Equality at home - Can this really be achieved?

[marga73]

There is an issue I've been wanting to discuss for a long time. It's the issue of equality inside the house.

Even though women now work and are able to gain respectable positions in the workplace, and we can say that some level of equality has been attained, it seems to me that once they have children, women lose more than men in terms of work opportunities and financial independence. And all because the house and the children still seem to be a "woman's job".

It's all great to find women who are happy being the SAHP, but don't these women feel sometimes that being 100% financially dependent on their husbands is frustrating? Doesn't this situation make them feel trapped and powerless? Is it OK for women to sacrifice their independence for the sake of their children and the house keeping?

I work part-time, and have two small children, and still feel trapped sometimes. I'm grateful in many ways that my husband earns enough so we don't have to worry about paying for mortgage, food, childcare etc - and I contribute to this too - but I feel it's far beyond from the ideal I had when I was young and it really annoys me. If I'm honest, it makes me very angry.

I would like a society where men and women work part time, share domestic tasks 50/50, and look after their children part time, and therefore pay for everything on equal terms. Is this too much to ask in the fierce capitalist society we live today? Am I naive to think that should be the case?

what on earth would be wrong with sharing both the work and the childcare?

Nothing at all if that is what they want. I am just very grateful that DH was the one who actually wanted to go out to work and I could have all the childcare-I loved it.
People need to do what suits them and not think it suits everyone. Your partner is the one to sort it with-before you have them.

the thing is that the sahp choice is easy to make in this social world (if you can afford it etc) the choices being looked at here are harder to make in a sexist world where it is too often assumed that the woman will do the childcare/domestic labour or at the very least do the lions share of it and be the one to modify the rest of her life to fit around it.

so change does need to occur to make sure women can make real choices rather than be steamrolled into what fits social norms.

i don't think it helps when people who the social norms suit are defensive and resistant to others talking about the need for change - you'd still be able to carve out your choices but in order for others to do the same the auto-correct status of sahm or woman as the one who makes the changes needs to be challenged. i realise that can look threatening.

i know what i'm trying to say but not managing it well.

saying women need to be able to make other choices more freely doesn't say that woman shouldn't be able to choose traditional routes. however those traditional routes do have to lose the status of 'best', 'natural', 'normal' if those choices are going to be able to be made.

likewise the heterosexual nuclear family as a whole has to lose it's privileged status as 'right', 'best', 'natural' if people are to make meaningful choices about how to live, reproduce, raise children, find fulfilment, support each other etc.

not that people won't be able to 'choose' heterosexual nuclear families and divisions of labour if they really want to but that they won't be fetishised into the only/best way to live.

(which is handy given one in two of these set ups fails)

I don't think that the heterosexual nuclear family is any kind of societal norm any more. The fact that a lot of people choose it doesn't mean that society doesn't accept all sorts of families quite happily.

I don't think that any particular family is the norm any more which is why people need to sort it out with their partner before they have DCs. It seems to me that the only problem occurs when both parents are ambitious career people and they can't afford the sort of child care they need.

Of course its possible. Real femniist women even in the 80s when I had our first three children have never tolerated sexism at home. Lots and lots of us work full time and have a partner who does too. If you are brought up not to be sexist then you do not tolerate that in a man either. It's not particularly difficult.

"it seems to me that once they have children, women lose more than men in terms of work opportunities and financial independence. And all because the house and the children still seem to be a "woman's job". "

The quote above says it all really. Why would any bright woman allow her career to come second place to a man and why would they enter a marriage on that basis or not discuss it? It's ridiculous. Women just don't put up sexism in many many marriages unless they were depserate for a man and feel lucky to have hooked someone who can keep them so they can live off male earnings which many women would never tolerate and ni a sense is worse than prostitution where at least you earn your own money rather than being kept in return for domestic and presumably sexual services.

Are there really so many stupid women out there who let house and chidlren be seen as a woman's job? What were their parents thinking in bringing them up to have that view?

xenia - words fail me.

the arrogance and ignorance is breathtaking.

Words don't fail me-I have heard it all before from Xenia who thinks that women have no status and no interests unless they are in paid employment. She can't imagine that anyone would find childcare much more interesting than her job-or that you can do far more exciting things with your time than earn money.

Actually -reading again words do fail me-utterly!! I have never heard such drivel.I married my DH because I loved him, I had DCs because I wanted to have them. I am certainly not going to put a career first and farm them out and have cleaners etc invading my privacy. I don't mind at all if people do and understand that they would go crazy at home.

"Why would any bright woman allow her career to come second place to a man and why would they enter a marriage on that basis or not discuss it?"

You've been told several times, why this mgiht happen Xenia.

You just don't like the answer.

I tell her thread after thread! She doesn't listen. I would find her job boring and I don't want to pay school fees-if I had the money and I don't like selective education.
I understand that Xenia does and why-(she tells us often enough) but I don't see why she can't see it the other way around. I am her intellectual equal-I choose to be married-I choose to put it above career and I love it.
We are all different-one size doesn't suit all.

Just playing the devil's advocate - if someone is so interested in childcare, why not train and make a career out of it?

The assumption that SAHMing is equal or even better than WOHMing is directly linked to the assumption that one is a good (better than professionals) carer just because of possessing ovaries.

I did-primary school teacher. I love being in the classroom with the DCs so I have no desire to be a Head or even a deputy-my ambitions just lie in being a better teacher. However I have had a change-I don't like all the paper work that goes with it these days.
It is a career I can go back to-I have left it before and gone back-if you do it well (which I do) there is always an opening.

But I don't understand why a woman would want to be financially dependent on another? Why wouldn't a woman want to be independent?

Xenia- www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=644 30000 women get sacked every year for getting pregnant. In this climate it is almost impossible to get back to work. You should assume women 'choose' not to work.

er, because children aren't interchangeable, ww? why don't women who enjoy spending time with their blond husbands set themselves up as companion services for blond men? after all, it would be very similar to spending time with their husbands.

victorialucas massive generalisation. I am one of the 30k and got back to work. It's possible.

I find it ready odd that anyone should think that wanting to spend time ith your own children should be confused with being interested in childcare. I'm not remotely interested in childcare, i'm interested in my children

Its great he is at part of the week. He could provide childcare all of the week but we chose not to do that. He could work full time but we chose not to do that.

Whatever he choses to do or not do has no impact whatsoever on my career.

He wants to work full time? DS goes into childcare ft.

He wants to work part time? DS goes into childcare pt and DH has him pt.

He wants to be a ft SAHD? He has DS full time

None of which affects my career in anyway so I would be highly offended by suggestions that it did.

Since dp has worked Monday - Friday instead of being at home part of the week, I have found work harder. I now have to drop ds2 at nursery or grandparents everyday rather than only part of the week. (Dp drops ds1 at school and picks him up.) This has given me less flexibility to get to work early or leave late on some days. So I would agree that it is easier for people with a SAH partner to get on in their careers because they don't have to worry about childcare.

Oneliein it's not about women choosing to be financially dependent on anyone, the fact is it becomes a partnership when you have children. The family is at the centre and you essentially work for each other. And when you get older, your children will look after you (whether by paying someone else to do it or helping out themselves). There is no such thing as independence when you have children.

All this fighting about equality and independence has value and meaning (but boy there is a long way to go yet) in the single woman's world, but once you become a family, the structures completely change. It's really not important who does the childcare / housework. It's a team effort and you just put into it what you can.

As I said before, it's the employment structures that are unfair as they don't recognise flexible working, meaning that families are forced to sacrifice one full time worker for one SAH parent.

Oneliein- do you not read the unemployment stats? Anecdote is not evidence.

Oneliein it's not about women choosing to be financially dependent on anyone, the fact is it becomes a partnership when you have children.

Exactly. Sometimes I think that I am living in a parallel universe when I read utter rubbish about being kept in return for domestic duties and sexual favours. Some of you must have very strange home lives and know very strange men!

You seem to miss the point that you don't have to get married or live with a man and you don't have to have DCs -and if you do want DCs you don't even have to have the man these days!
It is choice. It isn't sacrifice-I would hate to be a full time worker.
I am independent financially-it is our money and it is the way we choose to do it. And the worst did happen and DH1 died and left me as a SAHM with a baby and I still managed to stay at home while he was pre school age. We are not hopeless-we cope-and still do it our way. (which in my case isn't Xenia's way)

There's an awful lot more to family life than who earns the money (or who brings the capital).

I can't see why who earns the money is important or matters.

It matters to people who think the most important thing in life is earning an awful lot of money and want to devote all their energies to the pursuit of making money! Which is fortunately not the whole of humanity.