[goodJobWalrus]

As a woman, I think so. At the minimum, you need to make your own money to be independent, and independence is necessary to be an adult. I can't imagine feeling grown up, and at the same time asking my husband for some money each time I need to buy something.

(Financial) dependance infantilizes a person. There is a reason why unemployment is depressing even if you have a roof over your head and food to eat.

[scott_s]

I think that in a healthy relationship where one spouse stays home, there's no concept of asking for money. All resources are assumed to be shared, and discussions will of course happens about spending money, but not permission.

I agree that the scenario you're imagining sounds undesirable, but I don't think that's necessarily how one-spouse-stays-home must be.

[grahamburger]

This is how we do it. My wife would also baulk at the idea of 'asking' me for money, even though it's my job that brings money in for the fam. To me, it seems strange that a couple would consider some money 'his' and some 'hers' regardless of where it came from. I've seen hints of that type of spousal relationship here (including in GPs comment) and other places and it's very foreign to me.

[cm2012]

In general, I disagree. In many, many relationships, while the husband earns the money, the women gets final say in what's spent where. While this isn't the rule, it's certainly not uncommon (and popular culture, IE sitcoms, movies, etc pretty much purely reinforce this).

You could say that the scenario where the husband holds tight to the purse strings and the woman only goes along with it because of fear or anxiety that the woman is forced to be infantilized. But I would guess this is sub 10% of marriages in the US.

On a separate note, I think a useful framework for looking at this is to think of the couple as one entity with two parts, rather than as two separate entities. If the entity is split, it's definitely true that the one that can't provide for itself is at a disadvantage, so it takes a lot of trust. But that's also why there are divorce settlements that favor women that gave up working at some point.

[goodJobWalrus]

I'm speaking purely from a personal level. Maybe it's cultural. I have grown up in a country where women work, so I never met a housewife. It would really be hard for me to feel independent while asking my husband for the pocket money.

The few housewives I met later in life were quite infantilized compared to working women I know.

[cm2012]

According to Slate's tool here, only 9% of married couples have only separate bank accounts (the situation where you have to ask your husband for pocket money if you don't have a job) : http://www.slate.com/articles/life/home_economics/2011/01/ou...

[robryan]

Interesting, we have always had a system where we contribute to joint expenses in a joint account but otherwise keep our own accounts.

It certainly avoids that situation in the article where the husband is resentful about an amount spent from joint finances.

[goodJobWalrus]

My husband and I have a joint bank account. I still don't feel that money he earns is my money.

[ssmoot]

But do you feel like the money you earn is "yours" then?

I think maybe that's the disconnect. I don't feel the money I earn "belongs to me". Same for my wife. I don't set my own priorities and budgets. We discuss them.

We're definitely not perfect, and I've definitely bought things that irked her and vice versa. But the joint account means just that. Unless it comes in a birthday card or something, money goes in to a pool. I don't keep a running balance, negative or positive in my head for my contribution.

[goodJobWalrus]

No, I'm cool with sharing my money, and having a concept of our money. I'm just not cool with being incapable of making my own money. Put it any way you want, but it makes you dependent.

I think it's not an accident that every person I know that is not making their own money is frustrated because of it. Again it might be just my cultural conditioning, or my personality, not sure.

[cm2012]

Just a quick add (thanks for the great convo) - Psychologically, to me it is a matter of thinking that even if you don't bring money into the relationship you still have full and equal rights to it (family money is family money, source is forgotten). To me, it's weird (but understandable) that you don't think money he earns is your money too and vise versa. But I think both interpretations are equally valid.

[meric]

Would it change the situation, if every time your husband receives a pay check, he gives you half or all of it? What about if both of you are independently wealthy and one of you decided to stay at home to take care of your children? What if the stay at home house wife has a profitable hobby which makes decent income?

Or stay at home house wives can never be adults?

[goodJobWalrus]

If you are independently wealthy you have your own money, no? You don't depend on the other person.

But what you mentioned is interesting. Look at heirs of great fortunes. They either find something productive to do with their lives, or they stay basically children their whole lives and that often means trouble for them (not always though).

[khedoros]

I think that an independent person is someone who could pick themselves back up if everything were taken away from them. Someone can be independently wealthy but be a dependent person.

My wife certainly has a more independent personality than I do. I put more faith in her ability to recover if I got hit by a bus than I put in my own ability, were the situation reversed. People like her make me believe that there's a difference between "dependent by circumstance" and "dependent by nature", and experience tells me that neither of those are static qualities. Circumstances shift, and someone may grow or regress according to their environment and personality.

[beccasanchez]

So quadriplegics and other people with insoluble medical issues that make their lives dependent on others can never grow up?

[true_religion]

This is an odd direction to take it. The entire thread of conversation has been premised around the unspoken law of 'you are an adult when you feel like an adult', and we debate under what conditions that feeling will truly settle in.

Since its self determined, someone can be quadriplegic, and feel like an adult; then they'd explain to us why they do.

It's not up to us to determine if they are.

Someone could be in the same situation and feel infantilized by the fact they can't feed themselves, despite being successful in every other aspect of their life. We could try to tell them they're still an adult, but in the end... we can't force the sensation of adulthood on them. No one can.

The person you are responding to was speaking about themselves, in their own feeling as a woman. Perhaps some women would feel utterly different, but that's no reason to take offense. I personally think the original posting of 'being an adult means you are the only person responsible for you' is western-culturally dependent.

In my culture, people will hound you about your behaviors till the end of time so long as you share a last name or a bloodline with them because as far as they are concerned family is responsible for everyone, always. Thus independence has nothing to do with adulthood. Adulthood, is rather the capacity to give more to the family than you take away from it.

[goodJobWalrus]

I truly don't know, I've never met a person who is dependent on others due to medical issues, so I wasn't referring to them.

[MollyR]

I bet most people would consider stephen hawking an adult.

[goodJobWalrus]

I bet that too. He has a world-class career, made a fortune, had several wives and multiple children. He hit every "adulthood" milestone western society ever came up with.

[beccasanchez]

He achieved all those things before his illness though.

He had financial independence, status, and a career before he became paralysed.

This means he could pay for his own nursing, and that's exactly why people see him as an adult.

Here's the thing: what people are calling "adult" is nothing other than the traditional definition of "man"

A "man" is a person who is independent, powerful, free, makes his own decisions, pays his own way, has others depend on him, etc.

What's interesting is that you have clearly indicated that, despite being female, you feel like a man! Meanwhile there are many males who do not.

I think it's a very interesting discussion. Too bad my bringing up the housewife/paraplegic angle got me 18 downvotes and counting.

[nitrogen]

For what it's worth I didn't downvote any of your other comments but I did this one, despite this being the most substantive one in this thread. It feels like you're trying to pick a fight rather than have a useful discussion in the other comments, and in this one pull out a bizarre tangent into the definition of a "man".

Maybe internally you and I and the other commenters all feel the same about equality but with different vocabulary, but the language and framing used here seems likely to have a divisive effect. Rather than letting all of these downvotes cause discouragement participating, hopefully they can help to converge on a useful, non-divisive approach to actually sharing information instead of sticking to what may come across as inflammatory.

[MollyR]

These are all good/interesting points. I'm not sure what I think about them right now, It'll take a while to digest.

Thanks again, you really gave me something interesting things to think about.

[mercer]

I think that's actually a very good question. Intuitively I'd say no, people with clear medical issues and resulting dependency are adults.

But on the other hand, I'm much more inclined to consider that people with psychological issues and resulting dependencies are not always adults. It's purely a feeling, by the way. I can't quite justify it.

I think the crucial part is visibility and understanding. If we can understand the mechanism, or see the disability, it's easier to accept that it's not a choice, and that they do the best they can within their limits. They are as independent as they can be, and really, aren't we all quite dependent in the end? I mean, if society were to collapse I'd probably die pretty quickly as I have no clue how to survive in any kind of 'nature'.

But then, as a disability become less visible, or harder to understand, we have a tendency to not be so lenient.

So at some point on the spectrum we might have Lupus, which (afaik) is understood but not visible. We might sometimes get frustrated at the limitations of someone suffering from this, but we still see them as adults (http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christ...).

Then there's ME, which has for a long time been treated as a psychosomatic issue. It wasn't/isn't well understood and the symptoms appear somewhat randomly and seem to be just 'tiredness'. A family member of mine had this and sometimes I noticed it was difficult for us, the family members, to sympathize and not feel like she was a bit whiny and childish.

And then we have something like depression, personality disorders, or developmental disorders, which very often causes intense frustration, or anger in the surrounding people. I know a few people suffering from ADD, autism, and bipolar disorder, and they get very little sympathy.