Working for Lifestyle/Extras
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| Mon, 11-20-2006 - 11:13am |
Hi Ladies :)
This is my first time on this debate board and I have been dying to jump into some of the topics, but I feel as though they are sooooo long (one in particular is over 1000 replies, yikes!) that starting my own specific one might work out better.
Anyhow, a recurring theme here seems to be what Moms should and shouldn't be going to work for. It seems some are of the opinion that is OK for Mom to work if she must to pay her bills but NOT if its to afford a nice car, house, good neighborhood. This is considered keeping up with the Johnses (who are they???) and thats bad.
Well, I want to know what in the heck is wrong with a women working to have nice things? I don't mean working and leaving baby in child care 16 hours a day, everyday...thats pretty extreme.
I enjoyed a certain lifestyle before having a child, should I have downsized that lifestyle once baby came so I didn't have to work? What about me *wanting* to maintain a certain lifestyle for myself, my husband, and my child makes me a (a) workaholic or (b) striving to keep up with the Joneses?
Don't some people (like myself) simply enjoy living in a nice place with nice things and want their children to have the same experience?
So please, anyone who thinks a women is wrong for WOH if she is not doing so to financially survive but does it to maintain a certain lifestyle...whats wrong with this?
Thanks all :)

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Pretty much once the ovaries are in place, womanhood is a foregone conclusion, isn't it? WOHMs don't lose their ovaries, so it would seem that being a WOHM *and* a woman aren't that difficult to coordinate. And a Mom is a Mom is a Mom, whether she SAH or WOH.
. . .no crab feasts, no tuition for STM's.
The 1950's is a figment of your imagination. Women have always worked in higher numbers than sah ala the 1950's white upper middle class college educated model seen in Leave it to Beaver. Women worked on the farms, in the family businesses, as servants and teachers and nurses. All the time caring for their children- or more likely leaving it to a younger sibling or eldest daughter or unmarried Auntie.
The idea of a family of four with a dog living in a center hall white colonial with a picket fence is a hollywood creation.
The reason more women stayed at home in the 1950's than in the previous decade was availability of jobs and CHOICE. When the "menfolk" came back from war, the womenfolk were expected to give them their jobs. Women were fired when they married or were forced to quit when they became pregnant - even up to the 1960's. I was born in 1964, and my mother lost her job because of me. She was a teacher and teachers were expeceted to not start a school year if they were pregnant or planning to become in the upcoming year.
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"I found my family was more important than the money I earned, regardless of how much it was."
By WOH, I am saying that my family is important.
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"K has always been "pre-school"."
Not here.
"It is CREDIT and the decline of morals which have brought us to where we are with mom's deciding whether to work or not."
Totally and completely false.
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