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.

Why does working equate to equality?

OP, the best thing for a woman who wants to be a stay at home mum is to have a good education, then work in a trade or profession where she can earn well, marry a man who is equally able to earn well and carry the burden of working for his family while she carries the burden of raising the children for the majority of the time.

Then when the children are older you haven't fucked your chances of being employable and earning your own wage.

My husband earns a high wage because he's at the top of his game in a highly skilled profession. I work in an equally skilled profession. We both work freelance which affords us the flexibility for me to stay at home and raise children while he works. I am back to working part time now because I enjoy it. Will drop that again if we have more children. Then when they're older I am able to work full time if I want (unlikely), but my husband earns enough that I can work however many hours I want purely for the enjoyment of my job.

The lifestyle is there but you have to work hard for it before having children and you need to marry someone who isn't a deadbeat. Too many threads about those on Mumsnet.

I know, I'm sure there's the odd man out there who has a bit of a conscience about these things, but for the overwhelming number of couples I know who were married in the 50s, 60s and even beyond, that's the dynamic.

The baby/preschool years are a hard, sometimes impossible juggle and I can totally see the temptation to chuck it all in and stay home if you can afford it, but those kids aren't going to need round the clock care forever. I wish more women would play the long game and really think about what the rest of their lives are going to look like if they opt out of the workforce for the majority of their 20s/30s which are the absolute prime years for education and career building to set yourself up for life.

I also think women who idealise the 50s are forgetting about the crushing sexism and expectations on women at the time. The horrible stigma around sex, single motherhood, divorce.

Given you weren't meant to sleep with or live with your man before marriage it was absolute luck of the draw as to whether he'd turn out to be a good one or a bastard - and either way you were more or less stuck with him for good. Unless he left you, and then your life was shit anyway.

Women have always worked, regardless of the decade.

It's a very brave choice and a personal choice, and it comes with vulnerability. No income, savings, pension contributions, mortgage payments, property, credit history, CV ... If the relationship collapses or she's widowed, there's nothing to hang on to without a life outside the home.

The housewife wasn't from a particular time, only from a particular situation. All the women in my family have worked; I know as fact back to the nineteenth century, and probably before. Finance, business, NHS, Civil Service, factories, service, religious life, shops. Many were also housewives, others single.

Feminism is about choice.

I'm pregnant with my first baby and I'd love DESPERATELY to stay home for the first few years and just be with my baby, but finances don't allow it. And I like my job generally! It's not wrong to want to be a SAHM and raise a family. It's not wrong to want a career. It's not wrong to want a mix of both.

With this idea of property should be affordable on one wage who is to make up the difference? the husband (going with the idea that women dont want to work), the government? raising taxes? taking money from the NHS, Schools where would the difference come from?

So people want to have as many children as they want, send the husband off to work, keep a certain lifestyle and fund all the extra curricular activities, gadgets, designer clothes, holidays to Benidorm all on one husbands wage? then the daughters will be encouraged only to grow up and have children so there is no real point in them going to school, college or university just the sons

Husband means partners or boyfriend or whatever people want to call them

@Blueberryancakes , I think you’ve hit on the big lie. When women stayed at home and looked after the home and children the main wage was enough to service a mortgage for a family home. Often it was a teeny little place like the one I grew up in but those on an average salary for the area could afford the mortgage on the main income. Somehow we’ve reached a point where one wage can’t support a mortgage on a modest family home and as a result most women work, often their children are looked after by others. Women feel they need to be equal to men when I think the more reasonable thinking would be that the person who stayed home and dealt with home and children should feel equal in value to the partner who went out to work.
The rise in property prices has been heavily influenced by the fact that most parents work. We’re no better off with both parents working and our children are suffering….

Totally agree. When I say this in work, everyone is up in arms.

Some of the women in work act as if I should be grateful to be given the opportunity to slog my guts out at work, pay someone else to look after the kids, attempt to keep a house clean, cook, wash clothes, keep everyone fed and generally survive, all in the name of equality.

I didn't want equality. I want the opportunity to look after my own kids without having to work full time as well. I feel like there should be in opt in or opt out button.

We’re no better off with both parents working and our children are suffering….

My children aren't suffering because I work, thank you.
Firstly, I was able to free them from life with an abusive, alcoholic father while maintaining their standard of living. (Before you ask, no he was not like that when I married him and had babies with him.)
Now they're older, I've been able to support them in their transition to adulthood with career connections, advice etc that I would never have been able to provide if I hadn't built up the expertise to share.

Women feel they need to be equal to men
I AM equal to men. Cheers.

The children's book, The Family From One End Street, by Eve Garnet was written in 1937. It won the Carnegie Award for best children's book. It has remained in print ever since. It was remarkable because it was about an ordinary working class family. It was funny and realistic. Six kids and, of course, both parents had jobs.
No SAH mummies back then. Just ordinary people working hard to provide for their children.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheFamilyyfromOneeEnd_Street



Hopefully the Amazon link to the book is attached

I had my first child 30 years ago. I consider myself really fortunate that on DH's salary we could just about afford for me to stay at home for a few years, and have three children. I know my boys appreciate that I did stay at home with them.

It was a joint decision between DH and me, we knew there'd be fewer foreign holidays and no new cars but we were both OK with that.

However, nine years at home isn't the easiest in career terms. I'm lucky in that I picked mine back up after the boys were in school, but I had to go in a different direction to do so.

I've no regrets though, my years at home with my boys were so important both to them and to me.

It's such a shame that these days staying at home if you want to is less of an option.

Until a couple of months ago, I was also in your situation. I felt like the PGP temporarily disabled me and was off sick for a big chunk of time because I just couldn't perform at work. As I lay there in agony, I also felt like we as women have been sold a lie.

As an aside, have you been referred to physio for the PGP? I was skeptical but it worked for me and now that the baby is out, I'm able to move as normal without any pain :)

I have no idea what era you mean.

Working class women have always worked. The idea of staying home was an invention of the emerging middle class a couple of centuries ago. It was never about what was best for women or children; it was a status signifier for a new class of men.

I’m lucky because unlike every other generation of women in my family, I get to do fulfilling work. Like them, I am financially responsible for my children as a parent and so contribute financially to their care. Unlike them, I do so via difficult but meaningful work. I feel very blessed.

We’re no better off with both parents working and our children are suffering….

I trust you are speaking for your own dcs. I sincerely hope they are not suffering.

I have the benefit of my dcs being teens and early adults. I worked for all of their childhood, mixture of pt then ft. I am now in a senior position and WFH most days. I can take my ds to his uni open days, be around to help with homework, friendship issues and careers advice. We have financial security and I can retire early with a healthy pension. Their uni and expenses will be paid for and house deposit quietly waiting for them.

Would they rather have me at home when they were growing up and give up all of this? No way, if you know anything about teens.

As @Sugarnspicenallthingsnaice says, parenting is a long game. It is planning for all eventualities in order to keep the family on an even keel and moving ahead.

@Hagr1d I am seeing a physio, yes, but it's not helping. I actually started my own thread on it after this post as I am at my wits' end!

I think I really gobbled up the whole "pregnancy is not an illness" nonsense and didn't expect it to be this hard. I now see how life as a woman changes so much once kids come along and my career seems impossible!

Exactly @MissTrip82
It is one of the modern myths that women in the olden days did not work. I am sure my grandmother and great grandmother with much larger families found it hard, but they did not have a choice. They had to work so their families could eat. Some women today seem to think work is optional and that they need not bother with contributing to pensions and paying taxes.

You've somehow got a fucked up idea that one single wage can afford you a (if at all)mortgage .And it, for women to be reasonable to stay at home and look after the children (without I don't know , a cleaning wage) .
We're no better off with both parents working and our children are suffering . No shit sherlock have you ever read any books ?Go back to Bunty .

This is maybe the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen this sentiment expressed on Mumsnet. Are there no joint bank accounts in the UK?! My husband doesn’t give me money and I don’t ask him before spending money. (The exception is that we run it by each other if one of us wants to buy something unnecessary that’s over maybe sixty dollars or so.) I just go shopping with a credit card.

No, we’d let our children starve to death. 🙄

Saying that women had to stay at home regardless of their choice is anti-feminist.

It is also anti-feminist to say a woman has to go out to work for a political reason.

It is not a womans job to be an un-paid servant to others.

It is interesting that now it is normal for women work, that men didn't take the opportunity to be a parent and housekeeper.

Of course there are joint accounts.

One half of a couple could empty the joint account, put a stop on the joint credit card and divert their wage to a new account in their own name, all in less than an hour. The other party is going to be absolutely stuffed in the short-medium term if they don't have their own source of income coming in.

@DontKnow1988

I was a WHPT and the treatment for PGP is very limited. As you probably know its an inflammatory process, but you are unable to take anti-inflams for it because you are pregnant.

Apart from ice, belts, hydrotherapy, crutches and in some rare cases wheelchairs there isnt a lot you can do to alleviate the pain while pregnant.

You have my utmost sympathies.