Bahahahaha, I love her so much
this makes sense and i’m also sorry that people have turned that on you in a gross way!
i wonder also if being personally triggered comes into play? it would for me. so many of us have been burned or have seen people in their lives be burned when the husband made $ and the wife didn’t. it’s a common enough scenario, sadly!
i like to think that if i met someone in your shoes, i wouldn’t judge them – but there is a part of me that would be worried, like WHAT ARE YOU DOING DONT YOU KNOW HOW OFTEN THIS TURNS OUT HELLA SHITTY!!!
i’m not saying it’s right! 
just that i think it would cross my mind. but would probably pass on by as i continued to speak with you and get to know you a little.
This caused eye roll strain
Oh for sure! That’s kind of why I think there are other assumptions at play beyond judgment about not being career-ambitious, because some women express a lot of concern or ask if I have an “allowance” or what I’ll do if my husband “trades up”, etc.
Summary
I still think that reeks a bit of ableism and sexism because if I meet someone young who doesn’t work I think, huh, they might: be disabled, or chronically ill, or undocumented, or having mental health issues, or not need the money, or caregiving someone, or recently fired, or have a record that makes it hard to work, or be in between things, etc. I don’t jump right to that one assumption, if that makes sense?
I think there’s this thing in sensitivity where if something looks similar to a trigger, the triggered person can’t see that it might be different. Because really, being a 1950s housewife is so so so different from today just by virtue of how the world has changed. I don’t need a husband to get a credit card or rent a hotel room, etc. I have a college degree, etc.
And I think in some cases it’s not that the woman has personal experience with an abusive dynamic, but has just “heard tale” of this 1950s dynamic and so believes stereotypes about “traditionalism” (what I think they see, not what I would say about myself) that aren’t necessarily accurate. Like, my family has lots of housewives who are super traditional and religious, but the vast majority of them are actually the ones who control and manage the finances and make most purchasing decisions, including big ticket items like houses. I don’t think that’s actually uncommon at all.
I think there’s also an assumption that I haven’t thought of this? Which like, IDK any disabled person who is dependent on their spouse who hasn’t felt so much fraught tension with the acceptance of being dependent/a burden, in many ways. It’s very difficult to go through. So I guess that bothers me a bit, like it hasn’t occurred to me that I’m vulnerable? I am literally physically vulnerable, and financially vulnerable, like…every day, lol, so of course I’ve thought of that. It feels similar to me as when able people see me doing something physical and say, “should you do that? I’m worried about your back!” like…really? You think you’re more worried about it than me?! And that you might have insight I don’t into what my body can or can’t handle?! LOL, ok.
When people express concern I usually patiently explain that I have a lot of my own money, which DH literally couldn’t even get to if he wanted it. I have my own retirement funds in my name only and am still contributing to an IRA with his salary and have a non-retirement investment account in my name too and have my own credit card with a very high limit, etc. If we ever bought property I would be on the paperwork as an owner, etc. And like I said I manage everything for both of us. DH actually wanted to check something the other day and had to ask me how much he was contributing to his 401(k), lol. I could tell him anything and literally empty so many accounts without him even knowing.
I <3 U.
this makes so much sense to me. thanks for going into more detail about your thoughts.
omg yes … this can be such a projection/performance when people do stuff like this. it’s mostly kindly intended, i imagine, but also super condescending. and of course it’s not really about you at all – it’s all about how the other person sees themselves.
sometimes people i know do seem to be pushing themselves too hard – trying to meet up to a standard that is in their head about how they should be behaving instead of dealing with reality as it is right now. like my trainer hurt their back recently, and they keep moving big weights and wincing and i’m like ‘hey please let me do that for you, it’s okay that you are not 100% perfectly strong right now.’ being super-able-bodied probably makes it more difficult to admit that.
i feel like having chronic pain has helped me be more real about what my body can and can’t do at any given moment, and to take the space i need for how my body is right now. i imagine having a disability multiplies that effect.
Haha, so true. I wince when I see basically anyone using kettlebells, or like, riding a bike without a helmet. Those city bikes, man. I see people riding who frankly have no business riding a bike in traffic and I’m just like…ungahhhhh your bonnnnnesssss stahhhhp ur so squishy and don’t know ittttttt gahhhhhh. hahah
Ah crap i have THOUGHTS but will just have to dump since baby asleep on me and it 510AM.
My mum was a homemaker because they couldnt afford for her to work until I was late primary school. Dis not realise until this conversation what a good role model that was, given all the chatter of role models being Working Parents Mums. Mine only had 2 working parents when it worked for them. But also. Kids involved, so more common homemaker situation than no kids by a long way. Homemaker mums still common when I was growing up. Less so now. But this the situation i find my family in because of my physical ability and options available and also, 2 kids, apparently they need a lot of our energy who knew.
Feminism: make it easier for the mum to be the worker and the dad to stay home. Or the whatever. Because Ponder earnt almost exactly 2x/hr what i was earning when i gave up on working. Given the medical etc systems and the drop in/out/in/out nature of being on the disabled by pregnancy group its nonsense for me to work when we are likely having another kid, unless we put it off 5 years. Easier i break, do other stuff to keep me occupied (for ME not because capitalism, learnt that from my parents too), and then do some training before returning to work like a grad diploma.
The 2 earner thingy, my parents used mum as backup by living within their means, and her having a career in teaching so she could dip in and out by going relief or getting occasional specialist or part time roles. That money went to extras, not main spending, so that if they ever had needed to switch she could go full time and pick up the slack, OR if she needed for caring (im using the examples they gave) poss of her income was NBD. They used it to buy shares and pay for specific holidays. We once went on an airplane!!! (Every other holiday was around our corner of our very large state.).
I got atuck providing this case study but need a computer because yes sooo many thoughts
Hard.agree.on 2 incomes and stress stress stress, that was us, partly coz i had an untreated/ not fully diavnosed autoimmune disorder.causing fatigue
Oh and teaching is paid properly over here, idk what you do with incomes in USA. Relief teachers are actual teachers here
My recollection from reading the book many years ago is that the implicit insurance policy is that if person 1 can’t work, person 2 can pick up a job, because the household expenses are built off the assumption of one earner (and society’s assumption is that lifestyle can be maintained with one earner, so things don’t cost as much).
In this world, if the standard household is expected to be maintained by one factory worker, than if said factory worker gets laid off, then the stay at home partner maybe picks up a retail job, or starts a home daycare and the partner who isn’t working outside the home for money flips.
At a certain point in the 1960s/70s, the book’s argument is that the second person working wasn’t so much a ‘only in emergencies’ or a mark of failure, but instead used to get the family ahead economically. But then everyone was doing it, so it no longer was all that helpful, it just reset the bar with less adult time buffer which could later be exchanged for money if the family required it. Similar to how getting a masters degree used to be a differentiator and now it is expected for some industries.
This is likely a very white middle class argument (eta probably with additional ableist undertones I didn’t notice at the time), and that dual income households were very common all the way through, it just was a class marker and the book is written by and for people who think about the dad going off to work and a white picket fence. It could be that the second income was perceived as needed, or it could have been for the extras/pin money, and it might have been under the table or more barter.
It’s difficult to look at many of these things historically, because if you were frex keeping chickens and sold eggs, that probably hasn’t been added to the record anywhere, but it was economic value for the household. And other things were barter - I know growing up that the girl across the street came over to our house to play after school because her mom worked outside the home, and there wouldn’t have been any money, but I got a ride to school from that neighbour after I aged out of the bus system (grades 4-7 maybe?).
I had a couple thoughts on this that popped up - the idea that society expects you to work like you’re not a parent, and parent like you don’t work. Substitute parenting for living with a disability or having to care give for someone else in your family or any other big thing - the idea is to treat your employment like it’s your #1 priority at all times. This stems from when society was built around the husband working and the wife staying at home to take care of everything else including the kids. So if society is built around work taking up a ton of your time and then we slid into having two incomes needed, of course we’re short on time. Because we built around work and not around community.
Oh and random thing - at camp drop of the other morning I saw a dad getting his three kids out of the car and all I could think was “There’s an expensive family right there”. Childcare time three, ack.
I’m late to the discussion and many people have explained things so well from the homemaker/feminism side but I wanted to call out the quote above because honestly I think this is the real reason most two-earner families feel strapped for time and money. (And yes, I guess like Noodle this is why MMM resonated back in the day lol).
We’re a two-income two-full time working family with one small child. But we feel pretty relaxed because we’ve set up our life and made career tradeoffs so that we don’t have to commute. We cook dinner from scratch almost every night and clean the house ourselves and generally feel like life is under control (or not too out of control lol).
Buying vs renting is the biggest strain on our time because now we have to do house maintenance (or hire out) instead of relying on a landlord. Next weekend’s projects are cleaning out the dryer exhaust hose and fixing some hardware in the bathrooms. That would definitely be easier if someone’s full time job was home managing.
My hit rate on CPL adding books I requested remains 100%. I see this one is being added now, and there’s a box you can check when you request they add a book that will automatically put you #1 in line for a hold when it’s in. Yay!
TW for diet talk in episode 17, The Purpose of Income. It’s an interesting question, though, overall. What is the purpose of income, to you?
They give four purposes in the episode:
- Security (core needs: food, housing, transportation)
- Flexibility (they say people get stuck here—using any extra for more perks NOW, like getting bigger houses, stuff, cars, fancy restaurants, etc., and don’t progress. So these 4 are a continuum in their eyes)
- Independence (achieved through saving & investing. Money starts to work for you instead of the other way around)
- Freedom (having more money than you can reasonably spend)
When they first posed the question I didn’t think of a continuum or phases. I thought about necessities, nice-to-haves, luxuries, but also creating the world I want to live in, and supporting my community. When I started my current job nearly 5 years ago, I was finally able to send money to friends and family in need, and then later donate to causes I believe in. And that is so cool and to me fulfilled something sort of beyond freedom? Or not represented in the continuum at all.
I guess I don’t love the idea of Freedom being more than you can “reasonably” spend. What I find is reasonable is completely different from what my second sister thinks is reasonable, or my youngest sister.
That also doesn’t look like purposes, it looks like steps. I guess I go into a different idea of what the purpose of income is - going back to theories of money and its purpose being like a charged battery so I can store the energy / value of the thing I’m doing now and use it later.
I like that analogy a lot!
That’s an interesting way of phrasing it! I agree that Freedom doesn’t feel quite the right phrasing for the final stage - maybe more like power? So either the power to decide more freely what kind of life you want for yourself, or the power to influence or give to others. This feels almost like a continuation of flexibility for me - it’s just that independence can theoretically be a fairly set amount of money, and so once that’s achieved you’re essentially back to step two in what to do with any extra.