To think that financially speaking, many women are still stuck in the 19th century?

[Newmeagain]

I probably spend too much time on mumsnet, probably because it is such a fascinating window into other people’s lives.

One thing that I have found completely astounding is how many women live in a set up where they are a SAHM (or work very part time and are almost a SAHM) but have limited access to money. It’s very much “his money” and best case scenario they may have an allowance. Just saw a post about someone being “gifted” some money from their DH’s bonus to buy themselves something. A bit like a child may be given some spending money.

Or alternatively women who work, have responsibility to home/children and struggle and pay their “share”.

In some ways their position, financially speaking, is worse than in the past because I think some men nowadays are really resentful about having to share their earnings (whereas in the past that was the expectation) but don’t want to do their share, so you get this really terrible dynamic of women who are the primary care givers but are are also really resented - almost like an unpaid nanny/housekeeper?

Yep it's crazy to me. I didn't work for 4 years and not once did I not have any access to our family money. I don't understand people who share their whole lives, who share children, share a home and then have separate money. Astounds me tbh.

True enough. Although men and indeed lots of women no longer want children, or as many children, as they did previously. Life is too hard and too expensive already and children really interfere with any expectation young people may have of a life of non-domestic drudgery with a relatively decent income. Please note, I am NOT saying that this is the life parents do have but there is absolutely no denying that first world fertility rates have dropped hugely and that this is about to cause a massive issue.

Some of the time all the man will do is pay the bills and leaves the rest to the female. Insist on marriage before children.

I don't know. It's not the case for myself, or most of my friends. I always worked and DH and I just pooled money, and I dealt with the finances because he's too laid back.

I've always been in charge of the money, rather than having a small amount 'doled' out to me like a child. We just shared everything.

And some of the time he gets little choice but to work long full time hours to subsidise a partner who has decided her job is being a sahm.
Being a sahp is a lifestyle choice not a job - why people view child rearing as work is beyond me.

I actually have found that men often really want kids - but they don’t actually want the work of that - just having the mini mes and the fun parts.

I think a lot of relationships look very ‘even’ until children arrive and women suddenly are left with all the childcare and domestic work - even those in households where the husband pulls his weight seem to be responsible for the vast majority.

I think that has a knock on impact on the birth rate - women just aren’t willing to take on the huge domestic burden and sacrifice everything else for it. There is no expectation men do this if they have a large family.

In my circles, I know quite a few SAHMs who have had to give up work to care for children with complex needs. They may be looking after their DC for the rest of their lives - it’s not just a matter of getting back into the workforce when the kids are in secondary.

I’d say 1/3 of them end up single parents with very little practical or financial support from the father and live in poverty; 1/3 end up in financially abusive situations where their partner won’t contribute to any household costs, because the kids get benefits (which are intended to cover extra costs of living with a disability, not the fucking food shop). The remaining 1/3 are in relatively healthy and supportive (if financially quite strained) relationships.

I do wish so many conversations about women’s financial situations didn’t frame it all as poor choices borne of stupidity or romanticism.

Any woman who decides to have a child is gambling with her future, in many ways. It’s easy for someone with healthy kids and a full time job and husband who hasn’t yet had the opportunity to show his selfishness under duress to pat themselves on the back and think they’ve done everything right.

Rearing children requires work. Of course it bloody does! You either do it yourself or pay someone else to do it, but the work doesn't miraculously disappear just because you have outsourced it. Parents, especially mothers, will allows be at a huge disadvantage until this is properly acknowledged by society.

Many women are SAHPs because it is difficult to outsource the work associated with their children. It can be financially impossible, logistically difficult if you have a partner working tricky hours or you are a single parent and it can be especially hard if you have a child with SEN that childcare settings simply won't take. Your post expresses such ignorance to pretend that it is always a freely made choice that the SAHP is delighted about. Often it's an uneasy compromise with huge sacrifices being made by both parents, however it can be in the best interest of the child and the family unit.

Yes, absolutely baffling women having to use their savings on maternity leave as still expected to contribute half to bills or building up credit card debt.

Maybe but it was just the way she said it and some other money related things that made me think otherwise. At an event for example she said she hoped her partner would buy her a drink. Stuff like that.

YANBU. In the short time I’ve joined MN. By far and away, what blew my mind the most was learning how many women who were SAHM did not having equal access to their DPs salary for the purposes of bringing up their joint children as well as groceries etc. and are frequently expected to carry on paying half of what they previously were to all bills despite depleted income/savings etc.

In my mind I just thought couples worked as a team and shared everything without any resentment.

What’s worse is when young SAHMs post threads on unrelated subjects and for background will sometimes say something like ‘my DP is an amazing dad, he works so I can be a SAHM…’ and I always wonder if, as unfortunately approx 40% marriages break up, how financially secure their future (including pension years) is.

I think some women want children more than the men do and put their needs in a shit second place to make children happen without thinking about how the man will take care of them. This is why you get women breeding with selfish men who don’t share.

Men (a lot of them) seem to want equality when it comes to splitting the bills, but not when it comes to housework and child rearing!

YANBU. In the short time I’ve joined MN. By far and away, what blew my mind the most was learning how many women who were SAHM did not having equal access to their DPs salary for the purposes of bringing up their joint children as well as groceries etc.

And their own need for clothes, shoes, hair etc. Women who say he’s great because he covers the bills and stuff for the kids while her shoes have holes and she hasn’t had a hair cut for years.

YANBU I am in my 60's and utterly horrified by how many posters haven't had (or feel unable to have) a pretty straighforward discussion - before having dc - about how they see their finances working.

The whole 'she' pays during maternity leave from 'her' savings!!
If 'she' wants to go back to work then childcare costs come from 'her' salary.
Meanwhile 'his' life goes on pretty much as before - same freedom, same income, same access to money.

For goodness sake, if you can't plan for and talk about these things together, then why on earth are you having kids??

I do understand that people fall into this accidentally, and that there are incremental changes which creep up on you (e.g. her part time salary is static, his big promotion or bonus has always gone into his account). But surely there are time points when you recognise that things are unequal and unfair.

I know it's not easy. My dh was laissez faire and hates the kind of life admin that sorts out money properly. He was: "well I've got enough put by for both of us" (and he is kind and generous and scrupulously honest). But... we never know the future. He might have had his head turned by someone younger and prettier. He might have had a secret gambling habit. Then where would I be? We had several uncomfortable discussions - he was affronted that I even thought either of the example scenarios was possible (how could I wonder that about him?). But I was adamant, and bills, savings, pensions, spending money were pretty equal throughout the ups and downs of our family and career. It has stood us in good stead for our retirement years, where our pensions and available spending money are equal.

If I could do one thing in life it would be to teach young women and men about finance and financial equality.

A lifestyle choice very few men choose to take though, wonder why that is?
It's a choice of the household how to split work, and that means all work, if you have children and/or pets, decisions you hope are joint, you do need someone to drop at school and collect, feed, wash, launder, make appointments, sort of clubs and social events, book days out holidays, gardening, car, DIY, keep a house functional and free from mould, any health appointments and you know just generally try in among all that enjoy living a bit.

How you split and pay for the choices you make as a family is a personal, individual choice and should be decided between the adults involved.

How many men want their partners contributing equal amounts and to do all the domestic work? More or fewer than women who decide being a SAHM is for them?

If they really don't want children they could you know cover it up when having sex.

Men can also take charge of their own birth control. It's quite easy and possible, and even if you have to pay for them if you can't get to the GP it's still cheaper than funding a child and SAHM you didn't want.

But no that's also a women's job, swallow these hormone pills so I can wave my uncovered willy about.

Again it should be a decision between two consenting adults. It's not oh those poor men totally trapped, it's really not.

This is where friends help each other. ..

You: Are you guys struggling?
Her: No, Bob just doesn't allow me access to finances (or some variation of).
You: That doesn't sound right. Have you considered he may be struggling on his income or is financially abusing you. Either way, it's a very precarious state to be in as a family and particularly for you ...
Her: may not agree with you, but has something to think about (hopefully, as again, some of us are just permanently in a state of denial).

That ties in - you're not able to afford this lifestyle or you need to recognise the abuse. Either way, fix this shit.

Sure. I bet if all of us travelled back in time to 1805 we'd barely feel the difference. 🤨

I think it’s really shit and women are so often the losers because they take the time out to bring up children.

im not sure that my choice to be a sahm (made jointly with DH) was a ‘lifestyle choice’ 🤷‍♀️ in fact I’m not even clear on what that is - it’s almost always mentioned in a negative way. for us it was what worked best for our family as a whole at that time. I don’t remember thinking what a great lifestyle choice I’d made, mostly I was thinking ‘this is fucking exhausting, it’s not forever’

i would not have had children with someone who didn’t share equally. DH and I were together for 7 years before having children. We merged finances 💯 as soon as we moved in together, and it’s been that way ever since. We’ve had periods where he’s worked more, or I’ve worked more - working around our jobs and our children’s needs. 100% joint, equal access all the way, no matter who earned it. And no taking the piss with spending - it helps that we have similar financial goals and values. Again I wouldn’t have had children with someone who wasn’t on my level in this respect.

i can think of three women I know who don’t share, two of them have children. One is a high earner, and way out earns her DH, so she keeps things separate to ensure that it can go straight to her children. The other just trusts her partner to support her. She is a low earner, was sahm for a long time, and she has pretty much no pension. They got married recently to ensure she has access to his pension etc if he dies - she would be utterly broke otherwise. The one without children is less precarious, but they got married recently to make it easier to inherit from each other. They are in their 50s, and going joint account for the first time ever having bought a house together.

"my husband handles all the money. He did even when I worked. This is not because he is controlling, or old fashioned values or anything like that. But simply because I find that sort of thing the worst kind of chore whereas he is happy to do it and is good at it. "

My god. It's not about "enjoying" it, it's about taking responsibility for being an active participant in your own life as a grown adult. This weak rhetoric of "ohhh but I don't enjoy it" is an insult to your own intelligence as well as incredibly risky.

Read up on so many older women who are left absolutely helpless when their husbands die/leave them/whatever and they can't so much as submit a meter reading let alone take functional steps for their own material security.

I can't fathom why any sane woman would not want to be responsible or at bare minimum involved in her family's financial security when it benefits everyone for her to do so.

A lot of women seem to be so desperate to have a man and procreate with him they allow anyone who will take them to treat them like dirt.

The amount of women daft enough to move in with a partner, have a baby and then give up work with no financial security whatsoever astounds me. Then these same women are shocked when it all falls apart and they have nothing.

Every situation is different. As someone who raised my son without any financial support ( like many others), I simply cannot envisage what it is like to have access to the financial resources of another. I know several couples where the finances are pooled and it works for them.
All about perception, I can't imagine relying on another person

I think this is very true, sadly. As a general rule, women want children far more than men do and it's usually the woman who is the prime mover in deciding to conceive. Historically you got married more or less as soon as you started having sex with someone and contraception was far less reliable (and frowned upon) so children followed automatically from coupling up with someone. It was expected of men, morally and socially, that they would provide for any children they fathered, whether or not they wanted them.

Nowadays things are much more complex: firstly men are under far less social pressure to have kids at all, secondly contraception means you can almost always avoid having children you don't want. With more women able to support their own children than in the past, there is far less moral pressure on men.

I wouldn't want to go back to a world where most women stayed at home and I'm bloody grateful I can support myself, but in some ways things were more straightforward pre 1960s.

I agree: I have always been the sole breadwinner for my daughter and having access to "family money" has never been a thing for me: family money is my money.

I also think that the concept of "family money" is less relevant in a world where both partners are earning. Of course it makes sense that a SAHM who doesn't work at all should have access to the money her husband earns without strings or caveats.

But it's slightly more complicated in lots of situations. I'm the main breadwinner in my household: my partner, who is not my daughter's father, earns and contributes but he contributes a far smaller share of the costs relating to her upkeep, as opposed to the household upkeep (which is fine by me as he's not her biological parent). I am happy for us to share finances in the sense that I will pay for him to do things, but I would never want him to be in a position of being entitled to half of all the equity in our home. He isn't the one who's been massively handicapped as a single parent and had to foot the bill for everything before we met so it wouldn't be fair in my view to completely share finances.

"Family money" works if one partner is wholly financially dependent on the other and if there are shared children. In blended families it can become a recipe for one partner to coast on the other.