I remember growing up how all I ever wanted to be was a housewife. But, unfortunately, that wasn’t an option. That wasn’t on the list of available careers when I was in school. In fact, I felt as though I couldn’t even talk about wanting to get married and stay at home because it was shameful. I knew if I told people what I really wanted to do they would just laugh and say being a housewife wasn’t a career and wasn’t dependable.
But how exactly did it get this way? At one point in our history it was commonly accepted that a woman would more than likely marry and her husband would be the one to support her. What exactly went wrong?
In one simple word, the answer is feminism. Feminism was something that was supposed to give women “options,” or so they say. Despite the overwhelming evidence that the whole point was to push us into the workforce through whatever means possible, we still believe it was about “options.”
Why are we still so blind to the truth? As women, our work is now only legitimate if we are making a paycheck. Having children isn’t “work,” because we aren’t making a paycheck when we do it. Watching our own kids every day isn’t “work,” because, once again, we aren’t making a paycheck. It’s OK to take orders from a boss, but of course, it’s never OK to be in the home reporting to a husband every day.
It does seem that the pressure to join the workforce is not quite as great as it was a decade ago, but that pressure is still largely there. Most don’t have a loathing of women’s traditional roles as much as they did only a few short years ago, but they have found something else wrong with us being in the home; that something is a lack of financial security for the housewife.
Now that they have gotten women out of the home, they pressure us to stay there because of the no-fault divorce laws feminists pushed for that relieved men of their responsibilities to support their wives. Instead, both husband and wife are expected to be self-sufficient and equally responsible for supporting both themselves and their families. God forbid the law make any distinctions based upon sex.
So exactly how long will women sit around and put up with this? Most of us do not want to work all of our lives and most of us do not make six figures incomes or work at a job just for the fun of it. More often than not most families find that, unless they do make a six figure income, they keep very little of that second income when all expenses are accounted for. What exactly is the point?
We need a reform of the devastating no-fault divorce laws that were put into place across the country from the late 60s to mid-80s. Given our biological differences women should demand that our husbands support us and that a marriage is not something that either partner has the right to walk away from just because they feel like it.
Change is long overdue.
B. A. Hunter 