Quote Originally Posted by sindri View Post
@niffer, If you are married or want to be married some day, how do you see the traditional gender roles playing out in your relationship? Do you want your husband to provide the majority of the income and how hands on do you want to be raising your children? Also what combined income would you be happy with?
Finally, a good question from someone. I'm not exactly married now, but it's something that I've been thinking about a lot lately. I can tell you that I had an upbringing that was very turbulent, and so I've thought about what I want for my future very strategically, and what I want is an open, productive, warm, loving family of my own. Children aren't an absolute necessity, but it's hard for me to see me getting married with somebody who will never want to have any (I mean from their perspective, what would be the point of it?)

In regards to gender roles in a relationship, I would ideally have them be fairly traditional in terms of raising kids from an emotional standpoint, although certainly with augmentation based on the individual strengths and weaknesses of my husband and I. That is to say, I expect the father to be around sometimes at least to help bond with, teach and discipline the children, and I look forward to having an IEI husband who would be able to provide a lot of emotional warmth and steadiness. Whereas, all domestic things are very natural for me and so I expect to take the brunt of this. Kind of ironic how as an ST woman I normally wouldn't fit gender norms otherwise, but in the context of a family I can see how I would be a very effective, essentially ideal housewife. Ideally I would want to have a stable nuclear family where my children are strong and capable, have a happy future and are good people who contribute to society. I will almost certainly be working a lot of the time so daycare may be a possibility, but I have worked before in childcare and early childhood education in Japan and I would want to keep the quality of care for my kids to as high a standard as possible similar to that, if need be, raising my children singlehandedly. I don't see myself as being smothering or overprotective, but especially in the early years I will always be looking to my own head to have the final say for what I deem appropriate for them. After that I would want them to be independent and capable as soon as possible.

Finance-wise, although I've never "expected" to have a partnership where my husband would provide the majority of the income, obviously, I would welcome this lol. I was raised by a "strong" LSE mom who wanted me to grow up to never have to rely on a man to support myself, and I have always seen obvious benefit to this track as well (like not being homeless when not partnered... just as an example). I have dated people who were (or were set out to be) less income-generating than I (i.e. literally near-starving artists still living with their parents), expecting that I would turn out to be the primary breadwinner, and love has always been the only real motivation in who I've looked for. I myself am ok with a spartan lifestyle (I prefer minimalism actually), and I expect to be able to support my children fully singlehandedly. Realistically speaking though, in order to live a good life and provide that experience for my husband and children, it would of course be better if my husband helped out and pooled income to reach long term financial goals to be as supportive as possible. If my husband were wealthy and for some reason it seemed like a good option, I would also be completely fine with being a housewife (contrary to what Beskova's description for the ESTp female mentions), although I imagine that at some point I would want to return to doing something income-generating due to having nothing else to do.

I hope that answers your questions well enough. Thank you for asking.