This question sounds so old fashioned. Mysogynistic, medieval. There’s an air of “I don’t want my possession out there where she might meet other men. I want her home, barefoot and pregnant, making my life easier with a home-cooked meal and clean shirts waiting for me”. No, if your wife “has to work” to make ends meet, it’s because YOU don’t make enough money.
If you do make a lot of money, well, rich women shop shop shop and go out to lunch with their friends. What’s a middle class woman (without kids) supposed to do with her time, all day? This is entirely separate from a SAHM wife who has plenty to fill up her time, but kids are expensive, and while they’re in school, 9 out of 10 mothers I knew had some kind of part time work.
Oh, and women are wearing pants now, driving horseless carriages, and seem to enjoy making some money of their own without having to clear any purchase with their lord and master.
I met my wife when whe was 16 working in her mother’s restaurant, 43 years later she is still working. It never occured to either of us that she would not.
27-year-old male checking in. I can’t imagine marrying a woman who didn’t want to work. If I ever get hitched, I want to marry a peer and equal - someone who has a job she’s passionate about, so that we can both learn about the world from each other. I want someone with ambition and a rich vein of interest in the world, not a dependent. This is especially so since I don’t want kids, and wouldn’t marry someone who did. I mean, why wouldn’t my wife work?
To elaborate a bit: One of the many, many reasons I don’t want to marry a dependent is that, if my wife ever decided that she didn’t love me any more, I’d want her to be able to leave without a hitch. I’d hate to think that someone I cared about was staying with me just because she was afraid of what would happen if she left - but on the other hand, the idea of having to pay alimony with no children involved doesn’t sit right either. Adults should be self-supporting, with the ability to enter and leave their romantic relationships with their finances intact regardless of how their personal lives play out.
Interesting poll so far (at least to me). Out of 92 respondents I see now, overall 76% fall under “the idea wouldn’t even occur to me” while 24% seem to admit to at least toying with the idea. Only 16% of men have given the idea even perfunctory consideration, as opposed to 28% of women.
Well, I wish I didn’t have to work, but not because I expect a man to go out and do it for me!
Actually, I bring in the money and pay the mortgage while my boyfriend makes zero money running his own businesses. I think it does bother him, by the way, probably more than he admits to me. One reason he doesn’t want to get married at this point is that he doesn’t want to come to a marriage empty-handed.
ETA - on the other hand, many, MANY times I’ve thought to myself, “Damn, I need a wife!” Seriously, if I didn’t work a job where I have one morning free because I work an evening shift that day I don’t know when the hell I’d get anything done! How on earth do two people who both work 9-5 have meetings at the bank, or take their clothes to the consignment store, or have the furnace inspector come? Good lord, I’d love to have a full time personal assistant who cleans the house and gets my dry cleaning and runs to the bank.
We take time off work, or go during their (limited) weekend and evening hours. Fortunately, we’ve found an appliance repair place that doesn’t charge extra for Saturday service, which makes life a lot easier.
I wonder how many folks agog here at the idea of not working outside and being “bored” with nothing to do at home have ever tried it, though . . . if anything, my wife complains about not having enough time to get everything done around the house and in running various errands for the family. When I come home in the evening, I generally take over the housework and baby stuff, and it keeps me fully occupied as well while she can take a break.
A marriage is not a mere, “romantic relationship.” It shouldn’t be entered into with the notion that by marrying a peer, it will be equally easy to leave for either party. Children don’t make a marriage any more or less a lifetime commitment, or shouldn’t… Sorry about the hijack.
Oh, I wasn’t necessarily bored as in “I had nothing to do all day” when I was unemployed. I had plenty to do. I just found it devastatingly boring. Not intellectually fulfilling. Jobs can be that way, too, but at least you have a group of coworkers to interact with.
Edit: llcool, I’m pretty sure that almost no one enters into a marriage planning to get divorced, or that their spouse will die young, leaving them with no marketable job skills after being out of the workforce. However, a hell of a lot of people never consider that it might happen to them and get in deep trouble.
This!!! I am a 32 year old female. Full time attorney. I’d say my job is 9-5+++. My husband is also an attorney, who runs his own practice. We need a third.
Food (shopping, cooking, planning) falls mostly on me. Housework (other than kitchen) falls mostly on him. We pretty much do our own laundry. I am really really nervous about when we have kids.
Hi Ferret, that comment wasn’t aimed at you, sorry if it came across that way – I’ve had periods of unemployment or underemployment where I was keeping busy at home as well, and it was immensely frustrating. But for our situation, at least, I wouldn’t say that’s equivalent to my wife being a SAHM currently – she enjoys that role but worries whether we’re saving enough money.
I wasn’t taking it personally, just elaborating. I know SAHMs who say they’re fine with not working outside the home, perhaps ever. I also know moms who were staying at home and went absolutely stir-crazy, and started up work as soon as their kids were pre-school age. One works at a full-time job that only covers the cost of after-school child care for one kid and pre-school for the other, but it does wonders for her self-esteem and overall happiness.
I suspect I may know moms who have careers but would rather do the SAHM thing, but that’s hard to distinguish from “I hate this job!”
I have. As I said, it was deeply unpleasant. I felt stifled and useless. Having to run a bunch of errands every day isn’t the same as having something to do.
These are my feelings, too. I’m female, 35 and have two children. I don’t think women should feel any guilt over having to or wanting to work. Nor should men. However, my personal experience is that working full time, running herd on children and keeping the house and cooking, managing finances and doing various home repairs and garden work is very stressful or expensive (if you hire someone else to do it) when both spouses work. You’re basically doing a job and a half per spouse in an ideal world - in other words, assuming that you both take on equal responsibility.
I would like to have the option not to work or the work part time, especially because my husband just started a new business and already has several contracts, so he works a full day, comes home and eats and we spend some time together after putting the kids to bed, then he has to go back to work and often works 10 to midnight or after. That means that I get little help at night on prep work for the next day, and neither of us gets enough sleep.
If not working were a possibility, I would still work, though I wouldn’t feel obligated to do so full time in order to make sure my family has insurance. I would feel freer to find a profession - or make one - that better suited all my needs. I used to freelance, and I miss it for the flexibility. The only downside to that for me was not having benefits.
Another crummy thing about working full time is that, especially when our daughter came on the scene, ekeing out enough time to spend with both children, individually and as a family is hard as hell. Then there’s time to spend with my husband, “me” time, time spent making sure I’m healthy and sane, plus somehow managing to sleep.
As a side note, reading women’s magazines has started to piss me off. If you look at the magazine as a whole, you have one article telling you how to get ahead at work. Of course, that requires long hours. But, don’t forget - you should cook all your meals from scratch! And you should get at least eight hours of sleep a night! And spend an hour of family time, with time for each kid alone and together, then there’s the time you’re supposed to spend with your spouse, time you’re supposed to spend alone, time you should be working out and all the fucking clean-up chores and tidying you should be doing around the house. And on top of that, there’s financial management, grocery shopping, gardening, home repair… The list goes on and on about what you’re “supposed” to do. The sad thing is that a lot of it is fairly accurate, but I can’t see how anyone would ever have all the time to do that. I can’t ever imagine being bored if I were to stay at home. I think that notion is silly.
I was off on parental leave earlier this year and I couldn’t do it. I was bored. Not that I didn’t have tons to do but none of it was taxing to my brain. I ended up going back part time after two months and full time after 4 (I was supposed to be out for eight). I can’t see myself not working.
Now, if I made enough, my husband would stay home in a heartbeat. He would enjoy puttering about the house and doing home things. He is a laidback type who enjoys taking his time at the little things (my opposite).
I work close enough to home that he would probably join my workmates (whether I was there or not) for lunch sometimes to get social interaction.
For a while after I got laid off, The Other Shoe was the sole breadwinner. (Then, for a while, we were both unemployed - sucky, sucky times.) Then I got a job, and The Other Shoe was the househusband while I was the sole breadwinner. (Now we’re both employed - busy, but not as sucky financially! :)) I think it was good for us to both get a taste of the other person’s life, since it really cuts back on the “What do you DO all damn day? Eat bon-bons?” type of crap.
And I voted “Thought about it” but that’s because, well, it would be nice to not have to work. (Winning lottery tickets, anyone?) But only if we could afford it and The Other Shoe could hang out with me. The idea of leeching off him just because I have a vagina and he doesn’t is, well, silly, like the OP said. (Caveat: we have no children and never will. Parents have other factors to take into account that we don’t, since the cats can take care of themselves for a few hours in an empty house.)
I think that attitude has lingered here in my area of the world until fairly recently. I understand it as more of a “provider” issue; it’s embarassing because the man “can’t provide for his family”; it doesn’t have anything to do with the wife being out in the world where other men might meet her.
Modern times have changed that, and most guys I know are content with their wives working, although I do hear some comments such as “I wish my wife didn’t have to work” every now and then. As if they wanted to pamper her.
Personally, I was raised by a very liberal, feminist mother who encouraged her daughters to seek careers and “not depend on a man for your living”. I enjoy what I do for a living and, as someone else mentioned upthread, would hate to lose control of that. I’m uncomfortable with the idea of being a SAHM because I’d be at someone else’s mercy, if you will. I like having my own income too much to give it up.
I’d also feel like I wasn’t pulling my own weight. Silly but it’s there.
Conversely, my son was briefly married to a girl (they are in their 20’s) who firmly believed that a husband “owed” his wife a living; that even if she was in perfect health and wasn’t taking care of kids, he should not ask her to work, instead providing everything for her. Needless to say I found her attitude irritating.
Regarding the case of wife making more than husband: My husband and I talked about this before we got married. I make about 1.5 to 2 times what he does, depending on how well my business goes. At first it bothered him but he has gotten okay with it. One thing that helped is my pointing out how much he contributes in “in kind” services (vehicle & property maintenance are biggies).
What happens is that some things just have to slide. Your house may not be spotless and you may not have time to do the weekend things you used to because you’re catching up on stuff you didn’t have time to do during the week.
My second husband and I were like this, he’s a computer programmer and I’m a civil engineer. Our 3 kids at the time were in elementary school and he also traveled on business a good bit. Many of those years are just a blur now.
Of course you can find stuff to occupy you, but a lot of that doesn’t fulfill you. You do the laundry- it gets dirty again. You wash the dishes- they get dirty again. I adore cooking, but part of that is because I’m making something special. If I had to count on it as one of my main outlets for being constructive, it’d probably lose it’s charm. Likewise, fixing up the house is fun, but eventually it starts feeling kind of pointless.
Raising the kids is of course extremely rewarding. But once again, you are getting all excited about the wonder and promise of someone else’s life. Where is all that wonder and promise you once had about your own? And if that kid is a girl…are you just making this kid the only thing in your life, so that she can make her kid the only thing in her life…while all the boys are out actually having lives?
It might be better in a larger-extended family situation where you have lots of people around. But that’s not the reality for most American housewives- it’s just you, maybe a baby, the four walls around you and the clock ticking. When I’ve been unemployed. The absolute highlight and center of my day was when my SO came home from work. That’s just not healthy. There has to be some better way I can use this brain and body than waiting around for someone to come home.
