I am curious whether you or any of your friends has ever signed or formally negotiated any kind of employment contract with the man involved? My husband and I are considering taking me out of the workplace to keep the house and raise the children, but he’s expressed doubt about my ability to do a good job as a housekeeper because I haven’t in the past while working full-time. I told him I like the idea of a formal contract, so that we have expectations on both sides absolutely laid out, but he sort of rolled his eyes and said it wouldn’t have “legal weight.”
Whether such a contract would have any legal weight depends a great deal on where you are. Prenuptial agreements are very enforceable in some jurisdictions, while in others they’re very easy to break; in Louisiana a court once declared them null and void on the grounds that only the legislature can define the conditions of legal marriage (I do not know if this decision was later reversed). And in New York, unusual and even extreme conditions are relatively common in the prenuptial agreements of the wealthy. If I were you I would consult a local marriage & family law expert to find out what the legal landscape for such agreements is like where you live.
It’s interesting that you asked me this question, because sex workers’ situation is if anything exactly the opposite; our contracts with our clients are understood rather than spelled out, and spoken rather than written. Even if a whore made such a contract, it wouldn’t be enforceable anywhere in the US due to criminalization. Where our work is legal sex workers can usually expect the police and courts to give our agreements a similar level of respect as they would give other informal contracts, and where it is decriminalized we have the same legal recourse for a broken contract as anyone else. This is but one of the reasons decriminalization is so vital to the rights and safety of sex workers, but I’m sure you’ll agree it’s an important one; the enforcement of contracts is one of the few legitimate functions of government, and denying it to sex workers makes our work far more precarious and dangerous.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
In the case of her housekeeping, even if the contract is valid how would that even work? Doing a ”good job” at cleaning the house is very subjective. Unless she really does nothing, I don’t think her husband could ever prove that she didn’t fulfill the contract. Like for a sex worker, the job to be performed can be laid down in a contract, but even if she performs poorly the contract is still fulfilled.
Honestly … I do not get this at all.
She’s married to the guy. She already has a marriage “contract” of sorts. I know plenty of wives who don’t work and stay at home and raise children. They’ve done this for thousands of years actually – with no spelled out contract.
Unless …
Is she talking about some kind of nuptial contract to compensate her for giving up her career in case they later get divorced? But that doesn’t seem to be what she’s doing, by my reading of it.
Honestly … advice for husbands. You can marry a “rocket scientist” when you are in your 20’s. The feminists say that women can’t be happy unless they have a career and don’t depend on a man. So young women buy into this notion and go out and get careers. But actually – in 9 out of 10 cases – when a woman gets older she gets “hip” to this fallacy and starts wanting to give up her engineering career, or her legal career – or whatever so she can start refinishing furniture … or opening a picture frame shop to frame pictures … or an antique shop … or to write a book, or teach aerobics or whatever. Whatever it is – it will pay her a fraction or nothing of her previous salary. So dudes need to know this up front. It’s the cost of doing business with girls – so just accept it.
My advice, she should just tell her husband she’s quitting her job – so he’s going to support her … PLUS … pay for her a brand new shiny gym membership – so she can stay / get in shape and get hot. Fuck the “contract” just let him know that she’ll be the sexiest wife on the planet and ready at a moment’s notice to drop her dress any time he even remotely gets that “look” in his eye.
If ain’t amenable to that … it’s time to move on ’cause that dude is DEAD. 😀
Shit, I’d let her quit PLUS pay for a housekeeper if she offered me that deal!!
Yeah, but, to me, a potential fly-in-the-ointment is the glaring omission about her willingness to BE Mrs-Eagerly-Drop-Her-Dress-For-Hubby-At-Anytime.
Otherwise, I agree.
And, I ditto the warning to young guys about young women not knowing what women typically end up wanting. Most women’s child-bearing/nest-warming instincts eventually trump the radfem “genders only differ due to social conditioning” fantasies which they were indoctrinated with while young. Consequently, a guy should assume that any woman to whom he long-term commits will eventually default to the sort of pursuits which Krulac describes, no matter what she insists when she’s in her early 20s.
Because, Mother Biology don’t give a fuck about “but-we-don’t-like-humans-this-way-and we-want-reality-to-be-THIS-instead!” idylls.
Well, I have lived a charmed life. One – no woman has ever screwed me over. Even if we broke up – it was always friendly. I just have never had a woman try to take advantage of me. Had one that just up and “disappeared” into thin air on me – but she didn’t raid my checking account on the way out. Second – I keep hearing about wives who don’t want to have sex … but I have never had a wife or girlfriend who wouldn’t do it as much as I wanted to do it.
So when I give advice – it’s pretty much influenced by my experiences.
Wow…Just wow. Generalizing much? I feel deeply sorry for your daughters if you have any. “Don’t bother with your ambitions and goals in bettering yourself as a human being and a proactive member of the society, sweetie, because in the end, all you’ll want (or need) to do is find a nice husband, have kids and refinish furniture”. And yet, I know many women who sacrifice their lives raising children and cleaning up their husbands mess, and in the end feel like they have missed out, chose to forgo whatever professional ambitions they had, and ended up a housekeeping family appendage (with perhaps a few little hobbies like the ones you mentioned, kindly sponsored by their husbands’ generosity). Not to say there aren’t women genuinely happy keeping the family hearth, but this is just not fair to (even if it’s a minority) of women who won’t be satisfied by this. And, this might be a shocker to you, but there is a considerable number of families where the woman is the primary breadwinner and the husband stays at home. But I guess that constitutes an unnatural abomination in your mind.
Oh, and btw, the last bit about being ready “to drop the dress any time blah blah blah”, it goes both ways- as a woman with a VERY strong sexdrive, I’ve been bitterly disappointed by how many men don’t consider it their duty and obligation to keep ME satisfied when I want it.
I think you’re overly sensitive and didn’t read what I writ there. 😀
Some feminists just “itch” for fights where there is not one.
And yes, I have two daughters. One fully grown and one almost. The fully grown one has a career – and she actually makes more money than I do in my primary job (but I have many jobs and sources of income). Anyway – she’s well over six figures and single and she’s been in the workforce for about six years.
She HATES it. If she could quit and teach yoga she would. I suspect when she marries she will fandangle a way to do just that – knowing she can fall back on her husband.
Now here’s the important thing that you didn’t consider. I never said that women shouldn’t go out and realize their goals. I have been UTTERLY supportive of my two girls in anything they wanted to do. My youngest daughter has a dream that is NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to reach – yet I support her in that endeavor. I don’t think her dream will be realized – but she’ll never hear that from my lips.
I’m concerned here about your comment though …
Are you saying that women who stay at home and take care of the kids haven’t “bettered” themselves as a human being or been a “proactive member of society”? I really hope that isn’t what you’re saying – because if it is – it’s flat out “elitism”. The same kind of shit I’ve heard from snot-nosed fresh out of college grads who look down on me because I “only” have a High School education. Fuck that – I have been through three wars and been around the world ten times over. Those people READ “Salon” to find out what’s going on in Africa – I have fuckin’ been there and seen it for myself. No – I’m not an expert on Shakespeare but I damn sure have seen and done things they’ve never experienced in college. And now that those guys are behind desks for the rest of their lives while I’m still doing these things – I doubt they will ever catch up with me. But there they sit … plugged into the “Matrix” – thinking that they are all superior. Well, I suppose that’s a good thing – because if they ever unplug themselves they’ll be really depressed about their choices.
In MY opinion … a stay at home Mom that raises three or four children to adulthood who become productive members of society – is a mother-fuckin HERO. Her contribution is EQUAL – IN ALL RESPECTS – to anything I did in the three wars I participated in. She has NOTHING to be depressed about – and if you know women who are it’s because “feminist” gals like you parrot the mantra of “worthlessness” to housewives so incessantly – those women come to believe it. You know any women like that – you send them to me – I will buy them a cup of coffee and “deprogram” all that feminist shit out of their head.
I hope you will agree with me – that a homemaker who successfully raises productive citizens – IS SUPERIOR – to any woman in a legal career who has no kids by her own choice to put career before having them. I am not slighting women who CAN NOT have children. The same concept applies to them if they choose to stay at home and support their husband.
And finally – I WILL generalize here and say that evolution has programmed men with a peculiar “quirk” in that we wrap our self-identification up in the work we do. When we don’t have jobs – we feel worthless. Women, are NOT programmed with that fault. Women can feel worth even if they have no job – they are liberated from this curse that most men have. That is an aspect of feminine superiority – NOT inferiority.
And it’s one of the reasons that a lot of women give up their careers later in their lives if they have the opportunity to do so.
Shit … I should LEAD the feminist movement. Fuck Gloria Steinem.
Well you are either dating the wrong men or you’re not “hot”. Only you can say which – since I’ve never seen you.
I mean – I’ll be the first one to admit that MEN … the whole state of “manhood” in Western Society has gone totally off-kilter. That’s because we emasculate our sons at a very early age and fill their minds with feminist pap.
I’m not like that – but I was raised NOT to be like that. From an early age I was taught that, as a guy – I have certain roles to fulfill … such as being a provider for my family and protecting it. I was taught this was not something I could “abdicate” to the woman. I was also taught that women have their own roles and I should stay the fuck out of those roles and let them handle their business. Which I’m very good at doing.
The very real fact of the matter is … all my grandfathers were big tough dudes and you didn’t want to fuck with them. They handled all these male roles for their family – as my Dad has. But you know what? With the possible exception of my Dad – my two grandfathers WERE NOT the driving force in their families.
My “stay at home” grandmothers were. They were the ones that kicked them in the ass to keep them going. And they did this expertly without emasculating my grandfathers. I suspect that they used some “sexual tools” to do this – along with whatever else they had in their feminine tool boxes.
Whether the contract would have any legal weight or not is, in my opinion, immaterial. The contract would have moral weight if they are willing to abide by it. This type of contract could have a number of clauses that would be unenforceable by any court, but on the other hand once responsibilities are clearly drawn out it may help to short circuit any future misunderstandings.