I've read plenty of rants from both genders of stay-at-home dads getting snubbed by stay-at-home moms from their play groups, brunches, and other social activities. I think the stigma against stay-at-home dads hasn't gone away, just shifted to different venues.
Men aren't presented with this false promise. Men are influenced to work through negative reinforcement. A man who doesn't have a career is judged harshly, much more so than women, by society and has a difficult time dating and finding a partner.
Men also have a higher economic need to work. Women have much higher social mobility, so women are less economically motivated to work. A low income man will stay poor unless he works himself out of his social class. A low income woman can much more easily marry a man with higher income than her to propel her social class and household income up.
Women are more often presented with the positive reinforcement of value and purpose from work because women deal with less negative reinforcement when not working.
+1000 this
Have you noticed that it's leaders focused on their businesses and capitalism that we turn to when we look for definition of value and purpose. Those folks who are looking for our productivity that feeds their wealth.
Maybe we should look for our value and priorities somewhere other than these folks.
> Maybe we should look for our value and priorities somewhere other than these folks.
That may be a strange thing to say at the web forum of a company whose whole purpose is to channel young people towards that mentality and the capitalist perspective of value and purpose.
So please, say it louder.
Why ask these questions only as they relate to women and motherhood? Why haven't men being presented a false promise that value and purpose is derived from work? Being a father without a snazzy career is equally (if not more so) frowned upon by plenty of people these days. I don't think that stigma is healthy, either. Why do men have to emulate other men to be "valuable"? Why do men have to avoid emulating women to be "valuable"?
> Couple that with the fact that depression is most prevalent among childless women in their 40s
I don't know your source for this but you should at least consider the possibility that women, particularly women with financial resources (childless women in their 40s, for example), are significantly more likely to seek mental health treatment compared to similarly situated men. Correlation is not causation and more women being treated for depression does not necessarily mean more women are depressed.