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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Honestly, all of this is made easier if mom stays home with the children and dad makes more money to compensate. I know it’s an unpopular sentiment, but most women would feel much less resentment if they dropped work to focus their efforts (when the children are young) on raising them and let their DH work harder to cover the bills.[/quote]

So you think the only function women should have once they become mothers is to solely focus on being a mom?  Why is that fair?  Women have talents, skills and brains that society can benefit from!  Why can Dads be dads and also productive members of society!

You do know the story of Japan?  Women are choosing not to become mothers because of the unequal treatment of women!  I am not encouraging my dds to become mothers!  If the population dies out so be it.[/quote]
I’m saying that mothers would be much happier if the focused solely on being moms when their children are young. They very well may have talents/brain/skills society can benefit from, but the discussion about happiness and purpose are two separate ones. The vast majority of career women have jobs, not careers, and it is ironic that women supporting feminism parrot the incredulous lie that working 45 hours per week as Regional Sales Manager to Management is worth more to women than being home with their child. It is certainly worth more to your company that you spend those hours click-clacking on your laptop, but it won’t make you happier. I think the female resentment is symptomatic that some women are waking up like “what the hell am I doing, getting sucked dry for $35/hr?” but the market absolutely cannot allow her to consider quitting so - quick! - blame her DH and they can fight about who cleans gutters so that no one stops and says “wait, who is actually getting all our time?”[/quote]

Maybe... but only if her DH is happy to be the sole earner. A lot of men today hate that role and don't want their wives to stay home. Also many, many men simply do not make enough money to support a SAHM, even for a few years.

I know a lot of women who would happily have taken 4-5 years as a SAHM when their kids were small. Happily. But the household finances made this hard (it's not like 50 years ago where most working women made a small fraction of their husband's salary -- most married couples have a lot more pay parity now and losing one earner means losing 30-50% of the household income, not a small thing), plus they know that for their longterm finances (college, retirement) they have to go back to work, and they fear that even a couple years out of the workforce can mean a massive pay cut and never getting back on track.

Lots of women would love to be able to just focus on their kids for a while. They can't. But for some reason, this is just their problem and not a collective problem their husbands also must contend with.[/quote]
[b]That is why is said the solution for the resentment problem relies on both parents[/b] - women quit their job to focus on their children when they are young and men make more money. Unfortunately, telling men to make more money so their wives can stay home with a brand new baby is akin to telling women to lose weight. That this conversation is a such a black-box is a design of an efficient market, his company will fight tooth and nail to not pay him a dime more, so you fight about who is doing equal dishes at home so that no one stops and asks “why the hell does he get a $100 bonus when the company made millions in profit this quarter?”[/quote]

I agree with the bolded but not the rest of it.

Why can't the answer be that the solution is rely on both parents TO RAISE THE CHILDREN THEY BOTH MADE? [/quote]

Agreed but I actually appreciate the PPs example because it highlights how lopsided this conversation is. We talk about how women have to/get to choose whether or not to stay home with kids, but realistically they can only do that if their partners make enough on their own to support the family. Most don't.

If people are going to go around telling women they should be home with their children for at least the first 5 years of life (something plenty of conservatives will argue for), why isn't it okay to tell men "you need to make more money so your wives can afford to stay home with the kids"? People (men) freak out when you imply that men need to do a better job of providing financially for a family, but people tell women all the time they need to take better care of their kids. It's a double standard.

I personally agree with you that really couples should just view the whole enchilada (the money, the childcare, the home care, the household planning) as their joint responsibility and allocate it as equally as possible, whether they divide and conquer (one person works for money, the other takes care of the kids) or they split it all down the middle, or some other arrangement that is equitable. But it's worth pointing out that the same people who demand women stay home and care for the kids are not also telling men to facilitate that by earning more (probably because the same people also tend to be anti-worker and pro-corporation and don't want workers getting any ideas about asking for higher pay).

It's a fair point.[/quote]

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