Men's Group

Of course it is. Men just need to be able to work for no wages as women have done. The question is if their families can survive based on their wife's income alone.

Working from age 13 was only my choice if I didn't want to starve. Do you call eating and having a roof over your head a choice? You don't seem to understand the world we live in, or at least not the world most of us live in. You ought to have a look at census data. I believe there are more women than men in the workforce today. Few Americans earn enough to afford for either couple to stay home. There was a brief period in the 1950s and 60s where that was the case. Perhaps you grew up in that era. But especially since the turn of the 20th century, very few people have options to stay home with children.

Women aren't born thinking they have a choice not to work anymore, not in the past fifty years. More women go to college then men now. That prepares them for the labor force. Yet the poor and women of color have always worked. My mother worked, and my grandmother born in 1895 worked well into her 80s. Working-class American women have ALWAYS worked. Read some labor history from the late nineteenth and early 20th century. Working has NEVER been a choice for me. I actually worked from age 10 but had W2 income from age 13. I wouldn't have had clothes for school if I didn't work. I could never have gone to a movie with my friends or done anything that cost money if I didn't earn my own money. I wouldn't have made it through college and grad school without working two jobs, winning competitive fellowships, and keeping a high GPA throughout that entire period.

If by choice do you mean I could have attached myself to a wealthy man for the sake of security and turned myself into an unpaid laborer, I suppose one might consider that a choice. If men think selling themselves is a valid choice, they could also have find a wealthy wives or husbands. They could also choose to do housekeeping and child care for no pay, as long as they find a wealthy partner or don't care if the kids were fed, clothed, or had a roof over their heads. Of course that means no work resume if your partner turns out to be abusive or leaves you, and no Social Security for retirement, but that's only shelter. One can choose to be homeless. Or one can choose not to have kids at all and be responsible for only themselves. No one forces a man to marry or have children. Thankfully, increased opportunity means that women are no longer forced to have children or marry. Those are choices we all make for ourselves now.

Most men don't choose a woman based on earning potential. They choose based on physical appearance. Men are judged by net worth and women by cultural notions of beauty. So if men are comfortable having their destiny determined by their waist and hip size, and some accidental symmetry of facial characteristics, they can pine away for the life of the idle trophy wife depicted on television. They too have the option to turn themselves into a physical commodity to be sold to the highest bidder. Only not many women live that life, and even fewer men, though some do. But for those men who find that something to aspire to, they can pursue their dream. Meanwhile. the rest of American women and men will continue working as we always have done.