and paid a wage that did not assume they had a father to rely on, and not be forced to give up work when they married, or had children (think live-in nannies). The life of W/C women, and of women in the lower M/C (office and shop workers, teachers, nurses etc) mostly passed early feminists by, they had no idea how such women lived. It would be lovely, now, to stay at home and make a home for partner and children, and in some countries this is not only possible but counted as part of the GDP. Unfortunately we live in a very neo-liberal country where not going out to work is seen as lazy. Also, because most couples do both go out to work, this puts up the price of housing etc so that it becomes unaffordable to stay at home. In the 60s the Trades Unions wanted something called 'the family wage' which would, for the first time in history, allow W/C wives and mothers to stay at home as M/C wives and mothers could. I will not say feminism scuppered this (I am a second wave feminist) but (like the demand to allow mothers home from hospital after childbirth after only a few hours) the idea that women should be able to go out to work and have their children minded etc played straight into the hands of capitalism since it nearly doubled the workforce all at once. Demands for equal pay took up all the 70s and 80s, so that we scarcely noticed that the ability to stay at home and run it on one income had disappeared - I stayed at home until my DCs were 10 and 7 - for most women. Also that the jobs replacing staying at home were not particularly fulfilling or interesting!

Your mother sounds awesome. 🙂

My parents dealt with around a decade of infertility before they had me, their only child. My mom quit teaching to stay home with me; now that she had her longed-for baby, she didn’t want to hand me over to someone else and spend her days with other people’s kids. When I went to school, she was on a lot of school committees, including one where the parents learned about pieces in an art museum and then presented them to the classes on field trips. One year, a school fundraiser had a San Francisco theme. She designed a seven-foot, 3D Chinese dragon and got it to “breathe smoke” with a dry ice machine. She also made a huge mobile with a couple hundred paper cranes, dozens of clusters of “vineyard grapes,” and a suspended miniature Golden Gate Bridge about twelve feet long. I could spend all day talking about all the things she made throughout my childhood.

After I graduated from high school, she got involved in local politics for around twenty years, was elected to several different offices, and just retired now that her last term of office finished. One time, this guy she hated was running unopposed, so she and her friend asked this other lady if she’d accept the office if she won through a write-in campaign. My mom and her friend spent countless hours campaigning for this lady and got her elected even though she wasn’t on the ballot.

I do hate working, I have to say.

I've hated every job I've been in

Poor women used to work- but it was the work such as servants, washing, cleaning, factories, nursing and they had low pay and no rights

Looking back 4 generations, all the women in my family worked. Some worked outside the house and some were farmers.

YANBU, I also want this life and I am pursuing it! I think a lot of woman even today could have it if they prioritised it before marriage, i.e. choosing a reliable man that they trust and planning for a way to make it on one income. I have been working towards it since my 20s. I’m now in my late 30s and pregnant with my first child and in a position to be at home with them while they are growing up. I’m thrilled about it and so looking forward to the future.

That said, I had a great deal of pressure on me to pursue a high-flying career in my 20s. For a long time, it seemed like the only valid option available to me. It’s been a lonely and confusing road trying to get to this point. I think the main problem in society is that the desire to be at home and raising a family is shamed, especially if you are considered intelligent. Like you said, it’s seen as backward and anti-feminist. Of course, it does come with some trade-offs. Yes, you have be dependent on a man and that does place you at a disadvantage in terms of power. But there are downsides to trying to keep everything equal too. You have less time for your home, family, friends, marriage, healthy cooking, etc.

I’m all for people doing whatever works for them and their families. If you have a great career and the man is happy to stay home, fine. If both parents want their careers and you have good childcare otherwise, fine. If you need the money and have to work to afford life, fine. Everyone’s different. What saddens me a bit is that I feel I can’t talk about the life I’ve built in a positive way. I’ve planned and worked hard for this and taken risks, but I feel many will just see me as lazy.

And it’s not necessarily true that I’ll like doing domestic things and taking care of children more than a good job. I’m doing it because it’s what I believe is best for my children and marriage, not to maximise pleasure. I feel a lot of women don’t believe that they are allowed to choose this option. There’s often a stigma attached to it: overly religious, scrounger, lazy, ultra-privileged, non-ambitious, stupid, hasn’t thought it through.

Some people are ambitious about careers. I’m ambitious about having a good home life, well-raised children, lots of time for my marriage and enough leisure time to think and be emotionally healthy. If I need to work for financial reasons at any point, I’m happy to do that (and have done in the past). If a job makes sense for my family and fits around my other goals, fine. I’m achieving what I set out to do and I’m quietly proud of it.

I also echo what a lot of other posters have said about women not working is a fairly small and short-lived demographic. My grandmother and her contemporaries all worked whilst bringing up children - they worked nights or evenings when they were babies, and they worked when they went to school. Most working class families never had the luxury of being a one wage household. So these halcyon days people pretend existed mostly didn’t.

I grew up with a SAHM in the 90’s, she gave up work when I was born and never worked again. I don’t think it was good for her, she’s been left without much identity as a woman with an adult child and really struggled when I left home. I also think it would have been better for me to see my mother working, I think having a SAHM was detrimental to the way I’ve viewed work as an adult and I’ve had to struggle against that.

She was an amazing SAHM and did everything and more - I was very lucky in some ways. But I don’t know if the benefits are there for kids as much as some people say.

Feminism is about choice, even about making an unfeminist choice. Though choosing to stay at home rather than make money for other people is a perfectly feminist (even revolutionary, now) choice. Feminists wanted women, single, married, mothers or childless, to have the option to work and be paid properly for it, to have the opportunity to do things in the world and the public stage - there was no idea that every woman should be forced to do this and that not doing it would be construed as lazy, or that you would be bored. Well I remember the suggestion - 70s - that I must be a cabbage because I was at home with my children. This, from women! Choice for everyone, I would support. We have to earn a living, but we do not have to live only to work for someone else's profit all our lives. NB You are confusing third and fourth wave feminism with their emphasis on choice/identitarianism, with second-wave (70s) feminism, to do with equality. Earlier feminism was about getting back many of the rights women had lost since the sixteenth century. Medieval women had far more rights and opportunities than Victorian women, for example, including the ability to inherit a peerage, to inherit and run a business, to set up a business on their own and become a member of a guild, to inherit their husband's or father's land in the village and farm it, employing others to do work she could not do etc, none of which were truly available to nineteenth century women.

Try dialling back your lifestyle to a working class 1950s lifestyle...

• Very limited diet of meat and vegetables, no processed foods or pre-packaged snacks
• New clothes rare and usually home-made
• Children wearing hand-me-downs until they wear out
• No holidays abroad
• No extra-curricular activities for children
• No devices or screens
• No car, travel everywhere on foot or by bus

And you might find that you can afford to live off one salary.

Some men get a sense of satisfaction from being able to provide for their family.

My DH loves his job, financially he doesn’t need to continue working, but he loves it and he loves being able to give his family a secure and privileged life.

I planned for being a SAHM too. We bought a house where we could pay the mortgage on one income, and I was very clear with my husband back when we were dating that I wanted to be a SAHM when I had kids.

I don’t think I’m at a disadvantage in terms of power. My husband knows he couldn’t have the life he loves without me. (And honestly, I’m the more assertive personality in the marriage.)

Go ahead and talk about your life in a positive way - haters be damned. 😉

I agree with you op that life should be somewhat affordable on one wage. It should be possible to raise your own children as you see fit with one wage to some degree. The situation today is a double whack for almost all women and absolutely not fair - that is to say we have not gotten equality; not really - because our contribution of creating new people for future society is not valued at all by our current societal set up. Neither is any value given to caring for family or elderly or anyone really for that matter. It’s all about making money (profit) for a very few people at the top. x

Seems to me that ‘feminism’
and choices that are pro-feminist are actually seeking equality as men and women being the same. To me, real feminism would be seeking an equality where based on our differences - so that women’s roles’ can be valued and compensated in society not only if you chose the same life as a male counterpart but also if you choose to have children and raise them yourself. The other elements of being a woman and what that may contribute to society should also be compensated. That would be true equality. Today the ‘equality’ we have requires women to make the same choices a man might make. No value is given to other (typically) females’ roles in society and what that contributes for everyone.

I'm glad to see another poster thinking like this. The lazy (IMO) brand of third-wave 'choice' feminism which says 'we are not the gatekeepers', and refuses to analyse the still partiarchal system under which most women still make these choices, would be redundant were it not for the far greater sacrifices and more radical feminisms pursued by the first and second waves. Women would have no democratic voice, would still be slaves to regressive gender stereotyping, would be unable to maintain our sexual and reproductive autonomy, and would not have had a Sex Discrimination or Equalities Act allowing us - in principle at least - to participate meaningfully in the workplace. Without what came before the copout billing itself as the third wave, the options we have today simply wouldn't exist.

Recall that rape within marriage was still legal until 1992. #CountingDeadWomen is a tragic reality - it takes upward of TEN MINUTES to read out all names of women whose partners have been convicted of killing them in a mere year. Which is why, in the more recent 4th wave, concerns about WOHM vs. SAHM have taken a backseat to the more urgent concern of our times: the erasure of women, the recognition of us as actual human beings and not support vessels for male predilections, VAWG, the silencing of victims' voices as happened in the wake of #MeToo, and more importantly, how to put a stop to the above.

We have a long way to go. Compared with objectives such as this, 'choice' is a mere triviality.

I was also a child who had a Stay at home mother.

I also feel that I didn't like having a Stay at home mother..

I got bored of being around her, and she got bored of being around us.

It's not good for people to be together foe every minute of the day.

I would have preferred to have gone to a childminder for a few hours, and meet other children

Go ahead and talk about your life in a positive way - haters be damned. 😉

I should definitely try to do this. I’m quite agreeable by nature so I don’t like feeling negativity directed at me for whatever reason. I’m also worried about making other people feel badly about their situations maybe. It almost feels rebellious to say I love depending on my husband and being at home for my children - it’s a wonderful life in many ways. But it’s my truth and why should I hide it?

I also agree with the poster who said feminism is about equality, not choice. Choice feminism is a misunderstanding that’s rotting our society I fear - not every choice a woman makes is feminist.

An example of the negativity. Through my choices, I am arguably setting back women and rotting society. But if it’s a choice between what is considered best for society and what I consider best for my family, I know what will win.

Equality means that men and women don't and shouldn't have defined 'roles' in society purely based on their sex. It is just as much my husband's role as well as responsibility to raise our DC's because he is their parent too, it certainly isn't only my role because I'm a woman.

You think that peasant women didn’t work pre-Industrial revolution during medieval times and leisurely took care of their home and spent time with their children? 🤣 they all worked, including children! Backbreaking work around the house, farm, worked the fields, looked after animals etc. Including children from an early age!

pre-that - you had slavery-based societies (ancient Rome, ancient Greece, etc). Free women may not have worked but they were in the minority; slave women obviously weren’t SAHMs.

Yet another child who had a SAHM. I knew that if I ever had children, it wouldn't be a choice I would also make.