I don’t think you did. But that’s most likely what would happen. We’re still a very patriarchal culture in a lot ways. [quote=“Max_Blancke, post:82, topic:101116”]
I just wish that more jobs paid well enough that one spouse at least had the option to stay home with the kids.
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But to be fair, this was sort of unique to the 1950s. Prior to that (the depression era) many women worked, because they had to. And historically, the entire family unit, not just the father, was engaged in labor outside the home in some way. And it was incredibly rare for black women to have the opportunity to stay home, most especially, right up to the modern era. In some cases, the bias against black men working was so strong, especially in the south, that black women were the primary breadwinners.
It’s not that I don’t “approve” of it… that’s entirely irrelevant. I just refuse to give up my rights as a citizen so people can realize some white washed ideal that barely existed in history. The question isn’t how others organize their lives, because I have no interest in telling others what to do and how to live. I do have an objection to an entire social structure predicated on the diminishment of my contributions to society, which is just how that would play out. The war on women continues, even if you can’t see it. We know it’s there and we feel that the gains we’ve made are incredibly precarious here.
You’d be surprised, actually. Some people do have children and regret what they had to give up to raise them, because they were pressured into it, because they weren’t equipped to deal with the pressures of parenthood, because their children were not what they were told to expect. This is more true of women, even today, who are still told that the ultimate fulfillment of their lives is child rearing and serving others. Wanting something outside of that is still considered selfish on the part of women.
I’d much rather live in a world where those choices aren’t foisted upon people. I think the ideal should be that every child is a wanted child, that all families, however they are structured get the support they need to make the right choices for their family, and that people who have no interest in having a family aren’t marginalized by the political and economic structures we build as a society. We have the means to make a world where people can decide that one person can stay home and raise a child, and not be devalued or belittled for it. We just don’t have the political will to do so. As long as the ingrained bias against women doing anything that’s considered “man’s work”, it’s going to fall on women.
