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[quote=Anonymous][quote][quote][quote]Because IRL and also mirrored here, the husbands do not pull their weight in taking care of the household and kids and the women take care of the vast majority of the burden. So most of them decide to stay home because they have to do 2 jobs - WOH and WAH taking care of everything, from managing appointments, to cooking, cleaning, homework, shopping etc. Add several kids or a kid with special needs and the double work becomes unbearable and sometimes impossible, if the kid with special needs requires multiple appointments. I have a unicorn - a very well paid job FH and a H who is very hands on and does things without me asking, in addition to making $$$$. I bet if other women would have more opportunities like mine and involved spouses, the selection would change. But corporate America is not kind to moms, despite all that lip service, and lots of men are too good to do homework with the kids or laundry properly or take the trash out when needed and not when asked.[/quote]

You don't have a unicorn, you just made a good decision as did I! Most people choose a dud husband and complain incessantly about him and his lack of childcare/involvement in home etc. Buck up women!! Raise your expectations if you want the world to change! You are in the driver's seat of your life! Make better choices or stop whining about your bad choices. You chose to marry that dud.

I tell my daughters the biggest investment in their career and self is choosing a spouse that wants for them what they want for themselves and vice versa. Childcare and the cost of work (or not) is purely a family decision. It is definitely NOT the cost for a WOMAN.. that thought pattern holds us back. It is a family cost that supports the whole family PERIOD.[/quote]

The first poster here and it's also about luck. People change, get mental diseases etc. The person you marry it's not the same guy after 10+ years.[/quote]

Also, the "You don't have a unicorn" poster is also demonstrating the degree to which this is not necessarily within people's control without realizing.

PP, you are teaching your daughters the importance of choosing a good partner and teaching them to believe they deserve someone who will have an egalitarian approach to marriage. That is awesome! But many, many women were not raised this way and do not really come to understand this until years into their marriage, and often not until kids are born. And THEN they discover what you are teaching your daughters right now, that of course childcare is a family burden that shouldn't just be on women, that men might pay lip service to this but might not pull their weight, that maybe they should have held out for a different man or approached their relationship differently. But you can't undo it.

Your daughters are lucky to be hearing this lesson now, and parenting them in this way (and seeing the example set by their father) will make it easier for them to demand that from their own relationships. But surely you must see that not all women (in fact probably a minority of women) are raised this way. That's why so many women wind up unhappy later. It's not because they "picked wrong". It's because they were trained not to believe they could pick at all. And for women in this group, it really is a question of finding a unicorn because the vast majority of men do not pull equal weight when it comes to childcare and household tasks, and also do not value their wives' career and earning on the same level as their own.

Maybe don't indict other women for choices they didn't even understand themselves to be making at the time, or for subscribing to oppressive social systems that are designed to keep women from having equal standing with men. Instead train your ire on the men who don't step up, on the parents who tell their daughters they'll be lucky if they find a man who wants them, and on laws and social constructs that place the burden of children and family life almost entirely on women with much more minimal expectations of men.[/quote]

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