26

I've missed a few days with this blog due to the holidays keeping me busy. So, today I'll catch up by reviewing the most active threads since my last post on Thursday of last week. During that time, the most active thread was the Gaza war thread which I've already discussed. Following that was a thread titled, "50/50 split of assets with SAHM" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster asks whether it is fair for a stay-at-home-mom who is divorcing after 20 years of marriage to receive 50% of the couple's assets. The original poster, who appears to be the husband in this scenario, believes this is not justified. I immediately noticed two things about this thread: 1) the original poster had engaged in a considerable amount of sock puppeting and; 2) he has an extremely dismal view of stay-at-home-moms. His first response in the thread — in which, of course, he did not identify himself as the original poster — claimed that the wife shouldn't receive a significant amount of money for being lazy and sitting on her [bottom] for 17 years. His next post, which was directed to the original poster, argued that in a non-community property state the wife might not get anything. He then posted that the wife had done "nothing to earn this money," Next he claimed that they were in New York state which is not a community property state and that he hoped to keep her share below 30% of their assets. After one more sock puppeted post in which the original poster claimed that the original poster clearly had a reason to hate his wife, he abandoned the thread. Nevertheless, the thread continued for another 23 pages. I haven't read many of those pages, but it looks like the thread deteriorated into a debate about the value of a stay-at-home moms. Some see these parents, much like the the original poster, as lazy do-nothings. Others take the conventional argument in opposition to that position and explain the work that stay-at-home moms normally perform. In addition, some posters contend that for many high-earning men such as the original poster claims to be a stay-at-home mom is required to both enable the man to engage in the intense work environment and ensure that his children are raised by at least one parent. As such, the wife is not only a contributor of household work and childrearing, but an important component of her husband's success.