Married Women Should Not Work

“Women’s Liberation? Not for me. I would have to step down from my pedestal.”

I love this quote from a friend’s grandmother when she first learned about a thing called “Women’s Liberation”. I think she was probably a wise woman.

Maybe she knew how blessed she was to be protected and pampered by a husband who loved her. Or maybe she had the foresight to realize that this so-called “Women’s Liberation” would actually put women in bondage, robbing them of their rightful place in society, causing untold miseries in their lives and those of their children. Whatever her reason, I couldn’t agree more.”(1)

I do not believe that married women should work. Single women sure. But married women no. I believe that it should be the husband’s responsibility to provide for his wife and children and that it is the wife’s responsibility to submit to her husband so that he can take care of her and take responsibility for her.

There have always been women who have never married and there always will be. There will always be those women who cannot or will not have children. But most women will want to form some kind of long-lasting relationship at some point and most women will at least have one child. The best way for a woman to have children in any civilized society is within marriage and with only one man. Those children will need to be cared for and raised, as human infants stay helpless for years and need constant care. The husband’s financial support of his wife is what enables a mother to stay home and care for her children. Without such an obligation on the husband, the obligation then has to fall onto the wife to either go to work to fully or partially make money to live off of if the husband doesn’t want to fulfill that obligation. Family life is then disrupted.

“Women like us are sexists. I think of myself as defined, most essentially, by being female and very different from a male- different from years of menstruating, from the nature of my sexual encounters, from the priming of my body by pregnancy, from giving birth, from nursing my babies, and from my unique maternal- not simply parental- interactions with my children. These differences comprise my femininity.” (Graglia, “Domestic Tranquility,” p. 324)

This stay at home dad thing is absurd. It does absolutely nothing good for families nor society and only serves to further degrade the family unit and confuse the natural order of gender relations. It doesn’t even make sense. Men don’t give birth and therefore there is no need for a business to grant him leave to recover from childbirth and nurse an infant. A man could take a few days off to be there for his wife and go back to working to make sure they are supported. But, no, of course, women must pump out breast-milk or babies must be bottle-feed and companies must pay maternity leave and re-arrange their business to accommodate pregnant and lactating women so we can be politically correct and feminism can continue to destroy society and the family. We can’t just tell a man to be a man and tell the woman to go home to her family!

There used to be order within families. When a woman and a man married they both knew what to expect. They both knew that they had separate obligations to fulfill and those obligations would be acknowledged by society and enforced by law if it came down to it. Today there is no real order within families and families are falling apart. I hear much talk everywhere about the crisis the family is in but absolutely nobody- including conservatives- wants to really do anything about it. At least, nobody wants to do anything about it that would involve putting a stop to no-fault divorces and imposing different obligations upon spouses depending on their sex. Of course, everyone should have personal freedom to do what they want! Who cares if they wreck society and everyone else’s life in the process. How dare us tell anyone they cannot do something?

And that leads us back to married women working. I think it is terrible. It completely changes the dynamic of family structure and relieves men of their rightful responsibilities towards women and children. If women want to be able to do whatever they want then they shouldn’t marry. I am of the opinion that a married women should have to have her husband’s permission in order to to work anywhere (even from home) and that her husband should be allowed to terminate her employment anytime he wants- especially if he feels it is interfering in family life. Likewise, I believe that a wife should have the right to force her husband to provide her with the necessities.

Of course, along with the husband being responsible for his wife means he must also be in charge of things. It should be the duty of the wife to obey her husband. When a man and a woman marry they are meant to become one, not to remain as separate independent individuals who cohabit and can go their way at any time. As such I believe it is such a joy to obey my husband and he in turn takes good care of me. The more women empower themselves the less men feel a personal responsibility towards women to care for them, support them and protect them.

“Women’s empowerment and women’s abandonment are two sides of the same coin; you never get one without the other. This is because an empowered woman will necessarily drive a man away since a man cannot contribute to a woman safely or effectively when the woman is ‘in charge.’ There are men however who will be attracted to an empowered woman and these are the men who want to abandon women, who don’t want to provide for and protect women. These men will prefer an empowered woman so that they will be ‘off the hook’ in terms of their duties as men.”(3)

I was just telling my husband the other day that it would completely alter the dynamic of our relationship if I was to work. It would change the way I viewed him, it would change the way I think about our relationship and I doubt I’d be very happy (I doubt he would be very happy either). I know I certainly would not put up with working to pay the bills then coming home to do housework so we would probably end up fighting all the time over who does what and if we are splitting things “equally” enough. I certainly wouldn’t feel real obligated to obey him and my financial independence would always mean I would be able to walk away from the marriage whenever (as many women do these days) because I had no need of his money. It would just be a wreck. I don’t think I would perceive him to be as much of a man nor would I feel as close and intimate with him without being dependent on him.

“The very movement that turned against the traditional woman, vilifying and isolating her and compromising her social and economic security, claimed to be- and was accepted by society as- representing the interests of all women” (Graglia, “Domestic Tranquility,” p. 358)

The truth of the matter is that feminism has never spoken for all women. They have created this mess we have now and made men not want to take on any personal responsibilities for women. So now women have to take on a man’s burdens as well as putting up with their traditional ones. Marriage and divorce has become a never ending war between the sexes. First it’s marriage where both spouses fight over who does what and women whining and complaining about “having” to work (dumb girls don’t complain about working when you won’t consider going back to tradition even if that includes re-instate the word “obey” in those wedding vows and giving preference to men in hiring and pay) then it’s divorce where all laws are gender-neutral so it becomes a battle to get the upper hand over the other out of spite as well as get a good financial deal and welfare package out of it.

“Married women were once supporters of job discrimination. They knew this discrimination would make it easier for 1) Their husbands to find work and 2) Unmarried women and widows to support themselves. Feminists utterly distort this history. They say discrimination was the product of misogyny when in fact it was the result of respect and the assuming of responsibilities on behalf of women.

And as a result of their distortions of history, what do we have? A world in which married women are less able to forgo paid employment and must work a double shift, one at home and one at a job.”(4)

I’m not going to sit here and be politically correct and I am not going to defend feminism in the slightest. Feminism has offered absolutely nothing good to women. Man’s authority and responsibility within the family needs to be re-established and women’s traditional rights and duties need to be established as well. I don’t have any problem with asking my husband for permission to do things or buy things. I don’t have any problem with doing what he tells me to. I’m tired of hearing women complain about “having” to work and saying how much they’d just love to stay home but then turning around and spouting off some bs about “choice” and how feminism was some kind of necessary thing. They want tradition but they don’t want it when it means that the man’s in charge. And, likewise, I’m not letting men off the hook here because they are the same way. Men might like to have the woman in the home and obeying them but they don’t really want tradition if it means they must take legal liability for their wives. Well, neither can have it both ways. I know that and I think it’s time others realized that too.

“Employers no longer need to pay a family wage now that women have been “liberated” from the home—much better to hire both husband and wife and pay each half as much!”(5)

Besides, another matter most won’t discuss is the issue of the availability of jobs in the first place. If married women dropped out of the workforce there would be jobs available for single women who need them and jobs for men looking to support a family either immediately or in the future. Families with two incomes also tend to go into debt and most of the wife’s paycheck generally ends up going to pay for the wife working.

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, and it will bring you nothing but joy.”(1)