I’m happy being a SAHM, except when others talk about it like I’m some kind of sucker

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with you. It bothers me because the talk around universal preK is really a push to not tackle the real issue: most families cannot afford to live without two working parents. I wish they'd tackle housing costs, college costs, wages, etc. that would allow people to make the best decision for their family, whether that's working or staying home.

unless you want to live in a command economy, most of those things aren't fixable. Providing supports like universal prek is achievable

I disagree. College costs rising are directly tied with government-backed educational loans. That is a problem of our own making. We could limit foreign investment on housing. We could raise taxes on non-primary homes and air bnb situations that lower supply. There are options to fix these problems.

do you really think air bnb and Chinese investment properties matter more than at the edges? If I want to to buy an 850k home in Springfield, how much of the price that I will pay is a result of non-primary homes? Do you want to pull government backed education loans and leave middle class families without any ability to send their kids to school? Those loans are the only thing enabling large swaths of kids to attend college in the first place. I notice you didn't mention wages, because we're coming up on 50 years of wage stagnation relative to inflation, but no one even pretends to have an answer to that one at this point even though it's at the root of all of these issues

[Anonymous]

Feminism used to be about having choices. If you wanted to be a SAHM, that's fine it's your choice. If you wanted to work part time, that's fine it's your choice. If you want to work full time, that's fine it's your choice. Go get the life you want.

But it's morphed into you MUST work full time and have a career, there is no other choice. IF you do not do it this way, then you are a bad person to be looked down upon.

I don't like what feminism has become, personally. It should be about having the range of choices. It isn't anymore, and that is why it is losing supporters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought being a SAHM was the best thing ever until DCuM told me it wasn’t.

Congrats, it’s the best thing for you.

I was terribly deeply depressed when I was a SAHM. Luckily I had the resources to go back to work and restart my career.

DCUM is not the final arbitrator for anything.

You heard it here, folks! Some women was depressed when she wasn't working. Being a SAHM is "SAD". QED.

Not PP, but I lost my job at the end of 2020 (small company closed due to COVID). It's been the worst thing ever for my mental health. Is that the case for everyone? Of course not. But PP wasn't insulting you, she was stating her own experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with you. It bothers me because the talk around universal preK is really a push to not tackle the real issue: most families cannot afford to live without two working parents. I wish they'd tackle housing costs, college costs, wages, etc. that would allow people to make the best decision for their family, whether that's working or staying home.

Who is “they”? I DID make the best decision for my family and that was to wait to have children until we could afford to buy a small home and live on one income . I never conceived of a “they” making that possible

They is our government, both parties. The laws they pass impact housing and college costs and the decisions people make about if, or when, then have kids.

I am glad you made a good decision for your family. The point is the decision point has evolved. 40 years ago it was much easier to have a single earner family with two kids who could afford a home, retirement, and college for their kids. That’s the point, choices have been taken away due to the cost of home, colleges and wages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Feminism used to be about having choices. If you wanted to be a SAHM, that's fine it's your choice. If you wanted to work part time, that's fine it's your choice. If you want to work full time, that's fine it's your choice. Go get the life you want.

But it's morphed into you MUST work full time and have a career, there is no other choice. IF you do not do it this way, then you are a bad person to be looked down upon.

I don't like what feminism has become, personally. It should be about having the range of choices. It isn't anymore, and that is why it is losing supporters.

http://feministing.com/2015/05/07/choice-feminism-time-to-choose-another-argument/

When we valorize these women’s choices as entirely their own and inherently feminist, we stop asking why women make them and why there are large visible trends in income, occupational stratification and segmentation, and the “work/family balance” issue. Put simply, these women’s “choices” were not entirely theirs.

[Anonymous]

OP, I’m sorry people are being so vicious. It really sounds like if anyone is “in their feelings” on this issue, it’s the many PPs who are responding with anger and resentment, instead of trying to understand what you’re saying.

I know what you mean, though. I think the issue with Obama’s comments is the same issue a lot of policy makers and people in the media have: they thinking of a SAHP as a sacrifice because they are so accustomed to dual earner couples where both partners have high profile, rewarding careers. Like in Michelle Obama’s case, her quitting her job to take care of their family (and be First Lady) really was a sacrifice— she was leaving a successful career she’d built on her own because her husband got a more demanding gig. It’s such a stark example of a woman getting kind of screwed, even though Michelle obviously made the best of it.

But the problem with that approach is that it bears so little resemblance to most family’s lives. Most women, even professional women, are not as successful as Michelle. Most of our spouses are working far less important or demanding jobs than President. The cost-benefit analysis for the average family looks really, really different. And comparing my choice to SAHM for a couple years when my baby was born to Michelle’s choice results in a lot of false equivalencies. They aren’t the same. Their family is an extreme outlier.

Which is why I like listening to Elizabeth Warren on this issue. She will also talk about her own choices, but they much more closely resemble the experiences of more families, dealing with issues like: employers who are not supportive of working moms, families that don’t support new parents, the economics of childcare, etc. And she also understands not everyone has her exact experience and discusses policy from a broad based perspective of what communities need, as oppposed to the individual choices of one set of women. She is really the leading thinker on this issue today, and it’s frustrating that she has not had much of a platform to discuss it since dropping out if the presidential race. The Democrats should really be putting her more front and center on the issue. I think she has smarter, more useful things to say than Barack at this point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I’m sorry people are being so vicious. It really sounds like if anyone is “in their feelings” on this issue, it’s the many PPs who are responding with anger and resentment, instead of trying to understand what you’re saying.

I know what you mean, though. I think the issue with Obama’s comments is the same issue a lot of policy makers and people in the media have: they thinking of a SAHP as a sacrifice because they are so accustomed to dual earner couples where both partners have high profile, rewarding careers. Like in Michelle Obama’s case, her quitting her job to take care of their family (and be First Lady) really was a sacrifice— she was leaving a successful career she’d built on her own because her husband got a more demanding gig. It’s such a stark example of a woman getting kind of screwed, even though Michelle obviously made the best of it.

But the problem with that approach is that it bears so little resemblance to most family’s lives. Most women, even professional women, are not as successful as Michelle. Most of our spouses are working far less important or demanding jobs than President. The cost-benefit analysis for the average family looks really, really different. And comparing my choice to SAHM for a couple years when my baby was born to Michelle’s choice results in a lot of false equivalencies. They aren’t the same. Their family is an extreme outlier.

Which is why I like listening to Elizabeth Warren on this issue. She will also talk about her own choices, but they much more closely resemble the experiences of more families, dealing with issues like: employers who are not supportive of working moms, families that don’t support new parents, the economics of childcare, etc. And she also understands not everyone has her exact experience and discusses policy from a broad based perspective of what communities need, as oppposed to the individual choices of one set of women. She is really the leading thinker on this issue today, and it’s frustrating that she has not had much of a platform to discuss it since dropping out if the presidential race. The Democrats should really be putting her more front and center on the issue. I think she has smarter, more useful things to say than Barack at this point.

Warren was once very savvy on this but in my view has retreated from her earlier very pragmatic positions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with you. It bothers me because the talk around universal preK is really a push to not tackle the real issue: most families cannot afford to live without two working parents. I wish they'd tackle housing costs, college costs, wages, etc. that would allow people to make the best decision for their family, whether that's working or staying home.

unless you want to live in a command economy, most of those things aren't fixable. Providing supports like universal prek is achievable

I disagree. College costs rising are directly tied with government-backed educational loans. That is a problem of our own making. We could limit foreign investment on housing. We could raise taxes on non-primary homes and air bnb situations that lower supply. There are options to fix these problems.

do you really think air bnb and Chinese investment properties matter more than at the edges? If I want to to buy an 850k home in Springfield, how much of the price that I will pay is a result of non-primary homes? Do you want to pull government backed education loans and leave middle class families without any ability to send their kids to school? Those loans are the only thing enabling large swaths of kids to attend college in the first place. I notice you didn't mention wages, because we're coming up on 50 years of wage stagnation relative to inflation, but no one even pretends to have an answer to that one at this point even though it's at the root of all of these issues

DP here. And the truth is that this one is very easy to solve, but politically untenable. Individual wealth like the kind controlled by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates shouldn't exist. Perhaps more importantly, the overall wealth disparity between the type of people on DCUM (UMC/rich people like me) and the average American shouldn't exist, though I think this disparity is more of a secondary effect. The primary issue is that large corporations and their shareholders are allowed to hoard the profits generated off of the labor of American workers, who aren't benefitting from their increased productivity. These corporations have so many tax loopholes available to them that on paper they pay no taxes. This is the real issue, and it could be resolved by simplifying the tax code, enacting a much higher minimum-wage, and better regulating compensation packages to the executives of publicly-funded companies. The one thing that is somewhat politically viable is to increase taxes on UMC/rich professionals. I'm pretty ambivalent on the value of doing that, but I don't think it solves the real problem...which is that our approach to capitalism is very sick right now.

[Anonymous]

I agree 100% with you, OP. I don't think other posters are right that you're reading into it. There is the assumption in the democratic party that women are only SAHM's when they are forced into it/duped into it, and all women would be better off if they were working.

I am also very happy that I became a SAHM, but yes, it does get depressing when people in power are always suggesting that I'm dumb/victim of the patriarchy/stuck in a role, etc. It's just depressing to be looked down on.

It was so refreshing when Andrew Yang spoke positively about his SAH wife in the debates.

I honestly went to a therapist about a year after having my first child to ask her if she could tell me whether or not I was fooling myself that I liked being a SAHM. She said that it used to be that women had to stay home, and now the pendulum has swung the other way and all women feel forced to be a working mom. Her focus was actually child psychology (it just happened that she was the closest therapist to me) and she was really supportive of me staying home and told me she sees a lot of kids in her practice who have problems because their parents are too focused on theri big careers.

I also think another thing being totally ignored is that there are so many women out there who would love to stay home with their babies but can't because they have to go back to work. To me, it borders on inhumane that we live in a society where some women are forced to be separated from their babies just to be able to afford basic necessities. I think that's the real tragedy, not someone who has to spend the day with their baby (the horror!) when they would prefer to be working. I don't know why we don't talk about this more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Feminism used to be about having choices. If you wanted to be a SAHM, that's fine it's your choice. If you wanted to work part time, that's fine it's your choice. If you want to work full time, that's fine it's your choice. Go get the life you want.

But it's morphed into you MUST work full time and have a career, there is no other choice. IF you do not do it this way, then you are a bad person to be looked down upon.

I don't like what feminism has become, personally. It should be about having the range of choices. It isn't anymore, and that is why it is losing supporters.

http://feministing.com/2015/05/07/choice-feminism-time-to-choose-another-argument/

When we valorize these women’s choices as entirely their own and inherently feminist, we stop asking why women make them and why there are large visible trends in income, occupational stratification and segmentation, and the “work/family balance” issue. Put simply, these women’s “choices” were not entirely theirs.

The first PP also has a very skewed understanding of the history of second-wave feminism if she thinks that feminism used to be more supportive women choosing 1950s-style domesticity. I actually don't think that besides the corporate "feminism" of the likes of Sheryl Sandberg (whom, I'm sorry, is not a feminist) modern feminism is at all about looking down on people who don't have a "career".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Feminism used to be about having choices. If you wanted to be a SAHM, that's fine it's your choice. If you wanted to work part time, that's fine it's your choice. If you want to work full time, that's fine it's your choice. Go get the life you want.

But it's morphed into you MUST work full time and have a career, there is no other choice. IF you do not do it this way, then you are a bad person to be looked down upon.

I don't like what feminism has become, personally. It should be about having the range of choices. It isn't anymore, and that is why it is losing supporters.

http://feministing.com/2015/05/07/choice-feminism-time-to-choose-another-argument/

When we valorize these women’s choices as entirely their own and inherently feminist, we stop asking why women make them and why there are large visible trends in income, occupational stratification and segmentation, and the “work/family balance” issue. Put simply, these women’s “choices” were not entirely theirs.

I am a SAHM and that's my choice with the full support of my husband. I was not forced into it by ANYONE. I've made the choice to do this. Me. Nobody else. I am not a victim. Do not treat me like one. I am doing very well, thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

http://feministing.com/2015/05/07/choice-feminism-time-to-choose-another-argument/

When we valorize these women’s choices as entirely their own and inherently feminist, we stop asking why women make them and why there are large visible trends in income, occupational stratification and segmentation, and the “work/family balance” issue. Put simply, these women’s “choices” were not entirely theirs.

You're exactly what OP was talking about, and you're part of the problem. Some women have a really strong desire to be their children's main caretaker when they're babies and toddlers. It is a totally valid way to feel. If you don't share that feeling, then that's fine, but that's doesn't mean it's some cultural construction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

http://feministing.com/2015/05/07/choice-feminism-time-to-choose-another-argument/

When we valorize these women’s choices as entirely their own and inherently feminist, we stop asking why women make them and why there are large visible trends in income, occupational stratification and segmentation, and the “work/family balance” issue. Put simply, these women’s “choices” were not entirely theirs.

You're exactly what OP was talking about, and you're part of the problem. Some women have a really strong desire to be their children's main caretaker when they're babies and toddlers. It is a totally valid way to feel. If you don't share that feeling, then that's fine, but that's doesn't mean it's some cultural construction.

+ 1

I adore being home with my young kids. I think the issue I have is facing the presumption that just because I want to SAH for five or ten or more years, the rest of my life i can’t contribute in other ways to society. I worked for 10+ years before having my first and I hope to go back to work before I’m 45 - when I will have 20-25 more years left of working. I think it’s more than fair that my career won’t be the same as someone who never left the workforce, but I can’t stand when people act like I’ve completely sacrificed my working life if from age 21-70 I spend ten years at home with my kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

http://feministing.com/2015/05/07/choice-feminism-time-to-choose-another-argument/

When we valorize these women’s choices as entirely their own and inherently feminist, we stop asking why women make them and why there are large visible trends in income, occupational stratification and segmentation, and the “work/family balance” issue. Put simply, these women’s “choices” were not entirely theirs.

You're exactly what OP was talking about, and you're part of the problem. Some women have a really strong desire to be their children's main caretaker when they're babies and toddlers. It is a totally valid way to feel. If you don't share that feeling, then that's fine, but that's doesn't mean it's some cultural construction.

+ 1

I adore being home with my young kids. I think the issue I have is facing the presumption that just because I want to SAH for five or ten or more years, the rest of my life i can’t contribute in other ways to society. I worked for 10+ years before having my first and I hope to go back to work before I’m 45 - when I will have 20-25 more years left of working. I think it’s more than fair that my career won’t be the same as someone who never left the workforce, but I can’t stand when people act like I’ve completely sacrificed my working life if from age 21-70 I spend ten years at home with my kids.

You both clearly did not read the feministing article...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

http://feministing.com/2015/05/07/choice-feminism-time-to-choose-another-argument/

When we valorize these women’s choices as entirely their own and inherently feminist, we stop asking why women make them and why there are large visible trends in income, occupational stratification and segmentation, and the “work/family balance” issue. Put simply, these women’s “choices” were not entirely theirs.

You're exactly what OP was talking about, and you're part of the problem. Some women have a really strong desire to be their children's main caretaker when they're babies and toddlers. It is a totally valid way to feel. If you don't share that feeling, then that's fine, but that's doesn't mean it's some cultural construction.

+ 1

I adore being home with my young kids. I think the issue I have is facing the presumption that just because I want to SAH for five or ten or more years, the rest of my life i can’t contribute in other ways to society. I worked for 10+ years before having my first and I hope to go back to work before I’m 45 - when I will have 20-25 more years left of working. I think it’s more than fair that my career won’t be the same as someone who never left the workforce, but I can’t stand when people act like I’ve completely sacrificed my working life if from age 21-70 I spend ten years at home with my kids.

You both clearly did not read the feministing article...

False. I did. And what I agree with is that the feminist solution can’t be found solely in “choices” - which bizarrely is a way of asking women alone to solve women’s issues - but to turn to larger structural forces at play. But that doesn’t mean my choice isn’t my own.