She Works, He Doesn’t (Men Who Play Mr. MOM)

NewsWeek. ^ | 5-05-2003 | Peg Tyre and Daniel McGinn

[Cacique]

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Thomas and Sandra Nunez with their son, Andrew, and daughter, Ava, at home in Denton, Texas

She Works, He Doesn’t

The number of American families in which the sole wage earner is the woman is small, but many economists think it’s growing

By Peg Tyre and Daniel McGinn
NEWSWEEK

May 12 issue —  Since the beginning of time, anthropologists believe, women have been programmed to seek a mate who can provide for a family—whether that means dragging the mastodon back to the cave or making the payments on the Volvo. So when Laurie Earp walked down the aisle, she joined hands with a man most brides would consider a good catch: a lawyer.

[Cacique]

This is what happens with the feminization of society and the breakdown of the traditional family. It is also a side-effect of the changing nature of our economy from a manufacturing one to a service economy where most of our good white collar and blue collar jobs are being exported. A generation ago we exported manufacturing. Women are cheaper to hire than men etc..

Call me a traditionalist, but I beleive that the man should be able to support the family and he should be the one working and earning. These changes do not augur well for our society.

[Cacique]

ping

[yonif]

I wonder what the effects of this will be.

[NFOShekky]

Webster's

"Gigolo" A man supported by a woman.

[luckodeirish]

I am seeing a scary trend amoung some colleagues, the "man" sits home (does not want to work, can't find work, etc), no kids, watches TV and hangs at the gym, while the woman goes to work. I am seeing more and more of this, where the man essentially "gives up" on being a breadwinner. Is this a result of the deballing of the American male, or are men getting downright lazy?

[NEWwoman]

Looking at the full article, it seems he lost his job and she was able to get work. Sounds like a good plan.

[Cacique]

He should get his lazy butt out of the house and get a menial job if needs be. Too many people sit at home waiting for the "right" job, ie. they want to be paid as much or more than they used to. I a soft economy that is stupid. I was brought up to believe that any work, including digging ditches and cleaning stables is honorable work. Too many "men" out, there have grown up as wimps and snobs. They are what Anne Coulter would call "girlymen".

[merry10]

That sounds like my ex-husband who lost his job 9 August. His wife was working TWO JOBS while he sat home all depressed; boohoo.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Is this a result of the deballing of the American male, or are men getting downright lazy?

As it was so shall it be. In other words, there is nothing new under the sun. Wife working while husband sits around has been with us for a long time and is not restricted to America.

The difference now is that people are no longer ashamed of it.

Note: I am not referring to guys who stay home to raise their kids. I am talking about guys who will not find work because it is well, work.

[luckodeirish]

I'll tell ya, there is nothing as unattractive and yes, I mean sexually too, as a man lying on the couch playing 'ain't it awful".

Yuck

[ez]

I'll tell you a side effect. I was "house dad" for about two months earlier this year.

Women seem to me much more critical and likely to use a husbands unemployed status against him in an argument than a man. I would never dream of calling my wife lazy, or worthless, etc when she is not working, but she didn't hesitate to use it against me.

Fortunately, the situation has been resolved...

[Mannaggia l'America]

Women are cheaper to hire than men etc..

Not always. I don't deal with it any more, but when I worked at a small company, I saw the health insurance costs per employee. The monthly costs on a younger single woman was significantly higher than on a single man, I suppose due to the possibility of pregnancy.

Anyway, I don't have a huge problem with the reversal of roles on a temporary basis. When I was a kid, my dad was out of work for a while. He worked at a local factory and the head of the union local was a hothead (not just on union stuff either - I was friends with his sons). Like clockwork, every 3 or 4 years, they were out on strike - sometimes long strikes. (We even ended up on food stamps because of one of the strikes.)

Eventually, the company packed up and moved overseas. A lot of good all those strikes did...

This was at the end of the Carter years and coming across a new job was not so easy for someone his age with basically no skills. My mom already worked part time, so she switched to full time for a while until things got better and my dad stayed home. Once my dad got another decent job (about 2 years later), she went back to part time and eventually stopped working.

[Republican Red]

Got to disagree with you all on this one. I'm a mom who personally knows of four soccer dads out here in suburbia. All four of them had been laid off from well-paying jobs. Two of the guys are our soccer coaches, one helps out with the brownie troop and another is "room dad" at school.

As the kids get older, someone needs to be around for school participation and after school activities. The wives have great jobs, the husbands didn't. They were the logical choice. Also, the dads, for the first time, are enjoying time with their kids.

[AlbionGirl]

Would that there were more men like you. I'm not sure if it's by design or default, but men have taken full advantage of the free reign feminists have unwittingly provided them with.

'A whole lot of boys and not enough men'; believe it or not I saw this bumper sticker in Italy in '97.

[moyden2000]

Feminists have been peddling this dream for twenty years. Few women respect men who don't work.

[rabidralph]

Is this a result of the deballing of the American male

One cannot be deballed without one's consent.

[mikenola]

If one had to speak in gross generalizations, I think men are a bit more suited to managing a modern household than women. The complexity of maintaining a household is pretty much equal to the jobs most of us hold.

Raising children is an open question of course.

[tdadams]

This reminds me of a post I was reading the other day (on a forum other than FR) from a guy who boasted several times about his $200K household income - what an affluent life he and his wife had, what nice cars, what nice vacations, what good investments they had.

Later in the same posting he admitted that his wife makes about four times as much as he does. I couldn't help but think his wife was a sucker and this guy was a mooch. She's going to wise up one day and dump him.