Reading Peanut has left me feeling really sad about how far we still have to go for women

[trufflesandolives]

I’ve been spending a bit of time reading posts on the Peanut app recently, and I can’t quite shake how upsetting so many of them are.

Again and again, I’m seeing stories from stay-at-home mums who seem to be living under a kind of quiet, everyday oppression that’s become normalised. Women who’ve stepped back from paid work to raise children, only to find that their partners now treat income as leverage rather than something shared. Men who expect deference, obedience, or gratitude in exchange for “providing”, rather than seeing parenting and domestic labour as equally valuable work.

Examples that keep coming up:
• Women being given an “allowance” and having to justify basic spending.
• Being expected to do 100% of childcare and housework because the husband “works all day”.
• Partners making unilateral financial decisions because “it’s my money”.
• Women feeling unable to leave unhappy or unhealthy relationships because they have no independent income.
• Emotional control framed as “practicality” or “realism”.

What strikes me most is how often these women doubt themselves. They ask if they’re being unreasonable. They apologise for wanting autonomy. They minimise behaviour that, if reversed, would clearly be controlling.

It’s made me reflect more broadly on how fragile progress can be. On paper, we talk about equality, partnership, shared parenting. But in practice, the old dynamics resurface very quickly once one partner (usually the woman) becomes financially dependent — especially after children.

I don’t say this to bash men as a group. There are clearly many healthy, respectful partnerships out there. But the volume and similarity of these stories suggest something structural rather than individual bad luck.

Reading it all has left me feeling genuinely sad — for these women, for how easily care work is devalued, and for how much emotional and economic power imbalance still hides behind the language of “traditional roles” or “being realistic”.

I’d be interested to hear whether others have noticed this too, and how we think society can better protect women from sliding into vulnerability simply because they chose to raise children.

I'd never even heard of this app.
It sounds very sad.

Tbh i've found a lot of MN threads particularly upsetting these past few days and one reduced me to tears.
So I don't think I could handle the Peanut app atm.

They picked these type of men. Most of the women I know that are SAHM love it and are living their best lives. I plan on being a SAHM as well because I want to raise my kids, and not stick them in some daycare for the entire day as mommy drags herself to work for a job that doesn't give 2 cents about her and would replace her instantly.

Central to much feminist debate and the most obvious demand has been economic equality through equality in paid employment. Thus men (and women) have come to equate equality as simply being achieved by women working in paid employment. For some just working full time irrespective of salary difference suffices to confer a sense of equality, for other men this is no longer sufficient and confers a less equal status on his partner when he earns more.

There has always been a denial of the real value that women's unpaid labour contributes to society under capitalism.

Well, I hope it all works out for you, and I’m sure you didn’t mean to sound so smug.

I'm so old I was thinking of Charlie Brown

Does your dh not want to raise his kids? It’s ok that daddy drags himself to a job that doesn’t give 2 cents about him and would replace him instantly? He’s ok that he’s now tied to that job because he’s responsible for the financial stability of your family and even if that job made him suicidal he can’t leave?

mil was a sahm, it was not her best life she was being financially abused and couldn’t leave. I wish we’d seen in sooner and helped her get out. She literally couldn’t even book a taxi to the train station without him approving and paying for it.

dh had kids because he wanted to raise them. We share the raising and the financial responsibility. I work, he works. I have time off with the kids, so does he. If one of us is burned out we can take a few months of work to recover, or we can both go pt and share the load. Currently dh is pt and I am full time, it works well around older kids at school. It also means I can walk away at any point, and so can he. We don’t have to stay in a miserable relationship because we can’t afford to leave. Luckily we actually like each other 🤣.

Why have you used AI to write the post though?

It only took two replies for a victim-blamer to start posting shite.

Men act nice at the start to reel women in, and it's often only when she's pregnant with the first that the man starts letting the mask slip. It's far fairer to say that these men choose the type of woman who seems easy to abuse: the vulnerable, the disabled, the neurodivergent.

IMO as well the only circumstance in which a woman should ever contemplate becoming a sahm is if the husband is a very high earner.

so his income will effectively pay her lost salary. So she is still financially independent, can pay pension contributions, have savings in her own name.

becoming financially or otherwise dependent on a man is a bad decision. He then has all the control and you have no choices.

From another thread:

My parents were abusive growing up and in hindsight I see that he came in like the knight in shining armour to rescue me from them. When I met him I was sofa surfing after being kicked out by my parents and was not in the best frame of mind. I was vulnerable and effectively homeless. He swooped in to the save the day and I moved in with him quite quickly. I was pregnant with dc1 4 months after I moved in. He’s a fair bit older than me and I was too young and immature to see any red flags.

Now, @PixieDust91, did she choose him, or did he choose her?

I think this is a rather 19th century view, portraying women as helpless, child-like victims. There is absolutely no reason why women have to live like this in 21st century Britain. In most cases it’s a choice. They don’t want to work. If you choose to be a SAHM, then you are essentially living off someone else and making yourself an unequal partner in a relationship.

In some countries, women don’t have a choice because they aren’t allowed to work. This isn’t the case in Britain.

In some instances, day care costs what she'd earn or there are no places available. That can force women to stay at home.

I'm always amazed when my friends willingly give up a career to raise dcs. Are they mad? For every happy ever after, there is a woman left struggling to raise children alone while trying to reinvigorate a career, or worse, left making excuses for a blatantly abusive husband, sometimes for years.

My f abused my dm appallingly and I learnt early on that you always need to earn enough to be able to walk away. Never have more children than you can afford to raise by yourself. And never lose contact with your support network.

I think every single teen should be taught that in PSHE.

Good luck to you and that is sincerely meant. A lot of men and the statistics back this up, turn violent and controlling when their wives are pregnant or act in ways they didn’t previously. Almost as if they think their wife is now trapped with them and they can do what they like. T

I worked part time when mine were little but
now going back full time. I have the independence to leave if I want to and things change.

Not heard of Peanut, clicked on this thread thinking it might be a book recommendation!

Anyway, yes it is worrying.

Most of the women I know are financially equal to their partners, some do more of the domestic work, and with others I'd say their partner does the bulk of the load.

I have one friend who I worry about as shes unhappy but feels trapped. When she first had her kid she gave up work until they started school. This meant that she was left doing all the chores and handled the mental load around parenting. A 24/7 role. She works as a TA now but her relationship still seems to operate as before. Her husband retreats off to his home office to do his "important" job, often in evenings and weekends. He is a total fun sponge to boot. She is absolutely miserable but tells me she can't leave because they can't afford to run 2 houses. I can't help but think her pension will be tiny and she'll be stuck in this unhappy relationship. Unless of course he pisses off, in which case she'll still be screwed.

Yes, it’s really sad. I was a SAHM for a while and money was 100% shared and childcare outside of work time was at least 50-50. But in my experience this was the exception not the norm… and other women especially felt I should be endless grateful. I wasn’t. I expected it! For this I was seen as being a ‘bad wife’. But some time on we now both work and look after our kids with no major issues because we were always equal partners, whatever our roles. If men treat you as a slave when your a SAHM, they’ll still treat you as a slave if your working Ft. Other women saying “go back to work” as if that is a solution are victim blaming. I see it on mumsnet all the time though.

Make sure you’re married and he's putting into a pension for you.

The problem is that so many decisions made by younger women or those in the early stages of relationships can be very difficult to reverse later.

Not setting up joint finances in the first flush of setting up home - years later you read about odd imbalanced arrangements between partners and then it is very difficult to unpick.

Not getting married - huge implications…

Not learning to drive (or even get confident on public transport) because it’s difficult, expensive or not useful where you live right now. But ten years down the line, that partner has lost a lot of independence…

Pregnancy - the really big one..

Isn’t it funny that in many cases you could replace “job that doesn’t give 2 cents” for “husband that doesn’t give 2 cents”?

We are in a same sex marriage and have many friends who are also 2 women couples. We 50/50 parent and it routinely bowls me over how many of our women couple friends have a primary parent/primary earner dynamic. And I’m not saying it’s happened because one is more career focussed and earns tonnes more - I’ve got friends where one earns more money but does the lions share of parenting. I don’t think this is so much a man issue, I think it’s a society issue. But in my group of friends the women who have become primary parent have mostly pushed for it themselves. What I’ve learnt is people fall into a stereotype really quickly and that I am lucky that my wife not only said she wanted to be an equal parent, but actually meant it!

Sad indeed but truthful . Most of my friends lost financially having children having to almost ask for financial support from their partners where their lives didn’t change much . Over time I’ve also seen a shift to women working g more hours and juggling a home and children . Mothers also in divorce mothers often have to fight for what they deserve too sadly

Employers don’t need to ‘give 2 cents’ to pay money in wages and pension.

Same!

I've never understood why anyone would choose to become dependent on someone else.

Why does it only force women to stay at home?

childcare costs are temporary. In the short term you may not earn as much net as childcare costs, but when you factor in pension payments, effect on career of taking a long break, you are financially much worse off over the following years.

men can go part time. Or even sahm. It doesn’t have to be the woman. If childcare is prohibitively expensive then both parents going pt is an option, and often a better one if you factor in tax brackets and child benefit. Anything above a household income of 50k you’re better having two people working. Then you have the benefit of protection against sickness, job loss etc, and both can keep their skills current.