Yeah, and this is an incredibly dangerous thing to do too, for both partners really. For the woman, she's basically giving up any hope of having a real career, ever, and consigning herself to being nothing more than a "housewife" for her best adult years. She'll never have a serious career after that. Worse, she's making herself entirely financially dependent on the man. What happens when the marriage falls apart, as it does in 50% of marriages? Now she's got no income, no skills, and the best she can hope for is to really fuck over the ex-husband with child support and alimony. Even with that, it's not going to be that easy to live, and she'll have a lower standard of living than before. The same goes for the husband; with a wife that doesn't work, he's likely going to do very badly in divorce court, and lose a large chunk of his income to monthly payments to her. The whole setup is fraught with peril.
Finally, what kind of woman has no career goals? Usually one with little or no education. Educated men usually aren't interested in such women, unless they're both highly conservative and religious.
> Yeah, and this is an incredibly dangerous thing to do too, for both partners really. For the woman, she's basically giving up any hope of having a real career, ever, and consigning herself to being nothing more than a "housewife" for her best adult years. She'll never have a serious career after that. Worse, she's making herself entirely financially dependent on the man.
Absolutely true, but also absolutely the traditional and current norm.
> The whole setup is fraught with peril.
Yup, but that's why it's a commitment, it's risky for both parties but hugely beneficial if it works.
> Finally, what kind of woman has no career goals? Usually one with little or no education. Educated men usually aren't interested in such women, unless they're both highly conservative and religious.
Well about half the population is conservative, and about 80% of the population is religious, so that means the majority of men are interested in such women. This is hardly surprising as housewife is actually traditionally the norm, the notion of educated women earning money is rather new historically and isn't something society has really fully accepted yet.
In 2009, 59 percent of working-age women in the United States were in the labor force.
Well over half of working-age women are employed. That means the percentage of women who would qualify as stay at home moms is less than 41%. Likely well under, between 23 an 29 from a quick look.
You're mixing two different statements. Look at what I said was current norm, being dependent when married and trying to have kids.
So your stats don't disprove anything I said.
> Well over half of working-age women are employed. That means the percentage of women who would qualify as stay at home moms is less than 41%. Likely well under, between 23 an 29 from a quick look.
Not relevant to what I said, at all. I didn't say the majority of women are stay at home moms, I said they're financially dependent on their husbands. You can be a working women and still be uneducated and financially dependent. These are not mutually exclusive things.
I don't see what I'm mixing up. You said that the current norm is a woman "basically giving up any hope of having a real career, ever, and consigning herself to being nothing more than a "housewife" for her best adult years. She'll never have a serious career after that. Worse, she's making herself entirely financially dependent on the man." (Yes, these are not your words, but they're the words that you quoted when you said it was "absolutely" the current norm.)
If by "norm" you mean this still happens a lot, sure, but that's not what's actually the norm. The norm is to be part of the labor force.
Being part of the labor force doesn't stop one from being basically a housewife. A job isn't equal to a career. He's talking about educated women with real careers. You're talking about jobs, we're talking about careers. If you can find labor force statistics that break out low skilled jobs from careers requiring degrees, then you have something to add if that's still over 50%, I highly doubt it is.
And my point is largely, women's equality has a long way to go; it's really not the norm yet.
Ok, you went back and edited your comment to add more detail about what you meant. Yes, you can be a wife who's financially dependent on your husband but still hold a job. It could also happen in reverse, of course.
For the record, I'm not sure how common that actually is vs stay-at-home mom. If you have kids, it becomes glaringly obvious how expensive it is to put kids into daycare. For low-earning mothers with a better-earning husband, it can be really hard to justify working vs staying home to raise the kids. It costs more than minimum wage to put a single kid into daycare.
If you have some stats indicating that most women earn so little as to be financially dependent on their husbands, I'd like to see it.
You act like I'm attacking women, I'm not. Most married couples with kids are financially dependent on each other; single income families are no longer the norm either. I don't think it's a stretch to say that within most marriages, moms still dominate the child care side of the marriage and work when they can while dads still dominate the working full time side. And I've already stipulated that most married couples with kids are financially dependent on each other, so it's not just women. I don't have any data to show you, if you think I'm wrong so be it, I really don't care, but this is what I see all around me and the stats you posted I think basically back me up since it's barely over half counting all jobs and I'm only counting real careers that require education since we were discussing that, not just employment.
You seem to really want to make the point that more than half of women work; ok great, but it's a non-sequitur, we weren't talking about jobs, but educated women with careers and more to the point about how many men care about being with educated women with careers. The OP said who but religious and conservative men want an uneducated women, but religious and conservative men account for the majority of men so it's an odd thing to say.
I'm not saying you're attacking women. I don't think I said anything even remotely close to that. I'm responding to your claims about the prevalence of women dependent on their husbands for financial support.
Bluntly, I think you made a claim you realize is incorrect and you're trying to walk it back to something noncontroversial. The whole thread from imesh down was about women staying at home with the kids so their husbands could have high-earning careers. Arizhel commented that this was a dangerous arrangement and you stated that this was the current norm. After I disputed your claim, you walked it back to just being "financially dependent on their husbands". Now you've walked it back further to couples being mutually dependent.
From high-earning husbands with stay-at-homes wives to couples that can't make ends meet without two incomes. These are vastly different topics and if you were really intending to jump from one to the other, it seems odd to accuse me of dropping a non-sequitur for bringing in some data.
I also think your notions of womens' employment are antiquated. You seem to think that women don't have "real careers that require education" and they "work when they can", but women:
* have 43% of their population working full time (for comparison, 56% of men work full time)
* earn more degrees than men
* are 47% of the workforce
* have lower unemployment than men
* hold 51.5% of professional and management jobs (aka careers)
No, I'm not trying to walk anything back, I stand by what I said, and bluntly you seem to have gotten your feelings hurt and can't let it go even thought the thing you're going on about was tangential to the point I was making to him which was about how many men might be interested in such women. Guest what, if only 40% of people do something, that still qualifies as "normal", I know, it's shocking, but normal is a different word than "majority". Find a dictionary, I promise, it's true, something can be normal without it being what most people do. Women being dependent on their husbands for income is still quite normal. So please take your hurt feelings elsewhere and stop hijacking a threat that wasn't even about that.
I'll happily admit that the 51% number is slightly higher than I expected, hooray, you're made an irrelevant off topic point completely unrelated to why I responded to him in the first place. Do you feel better now? You can return to your safe space and look for the next post where there's one word you disagree with and high-jack another thread to rage on about something completely off topic to the thread.
My feelings are hurt? About what, and how would that even be relevant if it were true? I "high-jacked" the thread that I was part of before you even showed up? Come on. This is you desperately trying to criticize me personally because you cannot defend your own claims.
Your 40% stat is made up and you're trying to assert it as a fact and argue semantics instead. No. You don't get to descend into pedantry about the definition of "normal" when your underlying premise is based on imaginary data.
You're also making a false equivalency between what many men (supposedly) want and what actually happens. Even if 40% of men want stay-at-home wives, that doesn't mean stay-at-home wives (or financially dependent wives, or whatever your current slightly-changed claim is) are the norm. I bet far greater than 40% of men want to win the lottery and yet winning the lottery is decidedly not the norm.
I know, you're going to come in and say this is still not your point. I don't think you actually know what your point is. You've made claims ranging from most men wanting stay-at-home wives to "the majority of women" being "financially dependent on their husbands". You've stated that in "most marriages" wives don't have careers and just "work when they can" and you've claimed that "religious and conservative men account for the majority of men". My point is you have a bunch of preconceived ideas that are not based on fact and in many cases are provably wrong.
>... consigning herself to being nothing more than a "housewife" for her best adult years.
>Finally, what kind of woman has no career goals? Usually one with little or no education. Educated men usually aren't interested in such women, unless they're both highly conservative and religious.
Holy cow this is the most judgemental attitude I've heard in a long time. You make being interested in raising a family full time sound like a relic of some ignorant past. Yeah it's a career killer, but the rest of that is just being disrespectful. It's not about having no career goals, it's about prioritizing other things above them.
You call it disrespectful, I call it honest. Even in the past when staying at home was normal, people did not respected those women and looked down on them. Pretending otherwise is just lie.
I do not know whether the author of the comment is women or men, but described reality of it quite accurately - including what the women goes through and thinks about herself as she has to give up everything except the family. It is also incredibly lonely, you can hang around friends if they made similar choice, but just hanging around chatting is not satisfying for most people.
It is not just about prioritizing other things then career - plenty of working parents including fathers do that. It is giving up chance to be competitive in pretty much anything and giving up chance for any personal achievement. All those experiences that goes with having meaningful job, successes, failures, feeling like you are getting better, felling like you do something not everyone can do, all that things that gives people confidence are out. Just about the only possible achievement is when your kids are successful, but it is better for them if you don't live your live through them. You have to have special kind of personality to like that and only some women are like that.
As to education: staying home is more attractive proposition for women without education, because low education jobs are shitty and employers treat you badly.
You call it disrespectful, I call it honest. Even in the past when staying at home was normal, people did not respected those women and looked down on them. Pretending otherwise is just lie.
There are plenty of people like that alive today and to say that nobody respects them is not true. People are different.
As if being a housewife is an easy and unchallenging job. I only wonder how those intellectually suppressed women managed to raise such intellectual superman like yourself? I hope for your sake that your bubble will break sooner that later.
Finally, what kind of woman has no career goals? Usually one with little or no education. Educated men usually aren't interested in such women, unless they're both highly conservative and religious.