how many of us have a mother or MIL who never worked outside the home in her lifetime?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
I just spent a week with my inlaws and I'm always struck by the fact that my MIL has never worked in a paid position.
She got went to college, got married, and has been a homemaker ever since (she's now 72). Her husband worked as an attorney and continues to work part time in retirement at close to 75. My own mother took off about 10 years to raise children but before that worked to put my dad through law school. She went back to work again once her kids were in middle school and worked for close to 25 years. It's easy for me to be critical of my MIL because at times she's been critical of me for working. Also I can't imagine never earning a cent in a lifetime. However, when I think about it, several of her friends were the same way. How common is (was) this? |
Anonymous
Sweet its only been about 12 hours since that other SAHM vs WOHM thread was locked. It was about time we had another one.
|
Anonymous
| Did she not raise the fine man that you are married to? |
Anonymous
Oops. Didn't see that other thread. Op! |
Anonymous
+ a billion |
Anonymous
It's a generational thing. She is of a different time. Either she doesn't understand your life, or she may be just a judgy person who would find something to criticize about you regardless. Be the bigger person and don't judge her for choices/options she probably didn't have or didn't think she had. |
Anonymous
huh. this is the OP. I didn't write this post. Weird. This is not meant to be a SAHM vs. WOHM debate. I have spent about 50% of my life in both roles (at home with kids for a total of 10 years, working full time for about 15---split before kids and since kids entered elementary school). I don't identify completely with either role. I suppose I shouldn't have included the fact that I work in my OP. |
Anonymous
| What do you care? |
Anonymous
|
My mother tried a few half-hearted jobs but never really had a career. I hated it and always wished she worked. She was outrageously suffocating and just a total drag on the family. It got to the point that when I was a teen my brother and I told our dad we'd support him if he wanted to divorce her.
She's like the perfect example of everything NOT to do as a SAHM. |
Anonymous
| My MIL. She got divorced after 20 years and is now (20 years later) living off FIL's social security and slowly sliding into poverty. |
Anonymous
| My mom had to quit school at 14 to go work and help support her family. There's alot of different histories out there. I don't think there's much value in criticizing the different backgrounds people have had. |
Anonymous
Do you really think this won't devolve into one? Also I reported the above poster you should too if it isn't you. |
Anonymous
Yes! Thank you for saying this. My grandmother left home at 14 (taking a lamp to pawn), worked through the depression, through WWII and kept on working. It is what she knew and what she had to do for herself and her family. |
Anonymous
Not OP, but my MIL never worked. She became relatively inactive by age 55 and by 60 she couldn't walk three blocks. She has few friends and no interests. My FIL died more than a decade ago and it's painful to watch how unhappy my MIL is. I often wonder whether things would have been different had she worked. Maybe she wouldn't have been able to become so inactive and maybe her stamina would be such that she would be able to take trips with us. She got set in her ways and lives in the same place that she's lived for 50!years and is miserable because everyone moved away. I'm probably wrong to think that working would have made things different. But to me it seems that she lacks certain traits that I associate with working that would lead to a happy life. It really is painful to see her be so unhappy in her last years. |
Anonymous
|
You have got me thinking, OP. I had thought that women didn't start working outside the home until about the 1970's. But my mom, who would be in her 90's if she were still alive, worked at some point in her life outside the home. My stepmom, who would be over 100 if she were still alive, worked outside the home at some point in her life. My MIL, who is in her 80's and was born in a foreign country and doesn't read English very well, also managed to find employment outside the home. Even my Grandma, born about 120 years ago, worked outside the home at some point in her life.
|