Do men want a stay at home wife or a career driven wife?

[naartjie]

To the women who will say, “I don’t care what men want” blah blah blah, well I do. This question is for the fellas.

I find most men want a career driven partner just so they don’t have to hold the weight and responsibility of being a man. Not saying this is all men, this is just what I see around me and have experienced.

Stay at home wife

Career driven wife

Updates

+1 y

Just so everyone knows, this question is to know what men want. I know what I want and look for in a man, your personal opinions don’t change my mind whatsoever, it’s just interesting to read others opinions, thoughts and perspectives. Please don’t take this as me trying to be what men want me to be or that I’m looking for someone 🫶🏼 bless

[MrOracle]

"I find most men want a career driven partner just so they don’t have to hold the weight and responsibility of being a man."

I strongly suspect that you are either hearing this from other women, and assuming it originally came from men, or you are talking to men who are telling you what you want to hear. It's DEFINITELY not what MOST men want, but there are certainly some "feminist ally" men who think this way.

One of the reasons so many men have chosen not to pursue women any longer is because they cannot find women who are family-oriented, because women have been indoctrinated to be career-oriented (and they've tried, FAR LESS SUCCESSFULLY, to get men to accept this).

And let's get this straight: men aren't trying to hold women down or any of that crap. The problems are these:

1. Women have a fixed and relatively short fertility window, from their mid-teens through about 35. Career-focused women typically squander most or all of that fertility window with college and starting their careers, and tend to only think about a husband and children after they've passed their 30th birthday (often a while after) - but that's too late. By then, her ability to bear several healthy children is so diminished that she has significantly reduced value to more traditional men (i. e., the men that most women want). If women focused on families in their 20s, and THEN went to college and started a career AFTER their youngest was in school full time, she'd still have 30+ years for a career, but she would already have the husband and children. Feminist leaders have been actively against marriage and families since the 60s, and have made sure women are taught that doing it that way is NOT an option - but it totally is.

2. If a woman, at any point, begins to out-earn her husband, she tends to feel that she is now better and more valuable, and will want to "trade up" on her husband. This is one of the main reasons why women initiate 77% of divorces - she feels she can do better if she earns a high income. It almost never works out that she DOES secure a better man, but in the meantime, she typically destroys her husband in the divorce, and if there are children involved, it gets much worse.

Most men want a family - a wife and children - and that typically means a wife who stays home with the children at least until they are in school full-time - meaning the youngest is 5 or 6. But men have figured out that so few women are willing to even TALK about this, that marriage and children aren't worth it. Some men now only pursue casual sex, and a sizeable percentage have left the dating market entirely, choosing to pursue their careers and hobbies with other men and not getting involved with women at all. The number of men who still consider committed relationships today is quite small as a percentage (and many aren't the ones that women want), because so few women are "relationship material" anymore. Not prioritizing families is one of the key values that disqualifies women from being "relationship material" in the eyes of most men.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I like passionate women with strong interests of their own as well as their own friends and ability to enjoy themselves without me. So I'm allergic to the type of woman who dreams of being nothing more than a housewife.

However, she doesn't have to be career-oriented. She could be a fine artist who generates no income of her own, a struggling writer, a dancer, a poet, a struggling musician.

It's not the income part that is important to me. It's that she's independent, passionate, and driven and doesn't need me around all the time to be happy.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

So it's not about alleviating my ultimate role as a man to be leader, protector, and provider. I don't want a woman to do that. It's not her responsibility.

But I do like independent women with whom I have more interests in common and who can be really good in their own company. Most of all, I like women with whom I can have very interesting conversations.

To me, those aren't women who just spend all day homemaking and shopping and cooking and watching soap operas and reality TV. I have too little in common with those. I like to geek out on a wide variety of topics but shopping, soap operas, and reality TV aren't among them.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

For example, suppose the woman is a fine artist who makes zero income: the ultimate starving artist. I would still be very interested in her (especially as a visual arts major myself along with CompSci) and I could even support her as an artist. Then I could be fascinated by her artwork even if it makes no money and we might even be able to draw and paint together. That would be very interesting to me. Mostly I wanted a wife who would be very interesting to me: that's not going to be the stereotypical housewife for my tastes.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

Let's say I had a choice between a millionaire accountant, for example, and starving artist, and other things being roughly equal. I would choose the starving artist since I have much more interest in visual arts than accounting. I find accounting about the most boring field of study ever (not to say it's boring, but just boring to me).

[naartjie]

I absolutely love this answer. I don’t know what the majority of stay at home wife’s/mothers are like personally so I can’t comment on that exactly.
I think your perspective is spot on. Being your own person, having your own friends and interests is so important. Your family should definitely be your whole world but also time to yourself is healthy. I think people forget that.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

Cheers! For me my biggest nightmare before I married my wife was becoming the boring couple who has little to do except small talk like:

Husband: Nice day, isn't it?
Wife: Yes, it's nice.

Wife: The eggs taste really nice today.
Husband: Yes, these eggs taste nice.

Booooring! 😅 I want deeper interests in common.

I admittedly don't know what the type of woman who dreams of becoming a housewife is exactly like either. It just always seemed to risk being boring (not saying they're boring, just boring to me).

Also you talked about alleviating burdens. I do have some male ego there where I really want the ultimate responsibility traditionally associated with a man. I don't mind if a wife of mine contributes an income (and my actual wife does as a book editor and publisher) but I don't want her to feel responsible for doing so. I don't want her to risk her life to save me from a burning building (I should do that for her, not the other way around).

And I deeply appreciate that my wife trusts me to make the executive decisions that impact our entire family. It does help me to feel more like a man, but in exchange I deeply listen to her ideas and often even go with her own ideas. The difference as I see it, making the decision even when I go with her idea, is that she is not responsible if the decision backfires as I made it. I'm responsible.

But I do value women with leadership qualities not to alleviate my burden, but like the concept of a first officer. The first officer becomes the captain if the captain is away, incapacitated, or dead. So if I die in a burning building trying to guide my family to safety, it's now up to my wife to do so, and I value her leadership skills in that regard and don't want a woman to feel helpless in this case.

So I do like women who are leaders in their own right, strong, brave, assertive, and if they make money of their own, that's certainly a bonus. But it's not to alleviate my burden but to replace me if I'm dead.

[naartjie]

Wow… your wife is a lucky one that is for sure. Deep connection is vital, not the boring one lines. I’m not sure how people agree to marry into that and are happy with a life like that.
You certainly seem happy with your dynamic and I can only dream of one similar. Bless

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

Thanks very much! 🤝 The great thing about her being a book editor is that she reads endless new manuscripts she's editing and also new books in her spare time. So that tends to generate all sorts of new conversation material based on the books and manuscripts she's reading. I really love that about her since it generates some new conversation material.

Also in case you couldn't tell already, I'm very chatty and long-winded. My wife is too. Our friends actually teased us for it since we both write like 4 paragraph text responses to our friends where most people write a line or so. 😂 But that does mean that we can chat for hours and hours when we're together.

[naartjie]

I long for this… and you’ve hit my heart haha. I read a lot and most my day I’m listening to podcasts. I’m extremely artistic, in many ways. I too am very chatty, often am told to shut up though haha. I can relate with the 4 paragraphs to friends because you have so much to say. I feel I am like you, like your wife by the sounds of it. I look for deep connections and conversations with people. Typically you get the one liner from most.
I’ve wanted nothing more from life than to have babies and be married but to also go further with my art and make something of that.
I find it’s so hard to meet these types of people nowadays. Not many have hobbies or things to talk about.
I’m so happy you have someone who you’re much alike

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I had a bit of difficulty initially finding people (including men for friends) with a lot in common that way starting out. I'm very much an extrovert and enjoyed hanging out but initially all my friends were ones with just shallow interests in partying and drinking in common.

It took a bit of a search for me to find friends with much more in common than that. I wasn't exactly the type to be signing up for book clubs or art clubs looking for friends and dates. But over time I did start to network and explore connections and meet people (admittedly an initial set mostly from bars) and find more like-minded people and ultimately my wife through them.

But it was quite a search in my case. Maybe signing up for some clubs wouldn't have been a bad idea in retrospect. A trouble for me being ENFP is that I tend to be interested in so many subjects but not particularly passionate about any single one of them.


My wife turned out to be a very good fit being a publisher and editor of nonfiction books since that exposes her so such a wide variety of subjects.

[Katie1964]

Mine seems to like me to be taking care of the home primarily but I also help him keep the books and inventory at his company when I can. He appreciates the help and I like to do that to make his life better/easier.

[naartjie]

Oh I love that🫶🏼 bless

[LazerBean]

Most men want a wife that will work 35 hours a week.

[naartjie]

35 hours a week, pays bills, cooks, cleans, takes care of the kids, runs the house, makes sure birthdays and holidays are made special only to find their Christmas stocking is empty on Christmas Day. I’ve heard it all too well😅

[LazerBean]

Yeah 😬 sadly. Women need to choose wisely or else that will be them

[Anonymous]

I used to want someone as an equal partner and wanted career driven.

But my opinion has somewhat changed after seeing my siblings have kids, and my mom take care of one of them. If you are lucky to have grand parents or a big family, it makes raising kids so much easier when both parents go to work (theoretically).

THe issue becomes when you don't have that safety net. What will you do? Do you have the money to pay for daycare for infants? Ideally one parent should stay at home, and it's the parent that makes less money usually--though women are usually better with kids. But overall, makes it so much easier when one parent is dedicated to this.

A lot of career-driven women (who especially make more than their partners), don't want to put their careers on hold for this reason. They have kids late and aren't willing to sacrifice their careers until their mid to late 30s. But if they and their man (hetero normative perspective) can afford one child and the women makes significantly more--then hopefully they can work something out and the man can be a stay at home parent if they agree on it.

[Anonymous]

My problem with stay at home wives are it’s almost never works out. Also with a woman too focused on her career. I just want a good woman. I see some amazing stay at home moms/housewives but too many of those marriages end in disaster. Most are one sided, cheating, and one person or the other gets screwed in the divorce.

I need a woman who loves me and who I love. Women who say they don’t care what men want are usually feminist trash. I don’t care what they want either because I’m not going to marry them.

Nonetheless. What every person wants male or female is DIFFERENT. Focus on finding your soulmate. Some people can make it as a stay at home parent or super career driven if they are doing it for the right reasons.

If a woman has a fantasy that she can sit on her ass all day and never do anything. To find out it’s work staying home. Then complain and play the victim. Making her husband miserable in a one sided hellhole. Where he’s working two or more jobs. To come home do a nagging wife.

[Anonymous]

Here's my person opinion: I'd prefer she chooses whichever makes her happier. If she wants to stay home, take care of the house and raise the kids--cool! I think that'd be awesome and I'm MORE than happy to work to support the family. If she'd prefer to work and hire people to take care of the house and put the kids into daycare or find some other solution for them, that's fine too, so long as she ACTUALLY enjoys her work more than she would the extra time with the kids AND we can afford for her to work. (The reality is, depending on what her career is it may earn less money than the cost of paying for childcare and extra house help, so we'd effectively have to PAY for her to work, which again I'd be cool with IF she loved it AND we could afford it.)

What I absolutely would NOT want though, is a wife who takes a job and then is miserable because she's not spending as much time w/ the kids as she wants, or because jobs GENERALLY suck, AND on top of it all she's paying for the privilege of that suffering in the form of incurring more expenses than she earns. That all might SOUND obvious, but I've seen a LOT of couples where that's EXACTLY the case. Like the women have this idea in their heads that if they don't have a job they're somehow lesser people when in reality their job is actually not productive at all but is COSTING the family money AND making her miserable at the same time.

[lucas262]

I heard s career woman put it well,
She was a business owner, a rich woman. She said I still cook, and clean I still play the role of the woman on our relationship and he plays the man. Most women cannot be just one and have a career. I don't think there's a problem with either as long as the man is the man and the woman is the woman, the trouble comes when they switch roles. Men want wives when they marry, not bosses, gfs. Room mates or Friends. A wife is a whole other thing a very unique and special thing in a man's life.

[RebelinSteel]

It’s not about one person or the other having responsibility or holding the weight of it all, it’s about a relationship being a joint thing. This is particularly true when you need to apply for a mortgage, try doing that with one wage versus two wages lol. Then there are those extra after you pay energy bills, food bills etc, holidays, cars, meals out etc. they want to stop at home, then don’t complain about the 3 bedroom semidetached and stop wanting a 4 bedroom detached with a garden. Basically someone with some common sense.

[Unit1]

When I was younger I have said "career lady". Today it's a little different.

After getting a bachelors degree in IT and working 8 years in IT I had the bitter discovery, that jobs were not meant to make us rich. I still sleep on a mattress on the floor.

Nowadays I still appreciate a career lady or a lady, that does something practical (be it generating an income, running an online business, running some useful errands, getting things done, investing/trading with real money), not just spend 100% of her time sitting at home, scrolling tik tok/instagram and watching real housewives or whatever.

The best condition is we won't even need jobs to make a comfortable living.

However what didn't change was that housewives (and kids) aren't for me. Never will.

[Avicenna]

Ideal for me at this point in my life is a woman in her 30s that has had a career and now wants a family she'd stay home with while the kids are young. That said, I know that's pretty hard to find, so I realistically look for a career-oriented woman, just like I did when I was in my 20s and 30s.

[JacobJordan]

Married man I ignored all career oriented women. They are not worth the relationship. They are too masculine, too argumentative, too loud, too brash, generally speaking career oriented women are just astoundingly ugly when it comes to personality

[Redstang88]

Well I don’t want kids so stay at home wife is a hard no. Beyond that it’s not so much about how much she makes, more that she has drive and interests outside of the house and can contribute to building a life together. Guyanswers summed it up pretty well

[Squatting_Slav]

A stay at home wife ideally, because i just don't see myself being a stay at home dad. I like working and thoroughly enjoy my career working hard to where I'm at. Any partner of mine, regardless would be loved unconditionally supported unconditionally and looked after by me.

[BonzoInBitburg]

My house is paid off and I don't have a lot of expenses so I chose a stay at home wife. She makes sure all the bills are paid and the house is clean. She also organizes my business receipts and helps with my business a couple hours a day. It's what we both wanted

[BoopBoopBeep]

I'm honestly good with either, but once your career gets in the way of positively contributing to the household... what's my incentive to do all the cooking and cleaning for two people if I'm the primary breadwinner on top of that?

[RavVid]

I'd like a median point between the two. A wife that has a small job that brings in some money preferably is part time so house work is her major job. I earn a good income but idle hands are the hands of the devil.

[TopShelfMan]

A good wife is one that signs a prenuptial agreement, doesn't post provocative/revealing pictures online for attention, and doesn't do the "girls night out. (cheating). If she even brings half as much to the relationship as a good quality man does, she would be better than the majority of women.

[laly520]

depends on the guy
some want a more traditional woman n a housewife others would want a working woman n same goes for girls, some girls wanna stay home n be housewives n others wanna work n pursue a career
to each their own

[Lionman95]

I´d go for career driven since I don´t want and can´t have kids. So I don´t see a point in having a stay at home wife.

[Apple1996]

My man likes me at home raising our babies 👶

[TonyMetal___86]

By the way, miss apples is one of the babies haha

[Apple1996]

@TonyMetal___86 defo not 😂

[Sameone]

Ofc my future wife is not going to work i will cover her bills
But if she wants to work i will support her to open her own business
But if we are going to have kids she is going to stay at home

[HouseMoat]

My dad married a woman who not only has two jobs, but, one of them, she does at home, and looked after me. Still does that job, while I'm 35 now

[MsBrie]

My hubby and I agree career driven I got right back into retail clothing stores when I moved.

[Iron_Man]

She can work if she wants she can do what she wants

[Wwwyzzerdd]

I'm getting divorced, marriage is off the table as well as dating. Stay at home is what caused the divorce, Career Driven.

[jahaims]

Stay at home mom sure. Stay at home wife is just laziness unless he is just balling out of control and she is doing her part.

[shortster]

Being a homemaker is a career.

[naartjie]

Oh 100%, not saying it’s not, I’m saying a career driven women who is out in the world, not staying at home doing work there 🤗 I’m all for SAHM, it is not easy work.

[shortster]

My mom was a stay at home mother. I always appreciated her efforts.

[naartjie]

Bless🫶🏼 I love that you have her back.

[shortster]

Thanks

[MrHugeD]

Stay at home wife 100% ❤

Or at least, she can work until having kids

[Nikki1989]

Career driven partner I would hope.

[NathanDavis]

I want balance... and always been with women who bring balance

[Adogdog]

I would prefer a stay-at-home wife. I'm single and looking for one too lol.

[TonyMetal___86]

HOUSEWIFE without any doubts!

[TonyMetal___86]

@naartjie you never mentioned what you want to be? A career wife or housewife?

[naartjie]

Tony, I long to be a stay at home mom. I’ll work until I have children. I want to raise my own and not send them out to school giving the state of the world. I do have my own hobbies that could be used as a small side business from home that would keep me occupied

[TonyMetal___86]

Than you will become a SAHM, different from a housewife, cause a housewife will be at home wether there are kids or not and even when kids grow older, she will remain at home...
Anyways good luck!

[Date_a_Snob]

my fiance has asked if I want to be a stay at home mom

[OddBeMe]

What do you talk to a stay at home wife about? Boring.

[naartjie]

I think hearing about Sue drinking out of your wife’s cup for the second time this week is boring.
Maybe find a partner who has hobbies and interests? Someone who aligns more with you as a person. Stay at home wives aren't always boring

[OddBeMe]

Sure, but this idea of trad wife seems to me boring. My wife has an interesting career and makes interesting relationships at work, same as I do.

I do get parents might need to be home. But I would still argue they do something like charity work or part time, small business.

[DreamLife7]

Broke men want career driven women they can go 50/50 with

[Anonymous]

Mostly stay at home wife, but i t depends on the incomes, so if a the husband have nice job and earn enough money so yeah and if not then they both need to work..

[CVNT5]

i want my wife to be able to live her life too!💕

[Kelly6]

my hubby wanted career wife , which i am

[war_daddy]

men want a young hot wife

[naartjie]

It’s always the men that say this who look like you… it’s shallow. Maybe look for something deeper before you end up alone and loveless.

[war_daddy]

it's not my fault you're not hot

[naartjie]

If I were you I’d take a long look in the mirror and look for self improvement. Not just physically but mentally and emotionally. Life is not all about how you look. The sooner you learn that, the better. I suppose you can’t help everyone though and some people, such as yourself, live to live in delusion. The ending to that is a very sad one but I hope you find peace and have a great day.

[war_daddy]

I live in the real world. Let me tell you how your life will play out. You will either die alone or marry a loser or ugly guy down on his luck with no othe roptions.

[naartjie]

You sound so incredibly negative with the worst outlooks. I hope you find happiness… I’m so glad people like you, comments like yours, don’t get to me and that I feel happy and confident in myself. That I don’t live in delusion. You take care now

[war_daddy]

you're only still happy cause you're only 23. wait until you're 30 or 40 and still alone

[dolemite58]

I don’t want either of those things

[naartjie]

So you’re gay

[dolemite58]

No I don’t want kids so I don’t want a stay at home wife. I also don’t want one of those crazy career women that act all empowered about their job. Somewhere in between would be fine.

[Mediterraneansoul]

Work from home wife

[Anonymous]

I want a happy wife