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.

Similarly my dad dropped dead suddenly in his 40’s. My mum was left with two primary aged children, no access to money, had not worked for over 10 years, no qualifications, no way to get back in the workplace. Even if she had got a job a single parent on minimum wage wouldn’t stretch to wrap around care and school holiday care plus bills etc.

we had to sell everything and move hundreds of miles away to a cheaper area, nearer her family etc.

we went from a decent middle class lifestyle to living off my dad’s work death benefit which didn’t last long. Once we left for uni and benefits ceased she had to downsize further, as she had no pension other than state.

having lived that i always swore i would not have kids unless i was in a position to be a single mum. Own house, financially stable, with a salary that would cover a reasonable lifestyle and any childcare.

i am not a single parent. But if dh had walked out, dropped dead, had a stroke and couldn’t work, or otherwise couldn’t provide an income, my children and I would have been fine.

putting all your faith on one income seems mad to me. Circumstances can take it away at any point, then what?

This. Giving up any kind of paid work is a stupid decision and any man happy with this setup is almost certainly a misogynist. It’s just bad all round and sets a terrible example for the children: man gets to opt out of all household chores and parenting and woman is doing all of that and has no autonomy. That said, as a woman, if I was the breadwinner with a SAHD I would expect him to do 100% of the housework, chores etc and I would give him an allowance, like fuck would I give anyone unlimited access to money I’d earned. But I would simply never enter into such a situation because I’d accept nothing less than 50/50 on everything, with the ideal being both parents dropping to part time hours and sharing parenting equally. There’s no reason that only a woman’s job should be sacrificed. But frankly if you choose to enter into this setup then don’t be surprised when you end up in indentured servitude

You've got to make ends meet at the time though, so if childcare costs are more than salary and the couple can't afford that, then at home she must stay.

It's usually women who earn less than men.

I think it’s quite easy to be confident about never falling into this trap while circumstances are in your favour to avoid it.

If you both have broadly similar incomes and equally flexible employers then yes, it’s not too hard to both drop to part time. But what if you start out with a significant disparity in income and one of you has a role where pt working doesn’t really exist?

Then there are the curve balls that come along:

Redundancy
Employer relocation
Illness
Caring needs
Death
Discrimination

The job market is changing a lot too (look at the job hunting threads if you don’t believe me!) and far fewer people can be confident that they will always be in work…

To put it bluntly, it's the government's fault, and society somehow accepts it as normal. Being a mum and having no income of your own is somehow considered ok, whereas in other countries it certainly isn't, other than the US.

The UK is probably the worst country in Europe to be a mum in terms of cost and financial security: https://maternityaction.org.uk/2017/03/the-truth-is-that-uk-maternity-pay-is-amongst-the-lowest-in-europe/

From TUC: "Out of 24 countries, only Ireland and Slovakia have a worse deal than the UK, the TUC finds."

From a Guardian article: "In other countries, women are entitled to higher sums. In Croatia, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, women receive two-thirds or more of their previous pay for more than four months. In Estonia, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, France, Malta and Switzerland, this lasts for more than three months."

I'm from Denmark. Becoming a mum comes with next to no financial strain or pressure there, a lot of women who have jobs do it alone without worries about income. Childcare is very cheap as well.

Women's attitude to marriage or relationships is completely different to here (not many people want marriage as they don't see the point, whereas in the UK it seems to give the woman many benefits). Women have much less interest in the man's job or economic ability to provide, as they know that whatever happens, they'll mostly be fine and in a similar economic position to how they were as single women.

The way that the UK maternity system is set up is so 19th century it hurts.

When I moved to the UK, I assumed it was a given that a man's wealth and ability to provide was irrelevant, as that's how I'd been brought up. To me it feels so 1950s here and men's attitudes reflect that.

I highly doubt this will change in my lifetime. It's too big of a gap to bridge and too many minds to change, people already complain about tax being too high, but there's next to no support for families, mums and children compared to almost any country in the EU, including many 'poor' countries.

If the childcare bill is higher than your salary you can then be left struggling to pay bills because their isn't enough money at the end of the month. It then makes sense for one to stay with the children and one to go to work full time, whatever brings the most money into the house

It makes sense as long as it is less than combined income. We paid the equivalent of my entire after tax salary to a nanny when kids were young but kept my career and pensions.

I find the whole concept of the lowest earner’s salary being compared to / spoken of in relation to the full cost of childcare when it should only be considered 50:50 wrong, in my view. Yes, the toll is taken on the lowest earner more, but that whole viewpoint is flawed and supports the view that any money earned by that person goes solely to the child / the family and is not seen as ‘theirs’ in the same way.

on a similar note many families fail to see / do not wish to consider the bigger picture when one is taking a step back from a career as all focus is on the early years and not the longer term gain of staying in a career, even if financially it is a strain initially. These are lost years of being in industry and pension contributions etc - unless your partner contributes to a pension privately (which my husband offered to do). I am fortunate that I earn a similar amount to my partner however this is not down to luck - I made sure when forging a career to ensure I could always be comfortable on my own and pay my own rent / mortgage etc. part of that has come from experiencing divorced parents and related struggles. It really saddens me that lots of people are not in my position.

supports the view that any money earned by that person goes solely to the child / the family and is not seen as ‘theirs’ in the same way.

Not so. If both incomes are treated as family money, and child care is paid from family money, where one parent staying at home maximises the family money, that makes short-term financial sense. It's still family money.

I think the points raised by PPs about the SAHP losing out on pension contributions need to be made more often. But then the family unit might not be able to afford those, and immediate costs always take priority over long-term financial security, so she's still staying at home.