Cost of living out of control

[Ev01]

Do you think more women return to work because they are forced to or because they choose to? From friends and women I speak to, I feel like the right to mother your own child is generally becoming something for the well off as the cost of living is now so high. My mum and my nan were full time mums and I assumed I would be, but I fell in love with a teacher whose wages only cover the mortgage, not the food and heating bills, so like others (most?) I had to return to work to cover the basics. Angry at the government for going on about getting mums for toddlers back to work or more nursery places, when it feels no one is fighting for the right to mother your own child by sorting the cost of living out. Does the government not think the role of a mother is important? Aren't we beginning to shove babies into institutions so mum's can help grow the economy by paying for ever increasing living costs? Would love a campaign to join as it feels so wrong putting a child under one into a nursery.

I believe that having real choice is the ideal. It doesn't matter how you exercise that choice - SAHP, full time worker, part time worker. It's feeling you have no choice but to take one of the options that you may not want to that it all becomes a bit grim.

And who actually has real choice in life? Unless someone is lucky enough to be born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouth they can't just 'choose' to do nothing, they have to make a living. Even if those who are born with piles of cash have certain obligations that curtail freedom. I think the expression is 'grow up'... real life for all but the most fortunate means choices are limited.

Plenty have choice as has been spoken of here. Some choose to cut their cloth to one salary and live frugally, some choose to work because they want to, some choose not to work because they want tro.

I'm pretty sure millions of non working mothers have not all been born with piles of cash

Oh, and plenty of people seem to be able to choose to have no one in the family working at all as the taxpayer provides a better standard of living than one they can provide for themselves.

cog Not all sahps are *miserable and frustrated"!!! What a sweeping generalisation! So are all people who woh happy and feel valued??? Of course not!!!

Shit happens in life you know? My ds1 has sen/sn. There is a large gap (not planned) between dc and so I have been a sahp (with a short break before I concieved ds2) for 9 years now.

Is it what I saw myself doing at 17??? Well...no How many of us can say out life is what we imagined at 17? But then again I dont think I would have achieved much by "going to south america and fighting for anarchy" which is pretty much what I had got planned for my future at 17

I feel sorry for anyone - sahp or wohp - who is not happy and doesnt want that life. Its tough and must make life much harder.

Who knows what the future holds for me and my family? Health permitting I may go back to work/re train. Its nice to know I have options. Some people dont.

I don't understand this?

If you want to be a SAHM have you considered selling your home, moving somewhere a bit smaller so the mortgage is less, or renting? Have you looked at ways to reduce your food bills? If you have 2 cars have you considered selling one? What about less holidays each year? Or ways to reduce your gas and electricity bills?

When my Ds is born I will be returning to work after 6 months as that suits my family better, but if I wanted to be a SAHM with some lifestyle changes I could certainly make that happen and my DP is a teacher.

I still agree with what Cogito says. Our foremothers fight to gain the financial freedoms we have today. We feel outraged when we hear stories from "a certain religion" that confines women to the house and completely dependent on their male relatives. I work because it defines me to be more than being a wife and mum. I work because it gives me power to choose what I want to use my spare cash on.

I think it's great we have a choice to be a SAHP. But why is it always the women who have to be the vulnerable one? Is there some social conditioning happening to think men should be the one holding all the cards? I'm sad that on women's rights, we are moving backwards in a lot of ways. Look at what the media still portrays women as. Young girls have a choice of tea party, beauty parlour, princess toys. Didn't a major retailer marking a science set as boys only? Beauty pegeants for girls? Sexualisation of the media. And then what do we get at the end? Most marriages end in divorce. Most men die before their mates, leaving elderly widows in destitute? It seems to me we are conditioned to just accept less.

"the right to mother your own child" You certainly have the right to be the mother to your own child. But nowhere does it say that the state should pay for it.

So if you are lucky enough to be in a financially secure situation say your DH earns enough then great. Good for you.

Yes in an ideal world women could if they wanted to stay at home and raise their child. But then in an ideal world we wouldn't have mass unemployment, poverty, diseases and wars. The ideal world doesn't exist.

We all therefore have choices to make. If you've chosen to get such a big mortgage that your husband's teacher's salary just about covers it then the main problem is you have stretched yourselves financially.

This is your problem, not ours.

"Not all sahps are *miserable and frustrated"!!! What a sweeping generalisation!"

If you read it again, I said that a lot of women of the OP's mother's generation felt miserable staying home because the middle-class social conditioning of the time meant they were raised to be dependent wives rather than independent women. It was literally shameful for a middle-class man to earn so little that he couldn't 'keep his wife' but those same women were often so bored they were turning to drink or tranquilisers just to get through the day. Working class couples had similar pressures but pragmatic economic considerations often won the day.

But why is it always the women who have to be the vulnerable one?

I'm not sure you can say it is ALWAYS the women....

Of course there are many women who are left in difficult positions after a marriage/relationship breakdown where the man swans off. But there are many cases where the woman ends up with the kids, the house and a chunk of the ex's salary, leaving the man with nowhere to live, little money and often very limited/no access to the kids.

I'm not saying all men are victims. Clearly not. Just that it's not always black and white. And for every poor woman left 'vulnerable', I could probably find you a man who was 'screwed over' by his ex too.

I think the very small minority of men in the position you describe niceguy2 doesn't really offset the fact that the most economically challenged group of people in society are generally single women with primary responsibility for children. There is still a high expectation that the woman gives up her job to look after the children, aided and abetted by attitudes like the OP's dressing up economic dependency as 'the right to mother your own child'. Whilst it can work for a select few, far too many women find they go this route with the best intentions and make themselves vulnerable or trapped in the process. A sacrifice very few men will ever find themselves in the position of making.

cog I think the vast majority of sahps are women for the simple reason that generally men earn more than women - even when doing comparable jobs - therefore the one with the least earning potential stays at home. Common sense, surely?

There is no way I could ever earn what my dh does...he has trained for his job for years, got a degree and 25 years experience. I was a receptionist and - as you must know - we are 10 a penny

But, yes of course it is a sacrifice...I am happy to have made it, but its a sacrifice none the less.

My bugbear is the women who think - as cosmo et al have led my generation to believe - they can "have it all". Well, you cant. Something has to give, in both scenarios.

For me as a sahp its financial independance and spending 9 years out of the workforce. For a wohp its not being able to raise their child the way they would like to, spending a large % of their wages on childcare and having to use all their annual leave looking after their sick dc.

There are no easy options being a parent IMHO.

The govt pay single mums to not parent their own children. Because obviously we can't be trusted to not feed them macdonalds and smoke fags all day .

Sadly, Becaroo, I'm very educated and my female friends are mostly the same. But the expecation for middle class women, like Cogito has said, hasn't changed that much. I know two PhDs who have quit their jobs to be SHAP. (I suspect they dont earn more than their DPs though because they were postdocs). A friend went part time when she's a senior engineer, and DH a postdoc, which I can guess she earns at least 10k more. Another is a hospital doctor, earned more than her DH, with probably a better career future too, but it's also her that went part time. We are conditioned to think it's wrong to ask the father to reduce their hours to care for the children even if they earn less. (Let alone if anyone dare to ask the father to quit their jobs because they earn less).

I just want to add that with about half our university graduates being female. And many females studying for degress like law and medicine, it can't be that rare for a female to earn at least the same or not more than their DH when they have their first child.

I think there is a dichotomy here, women work because one salary is not enough and the fact that being financially dependant upon another is not desirable but the fact remains that single women with children who work are still financially worse off than a couple who both work.

The answer lies not with a women's choice to work or not but with the fact that wages have not/never have kept pace with living costs. If women were to be truely independent she would be able to provide for her family irrespective of her partners wage or irrespective of whether she even had a partner. So yes OP you are correct.

Real choice esp for women would not be borne out of need but CHOICE. Something we don't have.

but those same women were often so bored they were turning to drink or tranquilisers just to get through the day and now many women work they no longer drink several glasses of wine after work or take anti-depressants. What a nonsense, there are many more women drinking socially and at home and the use of happy pills has increased.

The unhappiness is more about relative wealth and aspiration, stress from being run ragged in the pursuit of acquisition and media bombardment of things to acquire. Washing machines and happy pills have a lot to answer for It's caused by the gap between what we really need and what we think we need and the fact that you have to keep spending to keep everyone else in work.

"For a wohp its not being able to raise their child the way they would like to, "

So does that mean your DH as the WOHP hasn't been able to raise his children the way he would like to?.... That's where the argument always falls down.

I think motherhood and feminism has been railroaded into thinking that women shouldn't have more rights over their child, we have wombs, we lactate, it's men that have an agenda here to compare the rights of mothers and fathers.

Women have the right to choose to have babies, we carry them and we give birth to them. Why some women confuse maternal and paternal rights and boil it down to men having some magical kind of input really confuses me.

"The unhappiness is more about relative wealth and aspiration, stress from being run ragged in the pursuit of acquisition and media bombardment of things to acquire."

Only the other day I think you were trying to convince me that wages not keeping pace meant people were buying essentials on credit. Now you're talking about wealth, aspiration and acquisition.... keeping up with the Jones... luxuries, in other words.

It's a very misogynistic perspective that women in jobs are just earning to keep themselves in ribbons...

You have taken that out of context and confused me with Ttosca??????why?

And yes people have taken on credit to buy ribbons, I agree with you but just as many people have taken on credit because their living expenses have outstripped their income, esp in regards to housing, transport and food.

Yes, I probably was thinking of the other person. Sorry about that :) But what's better... taking on credit to to meet expenses or all the adults in the household going out to work?

cogito, yes it does mean becaroo's woh dh isn't bringing his child up the way he would like to, because he gets to see his child far less than he would do if both he and his wife were able to work part time.

You're accusing other people of misogynistic viewpoints but I think it's fairly odd it hasn't occurred to you that a father might prefer to share childcare than leave it all to the mother.

Wouldn't two part time wages really only equate to one full time wage, which really brings us back to the point that many women go to work because one wage is not sufficient.

Mini. Are you saying that just because you have a womb and give birth that you somehow have more rights towards a child than the father?

If so, doesn't that completely fly in the face of the whole principle of equality? ie. EQUAL

Or is this the same idea in socialism in so far as everyone is equal....except some are more equal than others?

I don't work because I don;t want to and don;t need to. DH works because he wants to and needs to.

We are 100% happy in our own roles. I would loathe having to work and he would loathe not having to. Our marriage is absolutely equal, respectful and egalitarian. All money is shared and I assure, I am very, VERY far from vulnerable.