Amy,
When my husband and I were dating, we agreed that we wanted a kid and that he would work while I was at home being mom. We married, had a kid, and I quit working to be "just" a mom.

Yes, I am totally dependent on my husband's income--but if something bad were to happen, well, there's insurance, family, or I could go back to work before I planned. Something would work out. After all, no one of us knows what's in store for us and yet we all generally muddle through one way or another, don't we?

Anecdote time!

I was chatting with an ambitious buddy of mine. She was saying in her network, every married person who is a VP or higher has a stay-at-home spouse, even the ladies.

I thought that was interesting. I recall reading somewhere that by and large, married men with a stay-at-home spouse are the most successful group.

That doesn't surprise me NicoleK. What you have to do to be successful in those circles pretty much rules out a home life. If you're single it's manageable, although not having dinner ready when you get home, doing your own washing/ironing etc means you'll end up a bit short on sleep, but doing it as a single parent or with a working spouse is almost impossible.

I'm single so it's easier for me, but luckily I'm not that ambitious. I'm good at what I do but I pay pretty short shrift to the "be here 12 hours a day" macho attitude.

The problem is, if you go totally mommy track, you're totally dependent on another person to take care of you. What if that person dies or leaves you?

Currently for the women, nothing bad happens if the person leaves. She gets the house which he paid for, the kids and money to get her nails done and for trips to paris.

If he dies, she just hooks up with someone else.

Now if the genders are reversed, it is a different matter in the american courts which practice their own version of sharia

My wife makes about 3 times more than me. I don't have a problem with that at all. My job is flexible (I work 40 hours in two days), and that allows me to be the primary caretaker for our two school age kids. Though I'm not totally reliant on her, I've obviously made certain choices that limit my career options.

"What if that person dies..."
-Both my wife and I have a bucket load of life insurance if one of us dies.

"... or leaves you" Well, there's always a chance of something going wrong. I've been married for 17 years and marriage takes real work to make it successful (none of our problems have been due to money).

The blunt truth of the matter is that for many people being married really helps them to stay in the middle (or higher) class. The "marriage is disposable" culture is one of the reasons for poorly raised kids and income disparity (to channel David Brook for a moment).

Once again, I like the blog, but the commenting system is poor. There's no way of knowing if anyone has commented on my comment.

Currently for the women, nothing bad happens if the person leaves. She gets the house which he paid for, the kids and money to get her nails done and for trips to paris.

YOU, Redrajesh, are a total ASSHOLE. Why don't you try saying that comment to the myriad women whose husbands have left them and given them NOTHING? One of my best friends' husband left her and their 2 children for a beast of a woman who has 2 kids of her own, and my friend got NOTHING except a pittance of child support. Her husband is an exceedingly well-off executive but he hired a scumbag lawyer who made sure my friend got the absolute minimum of child support and even ripped her off of the money she was supposed to get when the child support was done. She's had to work like a dog and raise her 2 kinds ON HER OWN with no HELP whatsoever from her shyster husband, while his second wife and step-children have lived the life of Riley. And my friend isn't the only one this has happened to. There are pleny of women out there whose husbands have left them and used lawyers to hide assets. And now don't go and say "she must have done something to deserve it" because nothing could be further from the truth. Obviously you don't live here in the USA or else you'd know that your sweeping generalization is false.

As for my situation, I left my ex because he had NO ambition WHATSOEVER, and I get a measly $69 a week child support for 2 kids, because I always have and always will work, and I make more money that he did. And now he is officially "disabled" which means he lives off the taxpayers' backs. ISn't that lovely? It makes me ILL. Fortunately for me, my parents were retired when I left my ex and they insisted on providing child care for me while I worked like a dog myself to pay the bills and keep a roof over our heads.

> Anecdote time!

Oh, no...

(kidding)

"I thought that was interesting. I recall reading somewhere that by and large, married men with a stay-at-home spouse are the most successful group."

This is true, especially those who have kept the same stay-at-home spouse for decades. Almost nothing enhances success and accumulates wealth better than a stable marriage and supportive spouse. In the wealthiest circles, it's more the norm to see long-term married couples, where one spouse (usually the husband) worked outside the home and the other stayed home.

It's more of a teamwork mentality that we've lost in this era of high divorce rates, where the first questions are the ones Amy is posing.

I flat out would not be as well-off today - nor would my ex - had I NOT been a stay-at-home spouse. I worked from home. I helped him run our businesses while taking care of our children. Many so-called SAHMs are doing that too - they're working from home or supporting their husband's jobs (by answering calls, emails, handling paperwork, paying bills) so that his work hours are far more productive. In fact, most small business owners thrive with that set up. That's why it's called "mom and pop".

The career-track for both partners applies better in the corporate world, but still, having a stay-at-home, or at least a less ambitious spouse, usually works towards the other's benefit, as well as the family's.

I do agree that staying home can be tedious, but so can sitting in a cubicle all day. My experience as a parent is that it's probably 90% routine and 10% excitement (terror) and adrenaline. It's good to be around when they really need you, though today, every parent is a text or cell call away, so I believe working parents can stay emotionally connected with their kids just as well as those who are in the house. The big advantage is being able to run to school when they're sick, forgot homework, or plans suddenly change.

But I never viewed my being at home as meaning I had to be full-time engaged with my kids, which would've been pretty boring, especially during certain ages. I did lots of other things while they were in school, or out playing with their friends in the backyard. Yet, they knew I was always there if they needed me, and I think that's the most important thing.

I stay at home. I've always wanted to raise my kids. My mom did (her hubby was successful) and that's just what I wanted. It's not that I didn't know women who worked, or that it was a possibility. I was encouraged to, actually, by my parents. My kids know plenty of women who work. 2 of my girls seem very career oriented already, one wants to be a mom.

My hubby would not have gotten where he is without me staying home. He's worked too many ridiculous hours for a sitter or daycare to have worked out. I intend to work at some point, I'm working slowly on my nursing degree, but not till my kids are older.

I know plenty of moms who have stayed home and worked fulltime at various points as a mother, and they without fail say working is easier. Maybe just the variety and mental stimulation, but easier. They do have housecleaners every week or two so they aren't working then coming home and doing all the cleaning, and since they work their spouses split the house stuff 50/50 where they don't when one stays home, so I'm sure that helps.

I raise my kids, do all the cleaning, all the food and necessaries procurement, all the dr and health related stuff, all the financials, literally everything that isn't taking out the trash or bringing home a paycheck. I work, baby.

Radrasheesh, you are an imbecile. I am not a fan of divorce when kids are present-Amy and I agree in that one area-but to say women are better off is absurd. If that were true, you would see divorced men living in poverty while the exwife and kids were well off, and the reverse is actually true. Women don't "get" the house. In almost every state in the union, they get half the assets. Which means if they want the house their kids have lived in and made friends near and go to school from, they have to give up other things. Quite frequently the house has to be sold.

"This little girl seems to be talking straight mommy track and that's very dangerous."

She's seven. She likes a boy she knows. Little girls do that. She may be into Disney Princesses, too, as far as we know. It doesn't mean she's going to be into either straight mommy track or Disney when she's old enough for it to matter. Her interests will change. Hopefully, Mommy and Daddy will be able to advise her on the practical issues of adulthood as she gets older.

> it is despicable to leave the caretaking parent
> with nothing, but it happens. This is why it's
> dangerous for a woman (or the caretaking
> partner) to not have a career.

Christ, how did you get to be so cynical? Were your raised by wolves who spent the dawn hour scratching at each other's eyes?

If I were in that kind of marriage, one where I saw my wife scooting off to work every morning for all the conflicts and indignities and exhaustion that a career brings to a person simply because she was afraid that I might leave her, well...

I guess I'd hate marriage as much as you do. I've already HAD marriage fail, and am less cynical than you are.

Yes, I am totally dependent on my husband's income--but if something bad were to happen, well, there's insurance, family, or I could go back to work before I planned. Something would work out. After all, no one of us knows what's in store for us and yet we all generally muddle through one way or another, don't we?

If a pregnant 17-year-old had that plan for her future, people would be horrified.

The reality is that some of these stay-at-home parents are going to be widowed or divorced. Being out of the job market for a couple of years is enough to depress employment possibilities. I can't imagine what it would be like to be 45, having not worked in 20 years, trying to get a job that would not only cover one parent with kids, but would also provide health insurance for all of them.

I'm not saying it's fair, or right. It's just reality.

I agree with Old RPM, this girl is seven, and she's likely to change her mind many times about what she wants out of her life before she actually gets to the point of marrying and having kids.

That said, the real issue seems to be that she doesn't want to work at all, and that she thinks that one parent MUST stay home. Obviously, that isn't true.

My mom worked from when I was a baby until I was a sophomore in high school. For a lot of that, she a single parent, and working was necessary. My step-dad wanted her to continue being a working mom, and she decided on her own that wasn't what she wanted anymore. I'm the oldest of six, and the youngest two are my step-dad's biological children, so they were quite young when my mom stopped working. So I had a little experience with both. I knew that being a working mom was a possibility.

I just (very) recently left my job to be a stay-at-home mom. My son is 5 months old. I always knew that I wanted to stay home with children if I had them, and it was something I discussed with my husband before we got too serious. Before my son was born, I worked, and even some after he was born. Staying home isn't because I don't want to work, it is because I feel that being there for my children myself is the more important job. I do plan to go back to work once my kids are in school, if not doing work from home of some kind before that. (My husband is starting a business with his father, so there are possibilities, I'm sure, as LS said.)

Is there some quota that compels female magazine writers to put out autobiographical stories whining about their work / life dilemmas? I swear that I've read this same article a dozen times. They're all the same.

You'll notice that she doesn't consider that her daughter's preference may reflect how the girl sees her. Maybe she recognizes that she's being shuttled around and kept out of the house so that her mom can work. Maybe she'd like to be at home and not treated like a distraction.

A part of me wishes I could be there to pick my kids up after school

And she easily could. She's a writer, not an assembly line worker. It sounds like mommy is using her career as an excuse to evade her parental responsibilities.

"The reality is that some of these stay-at-home parents are going to be widowed or divorced. Being out of the job market for a couple of years is enough to depress employment possibilities."

Given the current job market, staying in it solely for that reason isn't necessarily a better plan. Depends on what one does, and also how it would effect the marriage and family.

That's something to consider too. The reality is that a lot of marriages fail because both spouses are working and have less time for each other. They're often stressed, cranky, and sometimes competitive careerwise. This can create a less-than-ideal home life.

I think it's smart for a SAHM to continue her education as Momof4 is doing, or keep her hand in business, as I did. Furthering your education and/or helping run a family business is still something for the resume.

But if the marriage is stable, and a wife has every reason to believe she's married to a decent guy who wouldn't leave her and/or the kids out in the cold (nor, usually, does the legal system), choosing to stay at home shouldn't be viewed as automatically foolish choice.

It gets down to whether you view marriage as a partnership, or just two people living side by side, looking out for their own interests. Some may view the former as stupid, but my guess is that those marriages stand a better chance at surviving than the latter.

At any rate, once kids are in the picture, it's hard to maintain an individual outlook. You've got to do what works best for the marriage and family, and sometimes that's for one spouse to let their career take a backseat for awhile.

"And she easily could. She's a writer, not an assembly line worker."

Good point. There are certain professions where it makes little difference. As a writer, there's no guarantee she'll be better off 5-10 years down the road just because she worked outside the home rather than in it. Maybe she'd be like Stephanie Meyer and write a series while the kids napped and become a bazillionaire!

But this is a very personal choice, and I object when people try to say it must be one way or another. Families are so diverse. It would be like saying, "It's best for every family to move to MI." Maybe that's best for your family but would be absurd for mine.

Some kids are emotionally needy and cling to mommy or daddy longer, while others, more independent, run off to daycare eager to interact with their friends and learn new things. Every couple has to look at their own children, financial situation, professions, long-term job prospects, and childcare options. I think an intelligent choice can be made either way.

Amy said: Women have always been working women -- until the latter part of the last century when the job of mother and homemaker got a whole lot easier.

Some will argue that it's still hard, but I wonder whether it's truly hard or whether it's just tedious.
________________________

Well, in the 1990s book "Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness," Suellen Hoy pointed out that as machines made things easier, the standard of cleanliness kept rising to the point where women born before the Depression kept the floors so clean you could eat of them every day. Naturally, as their baby-boomer daughters told Hoy: "(That was) ridiculous - we don't eat off floors." So since the 1960s, there's been a backlash, but not much if you care about impressing the neighbors.
_________________________

Amy said:

This little girl seems to be talking straight mommy track and that's very dangerous. A commenter above talks about going "back" to work. Well, you have to have worked and built yourself into somebody of value in the workplace or your job isn't going to pay you much. And you'd better have a job of value to begin with -- not be a gallery girl or some otherwise barely paid Mrs.-track job.
____________________

As others have pointed out, she's only 7 and likely to change her mind many times, so unless she starts using this as an excuse to do less than her best in school, there's no need to make a mountain out of a molehill. If she DOES start balking, THAT would be the time to ask "what would you do if you suddenly HAD to earn a lot of money and you weren't qualified?"

I always wanted to be a SAHM. But our income level will always require that we both work. And now with a 6 month old, I have a new respect for the SAHM. Because the New Baby Learning Curve was the steepest I've ever encountered. Once the kids are in school, I imagine a good deal of the pressure is off, but between 0-5, it's got to be absolute chaos. Especially if you have more than one. When I'm home with Baby on the weekends (and sometimes it's just the two of us, depending on Dad's work schedule), the house disintegrates, there's always some new "challenge" to overcome, and there's no such thing as a hot meal.

As for the death/departing of a spouse, I'm of mixed feelings. It all boils to having faith in your partner, and gambling on luck (as far as death). It's a gamble, but little in life isn't. And its scary. I'm not sure I could do it, to be honest. If hubby got a super-executive job and needed me to stay home, I'm not sure what I would do. But at the end of the day, you try to do what's best for your family, even if it means sacrifice on your part.

I think it interesting that a 7 year old's comments are alarming when she says she wants to be a mommy.

If she said she wanted to be a princess, a fighter pilot, an astronaut, a supermodel, a TV star, a ballerina or a trapeze star for the circus nobody would bat an eye.

She's 7. Being a mommy is not a terrible fate. Little girls play with dolls all the time. Chillax, people. This isn't worth getting worked up over.

When I was seven, I wanted to be Wonder Woman. But now I'm 34, and I don't own a single patriotic leotard OR an invisible jet.

"When I was seven, I wanted to be Wonder Woman. But now I'm 34, and I don't own a single patriotic leotard OR an invisible jet."

But you've got Morelli. And Ranger.

momof4 has it--if you're doing right, stay at home parenting is work. Not orderly, 9-to-5 work, either, but a 24 hour a day, never ending cycle of being on call at all times for literally years. High stakes, too: if you fuck it up too badly, we're talking a lifetime of repercussions that could affect generations of your family. Parenting is a serious job, as people ate always screaming about left and right on this board, and I'm surprised to see some of the same people who complain about underparented kids dismiss the importance of a mother's (or father's) role in the household. The fact is, you can't expect day care workers or babysitters to fill the shoes of a parent and get the same results. No one can do everything perfectly, and if I had to choose between sacrificing my ambitions or my child's well-being, there's just no contest. There'll always be a job somewhere; my kid will only get one childhood.

Financially speaking, our situation actually got better once I stopped working, because it allowed my husband the freedom to accept jobs in other states without having to consider if there would be work for me there. I plan to work again once the kid is on school, but for now I'm enjoying a different, unpaid form of employment.

Crid takes the thread win, by the way. Wolves indeed.

For some families, part of the advantage of having a stay-at-home spouse is that the SAH person is available to work in an emergency. I stayed home for a year after our daughter was born, but when my husband lost his job at the end of last year, I was re-employed by January. Lucky for us, we weren't dependent on having dual incomes. Given my experience over the last couple of years, I don't think I'll ever do the full-time house-mommy-thing again. If I had been home for several years, it probably would have been much harder to find employment, and we could've been f*cked financially.

> The reality is that some of these stay-at-home
> parents are going to be widowed or divorced.

THAT IS INSANE.

Using that as your premise, your foundation for a social institution –People are going to be weak!– guarantees failure.

Weakness is what these institutions are meant to address. WE ASK PEOPLE TO BE STRONG, and we don't excuse their failure before they try.

> Being a mommy is not a terrible fate.

'Zackly.

> When I was seven, I wanted to be Wonder Woman.

I wish you sisters would consider marriage from the male perspective.

this conversation is always a strange one, because the one thing that people always fail to think about is time.
Say you start having kids at 25 and finish at 30. That means at 45 or so the kids will no longer really need your services as much... a 5 year old needs a different skill mix than a 15 year old. So what does that get you? At 45 you are going to start working outside the home again. Granted that the longer you stretch this out, the more difficult it is. for some women, that's the point...
How do you plan for it? What things can you do?

The real question is do you PLAN on having kids, or not? If so, biologically it's better before 30... But we are constantly bombarded with the idea now that somehow that's too early. As if previous generations were somehow stupid for getting hitched when they were 21. If that was so, divorce rates would have gone down once we started putting this off until we were more mature, right?

Is that what happened?

All of this comes down to marrying well, because if you do so, you are able to function as a unit, and deciding who works and who doesn't when the kids are young, is an easier call. In the push for 'equality' what is often missed is that being human is ASYMMETRICAL. Girls and boys are made for different things. In trying to make them the same, what exactly are we seeking to do? This goes for working, for having and raising kids, and much else. The decisions we make for what work is done, and who does what have to take this into account. This is all a thought excercise in that light.

Practically speaking is another manner. The last thing my divorce lawyer told me, was if I ever get re-married, to never allow her to be a SAHM. If they are, they have leverage in family court, that regular working people don't.

The thing is, you don't plan for marriage failures, and all that misery. So when your spouse makes a convincing argument that she shouldn't work anymore, because there are worthwhile intangible benefits to her staying home, it's hard to refuse.

If you rightsize your life it can be done... the question is, for how long to you wish things in your marriage to stay that way.

We have circled back to time.

The 7 year old in question doesn't understand a lot of things, and her mother sure put a lot of very adult thinking around that. All the 7 year old knows is that her parents seem to be stressed out by work, and her mom doesn't seem to be around as much as she wants her to. Add to that that she has picked up on traditional marriage from stories or other relatives and such, and she is making the logical decision with what she knows. So instead of the mom freakout and navelgaze, she could realize that the kid will learn more as she grows up, and it's what she is taught, what she absorbs, that will dictate what she wishes to do. What's her mom gonna do if at 14 she suddenly decides that marriage is bunk, and wishes to join the peace corp and never get hitched or have kids at all. Kids often go from one extreme to another, but they grow up.

you realize then that your control over their growth is limited, there are some things you just can't MAKE them do.

Back in the 50s plenty of women went to college then got married, raised kids to teen years, then got back in the job market after updating their skills or certifications. Teachers and nurses did this all the time. Or, got married out of high school and went back to school later. Even some of the Boomers managed this.

That's not good enough now. Every woman is supposed to be Carly Fiorina, or a magazine editor.

now that's funny CRID. OTOH, spam filter ate my home work, so, eh :shrug:

Who knows, next week the 7yr old may want to run away and join the circus, or think she has antlers on her head. I think the momalady is projecting too much... that doesn't mean there aren't deeper issues at work.

LS wrote: It's more of a teamwork mentality that we've lost...

Yep. It doesn't matter if you're staying home to raise the kids, working at home, or working outside the home. As long as as each spouse is contributing equally. Momof4 provided a really good example by describing how she keeps the house running (meals, financials, paperwork, etc) while her husband brings home a paycheck and works long hours. Both are contributing equally to the team.

But I also totally get that, often, both parents have to work and it's not just because they're unwilling to sacrifice their ambitions.

If my boyfriend and I get married and have kids, I will always work. Not just because I like what I do, enjoy getting dressed up for work, and traveling for business -- although I would miss all those things terribly. But, if we had kids, we'd rely on my job for health insurance (the boyfriend is self-employed) and for the regularity of my paycheck (there are some months where the boyfriend makes no money). I figure the stability my job provides would outweigh any of the benefits of me staying home.

> women went to college then got married, raised
> kids to teen years, then got back in the job
> market

Or not. They say adoption and foster parenting are dicier nowadays because there aren't so many empty-nest mothers with few years of full-time experience to offer.

"When I was seven, I wanted to be Wonder Woman. But now I'm 34, and I don't own a single patriotic leotard OR an invisible jet"

Good thing too. Most men would leave their wives for even one of those items. Both would make our heads explode.

The problem is, if you go totally mommy track, you're totally dependent on another person to take care of you. What if that person dies or leaves you?

No disrespect to Karen (the first commenter), but I am SO! NOT! into "muddling through one way or another." I'm a predicter, a forecaster, a planner, and things almost always turn out exactly the way I expect them to. I even make a living doing those things now, I've gotten so good at it, and the secret to it is risk management.

"Muddling through" might be another person's way of "going off the cuff" or "freestyling" or "being creative." To me, it's another way of saying "shortsighted" or "irresponsible" or "recipe for disaster."

I have never wanted to be a mom. I don't want a noisy, annoying burden that I have to pay for. I don't want to be a working mom or a stay-at-home mom. They both sound equally dreadful, just for different reasons. A friend once asked me why I got my tubes tied at the age of 34, and I said truthfully that it's because I couldn't find anyone to do it at the age of 24. The root - the absolute root of this - is the loss of independence and self-reliance that Amy mentions above.

Amy: It is despicable to leave the caretaking parent with nothing, but it happens. This is why it's dangerous for a woman (or the caretaking partner) to not have a career.

Crid: Christ, how did you get to be so cynical? Were your raised by wolves who spent the dawn hour scratching at each other's eyes?

-------

Cynical? The sky is blue, Crid. Wanting it to be pink, but accepting that it is blue, does not make a person cynical. Amy is spot on. You have to look out for yourself and not expect others to do it for you. Self-reliance is a hallmark of adulthood and as I've indicated in my previous post, I'm not a gambler. And I don't have anything against gamblers - the world is big enough for people with a lot bigger risk tolerance than I have - but I still want to smack them silly when they roll the dice, lose their shirts, and then demand my compassion.

This not the stuff of wolves scratching each other's eyes out, but I'll give you a for-instance. This was back in the early 90s - my summer job was doing data entry for a small, family-owned business. There were 12-15 of us working there at any given time. All were women. About 10 were divorced single moms, and my god I have NEVER seen people struggle and worry about money the way those women did. In all cases, they had grown up expecting to be stay-at-home moms and that their men would take care of them and their children. And they were all LEFT BY these men. With no lucrative job skills and a long, daunting task of fighting with the court system to try and get the child support they were owed. With just a couple of exceptions, and not including the ones who were happily single or happily married, they were one bunch of hard-bitten, bitter broads. I didn't want that to happen to me.

You pretend it doesn't happen, or call it cynical to admit that it does. Won't change my mind one bit.

"And she easily could. She's a writer, not an assembly line worker."

Good point. There are certain professions where it makes little difference. As a writer, there's no guarantee she'll be better off 5-10 years down the road just because she worked outside the home rather than in it. Maybe she'd be like Stephanie Meyer and write a vampire series while the kids napped and become a bazillionaire.

But this is a very personal choice, and I object when people try to say it must be one way or another. Families are so diverse. It would be like saying, "It's best for every family to move to MI." Maybe that's best for your family but would be absurd for mine.

Some kids are emotionally needy and cling to mommy or daddy, while others run off to daycare eager to interact with their friends and learn. Every couple has to look at their own children, financial situation, professions, long-term job prospects, and childcare options. I think an intelligent choice can be made either way.

"The root - the absolute root of this - is the loss of independence and self-reliance that Amy mentions above."

I don't see that as being a common result, especially with our legal system, which does strive to keep SAHMs and children in the marital home at roughly the same standard of living. This is complained about quite frequently by the guys here, but the courts protect wives from being viewed as second glass citizens just because they stay at home with the children.

The courts view it as a partnership, regardless of who is working outside the home, not as a dependency. And the truth is many women benefit financially from that.

It depends on how successful the husband is. In many situations, it would be silly for the wife to leave the children in daycare while she works at a much less lucrative job than her husband has. Why? Just to say she made a paycheck?

If they own a home and assets together, she already has half. Increasing his productivity and earning potential by managing the home and caring for the children only allows them BOTH to earn more in the long run. Perhaps substantially more than she could on her own.

If she's married to a jerk who makes her feel dependent and reliant just because he holds the paycheck, then that's a problem with her choice of spouse not the choice to stay home.

I agree, LS, but these court protections are fairly recent. The women I worked with back from 88-92 certainly did not benefit from them. It seemed their exes could come up with all kinds of ways to avoid paying child support - moving out of state, quitting a job, you name it.

Of course a huge problem is that many people lack judgment and do not choose well when they marry. Many were not taught to use good judgment as they were growing up and only learn it through painful trial and error as adults, if ever.

How well do you trust your partner? How well do you trust your own judgment? How much do you expect past performance to be a reliable predictor of future performance? For me, I could answer "A Lot" to all three questions and there would still be risks I would never take. Being at the financial mercy of another person is one of them.

I agree, Pirate Jo, but I think it depends on how much one would be at the financial mercy of the other. Many guys here would argue that they are the ones at the financial mercy of a stay-at-home spouse - provided they make a decent living. She can up and leave, take the house, half the assets, and kids.

You're right that this wasn't always the case, so I'm just making the point that these days, for some women, staying home may actually increase their financial security. These women aren't necessarily dumb or dependent for staying home. Many are making a smart cost/benefit analysis, including what's best for their children.

> You have to look out for yourself and not expect
> others to do it for you.

No one should be stupid.

The position I object to, the one smugly and repeatedly described here as "reality", is: I am no judge of character and could never be a judge of character, so know one should ask that of me. I nonetheless deserve the right to start a family and rope in innocent children and exploit the adjudications of society, etc...

This has GOT to be about resentments of children of divorce.

I see what you mean, LS. I think your scenario probably plays out more for higher-earning families, while the women I worked with hadn't been married to high-earning men.

Crid, what do you think of Balko's story about the family courts? Do you think they should be open to the public?

P.S. - All those women I worked with at my data entry job? The angry, bitter, struggling-with-money, fighting-for-child-support single moms? They all said they wish they'd just had kids and skipped the marriage part. That made no sense to me. Yes, yes, I know you love your kids and hate your ex. But if you'd just had kids and skipped the marriage part, wouldn't you be ... right where you are now? Broke, and trying to raise kids by yourself? I didn't get it.

> They all said they wish they'd just had kids
> and skipped the marriage part

That makes them monsters.

> That made no sense to me.

That makes me love you.

stuff, more later

Why is she worried about the "choices made" by a seven year old who has decided she will be a stay at home mom? I hardly think the decisions she makes at seven are carved in stone until the day she marries.

And let's be real here. I realize that she works from home, but unless she's sending the kids to daycare or hiring a baby-sitter, she's a stay at home mom...even if she's only paying enough attention to keep the kids from burning the house down.

In all of this, from what the mom said to the 7yr old, all the way through the basic issue is marrying well. Not well as in monetarily but well as in finding a good person, and really looking at them for that.

I didn't do it. I thought things would work out, but it simply got worse.

What the mom could teach the 7yr old is that. It doesn't matter if 7 changes her mind about marriage or kids or anything, giving the basis is important.

I talked to #1son about this, and he caught me in the trap. I told him you have to be very careful and marry well, and he said: "so you are saying when you married mom, that you didn't marry well."
'well, it certainly didn't work out...'

It was a very lame comeback, but I think he really gets it. In a way I never did, even though my own mom is divorced.

I always figured it was 'bad luck' or something that my mom's marriage didn't work out, I didn't think of it as a matter of 'bad choice'.
We tend to gloss things over to avoid hurting or even thinking badly of people... so I didn't learn from the mistake.
Trying to make sure my kids do is hard, because both of their reactions is to simply say they will never get married and have kids. To which I say you may or may not, but do it for the right reasons.

IF you marry well, then you can be the team, and IF you are a team you can make decisions about who wroks most or least and should one stay home and so forth. Maybe even if the position of the toilet seat is only one person's problem.

If you aren't a team, then who works or doesn't is the least of your problems, IMHO. This has certainly been my experience, even though everyone hates anecdotes.

As an aside? Remember ladies, if you want your husband to be more like a woman, maybe you should marry a woman...
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/29/living/why-we-get-mad-at-our-husbands-p/index.html?hpt=hp_bn8

though, I think several of my friends who married other women would not necessarily agree... just because your partner thinks "like" you doesn't make them think exactly the same as you.

One of the worst things about women is the NEED to have children now, fuck everything else.

This savage need to nurture.

I wonder what the mother would have written if the daughter said she wanted to marry her daddy.

I worked until my youngest was 1, then did the SAHM. Our reasons were economic. We live in an area where good child care is extremely costly, and we figured out that my work (counting money for commuting, clothing, etc.) was costing us money.
I knew I wouldn't be able to jump back into the job market, so I went back to school at night to get a nursing degree. Why nursing? You can find part time work quite easily and no matter where you go, there are jobs. I was making over 80k a year before as a communications professional. Don't make even close to that now. But I do know I would be able to support my family if something happened to my husband.
My point is this- it doesn't have to always be an either/or. There are careers that will allow you to work and be with your kids. Are these the greatest jobs ever? No. Most of them, in fact, suck. I work shifts from 6pm to 6am. A friend of mine works from 11 pm to 6am processing credit card payments. So yes, you can have a job and be there for your kids. It may mean going on 3 hours of sleep, but we choose to do this. May not be for everyone, but I feel we are giving our kids the best life we can.

In all of this, from what the mom said to the 7yr old, all the way through the basic issue is marrying well. Not well as in monetarily but well as in finding a good person, and really looking at them for that.

I didn't do it. I thought things would work out, but it simply got worse.

What the mom could teach the 7yr old is that. It doesn't matter if 7 changes her mind about marriage or kids or anything, giving the basis is important.

I talked to #1son about this, and he caught me in the trap. I told him you have to be very careful and marry well, and he said: "so you are saying when you married mom, that you didn't marry well."
'well, it certainly didn't work out...'

It was a very lame comeback, but I think he really gets it. In a way I never did, even though my own mom is divorced.

I always figured it was 'bad luck' or something that my mom's marriage didn't work out, I didn't think of it as a matter of 'bad choice'.
We tend to gloss things over to avoid hurting or even thinking badly of people... so I didn't learn from the mistake.
Trying to make sure my kids do is hard, because both of their reactions is to simply say they will never get married and have kids. To which I say you may or may not, but do it for the right reasons.

IF you marry well, then you can be the team, and IF you are a team you can make decisions about who wroks most or least and should one stay home and so forth. Maybe even if the position of the toilet seat is only one person's problem.

If you aren't a team, then who works or doesn't is the least of your problems, IMHO. This has certainly been my experience, even though everyone hates anecdotes.

As an aside? Remember ladies, if you want your husband to be more like a woman, maybe you should marry a woman...
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/29/living/why-we-get-mad-at-our-husbands-p/index.html?hpt=hp_bn8

though, I think several of my friends who married other women would not necessarily agree... just because your partner thinks "like" you doesn't make them think exactly the same as you.

In all of this, from what the mom said to the 7yr old, all the way through the basic issue is marrying well. Not well as in monetarily but well as in finding a good person, and really looking at them for that.

I didn't do it. I thought things would work out, but it simply got worse.

What the mom could teach the 7yr old is that. It doesn't matter if 7 changes her mind about marriage or kids or anything, giving the basis is important.

I talked to #1son about this, and he caught me in the trap. I told him you have to be very careful and marry well, and he said: "so you are saying when you married mom, that you didn't marry well."
'well, it certainly didn't work out...'

It was a very lame comeback, but I think he really gets it. In a way I never did, even though my own mom is divorced.

I always figured it was 'bad luck' or something that my mom's marriage didn't work out, I didn't think of it as a matter of 'bad choice'.
We tend to gloss things over to avoid hurting or even thinking badly of people... so I didn't learn from the mistake.
Trying to make sure my kids do is hard, because both of their reactions is to simply say they will never get married and have kids. To which I say you may or may not, but do it for the right reasons.

IF you marry well, then you can be the team, and IF you are a team you can make decisions about who wroks most or least and should one stay home and so forth. Maybe even if the position of the toilet seat is only one person's problem.

If you aren't a team, then who works or doesn't is the least of your problems, IMHO. This has certainly been my experience, even though everyone hates anecdotes.

As an aside? Remember ladies, if you want your husband to be more like a woman, maybe you should marry a woman...
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/29/living/why-we-get-mad-at-our-husbands-p/index.html?hpt=hp_bn8

though, I think several of my friends who married other women would not necessarily agree... just because your partner thinks "like" you doesn't make them think exactly the same as you.

Tomorrow, this little girl will decide she never wants kids or a husband and would rather travel the world with her pet iguana.

I'm not surprised if it's true that couples with one spouse at home make more. Having one person at home means the working spouse doesn't have to leave early to pick up a kid from school, go in late because he/she is waiting for the plumber, or take unexpected days off when the kid is sick and can't go to daycare.

> The reality is that some of these stay-at-home
> parents are going to be widowed or divorced.

THAT IS INSANE.

Using that as your premise, your foundation for a social institution –People are going to be weak!– guarantees failure.

Weakness is what these institutions are meant to address. WE ASK PEOPLE TO BE STRONG, and we don't excuse their failure before they try.

Posted by: Crid
__________________________

Um, it's not just "weakness" that's a problem. (Though I would certainly say that in addition to those divorces where there's some advance warning and you have time to figure out how to get a job again, there's also the problem of those cases where the husband suddenly packs up and leaves, with NO warning.)

What I mean is, in addition to death and divorce, there's the possibility of "cancer, accidents, mental illness, and layoffs." (That's from a one-star - but well-written - review of Dr. Laura's book: "In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms." Not surprisingly, DL refuses to acknowledge that elephant in the living room. So does slick fundie Dr. James Dobson - all he does is complain about those who push women to keep their paying jobs and keep up their marketable skills.) Anyway, those factors are not about "weakness"! Ask anyone who's a quadriplegic due to a drunk driver.
____________________________

Girls and boys are made for different things. In trying to make them the same, what exactly are we seeking to do?

Posted by: SwissArmyD
____________________________

Seeking to make them strong, flexible and competent enough to care for a family AND spouse should the drunk driver strike?

Of course we shouldn't try to "make them the same," but too many people confuse "vive la difference" with discouraging kids from developing their talents, passions - and most importantly, from developing the abilities to take care of their own needs, no matter how hard, boring or menial those types of work might be.
________________________________

"Muddling through" might be another person's way of "going off the cuff" or "freestyling" or "being creative." To me, it's another way of saying "shortsighted" or "irresponsible" or "recipe for disaster."

Cynical? The sky is blue, Crid. Wanting it to be pink, but accepting that it is blue, does not make a person cynical. Amy is spot on. You have to look out for yourself and not expect others to do it for you.

Posted by: Pirate Jo at November 29, 2011 11:27 AM
________________________

Reminds me of some religious - maybe Catholic - guide I found for parents. It was probably written before 1990. Can't remember exactly what it said, but the gist was that mothers who consider working for pay to protect themselves in the event of death, divorce or accidents are succumbing to social stereotypes and stereotypical thinking. HUH?
________________________

It depends on how successful the husband is. In many situations, it would be silly for the wife to leave the children in daycare while she works at a much less lucrative job than her husband has. Why? Just to say she made a paycheck?

Posted by: LS at November 29, 2011 11:58 AM
_________________________

Um, no. To keep up her marketable skills. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, IIRC, had a lot of trouble getting back in, despite being "armed to the teeth" with academic degrees. That inspired her to write the 1992 book "When the Bough Breaks."
_________________________

I wonder what the mother would have written if the daughter said she wanted to marry her daddy.

Posted by: LauraGr at November 29, 2011 1:47 PM
____________________________

Aren't ALL little kids supposed to want to marry one of their parents at some point? (According to Dr. Spock, it's quite common, anyway.)

Can we posit here that divorce in America tends to reward the more irresponsible or conniving party, whichever spouse it happens to be? Yes, I have known women whose husbands skipped off and left them with child and penniless. As PJ describes, my wife works in a field where they tend to hire a lot of single mothers, so I see it.

I have also known men who got taken to the cleaners by their cheating wives. In fact, I know a lady who did this trick three times, all with high-earning men. She lived a glamorous, care- and responsibility-free life. (Until the day she jumped off a cliff... some things just never work out the way you think they should.)

Yes, this aspect of the divorce system needs to be fixed. However... I was reading something today in an NRC document about the difference between good decisions and correct decisions. A good decision is one based on the best data available at the time. A correct decision is one that turns out to have been the right thing to do. Good decisions are usually correct decisions, but the correlation is less than 1 -- sometimes good decisions do not work out because of the occurrence of low-probability events. And sometimes correct decisions are just lucky.

Of course, you can only know if a decision was correct in hindsight. So the only thing you can do in decision-making is make good decisions. There are things you can do, such as insurance, to mitigate remaining risk, but you can never drive it all the way to zero. At some point, in order to get the things you want, you have to jump in (after taking reasonable precautions) and keep your fingers crossed. This goes for relationships too.

All of parenting is muddling through, piratejo. It's great when people realize it's not for them, before becoming one. There is no risk analysis or planning with a little human being. I would describe Dh and I as having muddled through (and flown by the seat of our pants and our passions) the entire 8.5 years we've been together. In which time he's tripled his income, and more than done so to his future prospects. Muddling works for a lot of people, we aren't all planners. Intuition isn't to be tossed aside lightly. The important thing is to know what sort of person you are and what you can and can not do. I can keep my kids okay, with hubby or with dead or gone hubby, nursing degree or no. Okay may not be in this house, and it may not mean Disney trips for christmas, but it will be loved and fed and secure.

My 7 year old girl has wanted to be 1) a fighter pilot (daddy was airforce) 2) married to Tony Romo 3) a scientist 4) a poet 5) a writer 6) a dancer 7) an animal researcher 8) a fisherman 9) a mermaid and that's just what I can recall the last yearish. This mom did what she does, wrote about something inconsequential but got a paycheck out of it. Go her.

Some will argue [being a stay at home mom] still hard, but I wonder whether it's truly hard or whether it's just tedious.

As if working in the economy is neither hard, nor tedious, for almost everyone. In rolling the occupational dice, a SAHM is far more likely than anyone else to be the ruler of her environment. She makes the decisions everyone else hops to, can accomplish all the essential tasks with scads of time left over, and has a fundamentally fulfilling job.

One of the most toxic notions of our cushy civilization is that women somehow don't have to set priorities. Yes, you can be a wonderful mom! And a CEO!

Bollocks.

You can either have a career, or you can be the best mom you can be. Can't do both. As it happens, most women find it much more fulfilling to be the latter than do the former. (My wife was a SAHM until the kids were in High School. I can't count the number of times at parties that other women were clearly envious when they found out.)

From SwissArmyD's link:

We're mad that these guys, who can manage businesses or keep track of thousands of pieces of sports trivia, can be clueless when it comes to what our kids are eating and what supplies they need for school. And more than anything else, we're mad that they get more time to themselves than we do.

Well, of course.

Until the author gives the game away two paras later: We married smart men who can fix cars and garbage disposals, men who empty mousetraps without getting the heebie-jeebies …

See the problem here?

Women expect men to do an equal share of "women's" work, while not having the slightest clue, or desire, to shoulder any part of "men's" work ever.

It is antagonizing to say, but still true: There is only one thing that women can do that men can't. Often not as well, but men can still do them all. In contrast, there is no end of things that women cannot / will not do. (Interestingly, those surveys of who does what around the house always exclude "men's" work.)

(Apologies if this is a duplicate; the previous got kicked into spamland.)

@Flynne
I left my ex because he had NO ambition WHATSOEVER, and I get a measly $69 a week child support for 2 kids

Why are you getting child support for leaving your ex? Besides, when did lack of ambition become a reasonable ground for leaving the spouse and getting child support from that spouse(who is even disabled in your case)? In that case, most men should be leaving their wives, and they should get the kids and the child support. Is that what you want to happen?

As for your friend, I will wait till her ex husband gives his side of the story before I pass judgement.....Every coin has two sides. Plus maybe your friend was not ambitious enough for her ex -if he is so talented as to pay minimum child support(what is your definition of a pittance - a million a year?). Which means, by your own yardstick, he had every right to leave her. And in this case, to be fair, he should get the kids as well and the pittance of a child support.

@momof4

Radrasheesh, you are an imbecile. I am not a fan of divorce when kids are present-Amy and I agree in that one area-but to say women are better off is absurd. If that were true, you would see divorced men living in poverty while the exwife and kids were well off, and the reverse is actually true.

If that is the case, how come women who divorce remarry many times over while the men who go through divorce rarely remarry? How come men who go through divorce commit suicide while women rarely do? And how come more than 80% of divorces are initiated by the woman and men try to avoid it as much as possible?

Somehow, your claims and the ground realities are so contradictory to each other. You can even look up videos and posts on pajamasmedia which corroborate my claims and contradict yours.

Ultimately, I wonder why women have to have the right to want to not work. In this age of equality,if women should have that choice, then men should also have the same choice.
Maybe the unpc portion of media can have a counter article like "What If Our Sons Don't Want To Work?" (Just like the counter article to the crappy, misandric, bullshitty kay hymowitz article on the WSJ)

Yes, you can be a wonderful mom! And a CEO!

Arghh... I am involved in a 10-person project, and one of the team members is a mom working 40%. God forbid one should ask her to do anything outside of her 9-5 on the two days she works. If you do, you are obviously anti-family, her little sweetums just needs his mommy, and you just don't understand... Never mind that most of the rest of us also have kids, the world (and the entire project team) clearly must organize itself to her wishes.

> Do you think they should be open to the public?

Yes, I suppose they should. Family courts are a shitbath, and people oughta know... I'd prefer that the public have its nose rubbed in it. If people are going to pretend that divorce should and does mean nothing to a child, then we needn't be precious about privacy. What do you say?

> This savage need to nurture.

Man, I wish you were twenty years older.

> there's the possibility of "cancer, accidents,
> mental illness, and layoffs."

Yes. If you don't like it, don't get out of bed in the morning. I hate comments like this because it's so OBVIOUS, or should be so obvious, that not every human being can be made happy through policy.

Fools want to believe that we can. The most coddled people in the world demand more coddling. Comments like yours suggest that every human standard, trivial and profound, should be dropped to the lowest common denominator... As if this could increase human happiness. This is horribly mistaken. Here are some fundamental truths. Children of 10 should understand them in some sort of verbal way:

• YOU ARE AT RISK. You will always be at risk. As Wolfe put it in The Right Stuff, "It can blow at any seam." Every person's life can turn to shit (or silence) with no warning and no recourse. You are an animal form.

• YOU WILL HAVE TO STRUGGLE. All decent people struggle to make things go better. The very few people in your life who have an easier row to hoe are not growing as you are when you struggle, but this only becomes obvious over time.

• ONE THE BEST THINGS ANYONE CAN DO FOR YOU IS ASK YOU TO BE STRONG. There are times to be soothed, but not very many. The world WON'T go better when it's made to work so that you don't have to think about it or be grateful.

There are probably other fundamental truths. I'll have to get back to on this. Meantime, don't be a ninny. Grrr.

> Cynical? The sky is blue

I fucking hate that kind of rhetoric. Fucking hate it.

Y'know, it's just not true that no one can see what a partner wants out of life. Marriages fail, but others succeed. And get this: When you look at it dispassionately –without your own needs in mind, and without a need to flatter your own circumstance– you'll see that the best people often have the best marriages. They're often most thoughtfully attuned to the feelings of others, most disciplined in their adherence to principle, and best equipped with a warm heart to compare with others.

Listen, you don't wanna get married, DON'T. I'm cool with it! (I've been blessedly single for 20 years, and am looking forward to a quiet ride home.) But don't pretend that love done you wrong just because marriage didn't fall easily into place. Don't assume that the problem is with the standards of other people, or of society viewed whole. Saying that marriage is the best solution to the problem doesn't mean life will be all berries and cream.

Good people marry well all the time. We have evidence that it isn't easy for them, either.

@Crid - This word, "expect" - can mean a couple of things.

I "expect" people to be strong, make good choices, manage their own risks, work hard, do what's best for their kids, think about someone other than themselves for a change. Because they COULD. I share your view on this.

On the other hand, do I "expect" people to do these things in terms of, if I was going to build a math model and come up with a percentage of people who I predict will actually do this, what would it be? Probably less than half.

Rad, show me numbers on the "men rarely remarry" if you want to talk about why that might be true. Otherwise, I'll assume you made that up to bolster your weak argument.

"You can either have a career, or you can be the best mom you can be. Can't do both. As it happens, most women find it much more fulfilling to be the latter than do the former."

Depends on one's definition of "best mom". Ultimately, the kids get to decide this, not the parent. It's been my observation that almost any child who felt well loved, fed, and secure bestows that title on their parent, regardless of whether they had a career or not.

It's become the norm for moms to feel that being "best" means hovering over their children constantly, but that isn't always how the kids see it once they get a vote.

In fact, I think many kids today will look back and say they wish they'd been given more freedom and self-sufficiency. I know some moms who even have tracking devices on their teen's cars, which they monitor via computer, and involve themselves in every squabble or occurence at school that doesn't go their child's way. One mom I know prayed on her son's school locker every morning until he finished high school ("dear Lord, bless little Johnny's day...")

Frankly, it might be best if some of those moms had jobs to go to.

There's a blog run by a woman who claims that the divorce courts favor men and that abusive men are easily able to get custody of a woman's children so it's better for a woman to maybe hit a sperm bank and be a single mother with no identifiable father.

Her blog, to say the least, doesn't see much traffic. It's an insane claim.

While there are anecdotes about women being shafted by a rich husband in a divorce and living in poverty, most women know better and even joke about taking away a man's house and making him into a slave to her if he gets "uppity."

All that said, it is "difficult" to be a SAH spouse and risky, but being a wageearner is less fun. Why? Most women would prefer for the man to support them. If driving taxis was as fun as staying home with the kids, women would be doing more taxi driving. Watch what people DO and not what they CLAIM.

As someone pointed out above, magazines are full of upper class women griping about the horrors of life choices. Welcome to the world of men.

momof4, plenty of divorced men remarry or at least have relationships. As a married man, I know why: We understand women better and know how to talk to them. Single men don't know how to deal with women day-in/day-out as well.

That said, divorced men, especially fathers, have a lot of baggage. The divorced executive above who is merely paying "child" support to the mother can afford to support his new wife/gf and her two kids in luxury. The rest of such men pay child-support out of their PRE-tax income assessed on their gross income. If they remarry, their assessment is raised and child-support increases. In addition, the unwed mother above the executive found would lose a significant "head of household" tax break by marrying.

Regarding the claim of the stereotypical poor former housewife of an executive (played by Bette Midler in "The First Wives Club"). Why didn't she just offer the father custody and let him deal with the expenses if "child" support was so inadequate? Then she could go to school like so many men who have been laid off and move on with her life... If men acted the way these women did, they'd be called whiners.

Ultimately, I wonder why women have to have the right to want to not work. In this age of equality,if women should have that choice, then men should also have the same choice.
Posted by: Redrajesh at November 29, 2011 10:40 PM
_______________________

Um, explain?

We ALL have the right to WANT whatever we want, even if it's to be a serial killer.

However, no woman is legally entitled to be a housewife (as opposed to a paid housekeeper) if she can't find someone who's willing to marry her AND support her as a housewife. (She may not find anyone who wants to marry her at all.)

And, last I heard, househusbands are slowly becoming more socially acceptable - it started as early as the 1970s. Not that most women are willing to be the sole breadwinners, of course.

Finally, I have every sympathy for men who insist on marrying only those women who have and KEEP their good jobs and pay half the bills. As I hinted upthread, women who stay out of the paid work force for more than a year are not going to be too welcome when they come back.

I'm one of those women whose husbands packed up and left with no warning. Yes, no warning. He was always a Droopy Dog type, so there was nothing to "read."

I had worked on and off during the marriage, part-time "mom" type jobs even though we had no kids and did all the cooking and the lion's share of the housework. He, meanwhile, didn't do much of the "man" stuff (taking out the garbage and mowing the lawn were really all he had to do since he was financially supporting me), instead, he crapped up the lawn with multiple junker cars.

When he left I had to scramble for the first horrible full time job I could find (college town, so most jobs were part time, min wage), and have been paying for my housewifey life ever since. I've had a full time job since the divorce and will never be financially dependent on a man again.

And no, I wasn't getting my hair and nails done weekly or running up his credit cards. I was the frugal one in the relationship--I'm even more frugal now.

You already said it, but I'm posting this anyway.

From the letters to Ms. Magazine, Oct. 1987 (in response to the complaint that feminism doesn't support the role of the housewife enough):

"Six months ago I too was a self-described 'happy homemaker'; I baked bread, grew roses, played with my toddler. Then I woke one morning and found my husband (and our car, our stereo, our checkbook, etc.) gone. I was COMPLETELY surprised; I had assumed he was as happy as I was!

"I had to immediately find a job (which pays a third what his does); arrange for day care: try to scrape together enough money for food, mortgage, and utilities.

"Housewife is NOT a valid career option because you have no control over your own life. If you lose your husband you can't go down to the employment agency and apply for a new one!"

Sounds like she needed a lawyer, or just decided to let her ex walk away, if she's having to scrape up money to pay for the food, mortgage and utilities to support the toddler all by herself with an ex that makes a lot more.

Some people are just stupid or martyrs. Some choose terrible spouses, while others choose stupid professions and/or make stupid business decisions. I've known so many people who lost their shirt in business, but it wasn't the problem that they went into business; it was that they went into business stupidly.

There are housewives and SAHMs like Momof4 who are doing it wisely. And I'll bet that if she woke up one day and found her husband, car, and stereo gone, she'd track him down and make him pay for the 4 kids he helped make...and get the car and stereo back.

This ties neatly into another recent discussion about women refusing to ask men out and/or pay their way. Amy simply said it's risky to ask men out so why bother?

So for women waiting for a good looking rich guy to pay for everything AND getting a high paying job as "mad money", good for them. When it works out. For someone who refuses to go to work because it's too "risky" to commute and instead buys lottery tickets, good for them too if it works out.

Quite simply, life is RISKY. Always. Until you're dead.

The ONE risk that feminism hasn't addressed in it's goodies grab smorgasbord and damsel-in-distress victimhood: Winding up alone and/or childless. When a girl, or boy for that matter, is 7, ANYONE can be president or an astronaut. Then Reality sets in about by the age of 18 or so and people need to Grow Up. For us men, we're a little lucky in that we get the full firehose drink at 18 or so or even younger. We learn to either deal with women as they are and accept we're still living in the 1950's and either swim or sink. It's not a pleasant experience. But at least we get some time to deal with it, for good or ill. For women who got the "it's all about choices and what you want to do girl" lecture at 7, being 35 and single and childless and waiting around for a rich good looking guy to ride up and want a kid in the next year is probably not looking so good...

> On the other hand, do I "expect" people to […]

This isn't a complication. "Expect" isn't a difficult word. Yeah, people are weak, lazy, dim, and narcissistic, especially when no one has asked more of them, or told them that there are consequences for sluggishness. Turpitude is default human condition.

But those consequence aren't something the rest of society is doing to you. They are what society fears from you... They're what we know you can bring to the table on the day you're born.

I just can't imagine what some of you have in mind for the human process. You would approach every preschool class to explain that some people NEVER learn all 26 letters. You'd coach squadrons of high school athletes to understand that the vast majority don't concentrate on sports, or see any reason to make sacrifices in diet and practice...

And you would tell young couples preparing to build families that they're probably going to fuck it up; that the feelings of devotion and aspirations of support they stir in each other are illusions ("The sky is BLUE!"), and that no one believes they can do well or cares if they don't.

"It's just reality", says Kevin.

Well, it is when you're done with people, right?

"If that is the case, how come women who divorce remarry many times over while the men who go through divorce rarely remarry? How come men who go through divorce commit suicide while women rarely do? And how come more than 80% of divorces are initiated by the woman and men try to avoid it as much as possible?" - Redrajesh

so we got stats that are good and bad, and mostly hard to figure out... both for Redrajesh and momof4.

Men remarry at slightly higher rates than women 50pct to 45pct within 5 years per the US census. Though that number is kinda old, and it has been falling for both groups at roughly the same rate for decades. Search remarriage on the wwwDOTcensusDOTgov site since the spam filter is being a pain right now.

OTOH, men are offing themselves at higher rates after the divorce, google for that.

The divorce rate initiation seems to be broadly between thwo thirds and 75pct, depending on who you talk to. At both the CDC and the Census, the numbers are old, and it looks like the CDC is no longer keeping track since the 90's... but they are talking a 70pct range back then in female initiation of divorce. The caveat on that is that many professionals believe that the number is higher based on the number of women who force the guy to leave based on their actions, but he files the divorce so the stat is obscured. Since that is hearsay, and can't really be proven, I think we should just stick with the 70pct. number, since it is quite high anyway.

As an aside, the anecdotes that people know about marriage and divorce are quite powerful, and we base much of our belief on what the group of people we know does, and then extrapolate. This is dangerous. There is a lot of self selection involved, so you tend to get anecdotes that reflect that selection. Divorced people seem to be seen as a threat, and fall out of friend circles of marrieds, because of that... it skews your POV.

Thanks for the stats, Swiss.

I think men hate the paperwork, lawyers, and all the minute crap involved in divorce. Even when they want one, guys are reluctant to be the first to file. They'll procrastinate, seeing no incentive to get it done unless there's someone else they want to marry, so this skews the stats.

Also, divorce lawyers who represent wives are usually the aggressors. This is actually kind of a specialty of law. My divorce atty probably reps wives 90% of the time - there's more money in it. So, a divorce atty for a husband may counsel that he wait, get his assets in order, maybe try to reconcile because he stands to lose half of everything he owns, but the dirorce atty for a wife is going to say, "We've got to file now before he hides assets...freeze the bank accounts," etc. This explains a lot of the reason women file more often than men, but it doesn't prove anything as far as why the marriage failed.

The ONE risk that feminism hasn't addressed in it's goodies grab smorgasbord and damsel-in-distress victimhood: Winding up alone and/or childless.

Just imagine how awful it must be for an attractive, sensible woman of independent means to have a nice place all to herself and a boyfriend who only stays over on weekends.

Crid,

Some people never learn all 26 letters.
Most people don't concentrate on sports, or see any reason to make sacrifices in diet.
Most young people preparing to build families are probably going to fuck it up.

No, it doesn't have to be that way.

But it is.

As George Carlin says, "I'm divorced from it now." As you put it, pretty much done with people. You may still have hope, but I don't.

I know that I've been severely reprimanded on this forum for saying this before, but since I'm no good at learning from experience I'll repeat myself... so much is up to fate/deity/chance/whatever you want to call that external factor you have nothing to do with.

You could focus on your career and end up like a friend of mine who's having trouble getting pregnant, and who, in spite of her attempts to get ahead, never really did land her dream job. So now she has neither a job she loves NOR a family.

You could focus on your career and get ahead and then find you're too old to get pregnant.

You could focus on your career, get ahead, get pregnant, and find you're overwhelmed and that no, you can't do it all.

You could focus on your career, get ahead, have a family, and find the perfect balance between work and home, and live happily ever after.

You could focus on your family, not have a career, lose your husband to death/divorce and end up in poverty... or make a killing in insurance/alimony.

You could focus on your family, keep it intact, and always feel like you're missing something, like you SHOULD have been doing something else, but by the time your kids are older and you go back to work you've missed the boat.

... or you could live happily ever after.

There are so many ways life can go, so many things that can happen. Do what makes sense to you, and go with the flow.

Sometimes things seem bad but they end up being good...

For example, I was a terrible student in college. Horrible. Terrible. Didn't study. Slacked off. My grades were awful. So a few years later I applied to grad school and didn't get in. I took some classes, but I didn't get my grades (As) until after the application deadline. So I decided to go to my fall back school.

A week into classes I got into a horrible moped accident and busted up my knee... I recovered, but was told I could never do things like jogging again. I had to withdraw from my classes and go to physical therapy instead. Sucks, right?

Wrong! I knew that fate had spun her wheel and I was destined to go to my dream school after all. I reapplied, and included my recent grades (which were from classes at the extension school of my dream school), and some plays I'd written, and I got in.

So you never know. You just don't. There's no sure path to happiness. There's no sure path to despair. Things work themselves out the way they do. Just go through life, and try not to be a jerk, and you'll be fine.

> But it is.

Good Fucking Luck out there.

No tears, though, M'kay? Don't come cryin'. Your weakness is not my problem... You, perhaps like LS, love wallowing in filth more than you could love any solution, not matter how readily available to you.

Well, I learned all 26 letters, pay attention to my diet, exercise, and stayed single and childfree because I wanted it that way.

I'm taking care of my own life just fine and not screwing up anyone else's.

The solution to the problem starts with the people who are part of it. If someone else is determined to screw up their own life and the lives of their kids, that is their choice. I can't exactly tie them to a tree.

I'M not the one cryin'.

What are attacking me for, Crid? I was actually on your side in this debate, and I'm certainly not an occupier.

I think you're terribly cynical, Jo. Yes, many people fail or fuck it up, but I wouldn't say most. If everybody held that attitude, they'd never even try. Yet, many people manage to raise wonderful kids and have great marriages. That's not an anomaly. Our society just tends to focus on the drama of the ones who don't.

It's important to be clear about this: I think your attitude, both as expressed in this compassionate-seeming rhetoric, and in the core emotion which propels it, could not be more repugnant.

You are not a nice woman when you say these things. You are not a wizened one.

Carolla: "...And what they think realistic is...."

Crid, you and LS are acting like this is something determined by anything other than the individuals involved!

Some people make smart choices. Some people make lousy choices. Screwing up is what people do when they DON'T try, but that is totally up to them.

The only matter in which you have a choice is what to do with your OWN life. You don't GET to make choices about other people's. It is not cynical to notice this completely obvious fact, rather it shows a healthy respect for other people's boundaries.

You complain all the time, Crid, about people making lousy choices in life and winding up in family court. Observing that a lot of people do this, and predicting that people will probably continue to do so, is ... cynical? Okay smartypants, if that's not likely, what is it that you think is going to change and reverse this trend?

> The only matter in which you have a choice
> is what to do with your OWN life.

THEN SAY SO. Tell that to the fucking kids who are learning the goddam alphabet and studying in school and entering marriages. Tell them it's time to step up, that it will be unpleasant and things will go wrong, but they need to do it anyway.

Your rhetoric is nearly Islamic: You're using "totally up to them" to mean 'Allah's will has been written, and the die are already cast'. They are not. Things get better when people work at it. For reasons I can't fathom, you're afraid to ask them to.

And how dare you call me smartypants. How dare you

Also, read this new bestseller. Good things happen, but never as fast as we'd like and never as easily.

People gotta struggle, OK? It's a thang.

Goddam broken link at 1:39pm. This is a conspiracy, and you people are just fucking with me.

It's not a matter of screwing up; it's a matter of thinking ahead so you're less LIKELY to screw up.

Like driving a car.

Be specific, Crid - what are you doing to "ask" kids to learn the alphabet and study in school and work hard on their marriages? And how's that working out for you?

If they all listened to you, every last one of those little noseminers would learn his alphabet and study in school and work hard on his marriage.

What I see, for example, is each generation in poverty getting bigger than the one before. If you think that trend will change, and there will be fewer people in poverty in the next generation than there are in this one, why is that?

Do you think millions of deadbeats will suddenly decide, "Hey, I should study hard and do well in school, learn an income-producing skill, become financially self-supporting, wait until I'm 30 to get married, buy a life insurance policy before I have kids, set aside 10% of my income for my old age, eat fruits and vegetables, stop wasting my money on cigarettes, live within a budget ..." etc.? Oh, they COULD! A few will. The outcome is most certainly not preordained, but preordained and predictable are not the same things.

I'm just saying I can't make anyone else do those things. The limit of my power only extends to making myself do those things. Which is not a very Islamic thing to say. How dare YOU!

"Just imagine how awful it must be for an attractive, sensible woman of independent means to have a nice place all to herself and a boyfriend who only stays over on weekends."

I know a number of women who lived that precise lifestyle in their 20's. Then when they hit their 30's and wanted kids, him staying over was viewed as 'taking advantage of her' and she wanted a 'ring.'

One was involved in a relationship for 10 years with her boyfriend from 25 to 35. When she started talking kids, he bailed. That's the problem with taking the "safe" route and waiting for the man to initiate everything...

> what are you doing to "ask" kids to learn
> the alphabet and study in school

I'm paying for their motherfucking schools, which are being operated by a thicket of incompetent, careerist retirement-bots, dickless fuckwits who by their own conduct offer no example that life is anything more than a game between the self and the government to carve away the biggest slice possible... A fuck-mindedness readily enabled by those, such as yourself

> and work hard on their marriages?

Well, after a huge initial misstep on my part, things are OK. It's good to on the humble side of the argument rather than the arrogant and presumptive one. Knowutimean?

> And how's that working out for you?

New data appears daily. But I think it would go better if people didn't say stupid things.

> What I see, for example, is each generation
> in poverty getting bigger than the one before.

It's not true, it's not true, it's not true.

It's not true.

Listen, I have a huge folder full of big picture / good news essays from people who aren't stupid and aren't kidding. How many cites do you want?

Again, maybe your life isn't all golden. Sorry. But such cynicism is not appropriate, especially as a lesson to others.

Cite. Cite.

Cite. Cite.

Sorry... dropped a sentence at2:31pm.

...By those, such as yourself, who think they're doomed no matter what their environment asks of them.

I'm paying for their motherfucking schools, which are being operated by a thicket of incompetent, careerist retirement-bots, dickless fuckwits who by their own conduct offer no example that life is anything more than a game between the self and the government to carve away the biggest slice possible ...

Beautifully said. I'm paying for those same motherfucking schools, run by the same thicket, which is one reason why I "think we're doomed."

So what would it take to change this situation so that we are not doomed? For that matter, if the situation DID change, might we still be doomed, since these very schools have already churned out an insurmountable army of entitlement-seeking derps?

Well, never mind, that's water under the bridge. Going forward.

First of all, we all - especially the parents of the kids in those schools - have to recognize that those are OUR schools. The government is OUR government. WE created this mess. Do you see us surrounded by libertarians who embrace responsbility and willingly elect people who will give us less "free" shit? If we went around to everyone and said, "We can have schools that are effective, but we will have to oust the kleptocracy and do more of the work ourselves," will the same people who created this mess in the first place suddenly decide to stop trashing the place?

You can see why I dropped the sentence. It was getting like, really heavy, Man.

Meant it, though! Nothing puts a glow in the heart of a mediocre educator like the glib presumption that kids are just not up to snuff.

I think those cites of yours ignore the fact that a great deal of the increase in our standard of living over the past 40 or so years has been built upon debt. This is starting to unravel.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/06/60minutes/main20038927.shtml

25% of kids living in poverty now, with the poverty level for a family of four being $22,000 a year. Hell, I'm just one person, and with a paid-for condo and no debt, I'd be cutting it awfully close on so little, even if I didn't pay any taxes.

It would be great if the younger generations simply defaulted on it all, and said, "Hey, enough of this nonsense. We're writing off the debts incurred by those long dead, and we're living within our means from now on." I run across the occasional young person whose light burns bright, and to be sure there are a few of them out there. But for the most part, for the reasons you stated about schools, they are mainly mad about the bank bailouts because they aren't getting a bailout for themselves - not because they are against boobus governmentus and its policies in the first place.

Taking the longer view, as the old saying goes, unsustainable trends will cease because they must, whether we want them to or not - by their very nature, because they are unsustainable.

In Western nations, despite the heroic (cough cough) measures taken by Helicopter Ben and his dumptrucks full of printed US dollars, this is going to end in outright default or hyperinflation. When money dies, you'll see the best come out in some people, as they try to take care of themselves and their neighbors and do the right thing. For others, they'll loot and destroy. This, too, shall pass, maybe not until after I have long been dead and buried.

In the meantime, I think we're going to see people acting like junkies who have had their drug taken away.

"Meant it, though! Nothing puts a glow in the heart of a mediocre educator like the glib presumption that kids are just not up to snuff."

Amen.

As Crid's links support, things are getting better, not worse, in many areas of life, Jo. Part of the reason we have a higher poverty level in this country is due to the explosion in immigration. These are poor people coming here from other countries. They'd be poor where they came from, but at least here they have some opportunity.

But all this is kind of impersonal politics, like we're the only generation to have struggles. Certainly our grandparents could've chosen not to have children because they'd likely not survive to adulthood. But, then, without birth control, many likely didn't have the choice to not have children, as you have had. They just had to do it, and try to do it well, and whether you're a parent or a teacher, that takes believing, in every fiber of your being, that your influence isn't confined to just yourself.

I really like Cousin Dave's comments about good choices and correct choices not necessarily being the same. There are a lot of career-minded folks out there who made really good choices but are now still out of a job.

And I also love Momof4's attitude about these risks in life. Maybe she'll face hardship, but she has complete faith that she'll still be able to give her children the love, nourishment, and security they need - maybe not in the same house or the same level of comfort, and maybe not with her staying at home - but she'll do it. She'll find a way. Failure isn't an option. We need MORE parents like that.

This pretty much says it all. Genius.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/senior_year

> like we're the only generation to have struggles

Yeah. (Your inclusion in the earlier fisticuffs was based on a misreading of your comments about divorce practices, which weren't as pruriently enthusiastic as I'd thought. Nonetheless, I don't trust you much.)

> This is starting to unravel.

Something's starting to unravel, but it's not debt itself. Promise me you understand that an economy is not a zero-sum game, even though it is a game... That would speed our argument tremendously.

Sorry to be pedantic, but we've seen that there are many who ought to know this stuff in their marrow, but they got no clue. It's important. The OWS idiots don't care about babies, and they don't know much about bathwater, either.

Their enthusiasm will not take us anywhere we want to go.

Well, here's something to be happy about, even if you're not into faith (as I am not).

Between China and India, 40% of kids are studying STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math).

That's about two billion people. The USA and Western Europe doesn't get it, but some people do. Consider the expectations.

By two billion people, I meant the total populations of India and China. But the 40% of THAT number is still more than twice the total population of the USA.

Uh, mommytracking is NOT not having a job. It means not having a time-intensive career because you're saving some time and energy for your family, and prioritizing a work-life balance. This can mean anything from working part time, to working at home, to being a physician at a "concierge medicine clinic" as opposed to chief of staff at the local hospital. Like most things in life, how to handle home life, finances and vocation isn't an either-or proposition.

And, again for a bad statistics alert, this would be 40% of the college students in those countries, not everyone.

Which just makes my little brain work harder - but that is okay. I'm going to dig into how many people as a percentage of those countries' total the college students are.

Certainly they have more young people as a percentage. But the percentage of college students (relative to their total population of young people) would be lower. I'd like to see what it comes out to.

But by comparison, the USA has 310 million people, and how many of them are college students, and what percentage of THAT total is going into STEM fields.

No, Crid, I get that it's not the debt itself, alone, that's unraveling. It's the EXPECTATIONS based upon it.

I don't want to focus heavily on poor young people with lots of kids. Welfare crack whores are easy to pick on, although they make good cannon fodder for YouTube videos of Black Friday. Fighting over towels, ferchrissake.

But the old people are just as bad. The entire age spectrum of Americans has become addicted to a series of expectations that are based solely upon the government's doling money out as a result of borrowing. This is fucked. There is no American's life that will not be touched by this.

The economic threat from the Chindians in the 21st-century is not that their performance will overwhelm ours, it's that they'll fail to manage the expansion and modernization of their exploding middle classes, and thereby rope us (and everyone else) into the resulting wars and disruptions.

We better hope to high Hell they're studying in school.

You do weird things with the word expect.

"But by comparison, the USA has 310 million people, and how many of them are college students, and what percentage of THAT total is going into STEM fields."

I suspect it's higher than you think. Engineering, particulary, has been a very popular field for many college kids I know. Two of my younger cousins (in their 20s) are engineers, and several of my friend's kids are engineering majors.

The dirty, entitled occupiers don't really represent the majority of college students. It's a more hopeful picture than you fear.

I understand where PJ is coming from. The things she's concerned about are legitimate things to be concerned about. However, I think she under-estimates herself. PJ, just because society goes to hell doesn't mean that you will be dragged down. You will have options. And if necessary, we will come fetch you, disguise you as a member of Milli Vanilli, and smuggle you away. We will hide you out in the wilds of northern Alabama (we will locate a coffee bar if necessary). From our secret headquarters, we will plot world domination!

Bicycle lanes. She wants bike lanes.

Listen, let's just not pretend the secret to making society work better is to reduce standards for the guy on the street, OK? Not in ANY corner of his life.

However, no woman is legally entitled to be a housewife (as opposed to a paid housekeeper) if she can't find someone who's willing to marry her AND support her as a housewife. (She may not find anyone who wants to marry her at all.)

But a woman who says she wants to work and then changes her mind after being married a couple of years to become a housewife gets the full support of the law(with all the free money extorted from the husband/ex). Try being a guy and pulling that trick and you will understand what I mean by the choice that women have and men don't have.

I don't quite understand what you're saying, I'm not aware of any laws that prevent married men from quitting their jobs and not working.

I think you're confusing legal ramifications with societal expectations. Legally, a guy can be a househusband if he finds someone to support that. Socially, it's still not terribly acceptable.

But there are certainly women who had to pay their husbands after divorce, I've met some.

Women's standards of living tend to go down, not up, after divorces.

When men complain about this, I suspect they don't really want to be househusbands...not in the way women want to be housewives. They don't want to be in the house at all. They want to be on the golf course, not catering to the household needs, tending to children, and making things easier for their wives. They just don't want to work, which is a universal desire, but they equate not working with being a housewife. It's not the same thing.

"Women's standards of living tend to go down, not up, after divorces."

Most people's do. It's a lie that men's standard of living goes up since divorce doesn't increase his income. Under a child-support guidelines in California for a father earning $60K paying support to a part-time working mother, it would be $900 but under his tax bracket it would be 25% of his income. For one child and only if the mother doesn't declare expenses. Add in healthcare, a room for the child, etc. and 50% of his take-home can be gone in a second.

Funny thing, LS. When a woman told me she wanted to be traditional in her relationships (men earn the money) while modern at the workplace (get a big paycheck for herself), I asked her if she was willing to bake cookies and cakes from scratch like my grandmothers, clean the house from top to bottom weekly, fix clothing rather than buy new outfits, and let the man manage all the finances because that was a traditional household.

She was clearly cherry picking. Which is ok if she can get away with it. I asked someone 10 years later about her and she was still single, and childless.

You can have your suspicions about men but we have the actions of women to show whether they put their money, literally, where their mouth is.

Crid observes: "But a woman who says she wants to work and then changes her mind after being married a couple of years to become a housewife gets the full support of the law(with all the free money extorted from the husband/ex). Try being a guy and pulling that trick and you will understand what I mean by the choice that women have and men don't have."

Crid, I wish I had the URL but there was a married couple of Anesthesiologists who divorced who both earned $200K a year. She remarried and decided she wanted to be a housewife and demanded the courts award her more "child" support, a very lavish sum for the lifestyle to which she wanted to become accustomed. So he was ordered to pay to support another man's housewife.

Of course, if she dumps off her child at the firestation then nobody has to pay including her. That's the society we live in. Make sure your car has an alarm! Chirp!

"I asked her if she was willing to bake cookies and cakes from scratch like my grandmothers, clean the house from top to bottom weekly, fix clothing rather than buy new outfits, and let the man manage all the finances because that was a traditional household."

The more interesting question is whether you are still single.

Nobody lives like the 1800s anymore. Would you be willing to ride a buggie to work, plow the fields with an ox, and chop all the firewood?

> Crid observes: "But a woman who says

Naw, that was somebody else.

Besides, I'm not into whiny divorce people.

PK, I'm not sure if you intend to imply that being single and childfree is akin to leprosy. It is interesting that you have yet to pity/scorn a man in that situation.

Anyway, I'm 41 and wouldn't have it any other way. I've been with my sweety for four and a half years, but we do not live together, do not want to get married, and do not want children. He lives about 10 miles from me and we have no intention of changing the situation.

Hello LS. No, I'm not single but that particular woman, last time I checked, was still waiting for Mr. Right at the age of 40. Except for winter, I ride a bike to work 4 days a week and save a ton of money on gasoline, mowed my lawn with a manual lawnmower, and yes, when I had a fireplace I chopped my own firewood.

If so-called traditional women can insist that a man pull out a plastic chair for her, then she should be able to bake a cake with an electric oven, vacuum the carpets, use a sewing machine, etc. My co-worker men are shocked when I said that my wife packed me a lunch. My wife would be shocked if my co-workers saw that she hadn't thought of me enough to do so.

I have a theory that perhaps the reason why so many women want Paul Bunyan/Donald Trump/BadBoy alpha males is perhaps because so many modern men here are whipped. Like an insecure aging man wants a cheerleader and a Masarati...

Regarding the standard of living going down after divorce....

I once saw the 1995 TV movie, "Abandoned & Deceived," starring Lori Loughlin, which is based on a true story of a deadbeat dad and his family. I can only hope, however, that the scene in which the mother yells at the hungry kids for eating too much cold cereal when they're on food stamps is NOT true - you'd think anyone with any sense of arithmetic would have bought anything BUT cold cereal. Anyway, even though the movie does more to include both points of view than you might expect, one thing it never mentions and really should is that Americans are always determined to get something for nothing, so when parents divorce and two households end up costing more than one, they won't accept it and each side tries to blame the other for it.

(I don't know why, in real life, they broke up, but in the movie, they were in marriage counseling, and then the wife finds out that he's sleeping with the counselor.)

BTW, in a completely unrelated case, I heard of a wife who said that she would let her husband take the house, car and bank account, on condition that he take the children too. Somehow I wonder if that situation isn't more common than we think.

I don't think baking and cleaning is an unrealistic expectation. Though one shouldn't bake sweets too often. Most of my housewife friends are into the whole homemade bread and jam thing, though. A lot of SAHMs seem to be foodies.

I don't think it's necessarily unrealistic. It was more in the way it was demanded. I cook and clean, and sometimes, I bake (though it's not something I do a lot because it's sugary and fattening). Keeping our home neat and cooking him nice meals is something I enjoy and do out of love, not requirement.

But if my husband told me I *had* to bake him cakes and cookies, and mend old clothes, rather than buy anything new, we'd have a problem! :)

Pirate Jo, I don't think single men aren't pitied or scorned in the same context as women. For example, a single man who can't find someone is scorned as a loser who is too "uppity" with women (look at his forum) or lazy/loser.

LS, my point is that if a woman is truly traditional then she shouldn't be told by the husband to do such things. It's like saying you go to church to say prayers but don't want to be "told" to do so. If you are religious, then you say prayers because that's what religious _IS_.

LS, this notion of only doing things in marriage out of "love" and not marital obligation is naive or even self-serving. See how long women would put up with men deciding they didn't need to be providers anymore because they didn't "love" it and how their wives would handle it...

Someone said something interesting a few months ago on another blog. He felt that marriage in the states was men being clowns. They had to entertain and please their wives otherwise she'd "fire" them (kick them out) and he wasn't up to the task. The concept of marital obligations, in his view, was one sided so he didn't want to bother.

@NicoleK
Legally, a guy can be a househusband if he finds someone to support that

The laws definitely prevent married men from being househusbands by forcing them to pay alimony and child support. How is a househusband going to get money to pay alimony and child support?
And a woman gets to legally become a housewife after getting married even if she does not find anyone to support it. The married guy can become a househusband only if the wife supports it. The married woman does not need the husbands support to become a housewife.

But there are certainly women who had to pay their husbands after divorce, I've met some.

Actually as per stats, women constitute 3% of the alimony payers, but 33% of women earn more than their husbands/exes. So that shows how skewed it is and how difficult it is for men to get paid after divorce

"LS, this notion of only doing things in marriage out of "love" and not marital obligation is naive or even self-serving. See how long women would put up with men deciding they didn't need to be providers anymore because they didn't "love" it and how their wives would handle it..."

My husband and I both own businesses, so we both provide. But I don't tell him how to run his business, and he doesn't tell me how to run my business, the household, or what/how to cook in my kitchen.

Yes, there are marital obligations, but hopefully, neither of us will ever have to be like an attorney pointing them out. If one of us totally slacked off - if he just quit working and helping pay the bills, or I let the house get filthy or stopped cooking meals - we'd have to address it.

But there's something wrong when people enter a marriage demanding specific obligations be met. It takes all the joy and love out of doing these things for your partner willingly.

Perhaps we should consider when you use the term "we'd have a problem" in a more literal light. It's a problem when you have a marital obligation you don't like doing. But life is full of problems. I'm amused when I hear about women becoming single mothers by choice because they don't want the "problems" of being married to a man yet they think parenthood is problem free?

I think it's rather liberating to call problems for what they are rather than being forced to put on a happy face and act like you "enjoy" it because the other person can't accept personal responsibility for their demands. Welcome to the world of men where men go to work because they HAVE to and have businesses because they HAVE to and do other stuff because they HAVE to.

"Math is hard" -- Barbie

You don't HAVE to do anything, PK. Survival might become harder if you quit work, but you could. And maybe your wife would leave you. Or maybe she would stay and see you through it because she loves you. Maybe she'd go to work to support you.

The basis of a healthy marriage should be love, not obligation. If somebody is telling you what you HAVE to do in order to receive their affections, then it's a business arrangement not a marriage.

My husband has a very physically demanding job, which he's getting rather old to do. If he quit work, I'd understand. We'd figure it out somehow, maybe find some business we could do together. And I'd support him in the meantime because I love him.

When I was laid off a year ago, my wife was amazingly supportive. She even encouraged me to relax and take a small vacation. I also know that when I was having work problems 10 years ago in another recession, she defended me to her parents. But that didn't make her perfect. When we had short term money problems (that were going to be relieved soon) she became very impatient and angry. She didn't leave me, but it was a major conflict. So I chose not to risk it and viewed looking for work as a full time job. I found one in 3 months with 3 months severance remaining.

I dated a woman about 15 years ago who played all the usual games and then blurted out that she was traditional and expected to be able to quit work and tried a shaming ploy on me. Bad Idea. I dumped her. So it does swing both ways. A lot of men are not willing to just let their women quit work outright nowadays. I think it's good for them to keep busy and, well, appreciate what us men go through even if only a fraction of the experience.

You just sound so sexist, PK. I think it would be good for you to appreciate what women go through, even if only a fraction of the experience.

PK said:

When a woman told me she wanted to be traditional in her relationships (men earn the money) while modern at the workplace (get a big paycheck for herself), I asked her if she was willing to bake cookies and cakes from scratch like my grandmothers, clean the house from top to bottom weekly, fix clothing rather than buy new outfits, and let the man manage all the finances because that was a traditional household.
___________________________

I trust you're not suggesting housewives with babies or toddlers do all that? Especially if there's more than one?

Besides, women who do that just might find they're putting their energies in the wrong direction.

See here, from Nov. 1990:

Dear Ann Landers: The primitive nature of man never ceases to baffle me. After 20 years of a solid marriage, I sensed that another woman was making a big play for my husband. My confidence in his fidelity proved to be well-placed when, six months later, her phone calls and open flirting at social events stopped.

I was curious as to what caused him to resist the temptation to stray, since the would-be interloper was much younger than I and certainly much more beautiful. So I asked him, hoping he would say it was my steadfast devotion, my charm, my wit and my excellence as a mother and homemaker. I was stunned to hear him say, ``Our sex life was so good I just couldn`t see giving it up.``

He was not the least bit concerned about his children, his religion, what our parents and families might think, nor did he worry that a divorce might ruin him financially. It was the sex thing that made the difference.

I had imagined that an open discussion would give me confidence. Instead it has been a constant grind in my craw. I`m crushed that all the things I`ve worked so hard on mean nothing to him. Maybe I can find relief from the pain by talking about it. Thanks for listening.

Baffled in Tulsa

Dear Tulsa: The answer he gave you may be partially true, but rest assured that the factors you hoped would make the difference certainly did, whether he was willing to admit it or not. Maybe the lesson to be learned is, ``Let sleeping dogs lie.``

Jan 1991
Dear Ann Landers: I would like to reply to ``Baffled in Tulsa,`` whose husband said the reason he stayed with her all those years was because the sex was so good. My guess is her husband is going through his mid-life crisis and she doesn`t know a compliment when she hears one.

When marriages go on the rocks, the rocks are usually in the mattress. The vast majority of husbands want more sex than they get. Studies show that men think about sex an average of six times an hour, or about 750 times a week, not counting dreams. Compare that figure with this one: The average married couple has sex 1.5 times a week.

Have you ever heard of a man leaving his wife and family for another woman because she is a great cook or a fabulous housekeeper? Men leave their wives because they want more and better sex. Let`s face it. ``Tulsa`` kept her husband because she is good in bed. She should be proud of herself and appreciate her husband`s frank, truthful compliment.

It might be useful for her to seek out and talk to a woman who didn`t think sex in marriage was that important and ask that woman how happy she is with her separation, divorce and singleness. ``Tulsa`` could then ask her how important the other things were on which she worked so hard.

Baffled in South Bend

Dear Baffled: Thanks for a letter that reflects more truth than poetry. I couldn`t have said it better myself.

Lenona, I don't think I'm alone in that sex wasn't the defining drive in me meeting women. I'm not ashamed to say that I have self-serviced that need. It's no big deal.
Ironically, I didn't marry my wife for her cooking. I actually prefer my own style. I was merely observing that women who claim to be traditionalists rarely are living up to that ideal. We both know that these women are just using whatever rationalizations they can to goodie grab. People who live in that universe then try to project their own morality onto others.

Nearly all the men I know did not cheat on their wives. One guy even played a game where he didn't initiate sex just to see how long it took his wife to notice (3 months.) And yes, his complaint was that she was going out drinking and spending all of HER money at bars and parties while he looked after the kids. When she started driving drunk, that's where she crossed the line. Under divorce law in New Jersey, that was enough for her to lose full custody and then go to shared custody. Ironically, she really cleaned up her act after that (nothing like paying the bills to wake people up!) but he was disgusted by that point.

He was always shocked over the years at how I didn't slack off when judging women and even if I couldn't get them to a higher standard, I at least recognized the standard. My marriage has lasted longer than his has. If you want an average life, just go along with the crowd. It's funny that women who want "it all" can't seem to think above the herd that reads Cosmo.

"You just sound so sexist, PK. I think it would be good for you to appreciate what women go through, even if only a fraction of the experience."

Free meals, comfy lifeboat seats, and getting to hit members of the opposite sex and scream victim if they hit me back? SIGN ME UP!