To think the ultimate feminist act is ensuring that a man will provide for you and your children?

[ByUmberTurtle]

Life is hard and motherhood is even harder. There’s no shame in struggling to balance work, kids, housework and everything else. Sometimes you have to step back from work, whether it’s due to childcare, burnout or health. In those moments, knowing that your man has your back financially isn’t just practical, it’s powerful.

I’m not a trad wife and I grew up with very ‘independent woman’ kind of parents. But honestly? I think the real regressive choice is staying with a man who can’t or won’t take care of you when it matters. I’d rather be a single mum than build a life with a man who leaves me vulnerable. Feminism should include the right to choose a relationship that brings security, not just survival.

AIBU?

I would choose, and have chosen, a man who is competent and able to be equally as responsible for all areas of domestic and family life.

Thats what equality is.

What if a man had to step back due to burnout, childcare or health? Would you support him in return? Or is it one way only?

Exactly this.
And that's the example I want to set for our children.

I think the ultimate feminist act is a world that gives people a choice about what they do with their work and parenting arrangements.

I won't lie, I don't think I'd have children with a man who I felt had low earning potential because... well I happen not to be cut out for any high earning type jobs and didn't want to be the one to carry my household. That didn't mean, contrary to what internet bros would assume, I was looking for a man with a six-figure pay packet. Indeed my DH wasn't working and didn't have much cash when we met, but I knew he had a drive and some valuable skills.

Is it weakness to accept provision, or wisdom to recognise that all life survives by being fed? The flower does not refuse the rain in the name of “independence.” The planet does not scorn the sun. Why, then, should a woman scorn the security freely offered?

Perhaps the real rebellion is not in refusing to lean, but in choosing where to lean. Strength is not always the clenched fist; sometimes it is the open hand, willing to receive. And in that receiving, one may yet roar.

Absolutely, I think reciprocity is key in any healthy relationship. If a man I loved and built a life with needed to step back due to burnout, illness or childcare, I’d show up for him however I could. Support should go both ways, the difference is, I expect a man to be comfortable with providing when I need to step back too.

It’s not about keeping score, it’s about choosing someone who values the protector-provider role rather than resents or avoids it. That doesn’t mean I never contribute, it means I value being with someone who naturally wants to step up when needed and I’d do the same.

So nothing to do with traditional roles then. You are just describing a healthy relationship that applies to both men and women.

Actually, the true Feminist insight is realizing the problem is a system that makes childcare and childrearing a private matter between the parents and then allows men to skip out.

Firstly, we need society to treat men (and women) who fail to support their children with the same distain and sanctions as men (and women) who fail to pay for their petrol.

That means making them pay the real cost of raising children in both money and time, so one parent (usually the women) is not financially destroyed through both the money she needs to find day to day and the inability to progress a career for her future financial security.

Then, we need society to provide a meaningful safety net, both money and time, to support children whose father (or mother) genuinely cannot support them.

A system that makes women dependent on individual men, with all the risk that carries, simply because women are the ones who carry children can never be fair to women.

So reciprocity, in your vision, is a kind of cosmic barter system? He pays the bills, and in return you… nod sagely at his effort? Perhaps make him a nice stew when Mercury is in retrograde? The arrangement feels less like partnership and more like performance art, with you as the priestess of Emotional Support, and him as the bank with a soul.

You insist it isn’t “keeping score,” but the ledger practically glows through your words: one column for his financial provision, one column for your moral applause. What a tidy balance, provided, of course, no one notices that the scales are actually rigged.

And this idea of “choosing someone who naturally wants to step up” ..isn’t that just another way of saying you’d prefer someone whose identity is so entangled with being a provider that he won’t question why the reciprocity always seems to convert back into cash?

Yes, reciprocity and mutual care are fundamental in any relationship but I do see a distinction. What I’m saying is that I value traditional masculine men in a partnership, not because women can’t provide but because I believe men shouldn’t shy away from it. For me, part of a man’s role is being willing and ready to provide and protect, especially during vulnerable seasons. It’s not about blind dependency, it’s about feeling safe to lean when I need to.

So yes, it’s about shared effort but not identical roles. I can support, earn, lead and I have. But I choose a partner who’s comfortable leading in provision, not resistant to it. Not everyone will agree and that’s fine, but this view does connect to traditional roles in a way that feels empowering, not limiting, for me.

😂 😂 😂

My Mum must have been a man! News to me. She displayed all these 'masculine' traits when she raised us. Also, men deserve to see their children sometimes too.

totally agree

That’s a beautifully written takedown but it completely misreads my point. I’m not suggesting that love or partnership is transactional. I’m saying that I value a relationship where both people are willing to step up, in different ways, when life demands it. If I’m down, I want a man who doesn’t hesitate to carry the weight financially. If he’s down, I’ll do the same in the ways I can, whether that’s financially, emotionally or practically. That’s not “performance art.” It’s partnership.

And no, I’m not applauding from the sidelines while he breaks his back. I’m building alongside him, in a way that respects our different strengths and desires. For me, that includes admiring a man who feels good about providing, not one who resents it. You don’t have to want that but it doesn’t make it any less valid that I do.

Are you married, OP? Do you have children?

You just said it's the same for a woman though. You wouldn't shy away from providing either as you've said and in a relationship, both man or woman should feel safe to lean when they need to.

I'm sorry but I'm really not understanding the distinction/how it connects to traditional roles.

Utter rubbish. Of course lots of people set out thinking that they are in a mutually supportive relationship with secure finances and someone who “has their back” but, newsflash, quite often this doesn’t work out. Either because the man turns bastard, becomes ill, has their head turned by someone else, or various other reasons. And in 90% of cases the woman ends up having to support the kids on their own.

So the ultimate act of feminism is ensuring you can look after your kids yourself if it all falls apart.

What you're saying OP is just drivel at this point and as with most conservative chronically online political sentiment, it makes no sense when you try to tally it with real life.

Yes, you want a well rounded guy who has a job. It's very very important to you that he has a job and he works. In reality, most people, men and women, will keep their jobs these days upon having kids. Most people "provide" in some way or another.

You're taking the mundane reality of the logistics of every day life, and ascribing values to them so strongly that it becomes arbitrary and nonsensical. It sounds like someone playing pretend at real life, and it sounds like someone with an agenda and idea in their head, trying to fabricate it in the real world.

I've also noticed a strange habit of really over romanticising aspects of life and particularly gender roles within conservative mindsets. Just get on with your "provider" and live your life. As long as you're happy with your choices, why should it matter to you whether outsiders perceive your choices as "feminist" or not. Are people really knocking on your door, decrying your patriarchal values? Are the feminists writing you angry letters because you're at home while your husband is in the office?

It feels like there’s something a bit gloaty about this post.

It’s all very well patting yourself on the back for your informed choices OP, and perhaps you find it frustrating when you see women make the wrong choices in partners but do you honestly think that they thought to themselves “great! An unreliable deadbeat arsehole, he will do” or that they’ve been let down by partners that on the face of it had all the things that they deserved and expected ?

Suggesting women don’t do their homework properly and shouldn’t have looked for a richer, more reliable man is hardly the cornerstone of feminism in my book.

This feels like a "trad wifey" propaganda piece.

Mother at home with hubby providing was a Government initiative after the world wars to "give" returning troops their jobs back after women had clearly demonstrated in two generations that they could and did "men's work". Mums have always worked, provided and protected their family. Only posh ones did it slightly differently.

It is the luck of the draw if you "choose" a "provider" that does exactly what they promise and is in no way down to you, and the message you are driving is that you were cleverer, more astute and pickier than the rest of us morons. When, in fact, a bit like giving birth to a baby that sleeps well, it is pure luck and actually very little to do with you.

Give it a rest.

Nope and that doesn’t invalidate my view. Wanting to build a secure, supportive partnership isn’t something you have to already be in to believe in. People reflect on values before they marry or have children and I’m no different.

What you describe as partnership still leans on a script: strength expressed through provision, admiration tethered to the role of provider. The danger isn’t in valuing reciprocity, but in mistaking inherited roles for timeless truths. If love is a duet, must one voice always sing in the key of provision while the other harmonizes around it? True partnership may ask us to question not only who carries the weight, but why we imagine weight and worth in those forms at all.

This is a common perspective among younger conservative ideas; think of trad wives, this is exactly what they say.

They sit their on their social media accounts (with millions of views, lots of work, defo not SAHM, lots of them not even mums) and go on about how they're sorry to feminists but they believe in being supported by their husbands, and if that doesn't work out for other women, it's because they chose the wrong man.

Lots of internalised misogyny and blaming women for the actions of men, on top of actively disparaging the idea of equality between men and women. Lots of talk about submitting to husbands because that's what role is. Some references (as you see from OP) about "biological roles", though that talking point is more common among men.

We do have the right to chose a relationship that brings us security, I'm not sure where you are coming from with that comment? Feminism also gave us the right to divorce them if they mistreat us.

I’m not sure where all the projection is coming from but I’ll clarify: wanting a partner who’s financially dependable isn’t a political manifesto, it’s a boundary. And I don’t need angry letters to know that women are often shamed for expressing that boundary, especially when it doesn’t align with the “everything must be 50/50 at all times” script.

No one here is pretending life doesn’t require practical negotiation. I just believe in long-term partnerships, especially where children or illness may enter the picture, having a man who embraces provision as part of his role is not only valid, it’s wise. That doesn’t mean I don’t contribute. It doesn’t mean I expect to sit around in a rose garden while he battles dragons, it means I value shared security and I’m not afraid to say so.

If that sounds like “drivel”, I’ll wear it with grace. But let’s not pretend that expecting consistency, generosity and foresight from a partner is some kind of fever dream. It’s just one version of adult realism and it happens to be mine.