Danita, I don't think you gave up your life to raise your family. You indeed lived your life while raising your kids, and that is something to be very, very proud of. But I do understand what you are saying about finances. I'm interested in the book the Feminine Mistake. Statistics say that women earn less when divorced, men earn more.

Dotsie, my cousin and his wife are 'separated' and not yet filed for divorce for nearly two years. I think it keeps them each in limbo, each are not involved in the other's life and both have new love interests. They could pay for their own divorce just so long as each agrees and waive attorney representation and divorce for less than $500. Yet, for some reason they prefer limbo.

Hard to know if most women in North America have held a full-time or part-time job before they had children....however there's a good chance she has.

Even if married and raising children full-time, still useful to keep your own line of credit, keep it clean/debt-free and an account that is still yours.

The more I keep on hearing about people staying together because of keeping medical insurance coverage, the more I am convinced that I fervently hope that Canada's medicare system which has more socialized medical insurance coverage, does not change drastically/veer over to the U.S. model.

I had an intensive hearing test done by specialist because I had some rare unknown dizzy spells. It took 2 hrs.

I paid no extra fees for this.

My partner's mother, elderly, had several strokes over last few years. There wsere some instances where ambulance came. (She lived alone.) She also had cardiologists and geriatricians examine her.

She paid no extra fees for this high quality health care.

Just to give you an idea, in the province of British Columbia, if you are a single Canadian liviing in our province, you would pay....just over $53.00CAN every 4 months to assure that you could be looked after in any ambulance /emergency medical problems, pregnancies & birth deliveries, (I think fertility drugs are extra.) regular physician checkup, referrals by family doctor to and diagnosis by specialist physicians.

Cosmetic surgery is not covered..but exceptions are made for burn/accident victims, etc.

Oh yea, this is for adults and children.

I have never heard of any (Canadian) friend who wanted to divorce but worried about her health care/insurance coverage. This was the least of their worries.

Lenora,

I think you know I didn't mean it was a mistake to stay home with my children - it was just a mistake to put all my eggs in my husbands basket. (if you know what I mean).

My ex has recently started harping on me about his supporting me - how I should get a job (I have a home based biz, and homeschool my kids).....he has been really nasty as of late. I think he is beginning to feel the implications of his decisions (and he is VERY jealous that I am dating a nice guy).

Argh.

Danita

Check this out. I just came across this new book called The Feminine Mistake:Are We Giving Up Too Much?

Here are reviews from Amazon:

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. It would be easy to dismiss this as yet another salvo in the mommy wars-—the debate over women opting out of careers to be stay-at-home moms. But Bennetts, a longtime journalist and writer for Vanity Fair, is more interested in investigating what she sees as the heart of the matter: economics. Through impressive research and interviews with experts and with real women, Bennetts shows that women simply cannot afford to quit their day jobs. Long-term loss of income has a cascading impact in areas such as medical benefits and retirement funds, not to mention a woman's sense of autonomy, derived from financial independence. Further, a career supplies a woman with a measure of security for herself and her children in the event of unexpected sickness or divorce. As any woman who has tried knows, returning to the workforce and finding a well-paying job after an absence of years, or even decades, is difficult. Not so long ago mothers would pin a dollar bill to their daughters' underclothes when they went out on a date in case, for some reason, they needed carfare home. Those mothers knew all to well that without money of your own it's easy to be left stranded. As Bennetts expertly shows, it's still true. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Many well-educated American women are giving up the struggle to balance career and motherhood and making the "willfully retrograde choice" of relying on men to support them and their children, Bennetts maintains. Financial dependency can jeopardize women's futures and those of their children, she warns. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of women as well as sociologists, economists, legal scholars, and other experts, Bennetts lays out the dangers of giving up careers. She looks at how new divorce laws have altered alimony, reducing the likelihood of a lifetime guarantee of support for stay-at-home mothers after divorce. She details the impact of a loss of income on medical and retirement benefits and weighs it against lifelong financial needs. Bennetts encourages women to consider a "fifteen-year paradigm," viewing their lives beyond the years of motherhood and asking themselves what they want from life when their children are grown and gone. Allowing women to tell their own stories of economic abandonment, Bennetts presents a cautionary tale for women pondering giving up economic independence. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

What do you think?

I know of two women who make me scratch my head. One is married to a man she married out of...well, to spite her ex-husband? He is 30 years older than her and she has since fled to Alaska to live with a guy who has two children. Her husband went to Alaska to live with them and accepts that his wife loves another woman but now he's returned to the states. I don't think the woman will divorce because she needs his social security checks. The guy she's living with is an alcoholic and I'm guessing loving the fact that he has a woman who takes care of him and his kids without the commitment of marriage.
The other woman lives alone but continues to need a man who will pay her bills and give her money when she needs it...depsite the fact that it turns her stomach to be with him.
Makes no sense to me.

his wife loves another "MAN"...sorry. I should have proof read the darn thing.

Dee, people never cease to amaze me. A woman I worked with a ways back married a man and his girlfriend. The girls shared the man and hated each other. The woman I worked with knew all about the sexual relationship that the man and the other woman were having, that they lived together and were planning on continue to live together, and still she married him. (Boy that was a long sentence!)

I referenced the book you mentioned, Dotsie. I heard about it on a morning news show a few days ago. I believe it will be a very controversial book.

I think it is awesome that such a book has been written.

It is a very noble and beautiful thing for a woman to choose to be home raising her children - but I think women need some input about the "ins and outs" of it - especially financially.

I rode my ex-husbands finacial rollercoaster for 21 years - I wish I had done differently financially for myself. Its HARD starting over at 41.

danita