Single Men and Bachelors: Feminism is not for you.

[thesummerqueen]

Only after you eat me, 5th.

[Dotard]

Summer, even if you took away all the 'gadgets' like internets, ipods, ipads, game consoles, 50in led t.v.'s etc. your average blue collar working person cannot support a stay at home wife, kids, morgage, etc.

Back in the '50s an average blue collar working man could support all these things plus have some money for bowling night with the fellas, have beer in the frige and never run out of toliet paper. Wages have been halved because, my contention, the market was doubled for blue collar workers with the emergence of women from the household into the workforce.

I would maintain that if you cut the workforce in half wages would increase substantially due to employer competition for these workers and thus average joes could support families.

[thesummerqueen]

I've worked in the office of three different kinds of "blue collar" companies. A large homebuilder, an emergency response team, and now for an industrial galvanizer. I had access to employee records for all of the non-office staff.

There were maybe a handful of women in the emergency response teams. Less for construction. None for the galvanizer. They mostly work in the office.

Blue collar isn't effected by women's need to work. Trust me. The economy has changed. Also, many of those guys had women who stayed home. They had much less than people with two working parents, but they managed it. It's not just the gadgets. What a guy might spend on a bowling night back in the 50's now probably gets pissed away in some other form.

[festive1]

I think a very important element is missing from this conversation: the cost of childcare. I attempted to go back to work a couple years ago and I couldn't get anything that would pay enough to even cover daycare for two boys. I have a college degree, for what it's worth.

[thesummerqueen]

You know, we discussed that at work too, and we factored in some things: they have to have insurance now in case something happens in this litigious society, they have to feed the kids approved nutritional foods, some of them have stupid fancy gadgets so parents can watch their kids over web cam, and etc.

My mother paid for a babysitter who watched many other kids until I was old enough to watch the kids myself. It was much much cheaper than a daycare, but still very expensive. It's another reason I definitely don't want to have kids.

[festive1]

The least expensive daycare we could find was $400/week, each kid... Who can afford that? Not working class people. So at home I stay.

[thesummerqueen]

per kid? That's fucking ridiculous.

[Minimalist]

Wages have been halved because, my contention, the market was doubled for blue collar workers with the emergence of women from the household into the workforce.

Wages have been halved because cunts like Romney and the rest of the corporate crooks have moved too many jobs overseas.

[TaraJo]

Not just childcare, but day to day chores around the house. One of the faults I find with feminism is that it doesn't do a very good job of addressing sexist stereotypes about men and this is an area where it's coming back to bite women in the butt for it. Society hasn't really accepted the idea that men can do housework like cooking, cleaning, laundry or take care of the kids, so women have to do those jobs by default. Because of that, part of the reason I think women are choosing jobs with more flexibility is so that they can still attend to these jobs. If feminism wants to achieve equality for women, they're going to have to deal with men's issues, too; otherwise, problems like this will keep popping up.

[festive1]

Amen, TaraJo! I fucking hate housework, but being home, I'm the one who does most of it. I gotta give my hubby props though, he cooks and does the dishes.