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>There's a reason women joined the work force en masse, and it was because the money they could make and the satisfaction they could attain in the work force wa
by hackinthebochs 13y ago
>There's a reason women joined the work force en masse, and it was because the money they could make and the satisfaction they could attain in the work force was worth more to them than whatever value they produced scrubbing floors and steaming vegetables.
I'm usually not one to demand a citation in casual online conversations, but this is just screaming out for one. Did women really join the workforce en mass for "meaningful work", or was it out of economic necessity. I can imagine the majority of jobs available to women in that time weren't exactly what anyone today would call "fulfilling". Nor would I consider a survey of your female colleagues who themselves are likely well educated professionals, and thus a non-representative bunch, as a useful statistic. No, it is very much not obvious that women joined the workforce because working is more fulfilling than "scrubbing floors" (aka watching your children grow up).
- twoodfin 13y agoIf staying at home to watch the kids and scrub floors was so much more satisfying than a "real job", why didn't more men stay home in the 1950's and send their wives to work? It wasn't possible? But the '50's were the height of American economic achievement, no? The trend is clear: As more satisfying and economically rewarding career options became available to women, more women educated themselves for those careers and took them. A young middle class girl today doesn't take $40,000 in college loans to become an accountant because she's desperately in need.
- afterburner 13y ago"If staying at home to watch the kids and scrub floors was so much more satisfying than a "real job", why didn't more men stay home in the 1950's and send their wives to work?" Um... because women didn't have the same opportunities then so the household would make less money, and it was considered really bad for the man to be a stay-at-home "bum"?
- twoodfin 13y agoBut this whole argument is about how great the quality of life was in the 1950's. Women not having the same preferred economic opportunities as men sounds like a pretty damning quality of life indicator to me.
- aianus 13y agoStaying at home with the kids sounds like the preferred economic opportunity to me but I'm a white male so what do I know.
- forgingahead 13y agoWow that's terrible. Stay at home Mom's don't just "watch the kids and scrub floors". There is an incredible amount of work and responsibility that comes from maintaining a home and raising children. To be dismissive of the work that they do because you have a naive understanding of it is simply being shallow and unkind.
- twoodfin 13y agoI'm not trying to be dismissive. I'm saying that objectively, most men and many women free to do either choose to work instead of practice full-time homemaking. Others in this thread are arguing that the 1950's was an economic golden era because of course women would rather be homemaking, but that the modern cruel world has forced them out of the home and into the piecework shop. That just defies economic reality: As you say, there is a lot of value produced in keeping a home and raising kids. A job has to return a solid amount of income to make up the difference, and yet women continue to go to college at a rate outpacing men, and before the recent recession, they were on a pace to have more jobs than men. There's no economic gun to their head: In fact, as the economy got worse, women chose to stay home at a greater rate.
- hackinthebochs 13y agoAgain, how much of that is economic necessity, social norms, expectations, etc etc. There are so many reasons that could explain the trend of higher female employment over the last 50 years that simply assuming that they all just wanted to work is absurd.
- sn 13y agoIt is very important to be able to leave, to be able to provide for yourself and your loved ones if a relationship goes bad.