Has women in the work force helped or hurt the family?

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Em_in_FL said:
I’d be perfectly fine with that. 🙂
But our personal pro/con list would never get us to that situation.
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How do you think other women would feel about such a change?

Before answering, allow me to sharpen the query. Suppose the husband just one day decided that he wanted to leave the work force and enter into a stay-at-home dad life; he is not a lazy person, he will work hard to properly raise the kids. How do you think most women/moms would react to that change?

Do you not agree that most women expect that if someone will be home with the kids, that it will be them? Wouldn’t it be true that most women would feel hurt if their husbands wanted to take that role?

Being a guy I can only guess… 🙂
 
irishpatrick said:
Yes, quite true…but was it a good thing or bad thing? Is all the free love and sex a good thing for us collectively or a bad thing?
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Without a doubt, a very bad thing for our society.

BUT in the 60s and 70s, domestic violence against women was still swept under the rug. Child molestation in the home and physical abuse was largely ignored. If a girl being sexually abused by her father, came out and told her mother, she would likely be punished for making up lies.

In the 1950’s many boys were beaten for telling their father that they were being sexually abused by a priest or no one believed them.

500 years ago, women were killed for committing adultry.

I would say that some things have improved greatly while other things have deteriorated.
 
Serap said:
Without a doubt, a very bad thing for our society.

BUT in the 60s and 70s, domestic violence against women was still swept under the rug. Child molestation in the home and physical abuse was largely ignored. If a girl being sexually abused by her father, came out and told her mother, she would likely be punished for making up lies.

In the 1950’s many boys were beaten for telling their father that they were being sexually abused by a priest or no one believed them.

500 years ago, women were killed for committing adultry.

I would say that some things have improved greatly while other things have deteriorated.
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Yet, overall you would agree it was a very bad development, even with the other horrors. Correct?
 
irishpatrick said:
How do you think other women would feel about such a change?

Before answering, allow me to sharpen the query. Suppose the husband just one day decided that he wanted to leave the work force and enter into a stay-at-home dad life; he is not a lazy person, he will work hard to properly raise the kids. How do you think most women/moms would react to that change?

Do you not agree that most women expect that if someone will be home with the kids, that it will be them? Wouldn’t it be true that most women would feel hurt if their husbands wanted to take that role?

Being a guy I can only guess… 🙂
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I wouldn’t, I like working and being away from the house, true there are days where I would prefer to be home and not have to deal with traffic but I am not domestic, I like to cook and bake, that’s it. If my husband wants to deal with the laundry and cleaning the bathrooms and taking care of the house and the kids. Power to him.
 
irishpatrick said:
How do you think other women would feel about such a change?

Before answering, allow me to sharpen the query. Suppose the husband just one day decided that he wanted to leave the work force and enter into a stay-at-home dad life; he is not a lazy person, he will work hard to properly raise the kids. How do you think most women/moms would react to that change?

Do you not agree that most women expect that if someone will be home with the kids, that it will be them? Wouldn’t it be true that most women would feel hurt if their husbands wanted to take that role?

Being a guy I can only guess… 🙂
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This is really up to each individual couple and what’s best for their marriage. I cannot answer this question even though it was not directed at me.
 
trinichiqn said:
I wouldn’t, I like working and being away from the house, true there are days where I would prefer to be home and not have to deal with traffic but I am not domestic, I like to cook and bake, that’s it. If my husband wants to deal with the laundry and cleaning the bathrooms and taking care of the house and the kids. Power to him.
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Interesting. Thank you. 🙂
 
irishpatrick said:
How do you think other women would feel about such a change?

Before answering, allow me to sharpen the query. Suppose the husband just one day decided that he wanted to leave the work force and enter into a stay-at-home dad life; he is not a lazy person, he will work hard to properly raise the kids. How do you think most women/moms would react to that change?

Do you not agree that most women expect that if someone will be home with the kids, that it will be them? Wouldn’t it be true that most women would feel hurt if their husbands wanted to take that role?

Being a guy I can only guess… 🙂
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I wouldn’t presume to know what other women would expect.
A GOOD marriage would look at all the pros/cons of a situation. I think following “the crowd” for no reason other than “its normal” isn’t wise. Emotion shouldn’t be a factor.
All pros/cons need to be evaluated… including the specific features of women (like boobs) which may be necessary for feeding/caring for the children. It’s just a business case that should be fully evaluated.
 
irishpatrick said:
Yet, overall you would agree it was a very bad development, even with the other horrors. Correct?
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I’m not sure I understand, but yes, the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s hurt society. women were in the home during this time though.

But men abusing their wives was equally as bad and now it’s illegal.
 
I realize that I will get raked over the coals for this, however, I think after reading through many of the reactions, my opinion - as a 32 year old woman, is important to acknowledge.

First and foremost, while as Irishpatrick has pointed out there are many exceptions, to claim that generalizations are useless and invalid in any argument let alone this one, is to subscribe to the idea that the individual autonomous unit (being one person or one family) is the only thing that is important. This line of thinking is a hindrance to our culture which is supposed to be communal in nature. Therefore what one family does, even if it works for them at the time, does indeed have an impact on the community as a whole, and sometimes that impact is does not benefit the community as a whole.
irishpatrick said:
It has now been a well established fact that women pursue careers at nearly the same rate as men and they work fulltime at nearly the same rate as men. Those numbers have steadily increased for the last three decades. This has been the case long enough to help us create an informed opinion about the impact of these developments.

So, here are a few questions"
  1. Has women working fulltime outside the home been a good or bad development for the American family?
    In general, I think it has been a bad development for the American Family, mainly for the reason I stated above. While it was not the intended result of women moving into the workforce in great numbers, the erroneous sense of individual autonomy that has developed has been detrimental.
  2. Has our culture improved since women entered the workforce in massive numbers?
Again, individual lifestyles as well as individual families have indeed improved in several if not many instances, but over all… No. The culture has not improved on the whole, it has gotten worse.
  1. Are our children better or worse off?
I believe it has gotten worse.
  1. Has women working fulltime made this nation stronger, weaker, or no impact?
Women as individuals have gotten stronger, and that is definitely a good thing. However, on the whole, women have associated being stronger with a reduced need to be part of a family and consequently the community suffers. Therefore, the as a nation, we are weaker. Not because women have been working fulltime, but because the attitude has become, “Since I can work fulltime (and make money and support myself and fulfill my ambitions and acknowledge my talents) without anyone else, then I don’t NEED anyone, or anything.”
  1. Have our children become stronger or weaker in the faith?
Our children, on the whole have become weaker, because as parents we are weak in the faith to begin with.
  1. Has entering careers and fulltime work been good or bad for women (and women who are moms)?
I think I’ve answered this. 😉

**Add on questions for married couples: **
  1. Would women prefer to work and let their husbands stay at home and care for their children? Or, would women rather both spouses work?
I am currently a SAHM and I love it. But I readily admit, that I enjoy my husband being the “head of the household”, and the “submission” quotes from Paul are not difficult for me to grasp. That being said… I did start out working, and I’ve had to go back and forth between working and staying-at-home on several different occasions over the years in order to help pay the bills. I much prefer being a stay-at-home-mom. Not because there aren’t career choices and educational opportunities that I would love to be apart of, but because above all, I know that this is what God is calling me to do.
  1. Would it better to have men stay at home with the kids, rather then neither parent staying home?
I have a good friend whose husband stays at home with their two children while she works during the day, and he works evenings (a few hours a few evening a week) when she gets home. The kids enjoy their daddy time, but I will say their house is never really picked up and cleaned up. Not that I expect her or any woman to be solely responsible for the cleaning, I just think it’s funny, i doubt it would get cleaned much even if she were home.🤷. Anyway, she works during the day because she makes more money, but I know she would rather be at home and her husband working if they could, but right now, they make it work.
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Hope that helps.🙂 Anything else?
 
Serap said:
This is really up to each individual couple and what’s best for their marriage. I cannot answer this question even though it was not directed at me.
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Ahh, but it is not a specific, but rather a general query. You can certainly hold a opinion from a general pov regarding these matters. In general would women be happy or upset about such developments?
 
Sullibe said:
I realize that I will get raked over the coals for this, however, I think after reading through many of the reactions, my opinion - as a 32 year old woman, is important to acknowledge.

First and foremost, while as Irishpatrick has pointed out there are many exceptions, to claim that generalizations are useless and invalid in any argument let alone this one, is to subscribe to the idea that the individual autonomous unit (being one person or one family) is the only thing that is important. This line of thinking is a hindrance to our culture which is supposed to be communal in nature. Therefore what one family does, even if it works for them at the time, does indeed have an impact on the community as a whole, and sometimes that impact is does not benefit the community as a whole.

Hope that helps.🙂 Anything else?
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Thank you. I always have more 🙂

Can you respond to my flip-it scenario in which the majority of men change and want to be stay-at-home dads…how would wives/women react to that and would it be good or bad for our culture, families, children?
 
Here’s a personal example. As a child, my mom was beaten and belittled. She wasn’t allowed to work. She was treated like a second class citizen.

I was beaten, as were my brothers. My father was king. I was also sexually abused by my father…I was his property.

fastforward to 2011, my father would never be able to do what he did to us and get away with it. I put myself through university and became independent.

I never would have been able to do this the way things were before. Women were treated as second class citizens. A woman was not even defined as a “person” until the 1800’s my country.

We have come leaps and bounds and I would never look back ever. I think things are better now in so many ways for society as a whole. I also think that things have deteriorated as well in many ways.

Society has always gone up and down in different ways. Thing are neither better nor worse than 50 years ago.
 
Serap said:
Here’s a personal example. As a child, my mom was beaten and belittled. She wasn’t allowed to work. She was treated like a second class citizen.

I was beaten, as were my brothers. My father was king. I was also sexually abused by my father…I was his property.

fastforward to 2011, my father would never be able to do what he did to us and get away with it. I put myself through university and became independent.

I never would have been able to do this the way things were before. Women were treated as second class citizens. A woman was not even defined as a “person” until the 1800’s my country.

We have come leaps and bounds and I would never look back ever. I think things are better now in so many ways for society as a whole. I also think that things have deteriorated as well in many ways.

Society has always gone up and down in different ways. Thing are neither better nor worse than 50 years ago.
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I am truly sorry you suffered as you did. I hope your life is happy and at peace now, it seems like you very much deserve it… 🙂
 
irishpatrick said:
Thank you. I always have more 🙂

Can you respond to my flip-it scenario in which the majority of men change and want to be stay-at-home dads…how would wives/women react to that and would it be good or bad for our culture, families, children?
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As one person in society, it wouldn’t phase me one bit. But there are two problems (one of which can be overlooked, but the other can’t).
  1. Men, on average, still get paid more than women. This is the one that can be overlooked though–you can just do with less. But it makes the choice of choosing a parent to stay home a bit more logical (the one who earns less). Then again, I think part of the speculation on why women get paid less is because they take time off to care for families. So that might be negated.
  2. Biologically speaking women give birth nurse, etc. A woman has to stay home if she has bed rest during pregnancy, has complications with birth, and even with a normal birth needs time to recover, nurse, etc. So if the father stays home too, at many points in the family history you will have two stay at home parents and little to no income.
In my case, I have to work. Like another poster mentioned about his father, my husband left me. He pretty much decided he wants to live a bisexual, swank lifestyle and has no need or room for a family. Ironically, I wanted to stop working when I had my child and settle in to start growing our family. He pretty much said, no, that no wife of his was going to “watch soap operas and eat cheetos all day” (his words, not mine–he’s clueless to how hard stay at home mom’s work). He wanted me to work outside the home (mainly out of greed–he wanted a particular high-end lifestyle and to keep up with the Jones’). So in a way, his insisting that I keep working set me up to stay on my feet when he left.

By the way, ironically, my husband earns a lot more money than me, but is struggling and can’t understand how I can “survive” off what I make. The answer is he’s a spendthrift who parties a lot, but that’s a topic for another discussion.

To answer the original question, I really don’t think it’s men or women working out of the household that has eroded the state of the family. In fact, I question if family truly has been eroded (is it nostalgia for the past?). But if it has, I would say that industrialization and consumerism have done more to erode things than anything else.
 
To all,

Thank you for a most pleasant chat. I must actually get some things done now, so I must leave this thread. It is always nice when we can talk without attacking.

I learned a lot today. 🙂

God Bless.
 
irishpatrick said:
How do you think other women would feel about such a change?

Before answering, allow me to sharpen the query. Suppose the husband just one day decided that he wanted to leave the work force and enter into a stay-at-home dad life; he is not a lazy person, he will work hard to properly raise the kids. How do you think most women/moms would react to that change?

Do you not agree that most women expect that if someone will be home with the kids, that it will be them? Wouldn’t it be true that most women would feel hurt if their husbands wanted to take that role?

Being a guy I can only guess… 🙂
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Again…it depends. Each family has its own dynamics, its own preferences, its own financial situation, and so forth.

Not many men I know would trade their outside-the-home money earning jobs to stay at home with kids, cook, do laundry, clean, etc. And if they did, there’s no one-size-fits-all situation. It would work for some families; it wouldn’t for others. Some women would be fine with it; others wouldn’t.

Personally, if my kids were older and I had career prospects, I’d be all for it. If my kids were younger and I was still having children, I would resent being expected to be the breadwinner plus carry, give birth to, and breastfeed children simultaneously. I also have some health issues, and I don’t expect that my future pregnancies are going to be completely smooth-sailing. So in my situation, my husband would be making an unreasonable request and it would be a bad financial decision, since I anticipate needing more sick time off than some people might need. So all in all- it depends.
 
irishpatrick said:
To all,

Thank you for a most pleasant chat. I must actually get some things done now, so I must leave this thread. It is always nice when we can talk without attacking.

I learned a lot today. 🙂

God Bless.
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:confused:

Is this guy doing some kind of research for a paper or something?
 
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