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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I feel a lot of ambivalence towards SAH moms, because it's always SAH moms and not SAH parents.  It's totally fine if one parent wants to step back from their career and focus on the family (and is often very good for the family!), but there is still a lot of social pressure for women to step into that role that men to not receive. When I got married in my mid 20s, I heard questions about whether I was going to step back when we had kids, whether I was going to take a lower prestige/lower pressure job so my husband could focus on his career and I could the raise kids, etc.  Why didn't anyone ask my husband whether he was going to step back his career ambitions to start a family years before kids were even in the picture?

Until it's seen as an equally acceptable/normal path for men (and men decide to SAH in equal numbers), it will always be a choice that is colored by gender politics. [b] Even if it's the best choice for your family, it still is a choice that was influenced by societal norms that women have been trying to crack for decades.[/b][/quote]

And you think anything else isn't? Come on. You sound really naive here. We are all historical actors. No one is operating completely free of our time period's mores and values.[/quote]

Sure, but by having another family structure (having a SAH dad, or having both parents work and raise kids as equal partners) you are making a conscious choice that it doesn't have to be this way.  I'm not saying it's wrong to be a SAH mom--I'm only saying it's a choice I feel ambivalence about.  It models a set of norms for your kids--how does your daughter internalize that her career will be equally important in the future if you made the choice to step down from yours? There are all kinds of situations that make not having a parent SAH unfeasible (for example children with special needs or medical problems), or make having a SAH parent unfeasible (when both parents are absolutely required to work to make ends meet).  But for most of the privileged situations on this board, it's a choice to not model an equal marriage.[/quote]

Look. These other models have problems because of one simple fact. [b]Women are attracted to powerful men. [/b] SAH dads rarely work out because it is very difficult for a SAH dad to remain sophisticated, worldly and powerful in his wife's eyes when she is interacting with innovators and business leaders while he is making school lunch. Not impossible, but very difficult and rare.

The equal partner situation can work out more easily than a SAH dad situation, but if both partners are really totally hands on at home, it means that neither one is going to go stratospheric with their careers. Maybe that's ok, maybe one or both spouses feel very disappointed about it.

The fact that women have romantic preference for respected, leadership quality men is a constraint that may annoy you and seem like it shouldn't influence so much of life, but there really isn't much that can be done about it. Women are never going to be attracted to men of a lower social status than themselves.

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