Originally posted by penkitten
there are lots of women who do want to stay home with their kids.
my neighbor, has 6 kids, ranging from 2 months to 11 years. they are all home schooled and are well rounded . im amazed by her.
then there are others, who dont want to stay home.
Why is this amazing? Presumably she chose to have 6 children of her own accord. I'll also assume that all 6 were fathered by the same man, yes? I assume because statistically this is rarely the case. Personally I'd be more amazed by the man with the capacity to provide for 6 children and a wife.
Here's a little example of my own; I once worked for a guy who had 3 kids and a stay-at-home wife. I knew him (and got the job) because I knew his wife from a prior job just before she had their first child. She was the consumate 'professional' woman at that time, going on about how women earn less than men and the rest of the standard talking points, right up until she left for her pregnancy leave. She made it known that she wouldn't leave her career and would be returning to work in 6 weeks (standard pregnancy leave). I should also add that her husband had to take vacation time from his job to be at her labor and birthing and about 3 days after the birth at his own expense. On the 7th week, after birth and nurturing the child she announced she was quitting. All notions of a 'professional' career flew out the window.
I kept in touch with her and her husband for a few years until I started working for the guy's agency, when I learned that she had made an attempt to return to her career right up to the point that they had their 2nd child. This was the last nail in the career coffin for her. She was officially a housewife then, not by choice, but by necessity. You see, it was more costly for her to persue her career than it was to pay for all-daycare for 2 children for 5 days a week. She had essentially started her own day-care business for her 2 and then 3 kids since the amount of money she earned weekly from her career was about the same as keeping her children in day care. Regardless of the circumstance, it was her
choice that effected this change in she and her husband's lives.
As I said in my first post, you cannot 'have it all, baby'. Women will make a choice at some point or it will be made for them.
I do think there needs to be some distinction between the term 'professional' women and working women. This is a point of contention that women seem to blur more often than not. A working woman isn't necessarily a 'professional' woman. Everyone has to work these days in some respect. My wife is a CT scanner at a local hospital here, but she would never characterize herself as a 'professional', career minded woman. She works because it contributes to our collective well being, not because she's 'driven to success' or has aspirations of running her own department. In fact she's continually stated that she'd love to be a stay at home mother; and could we afford this, I'd be happy to have her do so. Employment is a necessity for us both and many single women as well. These are working women, who understand the choice between family life and work life and, given the option, would readily become fulltime mothers.
Professional women are those who have made a conscious decision (whether they're aware of it or not) to forego a traditional family life in favor of pursuing a career. And as I stated in my prior post, it's when preofessional women don't make the mental connection of the choice they've made that the problems begin. It's when they entertain the belief that they can have it all, they expect a man to be attracted to them based on their professional status, or they expect a man to assume a traditionally feminine gender role, that this narrow, self-serving world collapses in on her. This is not to disparage a woman seeking out a rewarding career or to devalue this particular choice, if that choice is fully understood and the expectations are realistic. It's just an observation of women wanting their cake and eating it too from being sold an unrealistic bill of goods and being falsely empowered with a sense of entitlement at a male's expense.
I'll finish here by pointing out that none of this applies to men. We simply do not have the option (or desire really) to be anything less than professional, to be anything less than motivated and ambitious. It's what's expected of us. Now, before I get all of the examples of at-home-dads or 'house husbands', let me say that you will never hear a guy on a date when asked about his future ambitions state how he'd like to settle down with a woman who's a good earner, stay at home with his kids and be a good homemaker. This is fantasy. Ladies, on a date, how hot would you be for a guy who confessed he wasn't going to college and had no other higher ambition than to stay at home and run the kids to soccer practice? This doesn't happen. This isn't meant to demean the choice a woman makes for raising kids or being a housewife, it's meant to illustrate the difference between the feminine and the masculine in this role. Men simply do not have the option. Househusbands rarely aspire to be househusbands and are generally forced by necessity into this role.
