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The Fear of the Woman Who Doesn’t Work
It’s a two-income household or bust, isn’t it?
It’s been over six months since I graduated college, and I’m starting to feel a bit panicky. Job listings have become a blur on my laptop screen. Sometimes I don’t know if it’s from staring too hard or trying to hold back tears. I scroll past retail positions — not out of a sense of entitlement but from too many side-swipes with customers who made me cry in break rooms — but I feel the pressure starting to mount.
What if I can’t find a job?
And then, quieter, is another voice piping up: What if I end up like my mom?
My mom also had her bachelor’s degree. She wasn’t a slacker student who made it by the skin of her teeth. She did her homework, got her college credits, and delighted her professors. Everyone thought she would go so far.
But she never got a job with her degree. She ended up marrying my dad, and she had me, and there was never a time that I knew her where she had a career or even a part-time job.
My dad never let her forget it either. When bills mounted from a one-spouse income and tempers flared, the fingers pointed every which way: “What can you say when you haven’t worked a day in your life since we got married?”
