Why is this the assumption when a woman marries a man?

Question

***to clear it up right now, I know not everyone thinks this; some.***

Why is it the assumption that a woman marries a man and takes part of his income? Have people forgotten that women work too? More married women are working more now than ever. They work too to bring the bacon home, make home repairs, increase savings, and put the kids thru school. Why do some insist on giving men all the credit for earning the dough?

Answer 1

Who has said that in the last ten years. I can't think of anywomen who don't work. Maybe take time off for babies, but they go back. What family can afford to not have 2 incomes?

Answer 2

Some people love to generalize, it happens here all of the time. Usually from personal experiences.

Answer 3

Traditionalist are weird people...

They expect and demand that a woman stop working to SAH for the children.  So the man is the only one bring in the bacon.  

They forget....that in the case of divorce.  The courts base child support and alimony off of comparing the mans income to the woman's income....compared to the cost of living and raising a child.

The women who has just spent years out of the job market, isn't going to be earning....what she could have earned even with a degree.  You spent 10-15 years out of work your starting at the bottom again.  So this traditional man has just shot himself in the foot.

Answer 4

Correct. Many of the same posters who insist that there's nothing in marriage for men and whinge about alimony are the same people who criticize women for not being traditional and staying home with their children.

So, APPARENTLY what they want is for a woman to stay home and work like an unpaid house slave during the marriage, but if the husband decides to dump her, he should be able to walk away with all the monetary assets of the relationship.

Huh..and they complain there's nothing in marriage for MEN?

Answer 5

Correct!  The term should be

WE work, we did this, WE  WE WE WE

Answer 6

Correct.....

Answer 7

So you are saying that women work too, then?

Answer 8

u are correct.

Answer 9

Very good point

Answer 10

Because those unenlightened individuals still consider men to own everything.  You know the questions that start with "Why do women file for divorce 70 % of the time- so they can take 1/2 his money,  his house, and his kids?".  

Once you are married the money belongs to the 'marriage'.    The exception -  assets acquired before the marriage or an inheritance that is kept separate (the earnings from those assets usually belong to the marriage).

Answer 11

Exactly...

That stuff about the husband being the sole or primary breadwinner might have been a reasonable assumption prior to 1975, but after that was when women began entering the workforce in larger numbers. Those numbers skyrocketed in the 1980s, and now more than half of the women in the US are earning a paycheck as well as pursuing careers!  

According to the US Dept of Labor statistics, in 2007, 59.3 percent of all women were in the labor force.

Many of those women are married ladies, too...

and despite the "s*x and The City" stereotypes of working women,  MOST women are not just working for so called "mad money" to buy themselves luxuries, either!  

A lot of them are working for economic S-U-R-V-I-V-A-L! Basic food, clothing, and shelter...for themselves AND their families!

Sometimes they are working to provide better opportunities for their children such as better private schools (my mother worked 2 jobs to pay for me and my 2 sisters to attend parochial schools as the public schools in Cleveland were abysmal)...and I've known personally of more than one woman who is working to put their grown children through university!

Without the woman's income, their families would be in dire straits....

Women's incomes are necessary to support families

77% of all mothers with school age children (6-17) work. This has forced school districts to re-assess the way they handle parent/teacher/student relations...and how to get participation from working parents in the schools.  

62% of working women earn half or more of their family's income. So that means that increasing number of women are the de facto  PRIMARY breadwinners in their households...

and that's NOT just the unmarried, deserted/abandoned, legally separated, divorced or widowed women, either.  This is true even in those households where there is a husband/domestic partner/father in the house!

Some of the reasons behind that?

The man may be laid off, disabled, retired or working part-time or seasonally (construction workers and roofers are an example of seasonal workers...and they are also known to have high levels of unemployment at certain times of the year.).  

Some of those husbands may have jobs that while not seasonal, offer limited or sporadic employment opportunities (musicians, actors and athletes are an example of this...not everyone in a "glamour" field gets the big bucks and multimillion dollar contracts...and they certainly don't at the start of their careers. It's champagne one day and ramen soup the next.)

Some of those husbands may be full time students...a great many women STILL work to help put their husbands through college in the hope that they'll be able to live a more "traditional" life with the husband having a profession and the woman becoming a SAHM...but sadly once some of those husbands are conferred that  MD or JD or PhD or whatever professional title they now have...courtesy of the wife's labors...they decide to LEAVE her for someone else because they've allegedly "outgrown" them! This happens a lot more than you think.  I know...I currently live in a university town where such things can and do happen!

Some of it is because there are some men who are legitimate househusbands...

and yes, there are a small number of men, I hate to put it this way, who are simply lazy and "living off" the woman, but still are not doing jack diddly around the house!

Answer 12

Here's why... Again not EVERY women is like this but many, many are...

Women (in general) seem to think that "if" they work that "their money" is "their money" and the husbands money is the "households money" - household meaning the husbands', the wife and the kids. As a side note, I don't know any man who has the word "if" in his vocabulary when it comes to working.

Maybe if some of these feminist could tell these women it's about a partnership rather than a self centered "me-me" mindset so many men wouldn't feel this way and it would help those women that aren't like this.

Answer 13

A lot of women become stay-at-home wives/mothers when they get married and are therefore not contributing financially to the relationship. They contribute in other ways, of course, just not financially. I think that's why so many people have this assumption.