Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ks938ks 1888 days ago
Does you partner have health insurance? Will she be able to make decisions for you, visit you in the hospital, or inherit your assets, if something were to happen to you? There are many legal benefits to marriage.

Are feminists forcing women into focusing on their careers or just giving them the option? AFAIK there are still plenty of women who are want to lean out and do the housewife thing. I mean “Real Housewives of X” is one of the most long running and popular tv franchises in the US.

2 comments

> Are feminists forcing women into focusing on their careers or just giving them the option?

So the answer to this question is very complicated.

A husband complained that his wife wanted to be a stay-at-home mom: https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/03/sudden-sahm-concern...

As you can guess, there were many reactions to this article. A woman argued that a working mom is a better option: https://twitter.com/JillFilipovic/status/1369685618863841280

Of course, there is other side of the coin. Some argued women should be given an option to be a staying-at-home mom: https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1369865452642471938

What do women want? Some want to be a stay-at-home mom: https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/09/12/is-op...

A husband complained that his wife wanted to be a stay-at-home mom: https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/03/sudden-sahm-concern...

Raising a child and building a home and life for a family is expensive. I know a lot of dudes who are stressed because they partner decided to become stay at home moms but also, “please buy a house”.

Anecdotally, I’ve also heard a few women balk at the idea of the husband being the stay at home parent. And I know a few dads who would love to be home more but can’t because they became the default breadwinner.

That’s not a partnership.

I don’t know who to attribute this to but you know what they say: “The only correction is an over correction“.

> Raising a child and building a home and life for a family is expensive.

This is an important point. I don't think feminism is trying to limit options but in practical terms if you have a mix of two income and one income households competition between them will drive up basic costs such housing so that running a one income household is significantly more expensive than back when most households were one income.

You can try address this via tax, as many European countries do. But then two income households feel unfairly penalised.

Most of the work under the label of feminism has been about creating options, there are many people that try to leverage the movement to be more exclusionary and say some options are wrong in favor of a mental corporate career. From my experience this has been women that go as far as to invalidate the decision making ability of other women that are not choosing a corporate career like that.