Is it 2008 or 1958?? - Retro marriage, 21st century-style

[olive bleu]

i always thought i would be a stay at home mom.i started out that way and was just waiting for my husband to finish college when he developed some serious health problems and has not worked since.So there went that plan.I ache to be at home.So i work mon -fri and then spend my weekends trying to pack it all in.I had 2 weeks vacation this summer and spent all of it at home, baking,scrubbing and handing out kool-aid and cookies to half the neighborhood. It's too bad, because there is really nothing else that i am THAT good at.I still do a lot that many working mother's have given up, like doing all my own baking,canning,sewing, hanging laundry on the line.This is the life style that i love and i can't let go of it.But i often think of the many women before me who really spent their lives just doing what needed to be done.I recently read a story about a Canadian woman whose husband died young and she had to leave her young children with her in-laws while she went away to boston to work and spent years sending money back home for them without ever seeing them again till they were grown.So believe me, i am grateful.

wow..that was bit of a bunny trail..oops

 

[Foofoogal]

Bless you Olive Bleu. I understand life throws curve balls sometimes.

 

[Foofoogal]

http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/11/10_400.html

interesting.

 

[Red Diabla]

http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/11/10_400.html

interesting.

Very. I think their bringing up how usury laws and lending regulations were changed in the 70's and 80's is having an effect on EVERYONE is dead-on. To me, this isn't just about whether a woman can choose to stay home or go to work, but how deregulating the system really screwed over the entire country from top to bottom. The regulations were there for a reason, for heaven's sake!

By the by, I work as well as my husband. We don't have kids, and lately I've been able to freelance from home. I don't have time to clean or cook(much to my chagrin), but the husband seems happy that I'm home when he gets home most nights. Real feminism is about choice...hopefully women will be able to do what they really want to do and make it work for themselves and their families.

RD

 

[Brinybay]

There's a social factor to consider also. Women in their roles as wives and mothers, can be the most influential and powerful people there are. Two examples I like to site, Theodore Roosevelt and General Douglas MacArthur.

Before he was President, Teddy Roosevelt was Secretary of the Navy. When he wanted to lobby for the position, who do you think he approached? Not the man in who officially had the political power to make the appointment, he approached the guy's WIFE. He invited her out to go rowing in a boat, and just came right out and told her he wanted to be Secretary of the Navy. He got the job. Source: "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" by Edmund Morris.

General Douglas MacArthur, shortly after the end of WW2, we was arguably one of the most powerful people in the US, victorious general, Viceroy of Japan, but he had a mistress that he went to great lengths to keep her under wraps. Why? Not so much that he was afraid of his wife Jean, but he was scared to death his MOTHER would find out. From a biography I read but the title and author escapes me.

 

[Emer]

Finally there

This year was the year I was finally able to become a stay-at-home-wife, something I've been wanting to do/be since we were married (3 years ago). And really, the only reason it happened this soon was because we moved into a small town with zero job opportunities (the one time I'm happy over the failing economy). But like some of the other ladies, I definitely don't see it as a "luxury" thing. It's much more of a clip-the-coupons-watch-for-sales-save-all-the-pennies-and-quarters type of thing. We're finally coming into a place where we have a bit of money in our accounts, are able to go on trips, and buy nice things...as long as they aren't "too" nice, if you know what I mean! lol

But children definitely aren't in our equation, and probably won't be. We like it being just the two of us.