Emily wrote:

Rosalie B. wrote:
Emily wrote:

P. Tierney wrote:

Given that, the "no" responses don't put me off much. If one
is to answer the question "no", in fact, I'm not sure what other
reasons they could give. What "no" rationale could a parent
give that would be logically acceptable to a working parent?


How about - she is taking the job from a man who is supporting his
family?

Dear Rosalie,

I think that that argument might not make sense in the
context of the sort of jobs in question. That is, we're
talking about the scenario where the family is economically
fine with just one parent working, but the other chooses
to work as well. I'm guessing that it would be very rare
for a parent in that situation to be, say, flipping burgers.

I had two boyfriends who said to me more or less the same thing - no
wife of mine is ever going to work. There was no consultation about
this - although one of them also indicated that I could work to
support him through seminary at the same time attending classes in how
to be a minister's wife. He also said that I would have to beg him
for money. This was a fairly prevalent attitude at the time I was
married, and neither one of these guys had any doubt that I would
praise them for this attitude. Both of them had mothers who worked
BTW.

When my dh and I were dating and thinking of marriage, I asked him
about this, and he said that if I had a job that I loved so much that
I would do it without pay, that it would be OK for me to work, but
that I couldn't work as a salesperson in the 5 and 10. He wanted me
to know that he would be capable of supporting his family, and also
that we should be able to live on his salary.

Of course in those days, women were routinely paid less too.

Most of the folks that I know in academia could be making
more money doing something else. If I'm taking a job from
someone, they could likely be doing something else and making
more money at it. Which isn't to say that there aren't more
people who want jobs like mine than get them, but it doesn't
make sense to talk about it in terms of economic need: the
people who want this job could all be doing something else,
but they want it because they want to be academics. In that
sense, I think I'm as deserving as anyone else, even though
my family could get by on DH's salary.

Emily

Making more money somewhere else isn't IMHO really relevant to the
argument, nor is the venue of academia, which is kind of an ivory
tower situation. I don't mean to dismiss your job, but the vast
majority of people do not work under those situations.
grandma Rosalie