I was thinking more of a time when women did not/could not work, or if they did, their options were very limited. My impression (since I was not there) is that their primary option for survival was marriage. Until recent times, I have no idea how an unmarried woman was able to make it on her own. That's what I meant by "trapped" and "lacking choices." Heck, even widows had a hard time surviving. Or so goes my impression of how things were, not just the immediately preceding generation but going back well before the modernization of societies. There have been attacks on marriage and on women and on all of us, all with deceitful little labels we seem to fall for time and time again. As you said, opportunities are not presented...choices are forced. Entertainment and advertising intentionally reverse roles solely to turn things upside-down. It's abusive, and just one more form of the way norms are destroyed and we are separated from ourselves in order to exert more control. The "Sisterhood" cares not for each constituent sister. I was watching the local news a while ago, and there was a segment on $1,000 scholarships being handed out to high school girls. One of them said "As a single mother, this is really going to help." You could tell when she said "single mother" she was looking for approval feedback because she now has an adult identity..."single mother." It is depressing.
I remember when single females were allowed to have their own bank accounts but married females couldn’t unless it was approved by the husband.
Lots of good input. As far as the single mother, I applaud what they do. I have a good friend who raised a beautiful daughter as a single mother. However, the kudos given to single mothers is an empowerment to them, one not necessarily given to 2 parent families which encourages the breakdown of the traditional family. Who needs a man when they can be a strong woman? I am in a traditional long lasting marriage; am I not a strong woman? You bet I am yet my friend (whom I love dearly) is seen as the stronger one. Sometimes when we follow the right path, we are overlooked. I remember applying for financial aid wben my son was going to college and when the answer came back it was like not only could we afford to pay for him, we probably should chip in for someone else. I told my husband that maybe if we would've pi...ed our money away on fancy vacations, electronics and spent more instead of saved, we would get some assistance but that's a topic for another day.
Most single mothers I know just made bad choices, unless they are widows. I used to listen to girls in the ER talk about wanting to get pregnant so they would get benefits and wouldn't have to work...so sad.
REALLY????? Was that a nationwide thing, or was it a local/regional thing, or was it some specific banks? Of course, when talking about marriage, it's always interesting to look at how other cultures do it and what they view as being "normal," like arranged marriages. That kinda takes the western fairy tale mystique out of it.
When I was doing volunteer work repairing people's homes, I heard lots of stuff that fits the clichés...except it's true. I recall a mother, hre adult daughter, and the adult daughter's infant baby getting ready to go to The Santa Council to get free Christmas gifts for the kid, and the two adults were talking about all the free stuff they were gonna qualify for as the kid passed through each government-defined stage...Obama's real life "Julia." I don't know how you break the cycle when the humans you're talking to (and those who they are surrounded by) only view their children and themselves in a utilitarian sense as "funding vehicles," and not as someone's parent or child (cherished or otherwise.) A fellow volunteer's coworker had something like 7 or 8 kids, and was working on making one more "...so I can quit working." The guy was serious. He had done the math. The government has a big part of the blame, but some people have no humanity. Tangentially, this all reminds me of a local IHOP waitress. I went in one night and could tell she was angry, so of course I had to ask. It seems that she had just turned 30, and called Social Security to sign up for retirement benefits! Of course, they gave her the bad news. "I've been working since I was 18!!!" She was pissed. I was flabbergasted.
Yup, it was a real thing. Even in the Napoleonic Law state of Louisiana in which one of the main tenets with marriage is the Community Property edict, married women couldn’t hold a separate bank account unless hubby approved of it. Now, how many men refused that approval is another thing but the Head of Household was the husband and the breadwinner ergo he was supposed to run the finances as well. I’m pretty sure that the practice became a thing of the past right around the time women started burning the bras or maybe a few years before.
Now that you mention it, I never had a separate account. We had a joint account but I'm the one who always wrote the checks. He put the money in and I took it out. But I do have a credit card that I got my very own self. Actually two.
I had to work and leave my kids with some real kooks. I had no choice thanks to man I chose to have them with. No I don't think the trade off was a good thing at all. But we survived. Judges lost respect for women and child support was a joke.
That is the way we work, too. I insisted my wife-to-be get a credit card in her own name before we married so she would have at least some credit history separate from mine.