Quiverfulmania

[Darrell]

Quote:Don't make crazy your normal and then wonder why nobody agrees with you.

I think I just found my new signature line.

[LMcC]

(04-14-2011 08:57 AM)richao Wrote:  As a guy, I have to agree with all of this. I think there's a popular stereotype, both in the culture at large and especially in fundy churches, that women want, want, want, and fundy preachers use this stereotype to emphasize the need to keep women under control financially.

In my case, that's true. I like stuff. That said, even though I'm married, I expect to take care of my own wants and not demand it from someone else. It's not my place to ask Hubby to spend the $$$ on what amounts to my playtoys. If I want an iPad or a new mega-multi-tool badly enough, I save up for it.

Quote:It shocked me when I went to Japan and discovered that, in the vast majority of households, it was the wife (yes, those subservient Japanese women) who controlled the purse strings. The husband would bring home his pay packet (before direct deposit was common, and folks were typically paid in cash), hand it over to his wife, and she would hand him back his spending allowance for the month. Husbands routinely referred to their wives as "the minister of finance" or "the treasury department."

My mom and late stepfather were sort of like this, except both worked. Mom was good with the money, so he didn't care. He lost much of his eyesight before his passing, so he wouldn't have been able to do it anymore anyway (this was before everyone had computers, folks).

Quote:I was never comfortable with this arrangement (in our household, I do most of the money management, but it's all in Quicken, which my wife regularly reviews and accesses to enter transactions), but I think it more closely fits with the vast majority of human experience: Men tend to have the more expensive hobbies (boats, hunting, cars) and the more destructive attachments (consider all the stories about men drinking away their family paycheck), and they often don't feel the biological connection with their children intensely enough to sacrifices these impulses and desires. Women (again stereotyping here, but I think it's truer than the stereotypes common in fundy churches) often feel this bond more strongly and will make the hard sacrifices necessary to, e.g., send their kids to the local cram school to ensure that they get into a decent college or to squirrel money away for the inevitable rainy day.

Another example of an area where fundamentalist dogma is simply inconsistent with the reality of human experience.

We'd be so screwed if we did everything the Fundy way.

Even though Hubby would be perfectly happy to let me run all the financial stuff because he never received the right kind of financial training, I refuse to do so. I've known of couples where the man handled it all and left the widow in a mess when he died, and I'm determined not to let that happen to him because I ran the show. I refuse to let his fears about money mess him up in the long run. I can access everything, but I make it a point to have him pay certain bills and stay on top of certain accounts. He is going to learn this stuff even though it drives me crazy not to just "take care of everything". He's coming along slowly, but it's something. Eventually, I'd like to have it so either of us can do the whole month's bills without the other's assistance.

AFA the expensive hobbies: I'm the one who spends money on his hobby. He has an electric guitar, and I bought him his new mini-amp and strap. I'd gladly buy him more accessories and a nice second axe if he'd let me because I want him to be able to do what he'll enjoy as well as possible. He generally stays out of the way of my hobbies and knows that I don't spend recklessly on them.