If this isn't a sock puppet, you are apparently brand new here. I'm guessing you are new because you don't seem familiar with the cultural norms for the site.

And I'm not sure there is any good way to engage you, but I'm a demographic outlier and I spent years homeless and I hated being given the silent treatment by people who were doing so out of malicious motives -- assuming the worst about me, not giving me any kind of fair chance and so forth. You don't know me so you have no way of knowing that my silence is more a signal of "I have no idea how to engage you. This just seems like a bridge too far." and I remain uncomfortable with remaining silent when I know it may come across as malicious.

I was a homemaker for about two decades. I liked being home with my kids and being a military wife. I got divorced because it became clear that staying was a death sentence for me and possibly for my sons.

I was diagnosed late in life with a genetic disorder. One of my sons has the same thing.

My ex was all too happy to agree with doctors that it was the fault of my genes that I was so sick. It was a way to wash their hands of responsibility for a lot of things.

So it became clear to me that I would die because of his unwillingness to look out for my welfare and no one was even going to blame him for it. Everyone was going to blame my genes.

So I fled for my life in essence under very difficult circumstances. I also spent several years homeless.

You are making generic statements about how you think things should go and you are doing so knowing that I'm divorced and it negatively impacted me, but I assume you don't really know the details of what I have been through and it's been extremely bad in a "I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy" sort of way.

So that makes is hugely challenging to try to engage you in good faith.

I was a homemaker and full-time mom for so long in large part because my parents were big believers in the idea that children need to be looked out for and cared for. My sister stayed home for a few years with her child even though she had a well-established career. This was a very big thing in the family, that the family made sure someone was there for the children. I flew out to take care of my sister's baby for a month so her baby wouldn't have to go to daycare (after all her parental leave and such had run out). Then she quit and stayed home with the child.

But this devotion to the children in the family didn't always fall along gendered lines.

When my brother's wife left him under shocking circumstances that he could have never predicted, he got custody of their infant child and he moved back home. Our father quit work to provide full-time care for that baby, though he had never changed a single diaper for any of his own children.

My father was a career soldier who fought in the front lines of two wars and had a Purple Heart. He hunted. He had guns up on the wall. He was an old fashioned manly man.

He never learned to do housework or cook. My mother continued to do all that. But he stayed home with his grandchild and changed diapers for the first time in his life.

So I think it is too rigid to insist that women in specific must be the ones who stay home with the kids, but I'm pretty appalled by the excessively low value that American culture places on the welfare of our children. That's not at all in line with the family values that I grew up with.

I don't know how to solve that, but I don't think overly rigid policies help with that.

I'm on record as not self identifying as a feminist. Feminists are frequently openly hostile to homemakers and former homemakers. They treat them like they aren't really people.

A lot of people treat homemakers like they aren't really people. I don't really understand that. That's not part of the culture I grew up with.

I don't know if this comment is constructive or not. I'm not looking to fight with you and we might agree on more than you would guess.

But it's super hard to figure out how to get there from here when staring at a comment that boils down to "The nearly six years you were homeless and no one would help you establish an earned income because you are a woman and you were literally going hungry at times is totes fine with me." That's really rather hard to swallow, even when assuming you don't know those details about my life.

I will probably be stepping away from this conversation. It seems like a hugely difficult conversation to have and it seems unlikely to go well.

Thank you for your reply. I think it might be best to agree to disagree, yes. Your characterization is accurate - if women are to be homemakers, a divorcee does indeed lack a place in this world. This is unfortunate, but I believe the alternatives to be worse.

I think your point about the feminists is entirely valid. Unfortunately, that's how it is in politics. You're either for or against something. You're either in support of homemakers, in which case it's in your best interests to argue that it ought to be the only option, or you're in opposition to them, in which case you ought to argue it should be illegal, and that no woman would make the choice of her own volition.