I've noticed that the "happiest" people are those that do what they love w/o regard for what other people think they should do.

Do what you can, where you're at, with what you have.

If someone comes along and tells you that you're doing it wrong, hand them the shovel and let them muck out the stable.

Those people generally don't know which end of the shovel is the business end, and can be safely ignored.

Yes, those people are the business end of the horse.

Ultimately feminism is a social construct... with the aim to get everyone to follow it's construction, by enforcing conformity first and foremost.

It isn't about making choices.

Seems to me there's a big difference between wanting to have children and wanting to become a housewife, with or without small children to look after. (Of all the SAHMs you know, what percentage of them continue to stay at home once the youngest child is in high school?)

There is no shortage of feminist support of motherhood (affordable daycare, for one) from the last 30 years or so. I'm guessing daycare gets mentioned in at least one out of every three issues of Ms. Magazine, not to mention plenty of feminist-leaning books.

I would argue that while yes, it's too bad that the role of the housewife got such a bad rap in the 1970s (doing that didn't exactly inspire boys to do/enjoy housework, after all), you'd think everyone would realize by now that SOMETHING had to be done to get girls from conservative families/communities to think twice before throwing away all their options after high school or even college. As an abandoned, ex-"happy housewife" wrote in 1987 (in response to complaints to Ms. about the lack of support for the role of housewives):

"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 another one!"

And, she could have added, a housewife needs to keep her marketable skills sharp, at least, even if she isn't getting paid for them at the moment. As many have pointed out, it's not just divorce - people die, too. Or become incapacitated.

All arguments about career decisions aside, lemme play devil's advocate:

The last thing my lawyer ever said to me after the divorce was final...
"If you ever marry again, DON'T let her stop working."
[as if I'd marry again]

I will be paying forever for that mistake. I switched up my entire life so she could stay home, at her request. My compensation has been to be told constantly that I am a horrible person.

These are interesting discussions acedemically, but realistically?

Don't get fooled again.

Lenona has a valid point about housewife not being a career, although arguably if that is your skill set you could find employment as a housekeeper. I know someone who did just that through an agency after a divorce. She got a job as a live-in housekeeper to a single father with teenage children. She took care of all the household chores and kept an eye on the kids.

After working at least one full time job and sometimes two for nearly 20 years I became a SAHM shortly after my third was born. It's been an adjustment for sure and I'm still struggling with it. The main issues for me are that I no longer have my own money so it feels like a loss of independence. I have to depend on my husband now and that goes against how I've lived my life before. The other one is a loss of identity or status. I no longer have a career to identify me and people overall seem to think nothing of stay at home mothers. I know that people thought more highly of me when I was still working with my first three kids. Then when I got laid off and ultimately decided not to go back to work I got looked down on for it. I like being home with my kids and I'm not sure if I'll attempt to work after they are all in school or not. I always wanted a lot of kids, but I also never pictured myself as a SAHM. I had never considered the logistics of having kids and a career though, and it makes much more sense financially to not work given the very high price of childcare here (a minimum of $800 a month per child and $1200 being more typical).

BunnyGirl,

I strongly suggest a family budget. My wife is a stay at home mom. That is her job and she shouldn't be begging me for money just because I'm the one with an income. We budget around christmas time for the rest of the year. We estimate my income over the year, tally up all the fixed costs (utilities, mortgage, insurance, savings, ...). Deduct fixed annual costs from estimated annual income, divide by two. We are a partnership so we both get half of what is left over after family costs. Her work is just as important as mine. I write her a check every two weeks just like a pay check.

Even in marriage it is important to have your own money.

To SwissArmyD:

My brother broke up with one girlfriend in the mid-1990s because she made it clear that she didn't think it mattered whether or not she had a paying job if/when they started having children. I can't say for sure what made him so firm on his need for her to continue working for pay (I never asked, but it didn't surprise me). At any rate, he married another woman who agreed to keep her job and they've been together for 15 years and have two children. I told that story, years ago, at Glenn Sacks' site and the youngish(?) MRAs there seemed bewildered at the idea that any man WOULDN'T prefer a SAHM - assuming you want children to begin with, of course.

To Ben:

Reminds me of what Planned Parenthood executive Sheri S. Tepper (she later became a novelist) wrote in a 1978 pamphlet (24 pages) for young women:

Excerpt from page 13:

"KEEP YOUR OWN BANK ACCOUNT

"And keep something in it. That 'Everything we have is ours' routine is cute and romantic, but it's most practical for a truly compound organism - like a jellyfish.

"In that bank account you need enough money to pay a deposit and first month's rent on a place to live. You need enough to pay all outstanding bills, AND a little extra for emergencies. Unless you've got that in the bank, you're not independent. If you live with him and spend all your pay every month, and then you're not living with him any more, what are you going to do?"

You can read a bit more here:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/06/07/new_trend_in_pr.html

Scroll down halfway.

I guess I should have clarified the part about not having my own money. My husband gives me $1000 a month allowance ($500 out of each of his paychecks) to do whatever I want with. It's the fact that I'm not working to earn my own money that is the hard adjustment. So even though I'm given money it doesn't really feel like it's mine and I'm still dependent upon him for that allowance. It's not earning my way and supporting myself. He's still doing all the providing and supporting.

I would strongly suggest doing something, even for a few hours a week, even if it's volunteer work. Because one thing that does devolve when you're out of the work force is your hirability if God forbid something were to happen to your husband or to your marriage. If you believe in a life insurance policy, then also know that you can't know for certain what the future holds, but I think every person with tiny humans who depend on them should try to keep their ability to be gainfully, happily employed, intact.

Then you are looking at it wrong BunnyGirl.

Marriage is (or should be) a partnership. Even in business not all members are revenue sources but that doesn't mean they don't provide value to the organization. Lawyers are a perfect example. Unless it is a legal firm they are a cost center. But try to run a business without them and you will pay twice as much later. Engineering is another. The payout may not be immediate but the value is there. You aren't getting a $1k/mo allowance. You get a $1k/mo dividend as co-owner of your family.

After I got married I experienced a significant increase in income. Some of that would have happened no matter what. But a large portion of it is due to my wife taking over tasks freeing me up to chase higher value options. She deserves to share in the fruit of those opportunities. Without her I certainly wouldn't have.

Lenona,

That is also good advice for men and even singles. If you need that next paycheck to not be homeless and starving you cannot tell your employer no. You cannot afford to take a risk or propose something new. The self-confidence and self-respect financial security provides opens doors and opportunities for everyone.

Honestly this is the only thing I argue with my wife over her money. I don't think she saves enough in case I get hit by a bus or kidnapped by ninjas. It takes time to transfer access to bank accounts.

More "gems" of advice from Sandberg:

"I say in the book, date the bad boys, date the crazy boys, but do not marry them. Marry the boys who are going to change half of the diapers."

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/11/life_can_make_you_into_a_feminist/

This is part of why I stopped calling myself a feminist. It became clear when my husband and I decided that I would stay at home with our daughter (and another one on the way) that only feminist-approved choices were allowed. It didn't matter that I'd had a rewarding career for over a decade before that. It didn't matter that I provided the down payment for the house we live in. It only mattered that I was a disappointment to the cause.

In doing a risk-benefit analysis, we decided that we were going to optimize for success, not failure. Me being home allows my husband to take advantage of career and training opportunities he would not otherwise have the time for. He is a software engineer and I was a newspaper editor. His income potential is much greater than mine. Me being home allows us to enjoy our evenings and weekends, too, because I take care of all the things we'd otherwise need to do.

I accept the risk that something could happen to him, or we could divorce, and I would have fewer options than I would have if I'd continued working outside the home. But he has an excellent life-insurance policy, and life is full of risk.

But if you ask a lot of feminists, I'm a traitor to vaginas everywhere.

Good for you MonicaP.

I have neither children nor ambition.

I have it all!

To Ben - more from Tepper's pamphlet, this time in reference to singles. (Of course, it's a bit hard to imagine, nowadays, that "housing, utilities and furniture" would only cost 30% of the paycheck of a 20-something.)

Pages 18 & 19:

"Don't be a victim of the college student syndrome. This is the simplistic view that 'I need X for rent and Y for food, and the rest I can blow.' You can't blow it. When you were in school someone else was paying the insurance, for clothing, your medical bills, the taxes. A budget should look something like this."

Total amount of income, after taxes, each month 100%
Housing, utilities and furniture 30%
Food 17%
Clothing, cleaning, laundry 10%
Transportation, including car insurance 15%
Medical care, medical insurance 10%
Personal insurance 5%
Recreation, savings, charity 13%

Page 19:

"Never co-sign a note for ANYONE, including your brother. Only poor credit risks need a co-signer. Give him the money if you want to and if you have it, but don't co-sign a note. Ever."

"So even though I'm given money it doesn't really feel like it's mine and I'm still dependent upon him for that allowance. It's not earning my way and supporting myself. "

I get that. Some years ago, after my wife lost her job (due to a corporate merger), we decided that she would take a year and a half to go to school and get a degree. It was becoming clear that in her field, it was becoming impossible to get a good job or advance without a degree, no matter how much job experience one had. But even though we had a plan and we were executing it, it bothered the heck out of her that she wasn't earning money. It didn't bother me, but it bothered her. The times that I've been out of work, I felt the same way.

But even though we had a plan and we were executing it, it bothered the heck out of her that she wasn't earning money.

Yeah, I get that, too. My husband still feels freer to spend money on non-essentials because I don't entirely feel like the money is mine. He's been great about it and often encourages me to spend more on things I want, but it's an adjustment.

Monica, I felt the same way when I was out of work over the summer in 2011. I would let the air conditioning go into setback during the day, becasue I didn't want it to run any more than it would if no one was home.

Some observations:

-- One half of everything earned by the working husband belongs to the wife as a matter of law. In addition, the husband has a legal duty to support the wife -- both during the marriage and after, through "support." Who has the power, again?

-- The advice to women that they should have a secret "divorce account" -- funded unknowingly by the husband, of course -- is contemptible. I would consider it grounds for immediate divorce, in fact.

-- The argument that support for child care -- mothering performed by a low-wage stand-in for the actual mother -- shows feminism's support for motherhood is ridiculous to the point of being laughable. Child care supports EMPLOYERS by maximizing Mommy's time being a wage slave so that entities other than her family (her employer and the child care provider) can exploit and extract profit from her labor. Child care also supports the GOVERNMENT, which can tax her wages (and the wages of the child care worker) -- something it couldn't do when her labor was performed at home solely for the benefit of herself and her family.

-- One half of everything earned by the working husband belongs to the wife as a matter of law. In addition, the husband has a legal duty to support the wife -- both during the marriage and after, through "support." Who has the power, again?

-- The advice to women that they should have a secret "divorce account" -- funded unknowingly by the husband, of course -- is contemptible. I would consider it grounds for immediate divorce, in fact.

-- The argument that support for child care -- mothering performed by a low-wage stand-in for the actual mother -- shows feminism's support for motherhood is ridiculous to the point of being laughable. Child care supports EMPLOYERS by maximizing Mommy's time being a wage slave so that entities other than her family (her employer and the child care provider) can exploit and extract profit from her labor. Child care also supports the GOVERNMENT, which can tax her wages (and the wages of the child care worker) -- something it couldn't do when her labor was performed at home solely for the benefit of herself and her family.

Posted by: Jay R at May 19, 2015 12:44 PM

This is so true Jay. Right now I am saving (earning ) over seven thousand a month tax free by taking care of my 90 year old mother instead of putting her in a nursing home.

Since she has a pension, and savings, we would not be able to shove the expenses off on Medicaid, the way that most do.

I wish more people knew enough about the tax system to figure out when they were being screwed.

Jay,

1. Alimony still varies a lot in the US. There are a number of states where you won't get anything without extenuating circumstances. Also it no longer is solely male to female.

2. The problem with a secret 'divorce account' is the secret part. There is nothing wrong with having your own bank account. There are major problems with hiding things.

3. I agree with you, government subsidized child care really helps the employers. It is just more of feminism trying to force everyone to do the same thing at the same time. The authoritarians need their labor drones.

And child care helps employers and the government but not the mothers who can't or won't stay at home?

How is it not (typically) essential to those who pay for it, given how expensive it usually is?

Maybe by the time we reach 10 billion (very likely before 2050, according to more than one calculation) we'll realize that having babies is far less important than figuring out how everyone can earn enough and stay healthy long enough to avoid being a burden, not just on young taxpayers, but on the earth's resources. (Even if you have adult children, they can still get hit by cars and become useless to your old age.) As I hinted in my May 18, 2015 9:28 AM post, future emergencies call for harsh measures NOW. Maybe one day, we'll even think of China's one-child policy (and the horrific abuses that went with it) as wimpy.

In the same vein, I just saw the grim documentary "Trashed" (narrated by Jeremy Irons) and while it talked, at the end, about the need to recycle more and to sell goods with less packaging material, there was one elephant in the room it wouldn't quite touch - the need for everyone to buy less stuff in general. This is especially important when you remember that so much of what we take home is out of laziness (e.g., take-out food) or boredom, which leads to buying stuff that never gets used and that can't be recycled easily if no one wants it.

Lenona,

It would be far more effective and help far more people to eliminate useless stifling regulation of child care. Offering a government subsidy without somehow increasing the supply (which regulations are currently limiting) will only increase the cost of childcare. Not make it more affordable or available.

I'm not sure what to do with the tangent you took off on after that.

99

Bob: you are right...it just took me a lot of time to realise it!
Swiss army D: agree!
Lenona «There is no shortage of feminist support of motherhood»...this is hilarious! Agree with Jay R on that one!Yes, shit happens and you have to prepare for it...but staying in the workforce is not the only way.
Your brother's reaction about his girlfriend's life choice is just as awful as the contrary. A man imposing his view of what his wife should do with that much assertiveness is not what I call an egalitarian relationship.
Bunny Girl: there are a bunch of ways you can do things differently so you don't feel it's «his» money...
Ben, you rock!