Why breadwinner role is seen as privilege

Tedfordshire · 2022-05-14T13:52:33+00:00

People often say "historically women were oppressed because they were forced to stay at home and raise kids", as if getting to spend every day at home with your family is somehow a worse deal than having to go out and do manual labour every day. Sure, they didn't have the freedom to go and get a job if they wanted to, but it's not like the men had the freedom to be a stay at home dad either.

Oncefa2 · 2022-05-14T13:31:37+00:00

The stay at home partner gets the benefits of having money and a career without having to work for it.

If anything that is what power looks like: compelling another person to work for money for your benefit.

ExMuzzy · 2022-05-14T18:37:15+00:00

The part that most ignore is that the process of earning money isn’t enjoyable for most people. I would personally love to stay home and not work. There’s also the fact that you don’t really get to see your children much or bond with them.

Man_of_culture_112 · 2022-05-14T16:04:35+00:00

It's stupid and is a testimony to the fact that Western progressives/socialists don't know anything and are jokes.

It is well know that THE PRIVILEGED DON'T WORK!!!!!!

Aristocrats don't work.

Stock owners don't work.

Slaves worked hard.

Being a stay at home wife is a luxury and a privilege and it is gaslighting to call it oppression

Tinfoil_Haberdashery · 2022-05-14T21:44:25+00:00

I've been both--currently a househusband.

I prefer housework. There are definite tradeoffs, but with full sincerity, fuck the rat race. I can't help but feel that the wildest trick society ever went through was convincing women that employment is freedom. Maybe it's the difference between choosing something vs. it feeling like a fate you're trapped in, but the workforce kinda fucking sucks.

anonymous_redditor91 · 2022-05-14T23:08:09+00:00

Being a breadwinner has privileges, but those privileges come with the responsibility of providing for others, which is the whole problem when progressives talk about privilege: they assume that all privilege is unearned. Some privileges are earned, some are unearned, and they don't make that distinction because they would prefer to have a more simplistic black and white model of the world.

EddgeLord666 · 2022-05-14T16:15:26+00:00

Lmao I would much rather be a stay at home husband than the main breadwinner if I were to choose one of those options but that’s not a very likely possibility. Yay male privilege I guess?

BloomingBrains · 2022-05-15T07:45:57+00:00

Trick question, it's not. Which is why you don't see women lining up en masse to provide for men. But, feminists need it to be seen as a privilege so they can justify their arguments about historical oppression and lend weight to their current claims of oppression.

The best way to make someone that is working to provide for you not catch on to what a raw deal it is, is make them think that it is somehow a privilege to do so, and that the only reason you're not providing them instead is because of course you would, but sadly, you can't.

griii2 · 2022-05-16T16:27:43+00:00

Let's not forget that although men earn the money, couples spend it together.

(BTW the "women make 80% of consumer decisions" is probably a myth, but they certainly don't do less than 50% :) )

th3empirial · 2022-05-14T15:15:32+00:00

Yeah but it’s an unstable kind of privilege because it relies on someone else. I get why a lot of women would rather have that control and not rely on a partner for economic resources. Like I wouldn’t be comfortable not earning money if only my wife did since who knows what could happen

Tookoofox · 2022-05-17T20:38:23+00:00

This is a largely hypothetical debate anymore, IMO. Everyone works nowadays. But...

Because, by and large, privilege and power are almost always linked. If the man wanted something, he could use his primary access to money as leverage against his wife and she had almost no recourse. Or, even without malice, he could spend half his paycheck by the time he got home on whisky and there was basically nothing she could do.

Yes, divorce courts did exist. But before the 1980s, the woman would have had to prove that her husband had been cruel or neglectful of her. In front of an, almost certainly, male judge which would devolve into a he-said, she-said with children in the middle. And, remember, divorce has been seen as a sin for most of history. So... That.

Also, I think y'all are imagining that being a stay-at-home wife is a lot easier than you think it is. Between the two, I'd definitely take hard factory job that I could clock out of, rather than the always-on-call job of mother.

Tl;dr: privilege and power are almost always inextricably linked.

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