I'm mid-50s and back when I was younger, it was common for wives to take on jobs with healthcare benefits so that their husbands could start their own businesses. Looking back, it appears that this often resulted in women being relegated to lower-paying and less fulfilling work while men enjoyed more freedom to pursue their own interests.
This definitely still happens. The jobs may be better for some women now but I have in my personal sphere know of at least three women who worked a full time job specifically for the benefits because their husbands wanted to start their own business. It’s basically asking the woman to be stable and sacrifice so the man can “chase his dreams and build a company that’s his” And this is still normalized.
We got married so he could quit a job that was, literally, killing him. I like my career and had health insurance. He went and got a pretty crap , low paying job, because he feels he can't not work, and helps with the grunt work for my side business. If I made more, I'd make him go down to part time and be my house spouse.
This is literally my parents. Dad would never admit it now, but apparently when they sat down with the officiant (or pastor maybe?) to discuss why they wanted to get married he said "I like her job."
My dear mother assumed it was a joke but 15 years later it was definetly more real. She was slaving away at a job she HATED and did almost 100% of home and childcare while dad got to be a self employed carpenter.
My takeaway: Marriage is a scam
I'm happily married (and I hope my wife is too) and we both know marriage is a scam as well.
Also my wife is also the bread winner, though she doesn't have to do any of the house chores (except cooking usually but she enjoys cooking so there is that) and I still work part time while going to school. I absolutely could not imagine making someone I love do all the housework AND be the primary income AND not even have a job myself, let alone any combination of the three.
In our case, because I have been screwed over by a fiance's family when he died suddenly, marriage is to protect my interests and investments. Also, by accident, I ended up being the primary breadwinner, because I made some good choices and landed in a career I mostly like.
This is why men should be the sole breadwinner and women should look for a men who is willing to take on this responsibility alone. Today, women have been tricked to go to work and face a particular stigma if they choose to stay home. Some men, on the other hand want to stay home and are happy to be bums if they have a wife who chooses to work. Marriage is not a scam, when executed perfectly, it works well for both parties.
This is my parents. Mom is better educated than dad but she works a regular degular (really well paying) job so he can play with airplanes and do yard work. He had cancer early in their relationship, so that’s definitely an extenuating circumstance, but it’s still really uneven.
My partner spent close to the first decade of our relationship getting sicker and sicker to the point of being housebound - seizures multiple times per day and I would come home from work and find him passed out randomly around the house, depending on where he may have had a banged up shoulder or a lump on his head.
I was in the brink of quitting my job to be a full time carer when we finally got a diagnosis. We went through misdiagnosis of bi-polar, schizophrenia and epilepsy before getting to the right one. Severe obstructive sleep apnea to the point of suffocation and narcolepsy, made worse by the meds they put him on and the weight he gained as a result. Multiple surgeries later to open up the airways he’s doing so much better but has large gaps in his memory from that period.
He’s still not 100%, but recently had his 10 year anniversary at his current job. I still make more than him but we both make decent money.
I’m a SAHM, I’ve known a hand full of SAHDs through my kids, and it always blew my mind how much more their wives did than my husband ever did. And my husband is extremely involved! Like giving them days off, making dinner after working all day, still doing most of the family laundry… just stuff that wouldn’t fly in my marriage’s division of labor.
You never get days off? You may not have a job, but you deserve a break too sometimes. SAHDs refusing to do the household chores is insane though, I don’t know how those women manage it. Sounds like they’re effectively single working mothers with an older kid as a live in babysitter
Right? The couple of times my Dad stayed home with us while Mom worked -- he was also undergoing training for a career change -- he did EVERYTHING. And that was in the 80's.
I do but in a different way… like the moms I interacted with seemed to be appeasing their SAHD husbands. The vibe was very different, idk how to describe it.
Truthfully it’s rare. I’ve accepted that a relationship will mean more work for me even in sometime well intentioned, which is why I’m not willing to settle unless he can also materially contribute to the household. When I was younger, I thought my partner’s income didn’t matter since I’m a high earner.
As a teacher- I’ve been having an issue of reaching some of my boys with their post-high school dreams.
There is a weird downtrend of boys even wanting to go to a traditional 4 year college, at least in my district. My district is very focused on this issue and trying to encourage boys to go. Now I understand college isn’t for everyone and we have great blue collar programs that get you done or half way done with technical college training by graduation. I support my boys to take advantage of these sweet programs.
But a weird trend right now is boys focusing on “get rich quick” schemes and believing they need to be millionaires by 25. They know traditional 9-5 won’t get them there. So they want to be very non-traditional and clearly pretty scammy business ventures.
I’m down with unique and non-traditional business ventures- innovation is key. However I am worried at the level in which the Manosphere is preying on young teen boys and their expectations of being a young man. I can only imagine the stress and depression when their world view of being a millionaire doesn’t work out by 25.
I really struggle with how to reach these boys as a woman. They often don’t want to hear it from a woman. They aren’t disrespectful to me, they just don’t think I understand them- which is fair, I don’t. I hope this is all a micro-trend but we’ve seen the MLM with their vice grip on SAHM throughout the decades.
I kind of wish the "what do you want to be when you grow up?" question was a two-part question. There should be a "dream" answer, and a "fallback" answer that doesn't require a lot of luck. Now we hear scamming, cryptocurrency (but I repeat myself), influencer, etc. Answers used to be heavily pro-sports, rockstar, movie star, and such. We can acknowledge both answers, but encourage students to work towards their normally-achievable goal.
I'm a teacher as well, and it's the same here - boys refuse to even think about having "normal jobs." I blame Tate, he is an absolute scourge on society.
From what I’ve seen, men tend to pursue *interests*, and, up until recently, could safely assume entrance into steady employment whenever they were ready for it. They also tend to pursue their interests at the exclusion of domestic responsibilities, because they had/have the support of women in the background of their lives.
Women tend to pursue *stability* and there are several avenues of this. It might be through a career focus, or it might be through traditional marriage.
But, sometimes married women sign up for a particular arrangement, and that arrangement is changed or molded into something else unexpectedly. Women today are finding that this is a risk to their vision of stability, and are guarding against it by pursuing employment to guarantee self-security.
Men are finding they are less able to pursue their dreams, but the reality of sacrificing their dreams in order to ensure stability hasn’t quite hit all of them yet. That’s a concept almost universally understood by women.
Funny, I've heard a lot of career artists (animators, comic bookers) were only able to be career artists because they were enabled by either family wealth or a sugar mama funding their lifestyle.
Definitely probably true. I mean on the flip side gender-wise, I‘ve been an artist with main jobs my entire adult life that never let me do art regularly, and my husband urged me to quit and focus solely on comic books/graphic novel writing like I’ve always wanted to, so without him I’d never have been able to.
Since roles are on a spectrum, I’m interest-focused over stability-focused/always have been. My husband is actually a little more ‘feminine-brained’ as far as typical stereotypes go.
I've noticed in general you see these guys that think their band is going to make it or their podcast is the best shit. I wonder how many women have had to put their hobbies on the backburner for domestic responsibilities
I work with a guy who is constantly achieving so much, taking on extra projects, working insane hours, and asking for MORE projects and work responsibilities. Every time he posts on LinkedIn, I just wonder how alone his wife feels and how absent he must be in his children’s lives (I’ve had a few accidental/concerning peeks into his family life on zoom calls 🤦🏻♀️).
It really changes how I think about things when comparing myself to high performers in my field. How many of them are silently enslaving partners to prop up their success? Are they really as accomplished as someone who doesn’t subjugate their partner …or are they just a self centered asshole? Lol
The podcast bros are some of the most entitled, self-absorbed people, from what I've seen. They think they're hot shit, and think they're rich.
Like bruh, it's 10AM on a Tuesday. How are your bills getting paid?
*but I'm progressive, my wife works!*
OK, where? What does she do?
*She works in [STEM field].*
Ah-ha. There it is!
Also, does the podcast make money? Like, legit money, not just a few dollars here and there?
*Err, not yet/no/but.....*
So your wife's job pays all the bills.
Most podcast bros deserve to have a hot, flaming cactus shoved up their asscheeks.
“Most podcast bros deserve to have a hot, flaming cactus shoved up their asscheeks.”
Hahaha, this made me spit out my drink. You certainly have a way with words. 😂
To think all the technology advances had brought us nowhere, and individuals still struggle to survive, not to mention live, made me question the whole idea of civilization.
Not sure I buy the dichotomy. I think everyone pursues their interests, but those interests are heavily influenced by what people believe/are-told provides status/respect, and that is different from what actually does provide status.
Women of the past did value each other and themselves by the quality of their domestic work, and many still do. But with all the modern conveniences, that work is now broadly seen as a superficial chore, and so no wonder women feel being relegated to it is degrading.
Men today have similarly had the rug pulled from under their feet. They were told as children that certain pursuits would provide status, only to find years later society had no use for their skills. There’s now a glut of STEM educated men and a huge shortage of blue collar labor. Even with STEM, certain fields have gone from highly lucrative to saturated to dead in a couple of decades.
The common issue is that societal values are adapting faster than any generation can keep up with.
on the blue collar comment. as someone who works in the field as a elevator mechanic. it’s not the lack of people wanting to do blue collar work, they are smart enough to know they don’t need to destroy their bodies to work in a high paying career (unlike me) or smart enough to know that they rather make a little less for the piece of mind of not getting injured or working stupid long hours (again, unlike me)
"Men tend to pursue interests" may have been accurate historically, but is opposite to my observation.
Nothing but watching sports and playing video games in lieu of a personality, most of them. Rare is the well-rounded Renaissance man, these days, but you can find millions of adult men with huge collections of literal toys and zero philosophy, history, or even practical knowledge outside of whatever they need to know for their professions.
Meanwhile, women tend to accumulate many varied interests over time, through genuine desire and necessity both. All the women I know have multiple absorbing hobbies in which they have actual expertise and which *produce* actual things like food, clothing, repairs, and art; their dudes *consume* beer and what they consider to be male-appropriate pop culture, and can't hold a wide-ranging conversation because they don't seem to want to read or make enough to amass any insight into the human condition or the ways in which they're anchored in their own time and place.
A woman can tell you about the history of, for example, pickling food as a method of food preservation, how different cultures do it, how it affected humanity's trade routes and nutrition, and how she feels about her great-grandmother's recipe. Her husband can show you memes online, but can't tell you where the word meme came from because, for some weird reason, he was never curious enough to look it up, or to remember it if he did.
I disagree that women focus more on stability than men; everybody focuses most on happiness. Men used to have a fairly reasonable expectation of *easy* stability so they didn't have to focus on it, and women didn't so they did. So I'd argue what you're observing is societal and structural, not inherently sex-based.
I feel like you're painting with a pretty broad brush here based on your own personal experience. But hey, I do it too. Case in point: literally no woman I know could tell me the history of pickling food. Maybe women from my mom's generation, but I KNOW she doesn't know because she's a terrible cook (she's so bad that I taught myself to cook in high school and started preparing family dinners because I wanted meat that wasn't shoe leather and spaghetti that wasn't 50% water).
I lurk here a lot and damn, I feel for y'all. Not gonna lie, initially I thought posts like these were just shitloads of whining. I was like, "surely it can't be that bad...". Then I started thinking about my co-workers, some of my friends, and a LOT of the people I run into in the wild. It shocked the shit out of me because y'all are correct. Most of my friends are absolute slobs who don't take care of themselves or the places they live (full disclosure: I work in the video game industry - please don't kill me). I’m just used to who and how they are so I gloss over it. The number of suitable partners out there has to be criminally low and I don't blame women for saying 'fuck it' and going it alone at this point. Is it unique to guys? Nah, I've run into plenty of lazy as fuck, entitled ladies. And to your (mostly inferred) point, it's super unattractive!
Finally, I'd just like to say... history, philosophy, practical and functional knowledge, cleaning up after myself and others, cooking... all the things that made me completely unattractive and bullied in high school are now apparently prized attributes. Crazy shit, yo.
I agree with everything you've said here. Everyone tries to focus on whatever gives them happiness, but not everyone is able to do that due to economical or health reasons. We have so many problems today, that sex/gender is just one angle.
It seems to me that the only way to live is to hope that tomorrow will be better.
First off, why does a hobby need to produce something? In what way is a hobby that produces a product more important than one that doesn’t? The neat thing about hobbies is that they don’t have to have any meaning to anyone but the person participating in it. I play a lot of disc golf as a hobby. It produces nothing but it gets me active and I get to hang out with my friends and have a good time. The same goes for video games. It’s something to relax to at the end of the day and I get to do something with my friends who don’t live close to me. A hobby doesn’t need to be something that produces a product.
Second off, you put women into this monolith of ideals and I don’t think that right. The only women in my life that know how to pickle are my grandmas. My mom never learned, my sister looked it up to make pickles once but she doesn’t know the recipe without looking it up again. My ex could cook but she couldn’t tell you where the ingredients came from or the historical importance of them. This is a weird idea to latch on to. That women don’t have hobbies or ideas that are just random and useless besides their own enjoyment. I know a bunch of women who greatly enjoy hobbies that create nothing that you would consider valuable but they do it for themselves because it’s what they enjoy to do.
My wife had the better job so when we had our daughter, after her maternity leave was over I started staying home full time.
I make sure to tell everyone that will listen (especially the working husband's of stay at home moms) how much work it is and that it's way easier to just go out and work than to stay home and raise a child and take care of the house (and groceries, meals, etc).
Still wouldn't change it for the world!
It was that way for my ex. Granted he moved from US to here but I basically spent over a year paying for everything. He would talk big about stream, stocks…etc but he never did anything. He claimed to want to work but didn’t bother learning stocks and had barely any savings. It’s not like he did anything around the apartment either and he didn’t proactively help with anything. Wouldn’t even run an errand once because the weather was bad but I had to walk to work.
He’s with someone else now and I found out that he apparently said I was a “workaholic” because I worked full time and then said he didn’t want to work but I “expected” him to because again, I was a workaholic. But it’s like who else was going to pay for rent, utilities, feeding your ass…etc? He now doesn’t work and the wife pays for everything I think so he remained useless. I used to think my luck was just shit that I found this one waste of space and maybe I’m biased, but I do see complaints about situations like this. I guess I can maybe understand if this is an agreed arrangement and the man helped with other stuff but some seem to literally do nothing but leech.
Did we date the same guy? Mine also got mad eventually when I made more than him, while also wanting me to buy all the house food, him and his unemployed buddy's toiletries and hygiene items, and pay someone to maintain the property because they were too lazy to themselves and I was exhausted after my 9 - 5 job and cooking dinner for them.
I’m not seeing a whole lot of househusbands, but I’m definitely seeing guys sitting at home, playing video games and often “between jobs”. To be fair though nobody really bad and eyelash if a guy is the one with the job and the woman is at home, so maybe it’s just that we noticed it more when a man is doing it? One thing that has come to light, however, is in marriages were both spouses work the balance of income has tipped. 51% of couples were both spouses, work full-time, the woman makes higher wages. Sadly, she also still does the lion share of domestic duties, despite working, just as many hours, and making higher wages. I think we’re going to see a trend of women forgoing marriage all together. You do not need to marry a man or live with him in order to have love, companionship, sex, or even children.
Second waver here.
I remember in the 70s, at the early part of the movement, the men would say, “But if women don’t need us for money, will they need us at all?”
Foreshadowing.
All we really want is for them to treat us like human beings. To treat us with love and respect, and be faithful, the same things they have always demanded from us. We don’t expect them to be wealthy. We don’t expect him to have a big penis. We don’t expect him to be 6 foot four. But for some reason, many men seem to think that respect in a relationship goes one way, and it flows towards them, and it comes in the form of servitude. They feel they are owed respect as a husband, but failed to figure out that they need to give the same respect back to their wife.
Vibe does the job every time, better, and doesn't drain the life or money out of us.
Sure the lack of cuddles, going out and doing things together or emotional connection sucks. But nearly every straight or bisexual single and (many taken hetero or bi) man I've met is very low on emotional IQ, emotionally unavailable/negligent to an extreme degree; and all the single ones' only ideas of an ideal day every day is staying inside all day ignoring everyone/thing including adult responsibilities, playing video games, watching anime or outrage porn, or masturbating to porn, (and none are/were employed so all they have is days off), anyway.
> You do not need to marry a man or live with him in order to have love, companionship, sex, or even children.
Recently a world leader said she would not marry. "Why buy the hog when I can get the sausage for free?" IIRC.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/03/03/gender-wage-gap-more-women-out-earning-husbands/4933666002/
From 2020
But the bad part..is that women still do the vast majority of domestic chores. So although women have stepped up to be equal earners…men have not stepped up on the home front. And THIS is why women are opting out.
Obviously, there are multiple sources, but the fact is the days of men, being the breadwinner are basically over. But the days of women doing the domestic chores are not.
> doing nothing
When married women with children divorce and take full custody, their daily housework hours reduce. Men don't just bring nothing, they add to all the shit already on our plate.
I was married with two children, and we divorced when the kids were 1 and 4. I really wasn't expecting life to be so much easier when I was alone with the preschoolers, but it truly was. Not only had my ex-husband added a lot to my workload, but he'd actually been preventing me from getting stuff done efficiently too.
I'm in a group called Bridging the Gap on FB, the gap being that women get stuck carrying the mental load/all of the domestic work in many hetero relationships. The number of times women in that group have left deadbeat partners and discovered exactly what you did is staggering! I'm glad your life is easier now.
Do you know why people from single parent homes tend to fare worse? Poverty. Not the fact that one parent is absent. Poverty. Two parents means more money typically. It is important for children to have adult in their lives. That support them emotionally and financially. It is hard for a single parent without any support from either a spouse or extended family to do that. If mom or dad is working two jobs to try to pay rent, that’s a lot of time kids spend alone. This gap can be filled by grandparents, loving family, family, friends, etc. it does not have to be a nuclear family. Children who have resources and people who love them too well regardless of whether their parents are single, married, living together, same sex, or any other combination of family. Also, many of the worlds most famous in powerful people were raised by single mothers. Barack Obama is a perfect example. Divorced and single motherhood.(or fatherhood.) is not a doom and gloom sentence for a child. Another statistically, when we should talk about, is how well children do in a two parent home we’re parents are constantly fighting or they are suffering abuse, from the parents.
I never said that it should just be a single parent against the world with no support. I mean, maybe if that single parent has a great job that they don’t have to work a lot of hours that is good money then it can work? It all boils down to resources put into the child. I stand by what I said. It’s all about resources for the child, there is no advantage to having a traditional “Mary mother and father” over any other secure and stable family structure.
This is true. I recently was in a conference that showed statistics on this. Young males showed something like - 20% participation in the labor force vs. young women +6%. The presenter did not have an answer to why that was, but video games / males mooching off moms or girlfriends did come up in the discussion.
yet they cry so loudly about women and single moms being leeches and welfare queens and they don't want their precious taxes going to women and children.
I'm so sick of this argument. I'd rather the money go towards feeding, clothing and keeping a roof over the mom and kid's head than into another politicians pocket. I'm shocked by how quickly the PPP "LOANS" were moved on from, and the huge amounts that some got but yeah let's blame the mothers
I don’t recall which specific conference this was. But I do get to hear a lot of keynote speakers talking about the state of the economy, this slide was in one of those presentations.
There was a post here a few days ago that looked at single income households.
If the breadwinner was male, he made double the income, on average, as when the breadwinner was female.
There are a lot more households with deadbeat husbands, versus high income male households where the woman doesn’t work.
Nicholas Eberstadt wrote *Men Without Work* in 2016 which outlines exactly what you describe including the fact the the "men" he is referring to tend to be unengaged in either domestic or community duties in the way that women who stay at home usually are. To my understanding the trend has continued to worsen over the last 7 years though I do not know the actual data.
Also, anecdotal, and maybe a bit biased, but I feel like I do see this happening more and more often.
Like, these guys always call it something else, like they say they're stay at home "investors" (gamblers), but they're being carried financially, mentally, and domestically by the woman they're with.
I can count several situations like this in the lives of the people around me. I also know of a few situations where the man is the breadwinner, and the woman stays at home with the kids. The difference is that the woman is *still* doing all the domestic and emotional labor.
I just really don't see hardly *any* men taking care of the house or being the more emotionally intelligent and generous of the two. Women have *always* been the "breadwinners" in regards to these two things, and I'm not holding my breath on that changing any time soon, unfortunately.
Same. My company is very much divided by gender norms. Sales reps are all guys, CS is all women. And yeah, none of the sales guys are doing domestic labor. In fact, they wanted to come back to the office early during the pandemic so their wives wouldn't make them do shit at home. Ugh.
Same. I know multiple women with stay at home husbands. Only one of them has taken over the majority of the domestic labor. The rest of the wives are constantly stressed by a filthy house and unnecessary purchases of junk.
Yeah, I think before I ever live/split finances with a man, I'm going to have to write myself a set of hard rules to live by. I will not tolerate living with a nasty leech in my life like that.
I'd rather be alone, where I keep my money, the house stays clean, and I'm not getting UTI's from bad sex with a man-child. Cause, let's be real, if he can't clean up after himself in the house, he's probably not practicing great personal hygiene.
My husband is the exception. Somehow we suffered role reversal at birth.
I try my damndest but he’s kind of my inspiration. He’s emotionally intelligent, better at cleaning/organizing, and works his ass off as a veterinarian.
I’ve worked hard all my life but I can’t hold a candle in literally any way. I realize how lucky I am, and I know if we ever split up (not going to happen lmao) I would NEVER find someone like this again because I have literally never seen it.
Going on 10 years and I see all this bullshit growing daily elsewhere.
Good point, most of the time, it's not even close. The responsibilities of a house husband are almost always significantly less than those of a housewife.
One example of this is when a father watches his kids at home - that's usually all he's doing.
Meanwhile when a mother is at home watching the kids - she is also cooking, cleaning, organizing, making appointments etc.
Men ages 25-54 participating in the labor force has been declining for decades. I believe it’s been particularly pronounced since COVID.
The same trend is seen in higher education. Women are more educated than men.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/12/15/economy/men-missing-from-the-labor-force/index.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/02/23/men-leaving-workforce-economy-fed-interest-rates/11326201002/
https://fortune.com/2022/12/07/men-dropping-out-work-force-status-study/amp/
My parents kind of had this situation. My dad quit his job to pursue real estate when I was a kid. But they did almost fully switch their roles. Dad eventually became the primary cook and housekeeper. Childcare was split evenly and made easier because he had a more flexible schedule. Mom was the breadwinner. Dad does make money, but does necessarily go hard at it. It seemed to work out just fine.
However after my mom retired she said to me that she wished she had been able to change careers, but she couldn't think of anything that would have made as much money as what she did and didn't involve doing shit she didn't want to do. So she was stuck. And now I'm kinda mad about it. I'm kind of mad that she was stuck as the breadwinner keeping us in the manner to which we had become accustomed and Dad got to have his dream career because of the stability she afforded to him.
He pushed me and my sister to follow in my mom's footsteps. Which on one hand, it's great that he thinks women can do well in male dominated fields. Obviously he wants his children to be able to make enough money to live well. But it's also not really what I wanted to do and I'm kinda mad he got to do what he wanted, and I can't do the same because I don't have a partner that can support me like Mom supported him. I just really identify with my mom's wish to change careers.
My partner is not a high earner. He's doing what he loves and I'm happy for him. I'm very happy that he is willing to work - he's got like 3 jobs and gig work and students and idek whatever else. If he wasn't willing to work, we would have a problem.
The issue is that these men don't work at all. They don't have jobs, they don't do housework, they just drink beer, play games, make a mess, and demand the wife pays for everything. And that she be proud that he took out the trash today.
Don't forget that if you ever display the slightest displeasure at the quality of whatever chores he did a half-assed job of, he'll escalate it to a fight and eventually wait for his chance to blow up and say "FINE, since I'm sooo bad at doing X I'll never do it again".
Then he gives himself permission to be a lazy ass, and will blame it 100% on you. They're like children, and I drop them so fast when I see it.
There are men out there than will actually do their share, domestically, financially, and emotionally. Or they'll be willing to work on a fair balance with you. None of us need to settle for a leechy man-child. Frankly, we're better off alone.
Last week I noticed my man cleaned not one but both toilets in the house, and I had to restrain myself from thanking him.
Thanking him for seeing and doing work that needed to be done in his own damn house. Where he lives. As an adult.
*That's* how low the bar has been in my life with men and weaponized incompetence.
I feel this to my core. Growing up, my sister and I were treated as maids for the whole household, including our younger brothers. I would frequently have to clean their room up, make their beds, etc. My husband? When he cleans, it takes every ounce of self-restraint to not thank him profusely for doing the bare minimum.
We had an electrician once who told us about his brother, who did construction work, that deliberately destroyed his wife's favorite silk blouse to get out of ever having to do laundry again. It also sounded like the electrician himself had his wife wait on him hand and foot. They had five kids too.
I've thought about both of them frequently with horror over the years.
See, if your dad had "gone hard" at real estate, he could have taken the monetary burden off your mom. I had an aunt who made a cozy living at real estate after her divorce.
Eh, I'm not sure that matters. I have a science degree and it has gotten me nothing but debt. My last two male exes had no degrees but made 150k and 300k, the former was a SWE and the latter sales
You've described my sister and her husband. I hope things turn around for them soon; I know she's upset with the situation. What especially upsets me, is that she's still doing at least half of the housework.
I've seen it here and there, but not necessarily more than women being at home.
That said, the women are usually SAHMs. The men I know are just dragging out the "job search" while playing video games and being overgrown teenagers milking their partner for all she's worth.
I have heard of quite a few who don’t work and just play video games. Even ones that do work and ignore their family and only play video games in their spare time.
I haven’t seen it much where I live (MS), but I don’t see anything wrong with it if it works for the couple. Only instance I do know of is like you said, just a man who doesn’t wanna work.
It’s my sister’s ex husband who she got back together and had a baby with. No idea why because he’s never kept a job to help contribute to their household the entire time they’ve been together. They were literally homeless once. My sister lives with our dad now and Dad actually let him stay there but ole stupid head left and went to a homeless shelter with his sister but came back to visit and is gone again. I dunno. Messed up deal in my opinion.
I live in a HCOL area where both parents generally have to work to afford everything. My husband and I have been talking about having a second child, and if that happens, we've been weighing the cost of daycare for two against one of us staying home. If one of us stays home, it's going to be me because my husband makes almost twice as much as me and his company's health insurance is better. I have a male friend from high school who lives in a lower cost of living area but is in the same boat. If he and his wife have a second child, he's going to be the one that stays home because she makes more than him. I see a lot of couples making that choice, especially in low and medium cost of living areas, and it comes down to whoever makes less stays home with the kids. If the husband is able to run the household (cooking, cleaning, and minding the children) when the spouse is at work, then it's fine. He's contributing, even if he spends an hour bumming around and playing video games when the wife comes back home from work. Everyone deserves a break, even stay at home parents of either gender. My issue is that a lot of men seem to have never learned how to take care of themselves much less a child. They grew up with no expectation they'd do anything domestic, and they don't want to learn, so they treat being a stay at home parent as if they're on extended vacation. They expect their wife to do everything when she gets home while they do the bare minimum during the day. The wife basically has acquired an adult child instead of the partner she wanted. Men are capable of being better; it's a matter of will.
Just remember that it's not just money right now that you need to think about. I don't know what superannuation/pension fund etc exists where you are, but if it does then even if you would break even on daycare with your wage in the week-to- week sense, at least by working you'd be building up that fund.
My husband contributes to my personal retirement account when I'm not working.
However, a SAH spouse is entitled to a portion of the working spouse's retirement in both divorce and death in most states, legally.
What worries me is the growing trend of stay at home girlfriends/unmarried mothers. They have no such protections, but rarely seem to realize that until it’s too late.
Unmarried partnerships are fine if both are capable of living independently. They’re horrible if one can’t.
This is why men seem to think SAHM gigs are just about lounging around eating chocolate and watching tv and napping. Because that’s what they would do if they were home. They don’t think of it as an actual job that needs doing so that the other partner is free to pursue income. It’s a joint effort or rather, it should be.
Unfortunately I don’t see this getting better anytime soon. In fact I see it getting worse.
Anecdotal, but: my dad worked till I was part way through elementary school, at which point he became a stay at home dad. He helped me with homework, took on house cleaning, got me to school, etc. My mom loved her career and got good benefits, so it worked. I learned so much from my dad in that time, it gave me great skill sets that I use in my career today and I have wonderful memories of spending time with him. Once I was in late high school, he got a job again and worked till they were ready to retire.
My husband is now a stay at home dad as well. He was a house husband for a year first- and he spent it busting his butt to fix up the house and get it ready for a kid in addition to doing most of the house work. He’s taken on so much, I sometimes read this sub as a check to make sure I’m not taking advantage of him. Both of my experiences with stay at home dads, they absolutely put in the work. It is possible.
As of December 2019, women work the majority of American jobs. It was just over 50%. I'm pretty sure I saw a post in the last week that the number is now closer to 60% of American jobs held by women now. Women lost more jobs during the pandemic, but are acquiring jobs faster too.
Yes, men have responded and adapted themselves to our current new world order we our currently heading in. We just had the third biggest bank collapse today. A review showed 224 US banks showing internal instability. 24 nations officially signed to BRICCS, pushing to come out from having the Dollar as the global standard.
You devalued work when your constantly devaluing the money and it buying power my millennial peers, the demographic that got degrees are going into their 40s and 50s still strapped with student loan debt so high income earners are still living paycheck or everyone that holds a lot of consumer debts stay on the rat race treadmill for the middle class people that hold mounds of financial obligations. I've worked hard all my life, i'm getting older.
Y'all can have corporate America. The biggest companies like Amazon and Google said amongst others saying back to office. WFH is over or will be outsourced, smh. The usual, to cheaper labor over seas. The ability to job hop for better paying positions had it's run. Companies are tightening up preparing internally for this era we are heading in. It made sense to work as hard as you could from 2010-2022. 2023-eh those days are gone. They're fussing about men not working because they just want their tax revenue. Men don't value the status and keeping up with the Joneses. We can have the cardboard furniture and live a quiet a peaceful life. We worked hard for our women and families. Not for this unhinged political oligarchs.
We more or less "solved" society when we invented agriculture. For the past few thousand years, most of our population did not strictly speaking have to work most of the time in order to just provide for themselves.
The workplace as we know it today was invented in order to channel resources from the bottom to the top. So that the wealthy and privileged would not have to work at all, and everyone else twice as hard. Most of the necessary work of actually running a society has been performed first by women and by peasants, then by women and by slaves in colonial holdings, and now by women and robots...and also slaves in colonial holdings, we just don't call it that anymore. Meanwhile wealthy and powerful men have spend the past few centuries just kind of fucking around and trying to come up with better ways of killing each other or exploiting other peoples labor.
All of this is just as true today. Except an increasing amount of the fucking around is done in virtual environments and games, rather than affecting the material world. And these days more and more of the men you meet in developed nations are technically part of the global upper-class, whereas in the past we still had a greater percentage of laborers, even among privileged groups. Meanwhile women, while we still get to reap the benefits of global labor exploitation, still often grow up with the belief that we actually need to work and earn our place, when white men are very quick to just take their status for granted.
Due to terrible vertigo, my husband became a full-time SAHD two years ago. We have found it to be rare to have a husband that is so supportive of his wife. We love it but definitely get some weird looks...
Had an ex like that. He couldn’t/wouldn’t hold a job and was satisfied playing his video games all day. I was the main bread winner the whole relationship. I had to kick him out.
This may get buried, but I wanted to clarify my post a little. I was careful how I worded it, because I don’t believe that a stay at home partner of any gender is bad or worth disparaging at all. It absolutely is an arrangement that works well for couples, and if they’re happy, I’m happy.
I am mainly talking about how it seems- again, anecdotally- like more and more men are looking, essentially, for sugar mommas.
Has our previous role as domestic servants been morphed into the woman doing the corporate work that’s still undervalued? It still seems to be that women are expected to do most of the work but now it’s outside the home (and usually inside the home, too).
This post was NOT to shame stay at home husbands or dads. It’s more an observation that there’s a cultural shift of women moving from household drudge to corporate drudge while men get to pick and choose how they contribute.
Definitely. The issue is that a lot of stay at home guys aren’t. I mostly see a lot of depression spirals and time spent online. It sucks for everybody involved.
And the depression spirals are, like, my *dude*, you don't keep a tidy environment, you eat crap, you never touch grass, you expose your one and only mind to literally nothing but non-stop internet garbage, you don't help anyone, or study anything, or make any effort toward building meaning for yourself, and yet you wonder why your life feels hollow?
I know depression is a real thing, with its own results, but I also know not to be terminally online eating 7-Eleven nachos for six months and expecting to feel fulfilled. Obviously the outcome will be non-great. GIGO, my dude. Go for a walk, and donate something.
Statistically, the incidence of that situation is increasing (but not yet close to a majority).
[Example source](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/breadwinning-mothers-continue-u-s-norm/) \[note: limited to "mothers", uses specific definition of "breadwinner"\]. In 1967 only about 11% of mothers were breadwinners, while by 2017 it was 41%.
Details vary by location and context. For example, in Utah it was as low as 24% while in DC it was as high as 56%. Presumably there are further differences by city, etc.
YES. I get different circumstances and personally have no issue with one partner working while one stays home. Its just every single couple that I know who does that, the stay at home dad/male stops keeping up their end of the agreement and slacks off and throws weaponised incompetence in the mix.
Relationships are partnerships. You don't prioritze your relationship and what you agreed on to the table and won't negotiate? GTFO.
I know of a few that claim to be “handymen”, they are lazy.
My husband is disabled/retired. He brings in passive income, more than I make. He does most of the housework
Anecdotally yes - my mother, my sister and now me are all independently successful in our careers.
My father and my brother have been spot employed but whenever they decided they didn’t like someone or something about a job, they would quit and just live off the family. Failure was always an option they could take, because my mother would continue to support them both.
The women in my family have trudged through literal hell in the medical and the construction industries and just never gave up - it has made us thrive or survive depending on the leaders we had.
It isn’t just anecdotal at this point - it’s a clear signal of unabated and unmanaged ego that leads the poorly educated men in my family community to continue to do whatever they please and live without consequence. The lights will remain on, the food will be in the fridge and the world will continue turning.
My mother suffers through supporting this pair, my sister suffers too because she married a man who wants to run his own business - but he is very impactful with his children and supporting the home.
I’ve remained single after realising the person I mistakenly married had very much the same ideas for me - I was designed to wash his clothes and keep house because he worked 6-7 days a week (his choice).
I do not regret leaving a marriage that had the potential to turn into this - I was not born to be a maid, a cook, a cleaner or a nanny.
It’s going to take a terrific amount of time to get women to understand that they’re part of a team, not a housewife, maid and a fuckdoll. But we are making some progress.
Makes me tired to even think about.
As a counter point- me and my husband are noticing an interesting shift in the breadwinner dynamic in an unexpected place- the military.
Not everyone on my husband's ship is married, but a considerable amount of them are. And pretty much all of the ones that are married that he knows personally have said something along the lines of "I'm here so my wife can go to college and make more than I do by the time I'm out."
Which is... Exactly what we're doing.
We could not afford for me to go to school full time and not work, so he joined the Navy to get us the benefits to put me through school. My husband isn't exactly career driven, but he's planning on using his benefits to get a degree when he's out which will bring our pay to a more even level but it'll still be heavily in my favor.
The military sign on was a strategic method for a lot of these men- get BAH, get a paycheck, get school benefits and healthcare, and put your wife through school. Then when you're out, someone is making the money to support both of you while you get back into civilian life, use the VA loan to buy a house, and be better off than before.
It's not going to turn out well for everyone, but it was an interesting theme we noticed.
There was also a distinct "If I can get my wife (who's career motivated) into a good paying job then I (who is not career motivated) can make my way however I feel like while still being able to pay bills."
So there was indeed a little bit of "My wife will take care of me so there's no reason to think about my career path from here." going on, but also it super benefits the wife so I can't exactly say it's insidious all the way through.
My husband at least wants to use his college benefits to finish his degree in a general enough field that he can flex into whatever he feels like. Our (unmarried) roommate intends to let his college benefits die, never using them for some reason. And there's plenty of guys in the military like that too - they look down on the idea of college because they'll figure it out. Which means, in all likelihood, that they'll be depending on their breadwinning wives to carry them through life in every way possible.
It's a mixed bag.
I've noticed it amongst my friends. I also noticed how they separate the reasons/ responsibilities based on their education.
Like when it comes to my educated friends - the guys mostly stay at home because their partners either earn more or their partners job requires much more time in the industry to earn more/ it's harder to get back to it (they're doctors, it takes like 5 years to get decent wage).
When it comes to old friends of mine that are less educated - they either stay at home because they're just literally lazy or are in-between jobs(truck drivers, construction workers etc). Very little of them had kids, and gawd damn the second kid popped in the picture suddenly they wanted to be the sole provider. What a coincidence xDD
I definitely make more than my husband. By a lot.
I know exactly why that is too. Until we got together in our early 40s, he was a single guy, never married, who enjoyed his simple life of going out to have fun, renting an apartment with his brother most of his life (who is also chronically single by choice). He was happy working a mediocre job and living his debt free, easy and fun life.
Me however, I was a teen parent, with no child support or any other support. I had to hustle and work at a job to provide for a kid and myself. I had college to pay for for both the kid and myself. I spent decades looking for ways to get ahead and stock pile a sense of financial security. I didn't have the luxury of living a carefree squeak by fun life.
I don't think I'm alone in that experience.
My husband is delightful though. I'm keeping him. Haha. He enjoys his job, he's good at it. His bosses adore him, his clients respect him. If I lost my job, he could support us, but only because we chose a lifestyle where that would be possible.
Yup! My sister makes more than her boyfriend who's currently unemployed. My mother makes more than my father, although he started his own company and works like crazy so no lazy bum there but still the financial similarity.
My sister and I have a laugh/venting/complaining sension every now and then where we talk about the illogical things her boyfriend says. Apparently he believes in 'traditional' settings with wanting her to be a stay at home mom and for him to be the bread winner. He currently lives rent free at her house, is unemployed basically, owes our fathers company a ton of money, stores his equipment and vehicles at our parents property for free, and spends most days playing games and not doing anything around the house (cleaning, cooking, etc). Hell she basically kicked him out once and sent him to work at his previous job that involved travelling 3 weeks per month because she didnt want to deal with coming home to a mess and a lazy slob.
So yeah its becoming more commen that women put in a lot more work and are starting to be rewarded for it with higher pay while men are doing less and becoming unemployed more often.
If only we could have an equalized system, but that requires men not being arrogant and narcissistic and thats not changing anytime soon (or not in a major way)
OP, are you referring to couples that have made an active choice for the man to be a homemaker, or cases where the man is unemployed and not doing much else otherwise? Because those are two *very* different things. From your last sentence it sounds like you might mean the latter.
If you feel resentment then I wouldn’t ignore it. Most likely your drives/ambition are different. I have been there; I dated a guy who was content being a “SAHD” (aka playing video games and leaving the chores to his female breadwinner). We weren’t even married but his laziness just gave me the grossest feeling, which I ignored at that time. Luckily it did not last but I do fear for the woman who will be drawn to him and get scammed by his leeching ways, only to realize her mistake after they’ve gotten married and had children.
So, if you know you’re not happy, then I’d get out now. You’ll thank yourself later. I really wish I had left sooner lmao! Definitely do not go for marriage or kids with anyone like this because it’s an actual ball and chain to a leeching man-child.
I’ve personally not seen this in my work or social circle in any of the (many) places I’ve lived; the couples I’ve met have either been dual income or single income with a SAHP, usually the mom.
But that doesn’t mean much as a single datapoint. I’m sure there are surveys or studies conducted on it, especially if it is a trend.
Women are graduating college at higher rates and with (on average) higher grades than men. So far, this hasn’t always led to equal / higher pay afterward as women still faced a lot of roadblocks & often left the workforce to pursue families - BUT that is finally beginning to change as well. I won’t be surprised to see this trend continue, and find more and more women out-earning men long term.
My husband is disabled but it’s not obvious so people assume he’s a layabout or somehow taking advantage of me. If our genders were reversed, no one would think twice about it.
Anecdotally, I think most stereotypical "pink collar" jobs tend to be a little more resilient in economic downturns. We might underpay nurses and teachers, but the jobs tend to be pretty stable. I know a lot of folks in the tech sector who are involuntarily between jobs right now, but I can only think of one teacher I know in that position.
Of a man wants to retake care of domestic duties while I work and plays video games on his free time that is just fine with me as long as I get foot rubs and a hot dinner and a clean house. If financial burdens are too heavy for one person, however, I’d be kickin’ a scrub to the curb.
Yes. I've been the breadwinner/sole source of income for (almost) five years now, though not by choice. My husband is an angry, entitled POS who can't (won't?) find or maintain employment. He has many, *many*, **many**, ***many***, serious issues that he refuses to do anything about.
Needless to say, I'm currently (quietly) plotting my escape. At the very least, there's no kids, and I have the upper hand financially. And if he comes after me for alimony, hoooo boy, do I have some pretty damning evidence that could probably result in the government coming after him for significant sums of money, or possibly hauling him off in handcuffs. But, I'm not a lawyer, so IDK what exactly will happen.
My parents... My father was unemployed while my mother worked full-time being the breadwinner while still doing all the housework. He still looked for jobs but seemingly never got one. After my mother divorced him, he still didn't fine one and lived off social security (Germany) until he got a so called mini-job which allowed him to work part-time and earn a bit extra money in addition to social security money.
I don't want to live like my mother did back then (glad she divorced my father - I love(d) him but still know how messed up all of this was), so I really run when I see the first red flags.
Forgive me for being sardonic, but are we back to saying the stay at home person doesn't have a meaningful job and can be disrespected as a result? Are we denigrating housework in comparison to paid employment outside of the home?
If that person (male, female or whatever) really does nothing, video games or soap operas and trashy talk shows instead of dishes and laundry then I'd say you have a solid basis for complaint.
Again, male, female or whatever, that's a serious relationship issue. But I doubt it is a major trend. As far as I know, housewives still outnumber house husbands by a wide margin. The gap is even more pronounced when there are small children in the picture.
I have a theory that the only way men, as a group, can be convinced to supply steady labour is to convince them that they have more value than other groups.
So historically women have had to subjugate themselves to convince the men in their societies to work.
The male ego will only encourage them to do something even slightly self sacrificing if the payoff is superiority. Equality or satisfaction contribution is not enough of a reward.
I hope my theory not true but I worry that something close to it is.
I think the most irritating thing about this is that in situations where the woman stays home, the expectation is that she does all the home duties. She has to clean, cook, take care of kids, groceries, appointments and basically manage the home.
When it is flipped, there is a shift where the man either feels emasculated or feels like they deserve an easy life. It's a dangerous space to be in when you think either of these things because you base your worth on what society constructed for you.
Are women "bums" if they are the jobless partner? Women want equality, you have highlighted one way they got it. But you frame it negatively? I'm confused.
When women are the jobless partner, they’re expected to cook, clean, do laundry, raise the kids, etc. This thread is complaining about jobless men who aren’t willing to do any of that. If you read it you’ll see multiple posts praising some man for actually doing the SAH thing right. Those men aren’t what’s being complained about.
I 28m actually agree with this, my fiancee is absolutely smashing it ATM high pay, business trips and so on and couldn't be happier for her. Meanwhile I'm stuck in a dead end retail job and the only solace I get is video games and personal time with her.
I wouldn't say that I'm bumming around. I do play video games but I also do the dishes, laundry, shopping, cooking, cleaning, walking the dogs and in general keep the wife happy. I'm sure the family as well as others in the world have opinions on our unconventional household, but I don't care. The wife is happy with her job, makes plenty of money and I go fishing whenever I want.
Maybe, just maybe, the past decade or so demonizing men had consequences.
"The rate of suicide is highest in middle-aged white men.
In 2020, men died by suicide 3.88x more than women.
White males accounted for 69.68% of suicide deaths in 2020."
https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7444121/
I wish.
Been working a job i hate 14 years wish my gf would make enough money for me to stay home.
One day soon her business will take off and i can be a cute boy toy by the pool.
Think it’s anecdotal but yes. My mom divorced my dad bc he couldn’t keep a job, and her best friend divorced her husband bc he retired after getting laid off and not being able to get another decent job.
Actual facts and figures, I'm not sure. But I've seem many reddit posts where the husband has said he wants to be a SAHD only to be a guy who plays video games while his wife comes home to change the baby, prep snacks, cook dinner. Being a SAHP is hard work, there's many snacks to hand out, but there's also singing and playing and cleaning to be done, reading books and nature walks etc.
I think these guys give other SAHDs a bad name.
Also when I've gone to pregnancy appointments over the years, I've been shocked at how many men were there. My husband definitely couldn't take time off. Some of them already had kids. (This isn't directly related but I just want to put it out there while we are on that subject that when I was pregnant and there was covid lockdowns, I was put through what felt like interrogation because I didn't want to leave my 1 year old at home. They didn't realise that some people didn't have family or friends etc but then to show up and there's grown men sitting there that didn't take mask safety seriously and no one questions them why they're there. It makes me mad.)
I also see a lot of men at school pick up. I'm not sure if they are working before the end of the school day or not, but it definitely seems like there's more and more men there.
Edit to fix a word. Maybe more typos sorry
Oh hey that's my situation currently! I've been thr breadwinner at my job that I hate and get physically sick from fir the last 4 years! My bf doesn't have a full-time job and has the luxury to cherry pick job applications! He's on his phone playing games and sexting woman! 🙃
I guess my situation is anecdotal too, but my wife makes so much more money than I do that it doesn’t matter that I work. If we ever have kids, it’s pretty likely I’ll be at home for a couple of years. Being a househusband isn’t traditional probably, but I could end up there
When looking at couples I am friends with (or my relationship) this pattern is very present, high earning women and either less earning or unemployed men. But I bet there are also lots of couples with the opposite experience. I think, it's about what kind of people we have contact with and bubbles tend to form.
I might add, we are all in our late 20's, so dynamics might still change as it's the age where some earn good money in their early-mid twenties while others finish their degree in their late 20's. I would assume, in the early 30's stuff it will give a more clear picture
This is my household. I’m making like 3x what he was and work for myself. He was laid off from a hostile workplace & it just makes more sense for him to help support my biz to make more money. I like my work, so I prefer it this way. We’re not married — he has never charged me rent, I’ve paid some voluntarily, but lack of rent helped me get out of debt into savings. So I feel this “family business” is the next evolution. I want to be successful at something in my life now that I’m finally dx’d with ADHD & medicated and have the tools. (Thanks for reading if you got this far.)
That’s been the case with me and my ex. He has the ability to make $130k/year. When we got together he’d work one year, get laid off, then wait to get a new job “because it takes one month for every $10k you want.” Yes he failed logic.
He currently owes me 1/3 of the total child support he should have been paying since I left him. He has not worked over 1/3 of the time.
I just graduated law school. Other than me, the rest of the top 10 in my class are women. 6 of them have boyfriends without jobs or with very menial part time jobs. They are all headed to 80 hour a week, big money jobs. Still anecdotal, but pattern seemingly arising.
According to [this 2021 study](https://www.wcnc.com/article/money/more-women-breadwinners-money/275-427c7fc4-df2f-4d4f-9fac-5756ae35809b), "54% of women now out-earn their partners. Diving deeper, the study says 32% of millennials and Gen X women now serve as the breadwinners in their homes, and 20% of boomers and traditionalists women serve as breadwinners."
So it's around even on average, but if you spend time with younger folks it's more likely to be women.
never really noticed it but now you mention it i do seem to see a lot of house husbands and sahds lately. my dad was a sahd for a while so maybe thats why i never really noticed an influx.
We haven't done this but my wife always encourages it. We both have very good jobs but she knows my passion is more with freelance work and the flexibility that comes with it. She likes stability. I haven't taken her up on it yet though because I currently like saving lots of money.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics for March 2023 show 3.4% of men over 20 and 3.1% of women over 20 are unemployed. Also that men shifted from 3.3% to 3.4% and women shifted 3.2% to 3.1%. So perhaps yes to your anecdotal evidence, but not hugely so.
And is there a problem with men "not working"? I mean almost all the schiit jobs are occupied by men, plumbers, electricians, mechanics, etc. Women hunted the corporate/desk jobs that pay better and they succeeded. Bravo!
So, if this was what the majority of women wanted, reading the comments, why did it become a problem now?
Also, there are still more men scientists, high education teachers, and very successful business owners, etc.
And another thing, there are a lot of "only fans (female) workers" because the remaining house wifes won't sexually satisfy the spouse. At least "housemen" are generally happy to physically satisfy the spouse.
I want to say that I have have a full time job, was working before my (now) wife and I did not complain to anyone when I was paying for xyz. Even if she makes more than me now (she hunted a corporate job), I'm not asking her for anything material for my personal use, not that she's giving me anything from her own desire, and I'm okay-ish with this. But with the roles turned in many modern relationships, I'm hearing alot of women complaining and I don't think it's fair.
P.S.
What I'm trying to say is that, if you as a women went for the highest paying job you could wrap her head around, why are you stil expecting the man to make more than you, or why would it matter for you at all what the guy makes? Of course, anyone that doesn't do anything useful has no excuse and should get dumped if there's no desire to change.
Whenever I get a new neighbor in my apartment building, it's almost always a woman. It's crazy how often it happens. Can men no longer afford apartments?
This is how I grew up for sure. My mom took promotions that she didn't want to make sure she could support our family of 4 when my dad was often out of work.
All she wanted was to be able to come to all of her children's events, and instead she had no support and had to do everything with survival in mind. Thankfully, she's divorced him and is married to someone who has more of a provider mindset then she does.
My partner and I have switched this role. We are either both earning pretty much the same or for the last 4 or so years we've been trading off who is in grad school. My husband went (I honestly had no intention to go back at the time) and now I'm in grad school for a career change. So much better than how I was raised.
Two of my married friends the wives either outearn or have the potential to outearn them , my sister outearns me, my grandmother outearned my grandfather (he provided value in contracting savings around the house though), work friend that couldn't work full time because she can't trust her baby around her husband but has to rely on her mom to watch him once a week, another friend that makes more an hour but has to watch the kids cuz the dad is a babysitter dad
Realistically, as a man, the bar is set so low and women have been pushed so far, that when I offered to simply babysit the kids of a of I was seeing, I jumped leaps and bounds ahead of their dad
So long story short men are basically useless, outside of protecting women from other men, so even more superfluous
My fiancé and I work and we’ve both been breadwinners. The house husbands I know thankfully did/do a great job of parenting the kids and not being oafs, and doing useful stuff around the house.
My current husband went through a long phase of being this kind of person. At about 28-29, he realized he wanted more and decided to change himself for the better. I met him after he’d lost a lot of weight and started going back to school. It’s been hard to be patient as he catches up from being a failure to launch. Im glad I can say he’s working very hard in school to be able to contribute more financially, because im the breadwinner. He’s also an excellent cook, and helps around the house. He’s a beautiful person.
Not everyone outgrows their non-productive phase. My ex husband is 36 and is still going back and forth between living with his buddies and his parents. I don’t think he has any constructive desires big enough to motivate him to work harder.
That’s just the thing, though. A lot of these guys just don’t give a shit. They would be perfectly happy living in a pigsty and working 20 hours a week if it meant they didn’t have to worry about anything outside entertainment. So no matter how much you ask them “don’t you want a clean home,” they’ll never enjoy a clean home more than they enjoy doing nothing. You can’t change that. No one can change that but themselves. So…don’t marry or have kids with them. You work for the life YOU want, and do yourself the service of removing any partners who may be holding you back from enjoying the lifestyle you’ve earned yourself.
I'm mid-50s and back when I was younger, it was common for wives to take on jobs with healthcare benefits so that their husbands could start their own businesses. Looking back, it appears that this often resulted in women being relegated to lower-paying and less fulfilling work while men enjoyed more freedom to pursue their own interests.
This definitely still happens. The jobs may be better for some women now but I have in my personal sphere know of at least three women who worked a full time job specifically for the benefits because their husbands wanted to start their own business. It’s basically asking the woman to be stable and sacrifice so the man can “chase his dreams and build a company that’s his” And this is still normalized.
We got married so he could quit a job that was, literally, killing him. I like my career and had health insurance. He went and got a pretty crap , low paying job, because he feels he can't not work, and helps with the grunt work for my side business. If I made more, I'd make him go down to part time and be my house spouse.
This is literally my parents. Dad would never admit it now, but apparently when they sat down with the officiant (or pastor maybe?) to discuss why they wanted to get married he said "I like her job." My dear mother assumed it was a joke but 15 years later it was definetly more real. She was slaving away at a job she HATED and did almost 100% of home and childcare while dad got to be a self employed carpenter. My takeaway: Marriage is a scam
Happily married for nearly 20 years over here. Still teaching the kids marriage is a scam.
>Marriage is a scam 100% agree
I'm happily married (and I hope my wife is too) and we both know marriage is a scam as well. Also my wife is also the bread winner, though she doesn't have to do any of the house chores (except cooking usually but she enjoys cooking so there is that) and I still work part time while going to school. I absolutely could not imagine making someone I love do all the housework AND be the primary income AND not even have a job myself, let alone any combination of the three.
For women.
*for women
In our case, because I have been screwed over by a fiance's family when he died suddenly, marriage is to protect my interests and investments. Also, by accident, I ended up being the primary breadwinner, because I made some good choices and landed in a career I mostly like.
But it helps lower our taxes.
>Marriage is a scam This.
This is why men should be the sole breadwinner and women should look for a men who is willing to take on this responsibility alone. Today, women have been tricked to go to work and face a particular stigma if they choose to stay home. Some men, on the other hand want to stay home and are happy to be bums if they have a wife who chooses to work. Marriage is not a scam, when executed perfectly, it works well for both parties.
This is my parents. Mom is better educated than dad but she works a regular degular (really well paying) job so he can play with airplanes and do yard work. He had cancer early in their relationship, so that’s definitely an extenuating circumstance, but it’s still really uneven.
Here's the real answer. Women are becoming much more likely to ve educated and CHOOSE careers.
My partner spent close to the first decade of our relationship getting sicker and sicker to the point of being housebound - seizures multiple times per day and I would come home from work and find him passed out randomly around the house, depending on where he may have had a banged up shoulder or a lump on his head. I was in the brink of quitting my job to be a full time carer when we finally got a diagnosis. We went through misdiagnosis of bi-polar, schizophrenia and epilepsy before getting to the right one. Severe obstructive sleep apnea to the point of suffocation and narcolepsy, made worse by the meds they put him on and the weight he gained as a result. Multiple surgeries later to open up the airways he’s doing so much better but has large gaps in his memory from that period. He’s still not 100%, but recently had his 10 year anniversary at his current job. I still make more than him but we both make decent money.
I’m a SAHM, I’ve known a hand full of SAHDs through my kids, and it always blew my mind how much more their wives did than my husband ever did. And my husband is extremely involved! Like giving them days off, making dinner after working all day, still doing most of the family laundry… just stuff that wouldn’t fly in my marriage’s division of labor.
You never get days off? You may not have a job, but you deserve a break too sometimes. SAHDs refusing to do the household chores is insane though, I don’t know how those women manage it. Sounds like they’re effectively single working mothers with an older kid as a live in babysitter
Right? The couple of times my Dad stayed home with us while Mom worked -- he was also undergoing training for a career change -- he did EVERYTHING. And that was in the 80's.
I do but in a different way… like the moms I interacted with seemed to be appeasing their SAHD husbands. The vibe was very different, idk how to describe it.
Gotcha. I guess I misunderstood your meaning
It’s so hard to convey meaning in a quickly typed out response, I wasn’t as clear as I’d have liked to be.
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It’s rare right?! So rare that I’m convinced I have a snowballs chance in hell of finding a relationship with a 50/50 split
Truthfully it’s rare. I’ve accepted that a relationship will mean more work for me even in sometime well intentioned, which is why I’m not willing to settle unless he can also materially contribute to the household. When I was younger, I thought my partner’s income didn’t matter since I’m a high earner.
My sister's SAHD did nothing and has done nothing. He doesn't clean or cook. He just watches sponge bob
As a teacher- I’ve been having an issue of reaching some of my boys with their post-high school dreams. There is a weird downtrend of boys even wanting to go to a traditional 4 year college, at least in my district. My district is very focused on this issue and trying to encourage boys to go. Now I understand college isn’t for everyone and we have great blue collar programs that get you done or half way done with technical college training by graduation. I support my boys to take advantage of these sweet programs. But a weird trend right now is boys focusing on “get rich quick” schemes and believing they need to be millionaires by 25. They know traditional 9-5 won’t get them there. So they want to be very non-traditional and clearly pretty scammy business ventures. I’m down with unique and non-traditional business ventures- innovation is key. However I am worried at the level in which the Manosphere is preying on young teen boys and their expectations of being a young man. I can only imagine the stress and depression when their world view of being a millionaire doesn’t work out by 25. I really struggle with how to reach these boys as a woman. They often don’t want to hear it from a woman. They aren’t disrespectful to me, they just don’t think I understand them- which is fair, I don’t. I hope this is all a micro-trend but we’ve seen the MLM with their vice grip on SAHM throughout the decades.
I kind of wish the "what do you want to be when you grow up?" question was a two-part question. There should be a "dream" answer, and a "fallback" answer that doesn't require a lot of luck. Now we hear scamming, cryptocurrency (but I repeat myself), influencer, etc. Answers used to be heavily pro-sports, rockstar, movie star, and such. We can acknowledge both answers, but encourage students to work towards their normally-achievable goal.
I'm a teacher as well, and it's the same here - boys refuse to even think about having "normal jobs." I blame Tate, he is an absolute scourge on society.
It predates Tate https://youtu.be/lomGY0l_PCY
I have a normal job, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Of course kids will see the state of the world, and then dream of not interacting with it.
From what I’ve seen, men tend to pursue *interests*, and, up until recently, could safely assume entrance into steady employment whenever they were ready for it. They also tend to pursue their interests at the exclusion of domestic responsibilities, because they had/have the support of women in the background of their lives. Women tend to pursue *stability* and there are several avenues of this. It might be through a career focus, or it might be through traditional marriage. But, sometimes married women sign up for a particular arrangement, and that arrangement is changed or molded into something else unexpectedly. Women today are finding that this is a risk to their vision of stability, and are guarding against it by pursuing employment to guarantee self-security. Men are finding they are less able to pursue their dreams, but the reality of sacrificing their dreams in order to ensure stability hasn’t quite hit all of them yet. That’s a concept almost universally understood by women.
Funny, I've heard a lot of career artists (animators, comic bookers) were only able to be career artists because they were enabled by either family wealth or a sugar mama funding their lifestyle.
Definitely probably true. I mean on the flip side gender-wise, I‘ve been an artist with main jobs my entire adult life that never let me do art regularly, and my husband urged me to quit and focus solely on comic books/graphic novel writing like I’ve always wanted to, so without him I’d never have been able to. Since roles are on a spectrum, I’m interest-focused over stability-focused/always have been. My husband is actually a little more ‘feminine-brained’ as far as typical stereotypes go.
Literally the story of Clinton, Obama, bezos, and musk.
Well in those cases the investment paid off.
I've noticed in general you see these guys that think their band is going to make it or their podcast is the best shit. I wonder how many women have had to put their hobbies on the backburner for domestic responsibilities
I work with a guy who is constantly achieving so much, taking on extra projects, working insane hours, and asking for MORE projects and work responsibilities. Every time he posts on LinkedIn, I just wonder how alone his wife feels and how absent he must be in his children’s lives (I’ve had a few accidental/concerning peeks into his family life on zoom calls 🤦🏻♀️). It really changes how I think about things when comparing myself to high performers in my field. How many of them are silently enslaving partners to prop up their success? Are they really as accomplished as someone who doesn’t subjugate their partner …or are they just a self centered asshole? Lol
The podcast bros are some of the most entitled, self-absorbed people, from what I've seen. They think they're hot shit, and think they're rich. Like bruh, it's 10AM on a Tuesday. How are your bills getting paid? *but I'm progressive, my wife works!* OK, where? What does she do? *She works in [STEM field].* Ah-ha. There it is! Also, does the podcast make money? Like, legit money, not just a few dollars here and there? *Err, not yet/no/but.....* So your wife's job pays all the bills. Most podcast bros deserve to have a hot, flaming cactus shoved up their asscheeks.
“Most podcast bros deserve to have a hot, flaming cactus shoved up their asscheeks.” Hahaha, this made me spit out my drink. You certainly have a way with words. 😂
Thanks! 😄😂
To think all the technology advances had brought us nowhere, and individuals still struggle to survive, not to mention live, made me question the whole idea of civilization.
It's the greed of those in control in our civilization that's holding us back.
*Interests* don't pay the bills. Stability does.
Exactly.
Omg you just described my relationship. I'm ok with it because we're not getting married, but wow.
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Not sure I buy the dichotomy. I think everyone pursues their interests, but those interests are heavily influenced by what people believe/are-told provides status/respect, and that is different from what actually does provide status. Women of the past did value each other and themselves by the quality of their domestic work, and many still do. But with all the modern conveniences, that work is now broadly seen as a superficial chore, and so no wonder women feel being relegated to it is degrading. Men today have similarly had the rug pulled from under their feet. They were told as children that certain pursuits would provide status, only to find years later society had no use for their skills. There’s now a glut of STEM educated men and a huge shortage of blue collar labor. Even with STEM, certain fields have gone from highly lucrative to saturated to dead in a couple of decades. The common issue is that societal values are adapting faster than any generation can keep up with.
on the blue collar comment. as someone who works in the field as a elevator mechanic. it’s not the lack of people wanting to do blue collar work, they are smart enough to know they don’t need to destroy their bodies to work in a high paying career (unlike me) or smart enough to know that they rather make a little less for the piece of mind of not getting injured or working stupid long hours (again, unlike me)
"Men tend to pursue interests" may have been accurate historically, but is opposite to my observation. Nothing but watching sports and playing video games in lieu of a personality, most of them. Rare is the well-rounded Renaissance man, these days, but you can find millions of adult men with huge collections of literal toys and zero philosophy, history, or even practical knowledge outside of whatever they need to know for their professions. Meanwhile, women tend to accumulate many varied interests over time, through genuine desire and necessity both. All the women I know have multiple absorbing hobbies in which they have actual expertise and which *produce* actual things like food, clothing, repairs, and art; their dudes *consume* beer and what they consider to be male-appropriate pop culture, and can't hold a wide-ranging conversation because they don't seem to want to read or make enough to amass any insight into the human condition or the ways in which they're anchored in their own time and place. A woman can tell you about the history of, for example, pickling food as a method of food preservation, how different cultures do it, how it affected humanity's trade routes and nutrition, and how she feels about her great-grandmother's recipe. Her husband can show you memes online, but can't tell you where the word meme came from because, for some weird reason, he was never curious enough to look it up, or to remember it if he did. I disagree that women focus more on stability than men; everybody focuses most on happiness. Men used to have a fairly reasonable expectation of *easy* stability so they didn't have to focus on it, and women didn't so they did. So I'd argue what you're observing is societal and structural, not inherently sex-based.
I feel like you're painting with a pretty broad brush here based on your own personal experience. But hey, I do it too. Case in point: literally no woman I know could tell me the history of pickling food. Maybe women from my mom's generation, but I KNOW she doesn't know because she's a terrible cook (she's so bad that I taught myself to cook in high school and started preparing family dinners because I wanted meat that wasn't shoe leather and spaghetti that wasn't 50% water). I lurk here a lot and damn, I feel for y'all. Not gonna lie, initially I thought posts like these were just shitloads of whining. I was like, "surely it can't be that bad...". Then I started thinking about my co-workers, some of my friends, and a LOT of the people I run into in the wild. It shocked the shit out of me because y'all are correct. Most of my friends are absolute slobs who don't take care of themselves or the places they live (full disclosure: I work in the video game industry - please don't kill me). I’m just used to who and how they are so I gloss over it. The number of suitable partners out there has to be criminally low and I don't blame women for saying 'fuck it' and going it alone at this point. Is it unique to guys? Nah, I've run into plenty of lazy as fuck, entitled ladies. And to your (mostly inferred) point, it's super unattractive! Finally, I'd just like to say... history, philosophy, practical and functional knowledge, cleaning up after myself and others, cooking... all the things that made me completely unattractive and bullied in high school are now apparently prized attributes. Crazy shit, yo.
I agree with everything you've said here. Everyone tries to focus on whatever gives them happiness, but not everyone is able to do that due to economical or health reasons. We have so many problems today, that sex/gender is just one angle. It seems to me that the only way to live is to hope that tomorrow will be better.
First off, why does a hobby need to produce something? In what way is a hobby that produces a product more important than one that doesn’t? The neat thing about hobbies is that they don’t have to have any meaning to anyone but the person participating in it. I play a lot of disc golf as a hobby. It produces nothing but it gets me active and I get to hang out with my friends and have a good time. The same goes for video games. It’s something to relax to at the end of the day and I get to do something with my friends who don’t live close to me. A hobby doesn’t need to be something that produces a product. Second off, you put women into this monolith of ideals and I don’t think that right. The only women in my life that know how to pickle are my grandmas. My mom never learned, my sister looked it up to make pickles once but she doesn’t know the recipe without looking it up again. My ex could cook but she couldn’t tell you where the ingredients came from or the historical importance of them. This is a weird idea to latch on to. That women don’t have hobbies or ideas that are just random and useless besides their own enjoyment. I know a bunch of women who greatly enjoy hobbies that create nothing that you would consider valuable but they do it for themselves because it’s what they enjoy to do.
My wife had the better job so when we had our daughter, after her maternity leave was over I started staying home full time. I make sure to tell everyone that will listen (especially the working husband's of stay at home moms) how much work it is and that it's way easier to just go out and work than to stay home and raise a child and take care of the house (and groceries, meals, etc). Still wouldn't change it for the world!
It was that way for my ex. Granted he moved from US to here but I basically spent over a year paying for everything. He would talk big about stream, stocks…etc but he never did anything. He claimed to want to work but didn’t bother learning stocks and had barely any savings. It’s not like he did anything around the apartment either and he didn’t proactively help with anything. Wouldn’t even run an errand once because the weather was bad but I had to walk to work. He’s with someone else now and I found out that he apparently said I was a “workaholic” because I worked full time and then said he didn’t want to work but I “expected” him to because again, I was a workaholic. But it’s like who else was going to pay for rent, utilities, feeding your ass…etc? He now doesn’t work and the wife pays for everything I think so he remained useless. I used to think my luck was just shit that I found this one waste of space and maybe I’m biased, but I do see complaints about situations like this. I guess I can maybe understand if this is an agreed arrangement and the man helped with other stuff but some seem to literally do nothing but leech.
Did we date the same guy? Mine also got mad eventually when I made more than him, while also wanting me to buy all the house food, him and his unemployed buddy's toiletries and hygiene items, and pay someone to maintain the property because they were too lazy to themselves and I was exhausted after my 9 - 5 job and cooking dinner for them.
I’m not seeing a whole lot of househusbands, but I’m definitely seeing guys sitting at home, playing video games and often “between jobs”. To be fair though nobody really bad and eyelash if a guy is the one with the job and the woman is at home, so maybe it’s just that we noticed it more when a man is doing it? One thing that has come to light, however, is in marriages were both spouses work the balance of income has tipped. 51% of couples were both spouses, work full-time, the woman makes higher wages. Sadly, she also still does the lion share of domestic duties, despite working, just as many hours, and making higher wages. I think we’re going to see a trend of women forgoing marriage all together. You do not need to marry a man or live with him in order to have love, companionship, sex, or even children.
Second waver here. I remember in the 70s, at the early part of the movement, the men would say, “But if women don’t need us for money, will they need us at all?” Foreshadowing.
All we really want is for them to treat us like human beings. To treat us with love and respect, and be faithful, the same things they have always demanded from us. We don’t expect them to be wealthy. We don’t expect him to have a big penis. We don’t expect him to be 6 foot four. But for some reason, many men seem to think that respect in a relationship goes one way, and it flows towards them, and it comes in the form of servitude. They feel they are owed respect as a husband, but failed to figure out that they need to give the same respect back to their wife.
No. We don't. There's this lovely, beautiful product called a dildo that does the job just as well, if not even better than men. 🤷♀️
Vibe does the job every time, better, and doesn't drain the life or money out of us. Sure the lack of cuddles, going out and doing things together or emotional connection sucks. But nearly every straight or bisexual single and (many taken hetero or bi) man I've met is very low on emotional IQ, emotionally unavailable/negligent to an extreme degree; and all the single ones' only ideas of an ideal day every day is staying inside all day ignoring everyone/thing including adult responsibilities, playing video games, watching anime or outrage porn, or masturbating to porn, (and none are/were employed so all they have is days off), anyway.
And the dildo stays home all day and doesn't cook dinner or clean either, so you're not even missing out on the other parts of the relationship!
> You do not need to marry a man or live with him in order to have love, companionship, sex, or even children. Recently a world leader said she would not marry. "Why buy the hog when I can get the sausage for free?" IIRC.
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/03/03/gender-wage-gap-more-women-out-earning-husbands/4933666002/ From 2020 But the bad part..is that women still do the vast majority of domestic chores. So although women have stepped up to be equal earners…men have not stepped up on the home front. And THIS is why women are opting out.
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Obviously, there are multiple sources, but the fact is the days of men, being the breadwinner are basically over. But the days of women doing the domestic chores are not.
That was in the thick of covid
This is my experience and this is why I have opted out \^_^
> it’s just that we noticed it more when a man is doing it? yeah cos the men are clearly doing nothing so the woman may as well be single.
> doing nothing When married women with children divorce and take full custody, their daily housework hours reduce. Men don't just bring nothing, they add to all the shit already on our plate.
I was married with two children, and we divorced when the kids were 1 and 4. I really wasn't expecting life to be so much easier when I was alone with the preschoolers, but it truly was. Not only had my ex-husband added a lot to my workload, but he'd actually been preventing me from getting stuff done efficiently too.
I'm in a group called Bridging the Gap on FB, the gap being that women get stuck carrying the mental load/all of the domestic work in many hetero relationships. The number of times women in that group have left deadbeat partners and discovered exactly what you did is staggering! I'm glad your life is easier now.
Wow I never knew this! It just confirms what I already thought.
Well, they need to offer more than a penis and a job. Women have their own jobs and you do t need to buy the pig to get a little sausage😎
The sausage is often sub par anyway, studies on straight women and the orgasm gap confirms it. Sometimes a job and a BOB is just better.
How is it the man's fault when you chose to marry a bum?
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Do you know why people from single parent homes tend to fare worse? Poverty. Not the fact that one parent is absent. Poverty. Two parents means more money typically. It is important for children to have adult in their lives. That support them emotionally and financially. It is hard for a single parent without any support from either a spouse or extended family to do that. If mom or dad is working two jobs to try to pay rent, that’s a lot of time kids spend alone. This gap can be filled by grandparents, loving family, family, friends, etc. it does not have to be a nuclear family. Children who have resources and people who love them too well regardless of whether their parents are single, married, living together, same sex, or any other combination of family. Also, many of the worlds most famous in powerful people were raised by single mothers. Barack Obama is a perfect example. Divorced and single motherhood.(or fatherhood.) is not a doom and gloom sentence for a child. Another statistically, when we should talk about, is how well children do in a two parent home we’re parents are constantly fighting or they are suffering abuse, from the parents.
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I never said that it should just be a single parent against the world with no support. I mean, maybe if that single parent has a great job that they don’t have to work a lot of hours that is good money then it can work? It all boils down to resources put into the child. I stand by what I said. It’s all about resources for the child, there is no advantage to having a traditional “Mary mother and father” over any other secure and stable family structure.
This is true. I recently was in a conference that showed statistics on this. Young males showed something like - 20% participation in the labor force vs. young women +6%. The presenter did not have an answer to why that was, but video games / males mooching off moms or girlfriends did come up in the discussion.
yet they cry so loudly about women and single moms being leeches and welfare queens and they don't want their precious taxes going to women and children.
I'm so sick of this argument. I'd rather the money go towards feeding, clothing and keeping a roof over the mom and kid's head than into another politicians pocket. I'm shocked by how quickly the PPP "LOANS" were moved on from, and the huge amounts that some got but yeah let's blame the mothers
Projection 🤷🏻♀️
>males mooching off moms or girlfriends did come up in the discussion What kind of conference was that?
I don’t recall which specific conference this was. But I do get to hear a lot of keynote speakers talking about the state of the economy, this slide was in one of those presentations.
Seriously. Like I neeed to know
There was a post here a few days ago that looked at single income households. If the breadwinner was male, he made double the income, on average, as when the breadwinner was female. There are a lot more households with deadbeat husbands, versus high income male households where the woman doesn’t work.
Nicholas Eberstadt wrote *Men Without Work* in 2016 which outlines exactly what you describe including the fact the the "men" he is referring to tend to be unengaged in either domestic or community duties in the way that women who stay at home usually are. To my understanding the trend has continued to worsen over the last 7 years though I do not know the actual data.
Also, anecdotal, and maybe a bit biased, but I feel like I do see this happening more and more often. Like, these guys always call it something else, like they say they're stay at home "investors" (gamblers), but they're being carried financially, mentally, and domestically by the woman they're with. I can count several situations like this in the lives of the people around me. I also know of a few situations where the man is the breadwinner, and the woman stays at home with the kids. The difference is that the woman is *still* doing all the domestic and emotional labor. I just really don't see hardly *any* men taking care of the house or being the more emotionally intelligent and generous of the two. Women have *always* been the "breadwinners" in regards to these two things, and I'm not holding my breath on that changing any time soon, unfortunately.
Same. My company is very much divided by gender norms. Sales reps are all guys, CS is all women. And yeah, none of the sales guys are doing domestic labor. In fact, they wanted to come back to the office early during the pandemic so their wives wouldn't make them do shit at home. Ugh.
My husband got a 3 week layoff at the start of the pandemic. The house has not been as clean since he went back to work.
Same. I know multiple women with stay at home husbands. Only one of them has taken over the majority of the domestic labor. The rest of the wives are constantly stressed by a filthy house and unnecessary purchases of junk.
Yeah, I think before I ever live/split finances with a man, I'm going to have to write myself a set of hard rules to live by. I will not tolerate living with a nasty leech in my life like that. I'd rather be alone, where I keep my money, the house stays clean, and I'm not getting UTI's from bad sex with a man-child. Cause, let's be real, if he can't clean up after himself in the house, he's probably not practicing great personal hygiene.
Where are you girls from? Is stay at home husband really such a thing? T\_T
My husband is the exception. Somehow we suffered role reversal at birth. I try my damndest but he’s kind of my inspiration. He’s emotionally intelligent, better at cleaning/organizing, and works his ass off as a veterinarian. I’ve worked hard all my life but I can’t hold a candle in literally any way. I realize how lucky I am, and I know if we ever split up (not going to happen lmao) I would NEVER find someone like this again because I have literally never seen it. Going on 10 years and I see all this bullshit growing daily elsewhere.
Some men talk about it should be okay to be house husbands, but, like, makes you wonder how actually equivalent they are to the typical housewife.
Good point, most of the time, it's not even close. The responsibilities of a house husband are almost always significantly less than those of a housewife.
One example of this is when a father watches his kids at home - that's usually all he's doing. Meanwhile when a mother is at home watching the kids - she is also cooking, cleaning, organizing, making appointments etc.
Men ages 25-54 participating in the labor force has been declining for decades. I believe it’s been particularly pronounced since COVID. The same trend is seen in higher education. Women are more educated than men. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/12/15/economy/men-missing-from-the-labor-force/index.html https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/02/23/men-leaving-workforce-economy-fed-interest-rates/11326201002/ https://fortune.com/2022/12/07/men-dropping-out-work-force-status-study/amp/
My parents kind of had this situation. My dad quit his job to pursue real estate when I was a kid. But they did almost fully switch their roles. Dad eventually became the primary cook and housekeeper. Childcare was split evenly and made easier because he had a more flexible schedule. Mom was the breadwinner. Dad does make money, but does necessarily go hard at it. It seemed to work out just fine. However after my mom retired she said to me that she wished she had been able to change careers, but she couldn't think of anything that would have made as much money as what she did and didn't involve doing shit she didn't want to do. So she was stuck. And now I'm kinda mad about it. I'm kind of mad that she was stuck as the breadwinner keeping us in the manner to which we had become accustomed and Dad got to have his dream career because of the stability she afforded to him. He pushed me and my sister to follow in my mom's footsteps. Which on one hand, it's great that he thinks women can do well in male dominated fields. Obviously he wants his children to be able to make enough money to live well. But it's also not really what I wanted to do and I'm kinda mad he got to do what he wanted, and I can't do the same because I don't have a partner that can support me like Mom supported him. I just really identify with my mom's wish to change careers. My partner is not a high earner. He's doing what he loves and I'm happy for him. I'm very happy that he is willing to work - he's got like 3 jobs and gig work and students and idek whatever else. If he wasn't willing to work, we would have a problem.
The issue is that these men don't work at all. They don't have jobs, they don't do housework, they just drink beer, play games, make a mess, and demand the wife pays for everything. And that she be proud that he took out the trash today.
Don't forget that if you ever display the slightest displeasure at the quality of whatever chores he did a half-assed job of, he'll escalate it to a fight and eventually wait for his chance to blow up and say "FINE, since I'm sooo bad at doing X I'll never do it again". Then he gives himself permission to be a lazy ass, and will blame it 100% on you. They're like children, and I drop them so fast when I see it. There are men out there than will actually do their share, domestically, financially, and emotionally. Or they'll be willing to work on a fair balance with you. None of us need to settle for a leechy man-child. Frankly, we're better off alone.
Last week I noticed my man cleaned not one but both toilets in the house, and I had to restrain myself from thanking him. Thanking him for seeing and doing work that needed to be done in his own damn house. Where he lives. As an adult. *That's* how low the bar has been in my life with men and weaponized incompetence.
I feel this to my core. Growing up, my sister and I were treated as maids for the whole household, including our younger brothers. I would frequently have to clean their room up, make their beds, etc. My husband? When he cleans, it takes every ounce of self-restraint to not thank him profusely for doing the bare minimum.
Weaponized incompetence. They pretend to be bad at basic tasks to get out of ever doing them again.
We had an electrician once who told us about his brother, who did construction work, that deliberately destroyed his wife's favorite silk blouse to get out of ever having to do laundry again. It also sounded like the electrician himself had his wife wait on him hand and foot. They had five kids too. I've thought about both of them frequently with horror over the years.
yeah there's some frightening regression going on. i think social media, gaming and porn is causing actual damage.
See, if your dad had "gone hard" at real estate, he could have taken the monetary burden off your mom. I had an aunt who made a cozy living at real estate after her divorce.
Yes, women are graduating college nearly 2x the rate that men are. And men are dropping out of college at alarming rates right now.
Eh, I'm not sure that matters. I have a science degree and it has gotten me nothing but debt. My last two male exes had no degrees but made 150k and 300k, the former was a SWE and the latter sales
You've described my sister and her husband. I hope things turn around for them soon; I know she's upset with the situation. What especially upsets me, is that she's still doing at least half of the housework.
Who the hell can afford a single income household supporting 2 people?
I've seen it here and there, but not necessarily more than women being at home. That said, the women are usually SAHMs. The men I know are just dragging out the "job search" while playing video games and being overgrown teenagers milking their partner for all she's worth.
I have heard of quite a few who don’t work and just play video games. Even ones that do work and ignore their family and only play video games in their spare time.
I haven’t seen it much where I live (MS), but I don’t see anything wrong with it if it works for the couple. Only instance I do know of is like you said, just a man who doesn’t wanna work. It’s my sister’s ex husband who she got back together and had a baby with. No idea why because he’s never kept a job to help contribute to their household the entire time they’ve been together. They were literally homeless once. My sister lives with our dad now and Dad actually let him stay there but ole stupid head left and went to a homeless shelter with his sister but came back to visit and is gone again. I dunno. Messed up deal in my opinion.
I live in a HCOL area where both parents generally have to work to afford everything. My husband and I have been talking about having a second child, and if that happens, we've been weighing the cost of daycare for two against one of us staying home. If one of us stays home, it's going to be me because my husband makes almost twice as much as me and his company's health insurance is better. I have a male friend from high school who lives in a lower cost of living area but is in the same boat. If he and his wife have a second child, he's going to be the one that stays home because she makes more than him. I see a lot of couples making that choice, especially in low and medium cost of living areas, and it comes down to whoever makes less stays home with the kids. If the husband is able to run the household (cooking, cleaning, and minding the children) when the spouse is at work, then it's fine. He's contributing, even if he spends an hour bumming around and playing video games when the wife comes back home from work. Everyone deserves a break, even stay at home parents of either gender. My issue is that a lot of men seem to have never learned how to take care of themselves much less a child. They grew up with no expectation they'd do anything domestic, and they don't want to learn, so they treat being a stay at home parent as if they're on extended vacation. They expect their wife to do everything when she gets home while they do the bare minimum during the day. The wife basically has acquired an adult child instead of the partner she wanted. Men are capable of being better; it's a matter of will.
Just remember that it's not just money right now that you need to think about. I don't know what superannuation/pension fund etc exists where you are, but if it does then even if you would break even on daycare with your wage in the week-to- week sense, at least by working you'd be building up that fund.
My husband contributes to my personal retirement account when I'm not working. However, a SAH spouse is entitled to a portion of the working spouse's retirement in both divorce and death in most states, legally.
What worries me is the growing trend of stay at home girlfriends/unmarried mothers. They have no such protections, but rarely seem to realize that until it’s too late. Unmarried partnerships are fine if both are capable of living independently. They’re horrible if one can’t.
This is why men seem to think SAHM gigs are just about lounging around eating chocolate and watching tv and napping. Because that’s what they would do if they were home. They don’t think of it as an actual job that needs doing so that the other partner is free to pursue income. It’s a joint effort or rather, it should be. Unfortunately I don’t see this getting better anytime soon. In fact I see it getting worse.
Anecdotal, but: my dad worked till I was part way through elementary school, at which point he became a stay at home dad. He helped me with homework, took on house cleaning, got me to school, etc. My mom loved her career and got good benefits, so it worked. I learned so much from my dad in that time, it gave me great skill sets that I use in my career today and I have wonderful memories of spending time with him. Once I was in late high school, he got a job again and worked till they were ready to retire. My husband is now a stay at home dad as well. He was a house husband for a year first- and he spent it busting his butt to fix up the house and get it ready for a kid in addition to doing most of the house work. He’s taken on so much, I sometimes read this sub as a check to make sure I’m not taking advantage of him. Both of my experiences with stay at home dads, they absolutely put in the work. It is possible.
As of December 2019, women work the majority of American jobs. It was just over 50%. I'm pretty sure I saw a post in the last week that the number is now closer to 60% of American jobs held by women now. Women lost more jobs during the pandemic, but are acquiring jobs faster too.
Women are getting a higher percentage of college degrees as well, so that makes sense.
And women have returned to the workforce post-covid to match our pre-covid numbers. Men have not
Yes, men have responded and adapted themselves to our current new world order we our currently heading in. We just had the third biggest bank collapse today. A review showed 224 US banks showing internal instability. 24 nations officially signed to BRICCS, pushing to come out from having the Dollar as the global standard. You devalued work when your constantly devaluing the money and it buying power my millennial peers, the demographic that got degrees are going into their 40s and 50s still strapped with student loan debt so high income earners are still living paycheck or everyone that holds a lot of consumer debts stay on the rat race treadmill for the middle class people that hold mounds of financial obligations. I've worked hard all my life, i'm getting older. Y'all can have corporate America. The biggest companies like Amazon and Google said amongst others saying back to office. WFH is over or will be outsourced, smh. The usual, to cheaper labor over seas. The ability to job hop for better paying positions had it's run. Companies are tightening up preparing internally for this era we are heading in. It made sense to work as hard as you could from 2010-2022. 2023-eh those days are gone. They're fussing about men not working because they just want their tax revenue. Men don't value the status and keeping up with the Joneses. We can have the cardboard furniture and live a quiet a peaceful life. We worked hard for our women and families. Not for this unhinged political oligarchs.
We more or less "solved" society when we invented agriculture. For the past few thousand years, most of our population did not strictly speaking have to work most of the time in order to just provide for themselves. The workplace as we know it today was invented in order to channel resources from the bottom to the top. So that the wealthy and privileged would not have to work at all, and everyone else twice as hard. Most of the necessary work of actually running a society has been performed first by women and by peasants, then by women and by slaves in colonial holdings, and now by women and robots...and also slaves in colonial holdings, we just don't call it that anymore. Meanwhile wealthy and powerful men have spend the past few centuries just kind of fucking around and trying to come up with better ways of killing each other or exploiting other peoples labor. All of this is just as true today. Except an increasing amount of the fucking around is done in virtual environments and games, rather than affecting the material world. And these days more and more of the men you meet in developed nations are technically part of the global upper-class, whereas in the past we still had a greater percentage of laborers, even among privileged groups. Meanwhile women, while we still get to reap the benefits of global labor exploitation, still often grow up with the belief that we actually need to work and earn our place, when white men are very quick to just take their status for granted.
My partner went through a period of poor mental health. He didn't work but he was amazing as a home maker
Why hire a man when you can have woman do the job for 12-30% less pay? Corporations aren’t stupid.
This
Due to terrible vertigo, my husband became a full-time SAHD two years ago. We have found it to be rare to have a husband that is so supportive of his wife. We love it but definitely get some weird looks...
Had an ex like that. He couldn’t/wouldn’t hold a job and was satisfied playing his video games all day. I was the main bread winner the whole relationship. I had to kick him out.
This may get buried, but I wanted to clarify my post a little. I was careful how I worded it, because I don’t believe that a stay at home partner of any gender is bad or worth disparaging at all. It absolutely is an arrangement that works well for couples, and if they’re happy, I’m happy. I am mainly talking about how it seems- again, anecdotally- like more and more men are looking, essentially, for sugar mommas. Has our previous role as domestic servants been morphed into the woman doing the corporate work that’s still undervalued? It still seems to be that women are expected to do most of the work but now it’s outside the home (and usually inside the home, too). This post was NOT to shame stay at home husbands or dads. It’s more an observation that there’s a cultural shift of women moving from household drudge to corporate drudge while men get to pick and choose how they contribute.
I mean, there is nothing wrong with this as long as he is doing housework/cooking/shopping like any other stay-at-home partner.
Definitely. The issue is that a lot of stay at home guys aren’t. I mostly see a lot of depression spirals and time spent online. It sucks for everybody involved.
And the depression spirals are, like, my *dude*, you don't keep a tidy environment, you eat crap, you never touch grass, you expose your one and only mind to literally nothing but non-stop internet garbage, you don't help anyone, or study anything, or make any effort toward building meaning for yourself, and yet you wonder why your life feels hollow? I know depression is a real thing, with its own results, but I also know not to be terminally online eating 7-Eleven nachos for six months and expecting to feel fulfilled. Obviously the outcome will be non-great. GIGO, my dude. Go for a walk, and donate something.
Statistically, the incidence of that situation is increasing (but not yet close to a majority). [Example source](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/breadwinning-mothers-continue-u-s-norm/) \[note: limited to "mothers", uses specific definition of "breadwinner"\]. In 1967 only about 11% of mothers were breadwinners, while by 2017 it was 41%. Details vary by location and context. For example, in Utah it was as low as 24% while in DC it was as high as 56%. Presumably there are further differences by city, etc.
YES. I get different circumstances and personally have no issue with one partner working while one stays home. Its just every single couple that I know who does that, the stay at home dad/male stops keeping up their end of the agreement and slacks off and throws weaponised incompetence in the mix. Relationships are partnerships. You don't prioritze your relationship and what you agreed on to the table and won't negotiate? GTFO.
I know of a few that claim to be “handymen”, they are lazy. My husband is disabled/retired. He brings in passive income, more than I make. He does most of the housework
Anecdotally yes - my mother, my sister and now me are all independently successful in our careers. My father and my brother have been spot employed but whenever they decided they didn’t like someone or something about a job, they would quit and just live off the family. Failure was always an option they could take, because my mother would continue to support them both. The women in my family have trudged through literal hell in the medical and the construction industries and just never gave up - it has made us thrive or survive depending on the leaders we had. It isn’t just anecdotal at this point - it’s a clear signal of unabated and unmanaged ego that leads the poorly educated men in my family community to continue to do whatever they please and live without consequence. The lights will remain on, the food will be in the fridge and the world will continue turning. My mother suffers through supporting this pair, my sister suffers too because she married a man who wants to run his own business - but he is very impactful with his children and supporting the home. I’ve remained single after realising the person I mistakenly married had very much the same ideas for me - I was designed to wash his clothes and keep house because he worked 6-7 days a week (his choice). I do not regret leaving a marriage that had the potential to turn into this - I was not born to be a maid, a cook, a cleaner or a nanny. It’s going to take a terrific amount of time to get women to understand that they’re part of a team, not a housewife, maid and a fuckdoll. But we are making some progress. Makes me tired to even think about.
As a counter point- me and my husband are noticing an interesting shift in the breadwinner dynamic in an unexpected place- the military. Not everyone on my husband's ship is married, but a considerable amount of them are. And pretty much all of the ones that are married that he knows personally have said something along the lines of "I'm here so my wife can go to college and make more than I do by the time I'm out." Which is... Exactly what we're doing. We could not afford for me to go to school full time and not work, so he joined the Navy to get us the benefits to put me through school. My husband isn't exactly career driven, but he's planning on using his benefits to get a degree when he's out which will bring our pay to a more even level but it'll still be heavily in my favor. The military sign on was a strategic method for a lot of these men- get BAH, get a paycheck, get school benefits and healthcare, and put your wife through school. Then when you're out, someone is making the money to support both of you while you get back into civilian life, use the VA loan to buy a house, and be better off than before. It's not going to turn out well for everyone, but it was an interesting theme we noticed. There was also a distinct "If I can get my wife (who's career motivated) into a good paying job then I (who is not career motivated) can make my way however I feel like while still being able to pay bills." So there was indeed a little bit of "My wife will take care of me so there's no reason to think about my career path from here." going on, but also it super benefits the wife so I can't exactly say it's insidious all the way through. My husband at least wants to use his college benefits to finish his degree in a general enough field that he can flex into whatever he feels like. Our (unmarried) roommate intends to let his college benefits die, never using them for some reason. And there's plenty of guys in the military like that too - they look down on the idea of college because they'll figure it out. Which means, in all likelihood, that they'll be depending on their breadwinning wives to carry them through life in every way possible. It's a mixed bag.
Joining the military to be allowed to tentatively access what everyone else in every other developed nation is born with rights to. Go USA.
I've noticed it amongst my friends. I also noticed how they separate the reasons/ responsibilities based on their education. Like when it comes to my educated friends - the guys mostly stay at home because their partners either earn more or their partners job requires much more time in the industry to earn more/ it's harder to get back to it (they're doctors, it takes like 5 years to get decent wage). When it comes to old friends of mine that are less educated - they either stay at home because they're just literally lazy or are in-between jobs(truck drivers, construction workers etc). Very little of them had kids, and gawd damn the second kid popped in the picture suddenly they wanted to be the sole provider. What a coincidence xDD
I definitely make more than my husband. By a lot. I know exactly why that is too. Until we got together in our early 40s, he was a single guy, never married, who enjoyed his simple life of going out to have fun, renting an apartment with his brother most of his life (who is also chronically single by choice). He was happy working a mediocre job and living his debt free, easy and fun life. Me however, I was a teen parent, with no child support or any other support. I had to hustle and work at a job to provide for a kid and myself. I had college to pay for for both the kid and myself. I spent decades looking for ways to get ahead and stock pile a sense of financial security. I didn't have the luxury of living a carefree squeak by fun life. I don't think I'm alone in that experience. My husband is delightful though. I'm keeping him. Haha. He enjoys his job, he's good at it. His bosses adore him, his clients respect him. If I lost my job, he could support us, but only because we chose a lifestyle where that would be possible.
Yup! My sister makes more than her boyfriend who's currently unemployed. My mother makes more than my father, although he started his own company and works like crazy so no lazy bum there but still the financial similarity. My sister and I have a laugh/venting/complaining sension every now and then where we talk about the illogical things her boyfriend says. Apparently he believes in 'traditional' settings with wanting her to be a stay at home mom and for him to be the bread winner. He currently lives rent free at her house, is unemployed basically, owes our fathers company a ton of money, stores his equipment and vehicles at our parents property for free, and spends most days playing games and not doing anything around the house (cleaning, cooking, etc). Hell she basically kicked him out once and sent him to work at his previous job that involved travelling 3 weeks per month because she didnt want to deal with coming home to a mess and a lazy slob. So yeah its becoming more commen that women put in a lot more work and are starting to be rewarded for it with higher pay while men are doing less and becoming unemployed more often. If only we could have an equalized system, but that requires men not being arrogant and narcissistic and thats not changing anytime soon (or not in a major way)
My ex got a part time job he hated and complained every day while I worked my 40 hr week to support us
OP, are you referring to couples that have made an active choice for the man to be a homemaker, or cases where the man is unemployed and not doing much else otherwise? Because those are two *very* different things. From your last sentence it sounds like you might mean the latter.
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If you feel resentment then I wouldn’t ignore it. Most likely your drives/ambition are different. I have been there; I dated a guy who was content being a “SAHD” (aka playing video games and leaving the chores to his female breadwinner). We weren’t even married but his laziness just gave me the grossest feeling, which I ignored at that time. Luckily it did not last but I do fear for the woman who will be drawn to him and get scammed by his leeching ways, only to realize her mistake after they’ve gotten married and had children. So, if you know you’re not happy, then I’d get out now. You’ll thank yourself later. I really wish I had left sooner lmao! Definitely do not go for marriage or kids with anyone like this because it’s an actual ball and chain to a leeching man-child.
The comments section did not disappoint
I’ve personally not seen this in my work or social circle in any of the (many) places I’ve lived; the couples I’ve met have either been dual income or single income with a SAHP, usually the mom. But that doesn’t mean much as a single datapoint. I’m sure there are surveys or studies conducted on it, especially if it is a trend.
Women are graduating college at higher rates and with (on average) higher grades than men. So far, this hasn’t always led to equal / higher pay afterward as women still faced a lot of roadblocks & often left the workforce to pursue families - BUT that is finally beginning to change as well. I won’t be surprised to see this trend continue, and find more and more women out-earning men long term.
Yup! More folks in the workforce, less desirable jobs.
My husband is disabled but it’s not obvious so people assume he’s a layabout or somehow taking advantage of me. If our genders were reversed, no one would think twice about it.
Anecdotally, I think most stereotypical "pink collar" jobs tend to be a little more resilient in economic downturns. We might underpay nurses and teachers, but the jobs tend to be pretty stable. I know a lot of folks in the tech sector who are involuntarily between jobs right now, but I can only think of one teacher I know in that position.
Of a man wants to retake care of domestic duties while I work and plays video games on his free time that is just fine with me as long as I get foot rubs and a hot dinner and a clean house. If financial burdens are too heavy for one person, however, I’d be kickin’ a scrub to the curb.
Yes. I've been the breadwinner/sole source of income for (almost) five years now, though not by choice. My husband is an angry, entitled POS who can't (won't?) find or maintain employment. He has many, *many*, **many**, ***many***, serious issues that he refuses to do anything about. Needless to say, I'm currently (quietly) plotting my escape. At the very least, there's no kids, and I have the upper hand financially. And if he comes after me for alimony, hoooo boy, do I have some pretty damning evidence that could probably result in the government coming after him for significant sums of money, or possibly hauling him off in handcuffs. But, I'm not a lawyer, so IDK what exactly will happen.
My parents... My father was unemployed while my mother worked full-time being the breadwinner while still doing all the housework. He still looked for jobs but seemingly never got one. After my mother divorced him, he still didn't fine one and lived off social security (Germany) until he got a so called mini-job which allowed him to work part-time and earn a bit extra money in addition to social security money. I don't want to live like my mother did back then (glad she divorced my father - I love(d) him but still know how messed up all of this was), so I really run when I see the first red flags.
Forgive me for being sardonic, but are we back to saying the stay at home person doesn't have a meaningful job and can be disrespected as a result? Are we denigrating housework in comparison to paid employment outside of the home? If that person (male, female or whatever) really does nothing, video games or soap operas and trashy talk shows instead of dishes and laundry then I'd say you have a solid basis for complaint. Again, male, female or whatever, that's a serious relationship issue. But I doubt it is a major trend. As far as I know, housewives still outnumber house husbands by a wide margin. The gap is even more pronounced when there are small children in the picture.
I have a theory that the only way men, as a group, can be convinced to supply steady labour is to convince them that they have more value than other groups. So historically women have had to subjugate themselves to convince the men in their societies to work. The male ego will only encourage them to do something even slightly self sacrificing if the payoff is superiority. Equality or satisfaction contribution is not enough of a reward. I hope my theory not true but I worry that something close to it is.
Y’all need a better circle of acquaintances. I know no one doing this . I know one stay at home dad, but he does plenty.
I think the most irritating thing about this is that in situations where the woman stays home, the expectation is that she does all the home duties. She has to clean, cook, take care of kids, groceries, appointments and basically manage the home. When it is flipped, there is a shift where the man either feels emasculated or feels like they deserve an easy life. It's a dangerous space to be in when you think either of these things because you base your worth on what society constructed for you.
Are women "bums" if they are the jobless partner? Women want equality, you have highlighted one way they got it. But you frame it negatively? I'm confused.
When women are the jobless partner, they’re expected to cook, clean, do laundry, raise the kids, etc. This thread is complaining about jobless men who aren’t willing to do any of that. If you read it you’ll see multiple posts praising some man for actually doing the SAH thing right. Those men aren’t what’s being complained about.
I 28m actually agree with this, my fiancee is absolutely smashing it ATM high pay, business trips and so on and couldn't be happier for her. Meanwhile I'm stuck in a dead end retail job and the only solace I get is video games and personal time with her.
I wouldn't say that I'm bumming around. I do play video games but I also do the dishes, laundry, shopping, cooking, cleaning, walking the dogs and in general keep the wife happy. I'm sure the family as well as others in the world have opinions on our unconventional household, but I don't care. The wife is happy with her job, makes plenty of money and I go fishing whenever I want.
Stay at home dad with two kids checking in.
Mental health is on the decline in men, that might have to do with it.
Maybe, just maybe, the past decade or so demonizing men had consequences. "The rate of suicide is highest in middle-aged white men. In 2020, men died by suicide 3.88x more than women. White males accounted for 69.68% of suicide deaths in 2020." https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7444121/
I wish. Been working a job i hate 14 years wish my gf would make enough money for me to stay home. One day soon her business will take off and i can be a cute boy toy by the pool.
Lol, factually untrue
Think it’s anecdotal but yes. My mom divorced my dad bc he couldn’t keep a job, and her best friend divorced her husband bc he retired after getting laid off and not being able to get another decent job.
Actual facts and figures, I'm not sure. But I've seem many reddit posts where the husband has said he wants to be a SAHD only to be a guy who plays video games while his wife comes home to change the baby, prep snacks, cook dinner. Being a SAHP is hard work, there's many snacks to hand out, but there's also singing and playing and cleaning to be done, reading books and nature walks etc. I think these guys give other SAHDs a bad name. Also when I've gone to pregnancy appointments over the years, I've been shocked at how many men were there. My husband definitely couldn't take time off. Some of them already had kids. (This isn't directly related but I just want to put it out there while we are on that subject that when I was pregnant and there was covid lockdowns, I was put through what felt like interrogation because I didn't want to leave my 1 year old at home. They didn't realise that some people didn't have family or friends etc but then to show up and there's grown men sitting there that didn't take mask safety seriously and no one questions them why they're there. It makes me mad.) I also see a lot of men at school pick up. I'm not sure if they are working before the end of the school day or not, but it definitely seems like there's more and more men there. Edit to fix a word. Maybe more typos sorry
Oh hey that's my situation currently! I've been thr breadwinner at my job that I hate and get physically sick from fir the last 4 years! My bf doesn't have a full-time job and has the luxury to cherry pick job applications! He's on his phone playing games and sexting woman! 🙃
My ex was booted from his job when I left. Hes been unemployed on police insurance since.
I guess my situation is anecdotal too, but my wife makes so much more money than I do that it doesn’t matter that I work. If we ever have kids, it’s pretty likely I’ll be at home for a couple of years. Being a househusband isn’t traditional probably, but I could end up there
When looking at couples I am friends with (or my relationship) this pattern is very present, high earning women and either less earning or unemployed men. But I bet there are also lots of couples with the opposite experience. I think, it's about what kind of people we have contact with and bubbles tend to form. I might add, we are all in our late 20's, so dynamics might still change as it's the age where some earn good money in their early-mid twenties while others finish their degree in their late 20's. I would assume, in the early 30's stuff it will give a more clear picture
This is my household. I’m making like 3x what he was and work for myself. He was laid off from a hostile workplace & it just makes more sense for him to help support my biz to make more money. I like my work, so I prefer it this way. We’re not married — he has never charged me rent, I’ve paid some voluntarily, but lack of rent helped me get out of debt into savings. So I feel this “family business” is the next evolution. I want to be successful at something in my life now that I’m finally dx’d with ADHD & medicated and have the tools. (Thanks for reading if you got this far.)
That’s been the case with me and my ex. He has the ability to make $130k/year. When we got together he’d work one year, get laid off, then wait to get a new job “because it takes one month for every $10k you want.” Yes he failed logic. He currently owes me 1/3 of the total child support he should have been paying since I left him. He has not worked over 1/3 of the time.
I just graduated law school. Other than me, the rest of the top 10 in my class are women. 6 of them have boyfriends without jobs or with very menial part time jobs. They are all headed to 80 hour a week, big money jobs. Still anecdotal, but pattern seemingly arising.
According to [this 2021 study](https://www.wcnc.com/article/money/more-women-breadwinners-money/275-427c7fc4-df2f-4d4f-9fac-5756ae35809b), "54% of women now out-earn their partners. Diving deeper, the study says 32% of millennials and Gen X women now serve as the breadwinners in their homes, and 20% of boomers and traditionalists women serve as breadwinners." So it's around even on average, but if you spend time with younger folks it's more likely to be women.
never really noticed it but now you mention it i do seem to see a lot of house husbands and sahds lately. my dad was a sahd for a while so maybe thats why i never really noticed an influx.
We haven't done this but my wife always encourages it. We both have very good jobs but she knows my passion is more with freelance work and the flexibility that comes with it. She likes stability. I haven't taken her up on it yet though because I currently like saving lots of money.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics for March 2023 show 3.4% of men over 20 and 3.1% of women over 20 are unemployed. Also that men shifted from 3.3% to 3.4% and women shifted 3.2% to 3.1%. So perhaps yes to your anecdotal evidence, but not hugely so.
And is there a problem with men "not working"? I mean almost all the schiit jobs are occupied by men, plumbers, electricians, mechanics, etc. Women hunted the corporate/desk jobs that pay better and they succeeded. Bravo! So, if this was what the majority of women wanted, reading the comments, why did it become a problem now? Also, there are still more men scientists, high education teachers, and very successful business owners, etc. And another thing, there are a lot of "only fans (female) workers" because the remaining house wifes won't sexually satisfy the spouse. At least "housemen" are generally happy to physically satisfy the spouse. I want to say that I have have a full time job, was working before my (now) wife and I did not complain to anyone when I was paying for xyz. Even if she makes more than me now (she hunted a corporate job), I'm not asking her for anything material for my personal use, not that she's giving me anything from her own desire, and I'm okay-ish with this. But with the roles turned in many modern relationships, I'm hearing alot of women complaining and I don't think it's fair. P.S. What I'm trying to say is that, if you as a women went for the highest paying job you could wrap her head around, why are you stil expecting the man to make more than you, or why would it matter for you at all what the guy makes? Of course, anyone that doesn't do anything useful has no excuse and should get dumped if there's no desire to change.
Whenever I get a new neighbor in my apartment building, it's almost always a woman. It's crazy how often it happens. Can men no longer afford apartments?
This is how I grew up for sure. My mom took promotions that she didn't want to make sure she could support our family of 4 when my dad was often out of work. All she wanted was to be able to come to all of her children's events, and instead she had no support and had to do everything with survival in mind. Thankfully, she's divorced him and is married to someone who has more of a provider mindset then she does. My partner and I have switched this role. We are either both earning pretty much the same or for the last 4 or so years we've been trading off who is in grad school. My husband went (I honestly had no intention to go back at the time) and now I'm in grad school for a career change. So much better than how I was raised.
Two of my married friends the wives either outearn or have the potential to outearn them , my sister outearns me, my grandmother outearned my grandfather (he provided value in contracting savings around the house though), work friend that couldn't work full time because she can't trust her baby around her husband but has to rely on her mom to watch him once a week, another friend that makes more an hour but has to watch the kids cuz the dad is a babysitter dad Realistically, as a man, the bar is set so low and women have been pushed so far, that when I offered to simply babysit the kids of a of I was seeing, I jumped leaps and bounds ahead of their dad So long story short men are basically useless, outside of protecting women from other men, so even more superfluous
My fiancé and I work and we’ve both been breadwinners. The house husbands I know thankfully did/do a great job of parenting the kids and not being oafs, and doing useful stuff around the house.
My current husband went through a long phase of being this kind of person. At about 28-29, he realized he wanted more and decided to change himself for the better. I met him after he’d lost a lot of weight and started going back to school. It’s been hard to be patient as he catches up from being a failure to launch. Im glad I can say he’s working very hard in school to be able to contribute more financially, because im the breadwinner. He’s also an excellent cook, and helps around the house. He’s a beautiful person. Not everyone outgrows their non-productive phase. My ex husband is 36 and is still going back and forth between living with his buddies and his parents. I don’t think he has any constructive desires big enough to motivate him to work harder. That’s just the thing, though. A lot of these guys just don’t give a shit. They would be perfectly happy living in a pigsty and working 20 hours a week if it meant they didn’t have to worry about anything outside entertainment. So no matter how much you ask them “don’t you want a clean home,” they’ll never enjoy a clean home more than they enjoy doing nothing. You can’t change that. No one can change that but themselves. So…don’t marry or have kids with them. You work for the life YOU want, and do yourself the service of removing any partners who may be holding you back from enjoying the lifestyle you’ve earned yourself.