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?

polarisation
sweeping the nation

You lot still at it? Exotic you are winning by miles. Anyone that can argue on mn against the prevailing view and continue with their reputation intact is doing extremely well.

I have another theory to throw into the mix - as EF has said, we now both have to work as a couple to survive. Why is this? because of housing costs. Why are housing cost so astronomical? Because having two incomes in a household enables people to purchase property at a much higher price than previously. I do believe that one of the reasons the housing market has spiralled is because families have become used to surviving on two wages. If there was only one wage per household the increase wouldn't have started. We halved the value of property - and doubled its price.

And now we run about blaming each other for being lazy or not feminist enough, or indeed for taking time out of our careers to have children. And faff about who does more washing up.

Why is that? Does he earn more and if so why? How did you decide which of you would stay at home?

Because he loves working, he wouldn't like staying at home with children. I love staying at home with DCs and am very grateful that I didn't have to fight him for it, or go 50/50 on it. It was very simple-I can't see the point in having children and leaving them with someone else to have all the fun and pleasure. So many people are making it out to be a penance or unpleasant chore.
I don't mind if people want to employ others to do it but I don't see why they need to make paid employment superior.

You need to have DCs with the right person. I wouldn't have wanted someone who thought we ought to have more money and pay for childcare and no way would I want someone who wanted to stay at home while I worked.

It shouldn't be polarised into either/or and this odd thing that we should all think the same. A high flying career isn't what I want-it would cut out all the pleasure in life-I wouldn't have as much time to read, be creative etc. I know plenty of people who find their career their main interest-and why not? We are not the same.

"Lawyers who are now senior partners in global firms are largely monolingual but they won't recruit junior lawyers who aren't tri or quadri lingual and qualified in more than one country - no need to, as the market is awash with them. The monolingual lawyers only able to work in a single jurisdiction are going to be doing very limited and unrewarding work in future."
With respect, that is utter rubbish.

Exotic you are winning by miles.

I wish I felt the same!

I don't think that people need to blame society-blame your partner if you can't get what you want.

Nothing to do with money and who earns it but working together as a family.

Absolutely yakbutter. You do what's most effective for everyone.

Neither of us attach status to who earns the money which I think is Xenias problem. Its ours however it arrives in the house. The kids need the input of both parents. The household needs both of us to contribute. Dunno why this is hard to grasp.

Neither do I. My main gripe with Xenia is that it doesn't matter who earns the money-what is his is mine-it goes straight into the joint account. We could only have the money because I do my full share towards it. We are a partnership. If he was ill and couldn't work I would go full time. If he now said he had done his bit and it was my turn I would go out full time. A career for life has gone, people chop and change. I'm not working full time at the moment-but it doesn't mean that I never will.

evil feminists ruined the housing market.

evil feminists responsible for hole in ozone layer.

scientists reveal rise in nut allergies is caused by feminism.

I think that it helps if you discuss attitudes to work and child rearing first.

Maybe it helped that we were older. I was a single mother-I was doing everything-car maintenance, putting up shelves etc and DH had lived alone for years-cooking, cleaning, sewing etc. I had worked long enough to know that I enjoyed my job, but had no wish to progress up any ladder.
I had been a single parent and loved it. We did discuss, before having further DCs, how we both felt about work outside the home.

Many people drift into it just making assumptions-obviously it causes resentment if things are assumed about your role that don't suit you.

It's all well, if you want to give up work and stay at home, and can afford it, enjoy!

However I find it kind of ironic that it's been only a few decades since women automatically lost their jobs when they got married because the assumption was that she belonged into the house, it's only fairly recent that maternity leave had been introduced allowing women to retain their jobs after having a baby rather than having to resign, these hard fought for choices are at best seen as a second best if not decried as anti-women.

In my first marriage I would have had to go back to work at the end of maternity leave-we couldn't have afforded not to. My first decision as a widow was not to go back.

Do you view those whom you leave in charge of your child as professionals? If you do then they should be paid as such Dworkin - good point. But it's not just about what they earn, it's how their quality of life compares to the high earners that is the important thing.

I made the point earlier that one of the reasons we (hardworking families) have all been shafted like this, is that there is so much financial inequality between the classes - in progressive societies like Germany and Sweden, there is not a huge difference between being a lawyer and a nurse. Your services are the same and your quality of life is similar - through subsidised health insurance, benefits etc etc. Here on the other hand you are either a high earner or on a varying scale of underclass. The high earners buy in their privilege - education, housing location, childcare and healthcare while we have to put up with what's left. The lack of respect attributed to non-professional work is what has turned us all against each other.

The Victorians seem positively progressive compared to our elbows-first society.

I thought women were fighting for choice and there is nothing wrong in seeing bringing up children full time as first choice.

I don't need as much money as Xenia-I don't want to pay school fees -therefore I can get by on a lot less.

I don't know where you've got your information about Germany from - but it's far from the egalitarian land of milk and honey over there. Otherwise not so many women would be stuck in tax and NI free "?400" jobs for bad hourly rates.

swallowed you seem to have a problem considering that there might be a connection between the doubling of household income and the housing market. It is more an economics debate than a feminist one but essentially, one worker could pay for a decent home in the bad old days. Then two workers started getting nice big homes and this began the driving up prices.

Employers started to realise that they didn't have to increase wages as much because there would always be two incomes per household and our demands were less urgent. They knew that their employees would cope. Wages have gone up comparatively little over the last 30 years. Of course there are a lot of other factors involved, but banks could ask for more, and employers could pay less, for a very long time, precisely because there was a sudden doubling of family income.

Anyone remember the whole 'Pink Pound' thing? A sudden glut of expendable income? And 'Dinkies' - dual income no kids. Women choosing to work did the same thing but must have had far bigger impact, over a longer period. Surely I'm not the first person to have considered this?

WidowWadman my point is that the quality of life on the whole is better there - you may only earn E400 (where's the Euro on my keybord?) but everyone gets decent education, decent healthcare, subsidised transport etc etc.

It's quality of life as a whole, not income, that is what makes a society equal.

I don't think that the German healthcare system is one bit better than the NHS (probably worse if looking at value for money, plus over here at least you don't get doctors pushing woo and unneccessary private stuff at you), the decent quality of life when so many have to be propped up via Hartz 4, the lack of mobility when it comes to jobs, because you need a yodelling diploma for anything and everything, but won't get an "Umschulung" easily, the subsidised transport which doesn't cost any less than over here...

I love Germany, it's where I spent the first 25 years of my life, but it's not as super duper as you're trying to make out, and in many things behind. The only thing, and I give you that, is that they got a better maternity/paternity leave policy by allowing and incentivising parents to share the responsibility.

in the 'bad old days' we also had a very different economy with people like my grandfather on my dad's side working the majority of his life in exchange for accommodation in a cottage on the farm he worked 12hr plus days on whilst the wives were working growing veg in the garden and preparing meals and hot water etc for the workers and the kids left school at 13 because they had to start working too. where getting a council house was salvation because you could then actually take a salaried job. at which point his wife did too instead of providing the female side of free farm labour.

they weren't buying houses.

on the other hand my mothers very upper middle class family could afford to buy houses because they were relatively cheap given the lack of demand as your average person never could aspire to own property and it wasn't a cultural norm to see property as wealth anyway.

my father's generation of that class had to leave school despite passing the 11plus and get a job - and it wasn't a job that would cover a house or amass the kind of deposit you had to have to get a mortgage then and mostly the women worked too. my sister was cared for by grandparents whilst both my parents worked because they needed to. i came along much later when their situation had changed somewhat but my mother still worked at least part time for much of my childhood and then they bought a business and both worked full time at it from the time i was ten or so.

there may have been a brief point in time where the middle classes could buy houses on one salary whilst the wives stayed home but there are a lot of factors that contributed to that time and that have contributed to that not lasting - not just feminism.

Men have never had it all. No one can. At one point you have to choose.

When our DCs were young DH commuted to London. He left the house by 7am, before they were up, and he got home around 7pm-in time to read a bedtime story, but if the traffic was bad he didn't even see them. He could travel-if he needed to be in Helsinki in 3 days time he could be there.
He could only do this because I was the main child carer. Therefore the money that he earned was every bit as much mine
Had I died he would have had to changed jobs, got a local one-got them up in the morning and been back at a reasonable time to feed them and get them to bed and he certainly couldn't have popped off to Helsinki without a lot of juggling.
Even had I been career orientated and ambitious I wouldn't have got to the top.My DCs come first-always have and always will.
You can't get to the top if you say 'I must leave by 5pm because I need to spend time with my DCs before they go to bed', 'I can't do that meeting on Friday afternoon, I'm going to my DCs school play', 'sorry-got to dash my DC is in A & E-probably won't be back today' or (as happened with me)'my DC is in hospital and I am going to with him the entire time' (which turned out to be a week). I suspect that many women are the same. If they can manage to put work first they need a partner who will do the above, but in my case I wanted to be the one.
You can't get to the top if you put home life first.
I am only working to have a home life, so the whole thing is pointless if I don't get one!

if you go back a generation further my grandad was one of 12 kids though only half of them survived childhood. his mother had plenty of work to do both with the children and the house and the work that would have come with the house (still farm labourers with tithed properties).

my mothers side would have been in various colonies around the world milking that cash cow.

jifnotcif - maybe you'd also like it in Wisconsin

Over there they've just quietly repealed the equality bill, as money is more important for men if they're to be the breadwinners.