The Real Reason your Wife Doesn’t Want to Work

2009-12-19
By

You’ve used logic, reason, ultimatums, bargaining and begging to no avail. Your wife still won’t go back to work even though the kids are in school full-time. You may ask yourself why she spent time and money on an education only to disempower herself by becoming financially dependent upon you. It’s a valid question.

Being at home for the kids after school, shuttle services and taking care of you are plausible excuses, but they are excuses and flimsy ones at that. Let’s be honest, has your wife achieved Donna Reed status or does she complain about the menial aspects of housekeeping, cooking, laundry and driving the kids everywhere? Do you eat a lot of takeout food and pre-prepared meals?

So What’s the Deal?

A majority of women still harbor the childish wish to be taken care of. The wish to be taken care of is natural, we’ve all had it at one time or another. Usually when we’re scared, sick or uncertain of the future. Then reality kicks in and we remind ourselves that we’re adults and take care of business.

By voluntarily giving up her career and making herself dependent, she’s infantilized herself and placed an unfair burden on you. Also, if you have a daughter(s), what kind of role model is she setting? Why should you encourage your daughter to go to college much less save for tuition when mom doesn’t use her degree(s)? Your wife is another dependent, just like your children.

Except that your wife isn’t a child. She’s an adult who refuses to grow up in this respect. Women with a modicum of intelligence and self-respect aren’t happy in this role. They’re stuck; trapped between an insistent, unrealistic wish to be taken care of, the desire to be recognized as an equal and their fear of being an independent adult.

Your wife’s wish to be taken care of and dependency on you will eventually breed resentment and anger in both of you. She’s angry and resentful about needing you and you’re angry and resentful because you’re shouldering the burden and she’s mad at you because of it. Crazy, isn’t it? This is called hostile dependency. Why does this happen? Because no matter how powerful her childish wish for security is, SHE IS AN ADULT, which creates an unconscious conflict within her.

Shrinkwrapped explains: “These people are unaware of their dependency needs and often will loudly proclaim how independent they are; at the same time, their behavior reveals their need for a parental relationship with others who are emotionally important to them.” Developmentally, they’re adolescents and “resent their dependency on their parents who embarrass them, often disgust them, and constantly fail them by virtue of their shortcomings as human beings.  Adolescents have a number of developmental tasks to perform before entering a psychologically healthy young adulthood.”

“They must give up. . . the passive wishes to be taken care of and nurtured.  To be independent is hard work and facing true independence (not the pseudo-independence of the child who screams “I don’t need anything from you” right before they storm out of your house and drive to their friend in the car you pay for) is frightening. The comfort of knowing someone will always be there to take care of you and make everything all right is not easily given up; and once given up, the knowledge that there is no one standing between you and the dangers in the night is potentially terrifying. . . Furthermore, because these people are responding to conflicted, unconscious dependency needs, it is literally impossible to satisfy them.”

Sound familiar? Your wife wants to be taken care of, but wants to be recognized as your equal. Here’s the problem: A child cannot be an equal partner to an adult. An equal relationship requires that both partners be  whole with their own fully developed identities. If she wants to be seen as an equal she needs to be an independent adult in every sense of the word. You can’t be truly independent when you’re taking care of yourself on someone else’s dime. Children get allowances for doing chores, so they can go to the mall; adults earn paychecks to support themselves.

Standing on your own two feet is scary, but it’s a developmental necessity. It’s part of being an adult and an equal partner. I hope for your sake and hers, she can do the psychological work and go to work.

by Dr Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD

Originally posted on shrink4men on January 16,2009

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Photo credits:

Donna Reed Wannabee by Marci Roth Illustration on Flickr.

Dr Tara J. Palmatier holds a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology and M.Sc. in Counseling Psychology. She has over a decade of experience delivering direct services to diverse populations in a variety of settings. She left the clinical field in 2005 to begin a career in multimedia editing, writing and consulting. Dr Palmatier runs her own blog, A Shrink for Men, and a private relationship consultation practice for individuals, primarily men, who are suffering emotional abuse in their relationships.
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  • Andrew

    Davidtoo,
    Here’s an idea for you – quit your job. Don’t tell your wife ahead of time. Tell her after you have quit your job – And then brace for verbal impact. She will yell, she will scream and she will cry. Do not explain to her why you quit your job. It will only lead to an argument and you may end up getting into trouble. You’ll never be able to reason with her so don’t even try. Tell her that you plan to be a stay-at-home dad and she will need to get a job to support the family.

    Drastic situations call for drastic measures.

  • Andrew

    Evelyn says: It takes me about 4 hours of work a day to run my home,”

    My response: So what do you do during the other 20 hours a day?

    Let’s take a look at the life of the average housewife. She cleans house, cooks meals, washes clothes, pays the bills, and cares for her children. However, we should keep in mind that she is doing much of that work for herself; she lives in the house that she cleans and maintains, she wears some of the clothes that she washes, she eats some of the food that she cooks, and she takes care of HER own children. If she were single, she would still have to clean her house, cook her meals, wash her clothes and pay her bills. Of course, she would definitely have less housework to perform, but where would she get the money to support herself? She’d have to get a full-time job. That’s at least 40 hours a week and those 40 hours don’t include the time that she would spend getting ready for work in the morning, commuting to and from work, or eating lunch. On the other hand, the housewife can show up for her “job” in a bathrobe, she is at work as soon as she gets out of bed, she decides when she will eat lunch, and she doesn’t have a boss.

  • Andrew

    Mrs. Pilgrim says “Go visit some of the best mommybloggers’ sites and see what we do all day.”

    My response: I’m sure that parenthood is a big hassle. But parenthood is a “choice”. Finding employment and earning money is not really a “choice” unless (a) you are independently wealthy or (b) you have the opportunity and willingness to financially sponge off your husband (or ex-husband) or other relatives. No one forced you to have kids. If changing dirty diapers, cleaning up baby vomit and listening to screaming kids all day long doesn’t bring you great joy and happiness, then you shouldn’t have had kids.

    Mrs. Pilgrim says “One could argue that, because of computers, most office jobs are a piece of cake and men are slackers for choosing those over ditch-digging.”

    My response: That’s an interesting analogy, but I’m not buying it. Here’s why: Anyone who has worked in an office (I did, for many years) knows that office automation devices such as computers do not make office work easy because office managers can and do adjust, i.e. increase, the workload of their employees when office automation devices are brought into an office. In addition to office work, I also have considerable experience with housework. Housework is a piece of cake compared to office work.

    Mrs. Pilgrim says “(So don’t let’s be insulting, shall we?)”
    My response: Was I insulting? Or did I touch a nerve?

    Mrs. Pilgrim says “And yes, many of us homeschool…”

    My response: I suspect that only a VERY small percentage of stay-at-home moms home school their children.

    Mrs. Pilgrim says “Anyone, male or female, who tries to take a shortcut to identity through the Land of Workaday is going to wind up in a world of trouble if they get laid off.”

    My response: Very true. I also believe that anyone, male or female, who tries to take a shortcut to identity through the Land of Marriage is going to wind up in a world of trouble if they get divorced. Additionally, I also believe that anyone, male or female, who tries to take a shortcut to identity through the Land of Parenthood is going to wind up in a world of trouble when the children grow up and leave home.

    Mrs. Pilgrim says ” This article is just one of many reasons that most psychologists are not to be trusted:”

    My response: In my opinion, the articles on this forum are great, and they are generating lots of good discussion. Just because you don’t like the message doesn’t mean that the message is bad.

  • Davidtoo

    OK. so you still havent told us what to do with a woman that REFUSES to get a job, and REFUSES to cut back on spending even though we are not making enough money. This is the road to financial ruin and she refuses to reign in her spending. Now. There is such a thing a “financial abuse” if a husband witholds cash from his wife. What if the wife continues to spend (because she has credit cards and debit cards) and then says “well we have these bills that need to be paid”.

    Tell me ladies. Is this financial abuse? Financial terrorism? What rights do I have, as the wage earner, to STOP this??!!!

  • Dabir Dalton

    Well said Evelyn…

    Re: “But it’s the first time I’ve seen it used to make a case for enthusing men into policing women to conform to feminist ideals, by making them view traditional women as their enemy that will only thieve from them.”
    __________

    This is why as a man I absolutely refuse to support the men’s movement today: Because far too many involved in the MRM have fought the feminists so long that they are becoming just like em.

  • Mrs. Pilgrim

    Also…I know who I am, and I am not my job. Anyone, male or female, who tries to take a shortcut to identity through the Land of Workaday is going to wind up in a world of trouble if they get laid off.

  • Mrs. Pilgrim

    Andrew says: “I still don’t see what is so hard about her life.”

    Go visit some of the best mommybloggers’ sites and see what we do all day. One could argue that, because of computers, most office jobs are a piece of cake and men are slackers for choosing those over ditch-digging. (So don’t let’s be insulting, shall we?)

    And yes, many of us homeschool rather than turn our kids over to institutions that will make a relentless attempt to paint us as useless parasites just because we don’t have a tax-generating job.

    Most women who draw paychecks wind up spending most of their “earnings” on things they wouldn’t need if they were at home (daycare, wardrobe, convenience foods, maid service, gas and other transit costs, and various incidentals), not to mention a goodly chunk of it paid out to the government. I’m not going to go into how having a workforce that includes people who don’t technically need a “job” depresses wages overall!

    This article is just one of many reasons that most psychologists are not to be trusted: They overgeneralize and make assumptions based on their own personal biases. It’s a long and inglorious tradition dating back to Freud (who projected his own sexual perversions onto his patients in an attempt to make himself feel more normal).

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