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 don't think you'd have enjoyed it much.

My dm had that life. She cooked and cleaned and washed clothes all day every day. She had no money of her own and therefore no decision-making ability. No car.
My df was too mean to buy her a washing machine. She had 5 children and no family support, so she was trapped.
My df didn't like her having friends in the house so she was quite isolated. They never went abroad or out for a meal or to the cinema.

Her marriage was nothing but domestic drudgery and having children.

When he died and she was rid of him, she finally started having fun - coach holidays, tea parties, working in a charity shop but that cost her 42 years of her life.

I'd say that was too high a price to pay.

That’s not what she was referring to, though - she was saying she wouldn’t want a man to have to give her money and wouldn’t want to ask if she wanted to spend money. My husband doesn’t give me money and I don’t ask him if I want to spend some.

👆👆👆

I’m both a SAHM and a licensed attorney.

so the man does the work and you do
nothing? pure laziness

just marry a rich bloke

It's amazing the amount of women that assume they will find a rich bloke that will afford them this kind life .
or like men our g-gp grandma's had married , I don't know came back in a body bag from a war .Spent the rest of their life a widow like many of the war widows .

how do you propose to live if you dont have money? wheres the money coming from to fund this lifestyle?

Part one: Otherwise this will be too long to read (something about "1 word when 14 will do" or whatever, idk)

A view from the other side of the proverbial fence:

Mrs. Frogpole doesn't "work" or at least "have to work" in the sense that she doesn't have a contract of employment or a place she goes to and gets a wage for what she does there.. but my god does that woman work. Every bit as hard as I do, and oftentimes harder, there's no denying that. Obviously we've both put a lot in to this one way or another, but I'll happily stand up and say that if it weren't for the sacrifices she's made and work she's put in by not going to work, we wouldn't be where we are today.

It's a bit easier with the kids being (allegedly) grown up now, one still lives at home though which is how I came to have this account here. She's done/does a lot of charity work, volunteering, community and youth work, stuff like that. Things that matter to her, she wants to do.

I know that not everyone can do it, and that we're on the far end of the scale, but there really should be more choice for people - we're in the top 5 wealthiest nations on Earth after all, surely we can do better than this?

A lot of historical literature and movies were made by upper middle class people. For some of this group, the 1950s housewife was the norm e.g. the Betty Draper type in Mad Men.

However, working class women , the majority, have always had to work. It may not have been in the ‘typing pool’ outside of the house, but may have involved minding other peoples kids, taking in sewing etc. If they didn’t have that additional income, their lives would be even harder than they already were.

Don’t base your fantasies on fantasies written by privileged people OP. Only a few women throughout history have been in a position to just do a bit of cooking, basic tidying up and that’s it. For most they did work, and for those who didn’t work out of the home, the domestic stuff was an exhausting full time job. No time to sit with a brew watching Loose Women and meeting up with people for coffees and nice lunches.

I don’t know of a single female in my family who’ve never had to earn money in some way.

Seems a tad unfair. I mean what if the woman wants to work but the man doesn't?

What do you mean? You did what grand ma did when she was widowed worked more ?

I think people are harking back to the past in a nostalgic way, which is fine, but we aren't going back there.

I don't blame most women for not wanting to work outside the home whilst they currently have to work outside the home and also bear most of the responsibility for housework, wifework and childcare juggling, it's more than one job which is why having one simple one ('be at home') looks attractive.

I don't want most women to retreat within the home, though, because then that sets up a precedent for our children that that's where women belong, and we haven't got to anything like good enough representation of women in politics, or business or academia. If women aren't seen outside the home and the home is considered their 'sphere', that's very narrowing for women's choices.

It's also clear though, that working out of the home is drudgery for some and probably stupid at other times. It is a bit crazy to pay someone else to care for your children in their early years (say prior to about 3) when you could do that for yourself, and if we recognised that as a form of legitimate work and paid for it as a society, that would be quite sensible (especially as in the UK childcare is so expensive). A basic universal living wage, for example, would allow those who wanted to allocate their time like that in that way for a few years.

Beyond that, I can't see any advantage in returning to economic dependence on men given the huge amount of posts on Mumsnet ranging from my husband's a bit shit and goes out every weekend doing his hobby right up to my partner is abusive but I can't leave as I won't be able to pay the mortgage.

I don't blame anyone for wanting to stay home at all, the way things are currently in the UK with the longest working hours in Europe plus all the domestic labour (the 'double' or 'triple' shift it's called), but there are countries doing things a bit differently, such as four day weeks, more limited working hours, shared maternity/paternity leave or having a basic income so different choices can be made by women without compromising their political gains.

Also, in the past, a lot of things that went on in terms of childcare wouldn't be acceptable to today's parents- so getting your older children to care for the little ones. These working-class women worked, but they had to leave their kids alone a lot or get the family as a whole to do more childcare, people wouldn't be up for that now, to care for other people's kids or for their eldest child (often the eldest daughter) to act as a surrogate parent.

Part 2 - yes I'm still blithering on edition:

Now to keep this a bit on topic🙃 I think parents should have more choice and freedom around having time with their babies and toddlers. I personally feel the way we in the UK treat our children is arse backwards, in that we're unable to give them enough love, cuddles, happiness, and protection when they need it most. When they're tiny, when they're little, their world is full of wonder, because we have to whack them in a nursery for 60 hours a week to earn enough to live indoors rather than in a tent underneath a flyover on the A424.

After that phase though, it seems as if we pour far too much time and effort in to trying to "make up for it" by mollycoddling them for the next 15 or 20 years. I feel that causes a lot more harm than good - it satisfies our perceived shortcomings of course, but it doesn't turn our precious little ones in to functioning, robust, capable adults who are more than able to function on their own, rather than having a meltdown, falling apart, or howling at the moon that this is everyone else's fault and that someone should fix it for them because they can't.

I also appreciate that it's much more of a problem than can by solved by an overly long internet comment. That choice and freedom can only come from a societal shift in the way we view and treat housing, and the cost of housing.

The cost of housing solution may or may not involve private landlords, buy-to-extort mortgages, and vigorous "encouragement" with a fcuking christmas tree getting shoved in by the end where you put the presents, rather than fairy first...

Sure, I get that, I just hope that any woman in that position has a back up income or savings because things could change in an instant. Literally. This forum is full of threads from women whose husbands just upped and left them without warning. Yes they can be taken to the cleaners during divorce but a) you need money for that and b) how are you going to eat in the meantime? It's so precarious, being so reliant on one person's goodwill.

One of my grandmothers worked in the family business and ran a home. The other had eight kids. Unless you were rich, drudgery was inevitable.

Same old . . .

Is this really a feminist issue though?, or something for married mothers to wish for?

Coz I'm pretty sure that there are plenty of men who would rather be pottering about at home rather then working!Also as a single childless female I know I'd rather not have to work!
As it is I have managed to work nearly 30 yrs and hardly any of it full time. Currently only working 2 nights a week (which I've done for years now) and love pottering around at home cooking, cleaning, walking my dogs, hobbies, etc.

It's only so expensive to live on one salary vecause expectations are so high compared to the standard pre-1950s lifestyle. If you downsized to a property two sizes snaller, kept central heating switched off and just wore extra layers in winter, kept electrical appliance use to a minimum to keep energy bills low (eg not having a dishwasher but washing up by hand) and had no mobile phone or streaming subscriptions, no broadband or phone line in the house, no gym membership and didn't run a car but did all shopping on foot, kept detailed knowledge of which foods were cheapest in which shops and walked to 3-4 different supermarkets on different weekdays to buy just the items that were cheapest in those shops (that's how my grandma always did her food shopping) and never went out to dinner, cinema or other expensive leisure etc then you probably could get by on one salary.

The drudge work needed to do all the above wouldn't be pleasant though.

The question is why should that drudge work automatically be the woman's lot when it would be just as valid for two mbers of a partnership to both have 50%fte jobs in order to have time for all the drudge work. Oh yes it's because women aren't quite fully human in the way that men are.

You have a very romanticised view of what a woman's life used to be like OP. The number of women actually able to live a life of leisure was always tiny. For the majority the amount of work needed to make ends meet has always been very high. At the lower end of the wage ramges a man's earnings wouldn't be ebough to keep a family and the women would need work too - often laundry or ckeaning and housework for richer folk or piecework that could be done in spare moments so that the drudgery was constant for 18 hours a day.

Whereabouts do you live ? Most of the women you know stayed home ? How old are you ? DS is 20 I know very few women who didn't go back to work.

Having to go to work during the end of my second trimester until a few days before birth, I did wish I never had to work. I will have the same feeling when juggling and trying to afford childcare when im due back after to maternity leave. Saying that, I wish I was an adult in the 90s as it was the best decade to live I think. Best music, best films, best life.

Also a lot of women right now work and still carry the majority of the domestic and child rearing responsibilities because their husbands/partners are ltb material.

I had this for around 18 months in the wake of the finacial crisis 2009-2011 ( DC were 5 & nearly 3) it was lovely and v.v. good for my career.

Poor women always had to work.

All I know is that when my husband left me for someone else, my job was one of the things that kept me going and I don't just mean financially. It gave me an independence and sense of worth outside that of my family. I agree with the PP who said swap out woman for man, as it would be good for people to have a choice, but I never ever would knowing what I know now. Puts you in a vulnerable position.

I used to think this after a hard day at work .I had a good career and then I had a stroke in my early 40s now I can't work I have to stay at home all day and I hate every minute of it its not all sunshine and rainbows .I miss my social life, my income and would give anything to go back to work.

Somedays/Most days I wish I lived in the days when once a woman got married she would give up work.

You mean the times that didn’t have washing machines, dishwashers, grocery delivery etc. Cleaning back in the day was back breaking work and relentless. No scrolling through MN or catching up with something you missed on iPlayer in your down time. When men came home, they retired to their armchair with the paper after eating the meal you prepared for them. They didn’t lift a finger.

The idea that back in the day women stayed home and didn’t work is both ridiculous and insulting.

I've never wanted to work because I'm lazy and I like staying at home, planning children in the next few years but for now my partner is happy to support us both, it's bliss 😇I cook, clean, do gardening, wander around with the dogs and do fitness but I have a large inheritance if things go sideways. I understand some people don't have a choice, but I've never understood people who find purpose through working, my favourite thing is comfort.