He is. 
I am a 51 year old woman. Even way back in the 70s, when I got my very first job at Mickey D’s to help buy school clothes, I couldn’t imagine not working and paying my own way. Oh I had some romantic idea of being June Cleaver for about 5 minutes when I was around 19, but almost immediately after marriage that went out the window and I’ve been working ever since.
I’ve been in all three/four categories (working woman/empty nester, SAHM, working mom) throughout my life and working mom is far and away the hardest and most stressful.
Out of curiosity, and without knowing more about your situation, what happens if he loses his job or you two split up? How comfortable would you be with entering the work force?
There’s been at least two or three mentions of stay-at-home husbands in this thread. I haven’t heard you pose the same questions to those couples–is it somehow understood that the husband will be OK if his working wife dumps him or she loses her job?
The double standards, like the turtles, seem to go all the way down . . .
It is a valid question.
I think the main difference is that a stay-at-home dad is such an unusual arrangement that you can be pretty sure the couple put a lot of thought into it. A stay-at-home wife, on the other hand, is a little more likely to be entered into because of social pressure or as a result of an unbalanced power dynamic. Women are probably a little less likely to consider what they are doing to their future prospects because being a housewife has so much precedence.
Another factor, of course, is that women usually end up with the kids after a divorce. A single person with no career is a problem, but a person with kids and no career is a really bad scene.
Those frivolous females, so incapable of making decisions and standing up for themselves in comparison to men . . .
In other words, do you guys even listen to yourselves when you say these things?
ETA: and what “social pressure”? What expection that being a housewife should take prececence? Do you even pay attention to what everyone else is saying, that a SAHM is almost equally rare as a SAHD? I think you’re fighting a power structure that doesn’t exist anymore.
Why are you so touchy about this? It does, in fact, happen. My own great-grandmother got a surprise introduction to the labor force after grandpa packed up and left her with two kids. My grandmother’s husband stayed, but drank too much, and she learned his income wasn’t cutting it a little to late. She found jobs, but never got to go to college or develop her career much…up until she retired she was still doing an on-your-feet job. My students in China often stated that they did not feel their studies were important, because they expected a man to take care of them. Well, you and I both know the divorce rate in China is soaring, and basing your future on “happily ever after” is an increasingly bad risk. If more people encouraged these students to spend their years doing career-oriented studies rather than waiting around for a man, they would almost certainly have a brighter and more in-control future.
Women, historically, have a little less power to decide the course of their lives. In some places this is still very true. I don’t think there is any grounds to deny this. in most of the US women are given more encouragement to develop their careers, but among certain groups and in certain areas the old ways win out. Many Mormon young women, for example, are encouraged to focus on having a family from a young age.
Stating the challenges that women face when it comes to balancing work, family, social expectations, and independence is not somehow an attack on men or an attempt to say women are better than men. Men face their own sets of problems, and I’m sure they can be pretty difficult to deal with, too. This thread just happens to be about something different.
I don’t think I’m touchy, except in regard to intellectual dishonesty, inconsistency or lack of straightforwardness. That’s the Dope, join the club & we’ve got jackets.
But anyway, I have to point out that the cites you give from mainland China and your great-grandmother’s generation aren’t all that persuasive for what I’m talking about now. I don’t see anything much to persuade me that in a modern Western society, reentering the workforce after time as a SAHM is necessarily more challenging than after time as a SAHD.
My husband’s always told me to do whatever the heck I want. He has a secure full time job that meets most of our basic bills. Right now I work at home full time. I’ve earned my husband each year for the last five. My husband loves the fact that I work. Doing so has given both us of more autonomy.
You have to earn him every year? Must be tough.
Good luck, Mr. Gorsky.
Out earned.
:smack:
Memo to self: do not post when really tired.
And that is not what I said, so we are together on this one.
What I said was SAHDads are at least a little bit more likely to have carefully considered and then rejected the idea of having a full-time career, while SAHMom’s are at least a little bit more likely to fall into it automatically or end up doing it because that’s what their husband/family expects them to do and/or it seems like a normal natural thing to do. I truly believe there are more SAHMoms than SAHDads who have not planned a good “what if” contingency plan.
I also said a SAHMom is more likely to end up a stranded single parent than a SAHDad, simply because even SAHDads are less likely to end up with full custody after a divorce and most (but not all) mothers are a little less likely to become deadbeats.
Of coure this does not happen in all cases, but I think it is probably a general trend. No, I don’t have a cite for this.
It’s like a woman becoming a firefighter or other traditionally male role- she probably has more considered her options a little more carefully than most male firefighters, simply because it’s so unusual for women that it wouldn’t even occur to most women as an option, there is not an easy social script for it, and she probably gets asked the same questions about her choice all the time. A woman firefighter, male pre-school teacher, female mechanic and male nurse probably spent a bit more time on their life plan than their fulfilling-traditional-gender-roles counterparts.
Oh and I’m forty. My mom was deeply resentful that she essentially had to return to work to keep us afloat economically in the 1970’s even when my dad held down a full time job.
I, OTOH, never expected that I wouldn’t have to work. Neither did my husband. My only concern has been balancing children and work. Full time working motherhood, particularly in the United States, can very hard. Of my immediate circle of friends I know exactly one person who returned to full time work outside of the home before her child was in kindergarten. She managed it because her mom built a house next door.
A recent poll found out that 57% of people in Spain think that “women should leave their jobs when they have kids”. There was a 15% who thought that “women should leave their jobs when they get married”.
We are already at the point where more college graduates are female than male and more business owners are female than male, so there’s both social pressure and a mental disconnect.
Acknowledged, of course, that it’s going to vary widely by country . . . I guess I had the US/extended Anglosphere in mind, for the most part
Piping up as someone else who chooses to stay home (and work part-time).
I’m 35, female, childless, and I voluntarily work from home, about half-time, making only a tiny fraction of what my wife makes. I could fairly easily get a full-time, not-from-home, job in my field. But I have never found one that didn’t make me miserable. My wife loves her job and does fewer chores; plus she gets to interact with a much happier me. This particular combination works well for us. I worry occasionally about her resenting me, but she assures me she’s happy with the current arrangement.
I will say though–this thread makes me grateful for the lack of assumed gender roles (and accompanying issues and baggage) in (most) gay relationships.
I didn’t come across any stay-at-home husbands, only stay-at-home dads (who would, presumably, have a better chance at full custody and child support), but I’ll have another look. I don’t think it’s a sexist question, especially considering cultural and historical context. How many housewives feared leaving abusive relationships, adulterous husbands or just loveless marriages because they simply had no other options, up until a few decades ago (or, in present day)? There have been a few recent Dope threads on alimony and child support and I’ll admit that, when I was younger, I thought both were mildly insulting to the modern woman – without considering how much one partner’s job or word can affect the other’s, and how often the partner in question is the husband (not to mention the laughable excuse for parental leave in the US).