wallabumba wrote: ↑Sun Sep 20, 2020 7:44 pm
As a young woman, I was a feminist When I was married, I had to work so that we could make ends meet. Sadly, this made my husband more willing to stay home and nurture his emotional crises (he was a recovering alcoholic). So I became the breadwinner. What I really wanted to do was stay home and have babies. But that would not be possible. Three husbands, and three divorces reinforced this reality. (yes, I should have picked them better--hind sight being 20/20 and all). Along the way I had two miscarriages (health problems to blame). Figuring I would never be a mother, and I would never be able to rely on a man to provide, I concentrated on taking care of my own business. In the work-world, I learned that getting ahead meant being tough-minded and hard hearted. So I did just that. I got harder and harder (I am still trying to soften up.)
Thank you for your excellent post, Walla. It's great to get input from your age group. Very important to see how these things grow and sometimes stay the same over generations.
I am very sorry to hear about your hard relationships and also the miscarriages. It sounds like you've had a very hard road to walk. I would like to add that although I think you're correct that some women join feminism as a cry for help against the hands they are dealt, that it is very important to see that a lot of the reasons women are in this position is because of feminism itself and it's history.
See, there have always been problematic men who either drank and neglected their families or other issues so previously some women were in the position to need a job to take care of their families. This wasn't the norm, and I'm sure that Whites being the sympathetic bunch we are would've allowed exemptions for women to do certain jobs even though it wasn't popular to do under the circumstances. Where feminism stepped in and ruined everything is by making laws to force employers to hire women indiscriminately.
As most of us know Whites don't typically need to be forced by law to do the right thing; we are disposed per our evolution to help each other and do what's best for our communities, that is how we survived our harsh winter climates in the far past. Whites that did not do so were less likely to survive and pass on their genes. There are always exceptions to the rule, but that's beyond the scope of what I intend to write.
When it became normal for women to enter the workplace that affected the whole job system, men who were otherwise capable were not hired in some cases to make room for the increased flow of women into the workforce. As you stated employers realized they could pay women less to do most jobs and that was a further incentive to hire them even without the anti-discrimination laws. When men realized that women wanted to work outside the homes this took pressure off of them to work as long or as hard to make ends meet. Families realized that by working two jobs they could have most of the material goods they wanted and didn't need to struggle or save to get what they wanted.
Then a few generations passed, men started to expect their women to work jobs and take care of the household/children. Enter my generation i.e. the Millenials. Our men are lazier and more entitled than generations of the past, they expect women to pick up their slack and to be co-providers for the household. My husband for example after we were married thought I was going to give him children and work a job outside the home so he could work as less as possible come home and play videogames. NOPE! I told him from the beginning that I was not going to work outside our home once we got married and he was going to have to step up and be a man. Good news is that he did, but not without him telling me for half a year how hard I made it on him and that I should get a job and help out.. I stuck to my guns, my place was in the home and I wasn't going to do it. If he didn't like it, well he knew where the door was and not to let it hit his buttcheeks on the way out.
I had pressure not only from my husband but also his mother in law (Who never worked until her kids were in their 20's btw...), it wasn't easy to get lambasted all the time. However, now even though we don't have much money to spare we survive on about 500$ a week, that's with $500 rent a month. We don't get everything we want, hardly! But, we get what we need and I am at home raising my children where I should and want to be. My husband works hard and is a good man, he's grown tremendously since I refused to cushion him.
Not everyone can have babies, Walla, be it unfortunate circumstances or health problems but there's still so much we can do in our homes

Women that want to work should be able to, I have a grandmother that retired from furniture. She loved her job, probably saved their marriage, her and papaw fight like two cats in a bag now that they're both at home. But, this should not be forced upon us and it should not be viewed as the norm.
Feminism is unfortunately seen as a cure when in fact it was the disease from the beginning.