Is this limited to wives or women? Hell, I’d quit working if I could afford to, and it wouldn’t be to raise children or maintain a household.
Let’s see, today I spent about 6 hours writing, cleaned off our gaming table, washed dishes, folded clothes, took care of a few little chores here and there, and I’m about to vacuum a couple rooms, take out the recyclables, cut up salad vegetables, and cook a recipe I found as a surprise for my husband.
Yesterday I also spent about 6 hours writing/editing, reorganized the dresser, washed dishes, folded a larger load of clothes, swept the uncarpeted rooms, took care of the litter box, and took out the trash.
Tomorrow I’m gonna tackle the pantry. (People, wish me luck. I may not come back from that one alive.)
Because I stay home, when my husband gets home around 5:30, he won’t have to split those chores with me. His entire evenings are free now, and most of his weekend is, too. He won’t have to go grocery shopping (something he hates) during his limited weekend time off, either.
And I won’t have to cram an hour or two of writing into my evening after having spent eight, thought-intensive hours programming. I’ve done more on my latest book in the last two days than I had in the previous three months. (My last day at my job was Friday.)
(I do hope one day to make enough from my writing that he won’t have to work at all.)
[L.B. Jeffries]He lives alone…probably had a very unhappy marriage.[/L.B. Jeffries]
Am I the only one who finds it not just slightly ironic that a poster with the handle Tijuana_Golds is advocating hard work and industry over convenient slackerism, or is that just my Philip K. Dick obsession showing?
Stranger
Because, of course, all stay-at-home wives cook gourmet meals and give full body massages every day :rolleyes:
I actually enjoy my job, but I always feel a lot more productive when I stay home. This morning I had a doctor’s appointment, so I didn’t come in to work until this afternoon. In the hour-and-a-half I had at home before I had to leave for the appointment, I dried and folded a load of laundry, got the car’s oil changed, loaded the dirty dishes, and paid some taxes*. It was less work than I would do in a morning at my job, but it sure felt like I got a lot more done. I’m hoping that by the time we have kids my husband will be able to support us so I can be a SAHM. By then, we’ll also (hopefully) have a house, so I can do my gardening, canning, knitting, sewing… you get the picture.
*I’m self-employed (kinda) so I file quarterly. I missed the last quarter, so I made that up and paid next quarter’s early.
I’m not sure if this is what the OP had in mind, but this discussion reminded me of one of Tim Allen’s routines:
“Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we’ve always had: work”
(I see some websites add “or prison” at the end, but when I heard his routine I don’t recall him saying that)
No matter whether y’all agree with the work ethic espoused by the OP, it is a fact that if a man just stays at home while his wife works 50 hours a week to support both of them, most in today’s society will label the guy a slacker, parasite, etc, even if it is a mutual agreement between the husband and wife. The double standard is there, even if some more enlightened parts of society are more willing to accept that arrangement.
Well, the OP will positively loathe me, because I’m a stay-at-home husband with no kids in the house (one’s in college, the other is out on her own). I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering from a very good engineering school, a Professional Engineer’s license (which I have, admittedly, let lapse), and could land a pretty decent job. My wife makes way more money than I did when I quit the work force, and more than I ever could.
When she took the position she currently holds, it was with the knowledge that it would require a lot of hours and a lot of travel. In order for us to enjoy life, it made sense for me to quit work and stay at home. I clean, I do the laundry, I pay all the bills, I handle the rest of the finances, I handle repairs to the house, etc. When she gets home at night, she has a very nice meal waiting for her, a glass of wine, and a foot rub if she wants it. When the weekend hits, we can enjoy it together, rather than do all the household stuff that would need to be done if we were both working.
This notion that everyone has to make as much money as they possibly can is what leads some people to early graves. We have a very good life. If it all came crashing down tomorrow, we could scale back (we both come from families that were lower-middle class), I could get a job, and we’d still have a good life. It wouldn’t be as luxurious as the one we have now, we wouldn’t travel as much, and we wouldn’t have as much free time as we do now, but we’d make it work. But until that day arrives, we’re going to do what works for us.
Fuck you for passing judgment on people you don’t know, for badly misguided reasons, and with that holier-than-thou attitude that will keep you (and only you) spanking your monkey in great loneliness for years to come.
And blowjobs. Don’t forget blowjobs. If she doesn’t have a paycheck she better have a controllable gag reflex.
This is a great point. Many uber-high paying jobs require huge time commitments–if you are in the “fast track” of a big company, 70-80 hour weeks and frequent business trips are common. If you are working like that, you are useless at home. You need a spotter–someone to take care of all the domestic arrangements, shop, pack, everything. Tijuana_Gold, would you be more comfortable with a wife staying home if her husband worked that kind of schedule? It’s really a shared commitment to one career.
Well, I would hope that a stay at home wife or husband would do nice things for their partner even if it wasn’t necessarily meals and massages.
I mean if a person truely does nothing other than sit around eating bon-bons and watching TV all day while their partners works that’s totally obnoxious. However, I assume that most couples that have come to this arrangement have something where it’s mutually beneifical to BOTH parties. (Whether that means food and massages, a really nice garden, a fabulous home for entertaining clients, blowjobs twice a day, whatever.)
A few years ago, my husband quit his white collar job to be self-employed and work from home. The corporate world was really not for him. But now he works part time and is very definitely the home-maker. The only reason I still think it’s important for him to have a job of some kind is the employment history issue. I don’t want him to have trouble finding work if something happens to me. But as it turns out, he’s rather hard working, and work keeps finding him.
Since I basically loathe housekeeping and he sees it as an avocation, I would be more than happy to support both of us entirely. As it is, we have the luxury that he only has to take work that he wants to, and as such can charge lower rates to accommodate projects that have some kind of social justice or environmental slant. That enriches both of us. Coming home to a clean house full of healthy, wholesome food also makes it much nicer for me to have to go out to work.
When we announced our engagement to his parents many years ago, his father immediately asked, “But son, how do you expect to support her?” I laughed then, and said I was perfectly capable of supporting myself. I didn’t marry him for his long term earning potential. We’re not in this to make the most possible money. We’re in this to share the best life we can together. Having him out of a job that was killing his soul, and barefoot in the kitchen definitely contributes to a much higher quality of life for both of us. By staying at home and taking care of everything, he’s providing for me in a much more emotionally necessary way than going out and working that much higher paying nine-to-five job.
Awesome. I love this.
Ditto. You said this better than I did, more efficiently, and with less swearing.
But, this is the Pit, so I suppose I should deduct a point for the lack of vitriol. Call it an 8.6.
Hey, my feeling is if either partner gets the other to pay all the bills while they get to stay home and volunteer or whatever they want to do with their time…God Bless. My beef is when that stay at home wife demands ALIMONY when the nice little ride is over. Staying at home is a great gig if you can get it. Wanting to still get paid for it when the marriage is over and you’re no longer washing his or her underware or having a meal waiting or what ever the agreement was? Nope. Shouldn’t happen. Pity after a certain length of marriage, it still does.
What if the reason you didn’t work is so that the other person could work 80 hours a year and develop a high paying career? What if you only did that with the understanding that they would support both of you with the proceeds?
(hijack) Hmmm. Didn’t know that peas result in lard 
(/hj)
Well, what do you know? I’m a “chichevaches” and a fucking slacker!
Don’t marry one, then. There are lots of women who have no desire whatsoever to do this. I personally would rather go snorkeling in raw sewage than be a housewife. (I’m taken, though)
And there are people who do housework as their paid employment. I just wrote a check for one of them.
Yeah, good for them if they arrived at the decision mutually, both are happy, and so forth.
It’s not stopping me from being bothered and having an opinion of them that I would never say to their faces.
Mostly, what bothers me most about this is the implication that household chores are something to be put on a pedestal and revered just the same as 9-5 drudgery. The whole “SAHs work harder than their husbands do” thing used to be glorification of females in order to subjugate them, and both men and women ate it up. My fundamentalist mother told me that being a career woman would be the “easy way out” and truly believes it. WTF, messes and chores magically disappear while you’re at your 9-5? Fundamentalist experiences have instilled a very suspicious view of SAH arrangements, but more power to people who choose that path and are both genuinely happy in it. It still will take me a lot of convincing that a person who chooses to SAH doesn’t have a significantly easier life than a person who has a 9-5.
For us, though, our mutual agreement is that either we both work or we both retire. And we’re saving up for our retirement as fast as we can.
Is Pastor Hagee secretly an SDMB member? 'Cause he just said this: