Does it matter to you how much your partner earns?

[brusslesprout]

Not wanting to start a debate or anything like that just a general musing really if this is a really important factor for everyone?

I wonder when looking at the bigger picture does it make the relationship better/easier?

My bf doesn't earn much which bothers me a little sometimes but on the same merit has no debts or bad spending habits as he's always had to be careful.

Growing up my Dad had quite a well paid job but isn't too good with money so still is in a lot of debt when he should be relaxing into retirement.

So yes does it matter in the grand scheme of things?

Yes they are.

Honestly could you be any more disparaging!

Maybe you should look up the definition of the word 'job'

Perhaps I should just leave my kids with no clean nappies, not go to the supermarket, not do my volunteer work on a Monday, not bother making sure there was gas n electric on the meters etc.

Because if they are not jobs then why do them?

They are jobs, important jobs at that.

They aren't jobs they are what most families do to keep the show on the road as it were. It is maintaining a life to do those. I am not disparaging at all but am hiding thread as it is going in circles and is a bit embarrassing in 2014 tbh.

So, the fact that most families do them does not change their definition.

Most people use a computer at work so is it not part of their job to do that because everyone is doing it?

The only embarrassing opinion is yours, that you feel the only worth a person can gain in life is through paid employment is just so, so sad.

Life is about a whole lot more than that.

Gecko I agree that raising children is hard work. And the chores associated with pre-school children (nappies, feeding, sleep-training, toddler groups, playing etc) are full time jobs in themselves. In my opinion.

However, what some of us are struggling with is the concept that being a housewife when your children are at secondary school (let's say) is equivalent to full time work. This is difficult to understand because so far the tasks listed are the stuff most people manage alongside full time employment.

Gecko volunteer work is valuable to society and probably good for you, but its not work you do for your family. And its perfectly possible to do all the other things you mentioned in a single hour in the supermarket each week.

Who has said that the things you do at home when your dc are at secondary school equate to a full time job. I missed those posts, I think

Parenting and housework are not jobs. Trying to justify that they are us just silly. They are what adults do in daily life.

Do men feel the needs to say they have three jobs, work, parenting and housework? No, as they are more realistic that employment is a job, everything else is not.

As for the women giving up her career so should be compensated, how many actual have one and then have a valid reason to give it up? Childcare is more readily available then ever and most just had jobs until they could find a reason to not work given the other thread on MN at the moment. Courts hopefully are astute to this.

Well I believe in freedom of choice.

I don't believe sitting at a desk all day is as hard work as doing nursing. I am not however going to tell people who work at desks that their job is lesser or in fact 'not a job' though

It's their choice what they do.

Lots of people who have children of secondary school age will have older relatives to care for.

My parents left us for 3 hours a day 5 days a week alone in the house because their jobs were far more important than being around for us. I ended up getting repeatedly and horribly abused by my brother and I now speak to none of them. I would rather run the risk of looking round and thinking 'what am I going to do now that my husband has left and I have to find some paid work' than run the risk of having one of my children grow up dealing with horrendous social problems because of the neglectful and abusive environment I forced them to grow up in because the most important thing for ME was that I work.

There are risks either way. My children won't be paying the price for my needs.

In general, I agree with you Geckos

I find it sad that women here are belittling the choices of other women.

Agree with geckos and bowlers arm and find it a little strange when people say childcare is more available than ever given the evidence of inequalities in availability and the prohibitive costs.

I also think it is massively valid to say that being financially independent and equal is the ideal. However based on my experience and knowledge as well as my principles I don't think this is necessarily possible. It certainly hasn't been for me and I'm trying to take steps to change it through education and divorce!

I don't see how berating and haranguing people who have not achieved that ideal, for whatever reason, is helpful?

I also think that it should not need to be the ideal if society was based more upon fairness and contribution than the protection and accumulation of private property.

I agree that devaluing domestic and caring work which is factually, in practice, falling to women, many of whom have no option to escape it, equates to devaluing of women. Not because it is work that requires women but because it is work that women are doing. Work that many women still have no or a limited choice to avoid doing because of structural inequalities in society.

Whilst we devalue it we will never achieve equality because what man in their right mind would concede their economic advantage to be exploited and devalued even where social policies allowed them to make that choice?

The thread has moved on to the highly exercising problem of putting a value on 'wifework'. This does need to be re-examined ad infinitum, or until [a] everybody on the planet realises that life doesn't run itself, and the work is worth money, and [b] businesses & governments fully accept this fact.

On a slight tangent, I do feel that women assuming the role of full-time wife/mother - in our times - hinder the cause of gender equality, purely because their choice reinforces the outdated 20th-century model. That's a function of social & economic context, not the fault of each individual woman. It saddens me, nonetheless.

From a pragmatic point of view, I maintain that any woman who does this without having a personal income is crazy, or naive at best. When a man gains the benefit of a wife devoting all her efforts to him and his family life, he ought to automatically realise she needs an income of her own, either from some commercial activity or from him. And so should she.

YYY, Offred.

It's not solely at the feet of women though is it? A change to tax or the cost of childcare or working flexibility and you could get numbers flooding back to work.

How a state organises those things will impact greatly on what the second earner decides to do.

Re "wifework" - if working people can fit these tasks around a working day, with no discernible problems, then in effect it has zero financial value.

It's been an eye opener just how many on here do want the FT SAHM role for their entire child-rearing lives (and even beyond), and want their OHs to support it to the extent income drives choice of mate to quite a large degree.

IMO it's a very risky plan, and removes a lot of options.

Most professional couples outsource a fair amount of wifework, though, LJ. Even without kids we had a cleaner, used laundry/dry cleaning services, purchased food cooked by others, and paid extra for easy options in numerous ways. Once you outsource childcare, even partially, the cost goes up dramatically. That is the financial value of wifework.

Of course social policies can massively effect this.

But look at you already articulating the current situation. The wife is the 'second earner'.

You cannot avoid the physical effects/constraints of childbirth/breastfeeding on a woman but you can use social policy to remove discrimination against and economic disadvantages women suffer because of childbirth and breastfeeding.

The current reality though is that social policy forces the majority arrangement to be primary maternal care and primary paternal financial responsibility. It restricts the choices of men and women but in a capitalist society results in male advantage due to them being the property owners/earners and women still being dependent on them.

I don't think the answer is to have children cared for for our very long working hours outside the family from birth though which seems to be the current direction. I think it is actually to value domestic and caring (paid and unpaid because let's face it caring paid jobs are more frequently done by underpaid women too) work and objective contribution more.

For example I'm arguably contributing more to the economy through my voluntary work for the NHS and CAB than I would do working for minimum wage, minimum hours with childcare paid for by the state for a big multi-national tax avoiding corporation but the fetish is that I am only contributing if I'm paid.

Slight tangent there but all unpaid work, child rearing and domestic work, makes a contribution to the economy. I just picked WOH as a fairer comparison I suppose.

I dont get this 'income of my own' thing

I get paid weekly, DH gets paid monthy. Our money is our money, same as our food is our food, I no more need a separate 'income' to him (and him me) than I do need a separate fridge for food!

It is all shared. If anything, because I control the food shopping, the bill paying and the clothes etc, any decision about extra money spent is generally my decision, regardless of who has earned that money.

Plus, this 'women taking the traditional female jobs reinforcing stereotypes' thing is ridiculous.

We have breasts and wombs, therefore we WILL be taking some time in life in order to breed, it is our biological function. This is not a social stereotype, this is part of being a mammal.

Geckos, you've just said you get paid. So you do have an income of your own. If DH went out to shop this evening, and instead of coming back left the country with all your money, you would be able to keep things going off your own bat. I'm saying that too many women are literally dependent. And no thoughtful man should be happy about that.

Well, yes, and our government takes that biological function on board. After decades of bitter fighting, women do get paid while reproducing. So what's your point there, Geckos?

To the contrary, if my husband vanished I would have to quit my job.

My point is that women are more likely to become housewives because of biological reasons than because they are reinforcing any type of stereotype.

Money, wealth, work (both in the home and out) should all be equal and seen as equal. Whether that means a woman working in the home and a man working out or vice versa (or a mix of the two) equality is the key.

nobody can decide what is equal for another couple we must decide that for ourselves, I agree that there are issues to be addressed but labelling work within the home as 'worthless' 'no a real job' etc etc is certainly not bridging that gap!

I am absolutely not independent from my husband, nor is he independent from me, that is what a marriage is, nothing to be ashamed of about that.

My point is that women are more likely to become housewives because of biological reasons than because they are reinforcing any type of stereotype.

When you say that, you're speaking from the stereotype. Having babies does not have to equal becoming a dependent housewife.

If we all woke up tomorrow to find that men had the ability to gestate, and women didn't, do you think the world's businesses, governments and militias would hand over the controls to women?

The biology doesn't dictate the status quo. Patriarchy does.

Nonsense, I am speaking from the view of an educated woman who wanted my children to have access to breast milk for as long as they needed it and understand the importance of primary care-giving.

I did what was natural to me, it was not what my mother did, it is what is natural to me despite lots of pressure to return to work at a few months and 'pay my way' No. I know full well that caring for my children and feeding my family is paying my way.

The issue here is that you cannot get your head around the fact that some people will chose that, that biologically there are good reasons for us to choose that. It does not have to be an uneducated and inferior choice, it is a valid and justified choice.

"It's not solely at the feet of women though is it? A change to tax or the cost of childcare or working flexibility and you could get numbers flooding back to work. How a state organises those things will impact greatly on what the second earner decides to do."

I agree with MarshaBrady.

We do not take decisions as to how to manage our family lives in isolation of the economic policy of the country we live in.

Economically this country would be a lot nicer to live in, with better prospects if there was one high wage earner per family rather than 25% of families having 2 high wage earners and most of the rest having no high wage earner per family.

Feminism has done great things but it has screwed the economy.