Why are so many women here so angry with / resentful toward women who stay home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope. Equality is equal pay for equal work. All of you SAHMs are super jealous of WOHMs. We made it, you didn't. You settled for a subservient existence.

Homeschool your daughters if you object. You can teach them useful things like body dsymorphia, yoga, MRS degree, etc... Or just send them to school and they'll pick up on your life choice while you shop at Costco after Pilates.

You sound quite disturbed. And mean. Do the life choices of others really make you angry or is something wrong in YOUR life? Do the world a favor and take a break from DCUM - go do your very important work already. Leave your children with a caring nanny as many hours as possible - they will be better off without your influence. Good lord.

It's logic. If you can't see it, try a new pose. You'll likely gain perspective in gender bias.

[Anonymous]

Women who attack other women for traditional choices are the anti feminists. The ERA was killed by such women because mothers, grandmothers and many others were rightly offended.
This site is also frequent home to a lot of women who are exhausted by the dual jobs of trying to manage caring for families while working full time.
I've been in both positions and I firmly believe that women who stay home are usually earning their keep. Women who work full time outside the home need paid staff to clean, cook and do child care. Very few have husbands who take on an equal share.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Women who attack other women for traditional choices are the anti feminists. The ERA was killed by such women because mothers, grandmothers and many others were rightly offended.
This site is also frequent home to a lot of women who are exhausted by the dual jobs of trying to manage caring for families while working full time.
I've been in both positions and I firmly believe that women who stay home are usually earning their keep. Women who work full time outside the home need paid staff to clean, cook and do child care. Very few have husbands who take on an equal share.

+1. It's kind of like when minority women harass minority men for "marrying outside the race." A black man marrying a white woman does not diminish other black women. A woman who stays at home does not diminish a woman who does not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I will give you my thoughts.

a. If I see a rich SAHM with her Lululemons and Barre classes, driving around in her BMW I get annoyed because of jealousy. She must have married well enough to have to not worry about earning a living and enjoying a plush life. Must be nice.

b. Mostly what is disturbing to me is usually these SAHM types are very well educated and come from well off families to begin with. They grew up supporting women's rights and access to equal opportunities. They also tend to be tiger moms and fight to get their daighters into the best private schools and colleges and discuss plans to have their daughters become scientists and diplomats...

They themselves could have had fantastic careers. It just seems hypocritical, lazy and...fake.

c. The middle class SAHMs do not bother me. They were probably not very ambitious or well educated to begin with.

I am one of these women. What you might not know about me is that my husband is out of the house every work day for 11 hours. Plus he occasionally has to put in some hours at home or on the weekend. He has an unpredictable travel schedule. If a client wants him to pitch his product or take a meeting, he gets on a plane when it is convenient to them (usually the next day or so). If I was working full time, I'd still have to deal with that plus the demands of my own job plus the kids and the house. Fwiw he makes around 750k with occasional equity grants which helped us to pay off all our debt including school loans and our mortgage and to build our net worth from there. The salary alone is enough to cover all of our needs and most of our wants. So why would I work when the extra ~40k I might bring in would actually make my life more miserable and not better? That's not even taking into consideration the material cost of childcare or the psychological cost of putting our kids in wraparound care when they are used to mom being home with them all the time.

We also really like to travel as a family. It's one of our greatest joys and biggest splurges. We plan 4 week long trips per year plus occasional long weekends here and there. I also usually take the kids on a trip by ourselves for a week in the summer. If I got a job, I'd be locked into their schedule, which might not align with my husband's and I'd be lucky if I got 2 weeks off. One of my brothers works in an hourly position and doesn't get any paid time off at all.

I am highly educated and proud of it. I have a master's degree in history from a top R1 university. I might not use it to earn any money but I don't think you can "waste" your education. It's not like all of the knowledge I gained in my history classes suddenly leaked out of my head when I quit my job. I never set out to be the woman driving around in her beemer on her way to Barre class. It's just the way life worked out. Someday I will go back to work just to have something to do but right now is not a good time. You can really look at what I'm telling you and find something to judge? This is what I don't get about these kinds of conversations. They become so angry and derogatory so quickly but they involve real people who are just trying to do the best they can with what they have to work with. These are the cards I was dealt. I married a man with a very demanding job. There are pros and cons to that. One of the pros being the money, one of the cons being the schedule. More than that though, he loves what he does and I love that he loves it. If I want to stay married to him, I have to accommodate that. That's just how it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, it's not D.C. It's a few select women who are desperate to feel they are better than other women.

No the mommy wars are going on all over the Internet not just here in DCUM-land. It's tiresome. I had the option to be a SAHW and decided against it but that's my business. People who choose differently are not wrong, they aren't wasting their degrees and so on. Why do we act like raising children is akin to shoveling shit? If women thought more of it, maybe men and society would think more of that role.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will give you my thoughts.

a. If I see a rich SAHM with her Lululemons and Barre classes, driving around in her BMW I get annoyed because of jealousy. She must have married well enough to have to not worry about earning a living and enjoying a plush life. Must be nice.

b. Mostly what is disturbing to me is usually these SAHM types are very well educated and come from well off families to begin with. They grew up supporting women's rights and access to equal opportunities. They also tend to be tiger moms and fight to get their daighters into the best private schools and colleges and discuss plans to have their daughters become scientists and diplomats...

They themselves could have had fantastic careers. It just seems hypocritical, lazy and...fake.

c. The middle class SAHMs do not bother me. They were probably not very ambitious or well educated to begin with.

I am one of these women. What you might not know about me is that my husband is out of the house every work day for 11 hours. Plus he occasionally has to put in some hours at home or on the weekend. He has an unpredictable travel schedule. If a client wants him to pitch his product or take a meeting, he gets on a plane when it is convenient to them (usually the next day or so). If I was working full time, I'd still have to deal with that plus the demands of my own job plus the kids and the house. Fwiw he makes around 750k with occasional equity grants which helped us to pay off all our debt including school loans and our mortgage and to build our net worth from there. The salary alone is enough to cover all of our needs and most of our wants. So why would I work when the extra ~40k I might bring in would actually make my life more miserable and not better? That's not even taking into consideration the material cost of childcare or the psychological cost of putting our kids in wraparound care when they are used to mom being home with them all the time.

We also really like to travel as a family. It's one of our greatest joys and biggest splurges. We plan 4 week long trips per year plus occasional long weekends here and there. I also usually take the kids on a trip by ourselves for a week in the summer. If I got a job, I'd be locked into their schedule, which might not align with my husband's and I'd be lucky if I got 2 weeks off. One of my brothers works in an hourly position and doesn't get any paid time off at all.

I am highly educated and proud of it. I have a master's degree in history from a top R1 university. I might not use it to earn any money but I don't think you can "waste" your education. It's not like all of the knowledge I gained in my history classes suddenly leaked out of my head when I quit my job. I never set out to be the woman driving around in her beemer on her way to Barre class. It's just the way life worked out. Someday I will go back to work just to have something to do but right now is not a good time. You can really look at what I'm telling you and find something to judge? This is what I don't get about these kinds of conversations. They become so angry and derogatory so quickly but they involve real people who are just trying to do the best they can with what they have to work with. These are the cards I was dealt. I married a man with a very demanding job. There are pros and cons to that. One of the pros being the money, one of the cons being the schedule. More than that though, he loves what he does and I love that he loves it. If I want to stay married to him, I have to accommodate that. That's just how it is.

I just love when women whose husbands make $750,000 come on here philosophizing about what everyone else should do. It's laughable and incredibly myopic. Are you women going on anon about how important it is to stay home with children realize that 95% of women in America probably work because they HAVE to, right? So you're basically just judging people less fortunate than you. Classy.

There's also zero evidence that children with a stay-at-home parent do better in life. In fact some studies show the opposite. Take that as you will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will give you my thoughts.

a. If I see a rich SAHM with her Lululemons and Barre classes, driving around in her BMW I get annoyed because of jealousy. She must have married well enough to have to not worry about earning a living and enjoying a plush life. Must be nice.

b. Mostly what is disturbing to me is usually these SAHM types are very well educated and come from well off families to begin with. They grew up supporting women's rights and access to equal opportunities. They also tend to be tiger moms and fight to get their daighters into the best private schools and colleges and discuss plans to have their daughters become scientists and diplomats...

They themselves could have had fantastic careers. It just seems hypocritical, lazy and...fake.

c. The middle class SAHMs do not bother me. They were probably not very ambitious or well educated to begin with.

I am one of these women. What you might not know about me is that my husband is out of the house every work day for 11 hours. Plus he occasionally has to put in some hours at home or on the weekend. He has an unpredictable travel schedule. If a client wants him to pitch his product or take a meeting, he gets on a plane when it is convenient to them (usually the next day or so). If I was working full time, I'd still have to deal with that plus the demands of my own job plus the kids and the house. Fwiw he makes around 750k with occasional equity grants which helped us to pay off all our debt including school loans and our mortgage and to build our net worth from there. The salary alone is enough to cover all of our needs and most of our wants. So why would I work when the extra ~40k I might bring in would actually make my life more miserable and not better? That's not even taking into consideration the material cost of childcare or the psychological cost of putting our kids in wraparound care when they are used to mom being home with them all the time.

We also really like to travel as a family. It's one of our greatest joys and biggest splurges. We plan 4 week long trips per year plus occasional long weekends here and there. I also usually take the kids on a trip by ourselves for a week in the summer. If I got a job, I'd be locked into their schedule, which might not align with my husband's and I'd be lucky if I got 2 weeks off. One of my brothers works in an hourly position and doesn't get any paid time off at all.

I am highly educated and proud of it. I have a master's degree in history from a top R1 university. I might not use it to earn any money but I don't think you can "waste" your education. It's not like all of the knowledge I gained in my history classes suddenly leaked out of my head when I quit my job. I never set out to be the woman driving around in her beemer on her way to Barre class. It's just the way life worked out. Someday I will go back to work just to have something to do but right now is not a good time. You can really look at what I'm telling you and find something to judge? This is what I don't get about these kinds of conversations. They become so angry and derogatory so quickly but they involve real people who are just trying to do the best they can with what they have to work with. These are the cards I was dealt. I married a man with a very demanding job. There are pros and cons to that. One of the pros being the money, one of the cons being the schedule. More than that though, he loves what he does and I love that he loves it. If I want to stay married to him, I have to accommodate that. That's just how it is.

I just love when women whose husbands make $750,000 come on here philosophizing about what everyone else should do. It's laughable and incredibly myopic. Are you women going on anon about how important it is to stay home with children realize that 95% of women in America probably work because they HAVE to, right? So you're basically just judging people less fortunate than you. Classy.

There's also zero evidence that children with a stay-at-home parent do better in life. In fact some studies show the opposite. Take that as you will.

Lady, I'm not judging anyone. Did you read what I wrote? Where in that did you read judgement of working moms?? Seriously. Bold it and quote it to me because I know it's not there. What I said was, SAH works best for me and my family at this time in our lives because...and I laid out the reasons why. I am defending myself from judgmental attacks from people like you and asking you seriously why you feel the right to judge me. I have a master's degree in history and was a former secondary school teacher before I quit to stay at home. I hated teaching kids that age. Most of them were brats who I couldn't discipline because of constraints laid on by administrators and their parents who didn't want to deal with their attitude problems either. My original goal was to become a college professor but with the increasing commercialization of college and universities, they have switched to a system of hiring mostly adjuncts in lieu of tenure professors because they don't have to pay them a living wage with benefits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have any of you heard of a third wave feminist? Well, I consider myself a fourth wave feminist. I do what I want, how I want to do it. I am equal in mental capacity to any equivalently educated male and physically dominate over a good percentage of them. If I want to work, I work. If I want to stay home and eat meat that my man makes me, I do that. I will either homeschool my kids with organic handmade toys or ship them off to Phillips Andover at 13. I don't follow the rule of some woman who spent 20 years earning the approval of her teachers and now can't function outside of an accomplishment based system. I am going to take my masters degree and troll Harris teeter in lululemon all f-ing day. My life. My choice. Period.

+1. The feminists who are trying to turn women into corporate worker bees aren't the feminists who speak for my family.

For me feminism means working to give women choices, and then allowing them to make them. Live and let live.

+1

Nicely put

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will give you my thoughts.

a. If I see a rich SAHM with her Lululemons and Barre classes, driving around in her BMW I get annoyed because of jealousy. She must have married well enough to have to not worry about earning a living and enjoying a plush life. Must be nice.

b. Mostly what is disturbing to me is usually these SAHM types are very well educated and come from well off families to begin with. They grew up supporting women's rights and access to equal opportunities. They also tend to be tiger moms and fight to get their daighters into the best private schools and colleges and discuss plans to have their daughters become scientists and diplomats...

They themselves could have had fantastic careers. It just seems hypocritical, lazy and...fake.

c. The middle class SAHMs do not bother me. They were probably not very ambitious or well educated to begin with.

I am one of these women. What you might not know about me is that my husband is out of the house every work day for 11 hours. Plus he occasionally has to put in some hours at home or on the weekend. He has an unpredictable travel schedule. If a client wants him to pitch his product or take a meeting, he gets on a plane when it is convenient to them (usually the next day or so). If I was working full time, I'd still have to deal with that plus the demands of my own job plus the kids and the house. Fwiw he makes around 750k with occasional equity grants which helped us to pay off all our debt including school loans and our mortgage and to build our net worth from there. The salary alone is enough to cover all of our needs and most of our wants. So why would I work when the extra ~40k I might bring in would actually make my life more miserable and not better? That's not even taking into consideration the material cost of childcare or the psychological cost of putting our kids in wraparound care when they are used to mom being home with them all the time.

We also really like to travel as a family. It's one of our greatest joys and biggest splurges. We plan 4 week long trips per year plus occasional long weekends here and there. I also usually take the kids on a trip by ourselves for a week in the summer. If I got a job, I'd be locked into their schedule, which might not align with my husband's and I'd be lucky if I got 2 weeks off. One of my brothers works in an hourly position and doesn't get any paid time off at all.

I am highly educated and proud of it. I have a master's degree in history from a top R1 university. I might not use it to earn any money but I don't think you can "waste" your education. It's not like all of the knowledge I gained in my history classes suddenly leaked out of my head when I quit my job. I never set out to be the woman driving around in her beemer on her way to Barre class. It's just the way life worked out. Someday I will go back to work just to have something to do but right now is not a good time. You can really look at what I'm telling you and find something to judge? This is what I don't get about these kinds of conversations. They become so angry and derogatory so quickly but they involve real people who are just trying to do the best they can with what they have to work with. These are the cards I was dealt. I married a man with a very demanding job. There are pros and cons to that. One of the pros being the money, one of the cons being the schedule. More than that though, he loves what he does and I love that he loves it. If I want to stay married to him, I have to accommodate that. That's just how it is.

I just love when women whose husbands make $750,000 come on here philosophizing about what everyone else should do. It's laughable and incredibly myopic. Are you women going on anon about how important it is to stay home with children realize that 95% of women in America probably work because they HAVE to, right? So you're basically just judging people less fortunate than you. Classy.

There's also zero evidence that children with a stay-at-home parent do better in life. In fact some studies show the opposite. Take that as you will.

Lady, I'm not judging anyone. Did you read what I wrote? Where in that did you read judgement of working moms?? Seriously. Bold it and quote it to me because I know it's not there. What I said was, SAH works best for me and my family at this time in our lives because...and I laid out the reasons why. I am defending myself from judgmental attacks from people like you and asking you seriously why you feel the right to judge me. I have a master's degree in history and was a former secondary school teacher before I quit to stay at home. I hated teaching kids that age. Most of them were brats who I couldn't discipline because of constraints laid on by administrators and their parents who didn't want to deal with their attitude problems either. My original goal was to become a college professor but with the increasing commercialization of college and universities, they have switched to a system of hiring mostly adjuncts in lieu of tenure professors because they don't have to pay them a living wage with benefits.

Don't sweat her, PP. She is BLIND with jealousy. She is foaming at the mouth and her brain stopped working. Just ignore.

[Anonymous]

My DH makes appx. $175K and I SAH with 2 elementary kids. We make it work. It doesn't take a salary of $750K to do it. My DH loves his job, travels often, and I manage home life. If I worked like I did before having kids, I would have to outsource everything, and I would have to use my vacation time for sick days, school holidays, family emergencies, etc.

I know there are many women who work because they have to, as well as many who simply want to. But SAH can be done on much less $ than PP has - if you're willing to give up some material things to gain freedom and flexibility.

I live in a nice house in an area of Fairfax Co. that many of you would never consider. I am willing to tolerate lower-rated schools, but I supplement my children's education with camps and activities, as well as my time.

I own my choices and don't begrudge anyone else.

[Anonymous]

Oh, enough with the jealousy stuff. Is it so hard to understand that we don't give a hoot how much your husband makes. There are actually people in this world who find happiness in things other than money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have any of you heard of a third wave feminist? Well, I consider myself a fourth wave feminist. I do what I want, how I want to do it. I am equal in mental capacity to any equivalently educated male and physically dominate over a good percentage of them. If I want to work, I work. If I want to stay home and eat meat that my man makes me, I do that. I will either homeschool my kids with organic handmade toys or ship them off to Phillips Andover at 13. I don't follow the rule of some woman who spent 20 years earning the approval of her teachers and now can't function outside of an accomplishment based system. I am going to take my masters degree and troll Harris teeter in lululemon all f-ing day. My life. My choice. Period.

+1. The feminists who are trying to turn women into corporate worker bees aren't the feminists who speak for my family.

For me feminism means working to give women choices, and then allowing them to make them. Live and let live.

This is exactly right. Thanks, PPs!

I am a 44 year old with two toddlers, and after dealing with daycare and WOHM bullshit I recently decided to stay home after a 20 year career in my profession (and a Masters Degree and lots of global travel.) To be frank, having both partners working while raising young kids/ without extended family to help is VERY hard. It is still hard being home but *for me* much better. I have nothing to prove (nor nothing else to achieve) in my career. I still call myself a "feminist" and am totally okay with the choices I've made.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have any of you heard of a third wave feminist? Well, I consider myself a fourth wave feminist. I do what I want, how I want to do it. I am equal in mental capacity to any equivalently educated male and physically dominate over a good percentage of them. If I want to work, I work. If I want to stay home and eat meat that my man makes me, I do that. I will either homeschool my kids with organic handmade toys or ship them off to Phillips Andover at 13. I don't follow the rule of some woman who spent 20 years earning the approval of her teachers and now can't function outside of an accomplishment based system. I am going to take my masters degree and troll Harris teeter in lululemon all f-ing day. My life. My choice. Period.

+1. The feminists who are trying to turn women into corporate worker bees aren't the feminists who speak for my family.

For me feminism means working to give women choices, and then allowing them to make them. Live and let live.

This is exactly right. Thanks, PPs!

I am a 44 year old with two toddlers, and after dealing with daycare and WOHM bullshit I recently decided to stay home after a 20 year career in my profession (and a Masters Degree and lots of global travel.) To be frank, having both partners working while raising young kids/ without extended family to help is VERY hard. It is still hard being home but *for me* much better. I have nothing to prove (nor nothing else to achieve) in my career. I still call myself a "feminist" and am totally okay with the choices I've made.

I wanted to like your post and then you said WOHM bullshit. Damn it, can't you "defend" yourself without that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh, enough with the jealousy stuff. Is it so hard to understand that we don't give a hoot how much your husband makes. There are actually people in this world who find happiness in things other than money.

There are few things more pathetic than a SAHM accusing another woman of jealousy. But they'll never get it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will give you my thoughts.

a. If I see a rich SAHM with her Lululemons and Barre classes, driving around in her BMW I get annoyed because of jealousy. She must have married well enough to have to not worry about earning a living and enjoying a plush life. Must be nice.

b. Mostly what is disturbing to me is usually these SAHM types are very well educated and come from well off families to begin with. They grew up supporting women's rights and access to equal opportunities. They also tend to be tiger moms and fight to get their daighters into the best private schools and colleges and discuss plans to have their daughters become scientists and diplomats...

They themselves could have had fantastic careers. It just seems hypocritical, lazy and...fake.

c. The middle class SAHMs do not bother me. They were probably not very ambitious or well educated to begin with.

I am one of these women. What you might not know about me is that my husband is out of the house every work day for 11 hours. Plus he occasionally has to put in some hours at home or on the weekend. He has an unpredictable travel schedule. If a client wants him to pitch his product or take a meeting, he gets on a plane when it is convenient to them (usually the next day or so). If I was working full time, I'd still have to deal with that plus the demands of my own job plus the kids and the house. Fwiw he makes around 750k with occasional equity grants which helped us to pay off all our debt including school loans and our mortgage and to build our net worth from there. The salary alone is enough to cover all of our needs and most of our wants. So why would I work when the extra ~40k I might bring in would actually make my life more miserable and not better? That's not even taking into consideration the material cost of childcare or the psychological cost of putting our kids in wraparound care when they are used to mom being home with them all the time.

We also really like to travel as a family. It's one of our greatest joys and biggest splurges. We plan 4 week long trips per year plus occasional long weekends here and there. I also usually take the kids on a trip by ourselves for a week in the summer. If I got a job, I'd be locked into their schedule, which might not align with my husband's and I'd be lucky if I got 2 weeks off. One of my brothers works in an hourly position and doesn't get any paid time off at all.

I am highly educated and proud of it. I have a master's degree in history from a top R1 university. I might not use it to earn any money but I don't think you can "waste" your education. It's not like all of the knowledge I gained in my history classes suddenly leaked out of my head when I quit my job. I never set out to be the woman driving around in her beemer on her way to Barre class. It's just the way life worked out. Someday I will go back to work just to have something to do but right now is not a good time. You can really look at what I'm telling you and find something to judge? This is what I don't get about these kinds of conversations. They become so angry and derogatory so quickly but they involve real people who are just trying to do the best they can with what they have to work with. These are the cards I was dealt. I married a man with a very demanding job. There are pros and cons to that. One of the pros being the money, one of the cons being the schedule. More than that though, he loves what he does and I love that he loves it. If I want to stay married to him, I have to accommodate that. That's just how it is.

I just love when women whose husbands make $750,000 come on here philosophizing about what everyone else should do. It's laughable and incredibly myopic. Are you women going on anon about how important it is to stay home with children realize that 95% of women in America probably work because they HAVE to, right? So you're basically just judging people less fortunate than you. Classy.

There's also zero evidence that children with a stay-at-home parent do better in life. In fact some studies show the opposite. Take that as you will.

Lady, I'm not judging anyone. Did you read what I wrote? Where in that did you read judgement of working moms?? Seriously. Bold it and quote it to me because I know it's not there. What I said was, SAH works best for me and my family at this time in our lives because...and I laid out the reasons why. I am defending myself from judgmental attacks from people like you and asking you seriously why you feel the right to judge me. I have a master's degree in history and was a former secondary school teacher before I quit to stay at home. I hated teaching kids that age. Most of them were brats who I couldn't discipline because of constraints laid on by administrators and their parents who didn't want to deal with their attitude problems either. My original goal was to become a college professor but with the increasing commercialization of college and universities, they have switched to a system of hiring mostly adjuncts in lieu of tenure professors because they don't have to pay them a living wage with benefits.

Don't sweat her, PP. She is BLIND with jealousy. She is foaming at the mouth and her brain stopped working. Just ignore.

Actually the poster you're responding to is the one that sounds angry. Maybe she's lonely since her husband is basically just a dollar sign.