Posted on 04/17/2006 5:10:26 AM PDT by IrishMike
Don't sweat it, once your fiance is staying at home, and not hanging out with work a day women, she'll meet the other stay at home wifes/moms (especially once she has kids) and her circle of friends will be with other moms raising their kids and she won't feel outside the norm....
That and she'll get to snicker at all those still working gals that say "I don't know how you do it, I'd go insane without work".... If you think a woman who truly embraces being a housewife just sits around the house whiping drool off of rugrats, never speaking to other adults you don't have a clue.
"Why Women Work".... I just see a couple of charts, I don't see anything about intellectual stimulation or career satisfaction there. Those are two major reasons I can think of that I, and women I know, work.
When my daughter told me that she wanted to be a trophy I had never heard the term and it was years before I knew what she meant. Yes, I see bimbos reading comic books on the beach while dirty old men admire their bodies. Amy is not a bimbo.
I've been saying this for years, but no one wants to listen... it takes 2 incomes generally to do what 1 did 30 years ago... Free Trade is nothing but a scam.... The only way the average household income is going to stay level or grow in the future is if bigamy and polygamy become legal.
Well provided she wasn't running around with him during his last marriage....
As a guy I tell women, particularly younger women all the damned time... if they'll cheat with you... they'll cheat on you.... not exactly rocket science, but aparently many don't hear it from their parents.
Also, the flip side is, if you attend coctail parties with the wealthy, you'll notice they tend to trade younger every decade or so.. sometimes more often. When their trophy wife hits a certain age, abra cadabra they are divorced and have a new gal that just happens to be the same age as the gal he just left was when they met....
As long as they are happy, so be it.. me, even with the money to provide first class, I have no desire for a woman who demands it....
City girls just seem to find out early
How to open doors with just a smile
A rich old man
And she won't have to worry
She'll dress up all in lace and go in style
Late at night a big old house gets lonely
I guess ev'ry form of refuge has its price
And it breaks her heart to think her love is
Only given to a man with hands as cold as ice
.....
Those charts show why most women I know work after having kids. Many of my "working mom" friends are only working to afford healthcare or to pay one of the bills.
Does the chart take into account the price of daycare, eating out more, clothes, etc? I know a woman who couldn't understand why anyone would want to stay home with their children. Meanwhile, most of her income went to a babysitter.
bump
You are correct of course - my title was a bit simplistic.
IMO, often it's a feedback loop - many women enter the workforce and/or remain there in part (and sometimes mostly) for reasons such as the those you cite, but for a majority of dual-income families the additional financial obligations it's possible to assume with two incomes soon makes it quite difficult for ether wage-earner to reduce their income.
And that's for families earing the median income or better.
If a dual-income family consisting of two high-school graduates earning $20K (around $10 an hour) each loses one of those incomes for a sustained period, it likely means they are headed for bankrucpy in pretty short order - especially as the entire loss of that income in such a family is likley to be the result of illness or injury.
So for both sorts of families there are often pretty strong economic incentives for both adults to keep working - IMO often strong enough that it's difficult to separate the economic and "psychological" motivations to maintain dual-inconme status.
Well, that's an interesting question.
One argument make by some people studying dual-income families is their situation is quite different depending on the nature of the families financial obligations - if the second income is supporting "discretionary" spending and one wage-earner strops working, to at least some extent they can "replace" their income's contribution by watching the kids, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, cooking meals, etc. - services their income was previously purchasing.
OTOH if that income was used for non-discretionaly spending (mortgage, utilities, necessary medical care and the like) the family is in deep trouble.
The issue here is that there is pretty convincing evidence that discretionary spending is substantially decreased compared to a generation ago - that despite all the "stuff" we are buying fixed expenses (primarily housing and medical costs) now consume a substantially greater percentage of family incomes than previously.
So increasingly you find a situation where such families are caught in the "two income trap" - once you have committed to (for example) a housing purchase that's difficult or impossible to support on a single income in order to buy into a community with good-quality schools, you are at risk of financial disaster if the second income is lost.
Personally, I am ready to stop working a 9-5 and stay home with a baby. Hence the tagline.... :-)
Not to belabor the point, but this is not what I meant. I would not discount as a future spouse someone who had been married and divorced. Know at least a couple of second marriages that are by all accounts very happy.
I DO THINK a woman should think more than twice about marrying a man who has left his wife to be with her. Then again, a woman who would date, pine for, sleep with, hook up with, (insert applicable term here) a married man, might think differently.
Married is always off limits, to me.
Both my daughter , her friends, and now my daughter in law are starting their own businesses at home. I think this is ideal. They can grow or shrink to fit changing circumstances, and have a lot of control of their time. My daughter, a photojournalism major, is building a protrait biz, and dot in law is technical writer.
I cannot wait until the day I get to stay home and have kids. Until then, I will work and try to pay off as many bills as possible to make that future life easier.
I did it too. Got a lot of flak. Homeschooled as well. I LOVED watching my child grow and change, interacting with him. I wouldn't trade it for all the career-glory in the world. And now I am using my education and have a wonderful job. (What's so radical about this? Honestly.)
The last thing I want is my wife sitting at home all day, thinking of sh*t for me to do when I get home.
hahah, thanks for the editing. I thot the article was awful, really. "It is SO different from any other generation that has stayed home with their kids, because of the good feminists." NO, it is in spite of the feminists and like women have been doing since time immemorial. With the changes that time has brought.
Oh, we're perfectly capable of doing that while we're at work, as well. :)
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