In the larger sense, it's absolutely toxic, because it projects a wholly unrealistic vision. People see others "succeeding", and blame themselves for "failing" when in reality, the "failures" don't realize that the "successes" were bankrolled by parents/spouses.
It is of course possible to succeed without the benefit of being bankrolled, but our weirdo faux-entrepreneur class makes it really challenging for others to understand what it takes or their odds of success.
I'm glad someone else gets this. I would have a real-talk conversation with some of those friends about this, but it was really hard to get it across.
"People really look up to you, and aspire to do what you do."
"Oh that's awesome!"
"No, not awesome. They won't be able to. They don't have the advantages you do."
"Are you mad that I have money?"
"No, you're great. It's just that people won't have a realistic idea of what it takes to get where you are, if they think all you do is take photos for a living."
"Hmm. Is this important? I have to get ready for other thing."
They would assume it had something to do with jealousy, so I mostly stopped bothering.
Isn't the real problem that it is socially unacceptable to not have a job, even if you are a housewife, mother or even househusband. We have gone from women not having the choice to work to not having the choice to not work.
If we're talking solely of the class of people who own horses kept in upscale stables and have the leisure time to ride them daily, then perhaps for them simply maintaining a household and raising children isn't enough and they feel idle if they don't pretend to have jobs because they can pay full time maids and nannies and maintaining a household and raising children really isn't time consuming and leaves them too much idle time. That is hardly a common position to be in, though.
"Housewife jobs" are structurally similar.
I'm based in Europe and work U.S. hours, so I usually have my mornings and early afternoons for leisure activities, including riding my horse. This means I travel a fair bit in social circles comprised mostly of middle-aged women who don't have regular jobs.
If you ask those women their job or, with a slight lack of tact, even ask directly how they make a living, it's usually something like yoga teacher, photographer, landscape designer, etc.
Initially, I always walked away from these interactions thinking something like: Wow, you must be a really good landscape designer, if you can actually make a living at it, and have the time and money for two horses at a pricey stable.
Later, I realized that these occupations are mostly fronts they put up because it's not socially acceptable these days for a woman to have a husband who does most of the earning for the shared household.
What you do is: You take some online class on landscaping and tell your girlfriend (the one who you're regularly giving $100-christmas-gifts to) that you're now a trained landscape designer. You do a bit of consulting for her by making a few suggestions about what flowers would look good on her front yard and have her pay $30 for the privilege of having consulted a trained landscape designer. From now on, whenever someone asks you your job, you no longer need to say "housewife", but you can say "landscape designer". If someone walks away with the misconception that you actually make enough money from your landscape designing to pay for your lifestyle, then that's just a misconception that you're under no moral obligation to straighten out.
The problem: This sort of behaviour is not really advancing the cause of feminism at all.
Because now, when a man tells me he's a landscape designer, I assume he makes enough money as a landscape designer to pay for his lifestyle. When a woman tells me she's a landscape designer, I assume it's a front and she really just has a rich husband who pays for everything.