Coming of Age during a Recession and its Implications on Traditional Gender Roles, or: Honey, I'm Home. Yes, of Course I'll Make Dinner.

Both my fiance and I are solidly millenials. I was just starting college when the stock market collapsed.  My fiance was an upperclassman in high school.  We've both tried to work through college, and we've both, at one point or another, had serious doubts as to whether taking on thousands of dollars of student loan debt was worth a sheet of paper that probably wouldn't even guarantee a job.  While I've had relative success at finding and keeping jobs, the "mancession," has hit my fiance pretty hard.  The result has been that, although neither of us feel that it is his Godly-mandated purpose in life to be the breadwinner of the family, there is a very real possibility that he simply will not be able to do that.  Many times, we have sat up at night discussing what we felt "marriage" was about and how it would make us feel if, say, our marriage wasn't like our parents' marriages.  Both of us agreed that, in some ways, we definitely want our marriage to deviate from the standard set by our parents' marriages.  While my parents' marriage lasted up until the day my father died, over twenty years, the pressure my father felt to be the quintessential "breadwinner" definitely put undue pressure on him, especially in lean years, and meant that we probably took longer as a family to invest in my mother's education and career than we would have if they both hadn't had the notion, at least for a while, that it would be better for my mother to be the more domestic partner.  In all reality, my father had a lot of skills and interests that would have made him a phenomenal stay-at-home dad.  He was an excellent cook, a very skilled gardener, and a definite homebody.  He regularly told me that he really didn't feel the need for friends outside his family, that he would rather spend every day with me than with any of his colleagues.  My mother, on the other hand, can't stand to be cooped up, and spoke of her time as a cloistered housewife with intense disdain.  She's a woman who needs to be outside the home so she doesn't lose her mind.  My fiance's parents, on the other hand, seemed to strike a more balanced approach from the get-go.  They both worked, simply because they didn't have the luxury of having enough money for one of them stay at home, partly because they had three kids.  Because the course of my parents' marriage forced them to rethink their ideas about marriage and gender roles, they didn't prime me for any specific model of marriage or femininity.  If anything, they prepared me to be fully independent, and so to be able to fill whatever role I need to in order to make a relationship work.  I view that as one of my greatest assets given to me by my parents.  Personally, I feel just as comfortable with the notion of being a stay-at-home mom and fulltime housewife as I do with being a career woman.  My biggest concern, as a woman who hopes to one day be a mother, is managing the logistics of those duties which biology pretty much dictates as being mine, while also managing a career, if my husband cannot make enough money to support us.  I know I want to breast feed for at least the first six months of my children's lives, if at all possible, but working a standard 8 hour shift five times per week necessitates that I have access to a breast pump, privacy, refrigeration, and long enough and frequent enough breaks to pump according to my schedule, and a short enough commute that I can safely transport said milk from my workplace to my home.  I have no doubts that my fiance will make a phenomenal, nurturing father, who will be willing to do as much childcare as is needed of him.  In my present career path, though, the odds are that I will need to ask him to do a LOT of childcare, potentially limiting his own career, and, since I am much farther along in my own career, advantages of being older notwithstanding, odds are that, unless he decides to join the Army (an idea we've thrown around a lot) or embark on some other career that has the potential to amply provide for a whole family (provided my own frugality), we will likely be depending on my income.  This presents some definite problems where our families are concerned.  As enlightened as my mother likes to consider herself, she's still enough of a traditionalist to look down her nose at a man who does not work outside the home, while I have no problem with my fiance being a househusband.  As for his family, they're still mostly traditional, Southern country folks who would consider far more trivial things far more scandalous, though we have the advantage of his sister's strong rebellious streak and career as a bartender as a potential foil to make us look much, much more conventional and boring.

And perhaps that's the most important point.  The economy may force us into nontraditional gender roles, particularly where our marriage is concerned, and indeed, we may very well not be remarkably unusual in that respect, but as two white heterosexuals with a stated goal of 2-4 offspring, the desire to one day own a home, and engage in such mundane pursuits as attending little league games and dance recitals, we really are far more traditional than society gives us credit for.  Our overall goals aren't all that distinct from the goals of our parents.  The difference is that we don't assume that one of us must, or indeed, will be able, to occupy the domestic sphere, although we would certainly prefer to have that option, particularly when our children our young.  We don't see those traditional gender roles as being necessarily good or bad, so long as they help a couple to realize both their individual goals and their goals for their family.  Some women just aren't prepared to be authoritative breadwinners, and so conforming to the traditional role of submissive wife and mother comes quite naturally to them, but for other women, being forced to fulfill that role is a waste of their God-given talents.  On the other hand, some men naturally fill the role of authoritative breadwinner and protector with ease, while others would be perfectly happy to care for home, hearth, and offspring, so long as they didn't feel emasculated in so doing.  Most people, though, have the capacity for either role, or for neither, depending on the gifts and talents they bring to a marriage.  I feel very strongly that motherhood will one day be a very, very important facet of my life, although the way that is realized will depend, quite profoundly, on my family's economic position in upcoming years.  If my fiance is able to break out of the rut this "mancession" has placed him in and thrive,  I would be very willing to set aside my career in favor of providing childcare and maintaining our home.  However, I'm not willing to set aside a career that may bring my family more economic prosperity just to fulfill a social construction of motherhood that doesn't jive with the reality of here and now.