What’s Your Story of “Providing?”
One story I hear over and over again, from all sorts of men, rich and poor, liberal and conservative, of many races and ethnicities, is the need to provide for their families financially. Countless men have given up some career that gave them joy, and take on some hated but lucrative job, in order to make sure that their family has the money they need. For other men, their wife has more wealth or income, and this has its own set of consequences in the family dynamic. There are men who are wracked by guilt for not being able to provide enough for their family, sometimes to the point of suicide. For many men, it is as their very manhood is defined by their ability to be able to seen as good providers.
This post is about you. Leave your story in the comments, if short (under 200 words). Please submit longer ones to David Kaiser at [email protected] and we will run them as posts in a special section about this topic
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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
As a 23 year old husband & father I haven’t been in business long but I’m learning exactly why this isn’t for every man. Providing for my little family is harder than I had imagined. Watching my dad as I grew up showed me plenty enough to know I could do this though. I’ve lost countless employment, leading me back to entrepreneurship. I am just starting out being a “good man” but this stuff was instilled in me by another good man years ago. When providing, things get tough. But there is a 43 year old man, who brought me… Read more »
Great stories, keep them coming
BTW, I’m not talking the cases when the CSA formula applied to certain parents, financially bankrupt them. It is much tougher financially for both parents to live independently, regardless of whoever the child lives with. Accommodation is the most expensive outlay we have and it really eats into the money available for the child/ren for both parents. It is much cheaper to stay together and I do realise there are some really tough cases where the standard formula doesn’t work out for all individual cases.
Obviously I am not a man and therefore not entitled to speak for men. I support men being the best humans they can be. Just as I support women doing the same. I think men and women see what being the best they can be, very differently. If I can generalise, women may be more likely to define their self worth by their relationships and men by their capacity to bring home the bacon. I fully support individuals following what gives them their sense of self worth regardless of gender. I think where the resentment of the traditional roles kicks… Read more »
My ex girlfriend and I had a child together when we were 21. I am now 23 turning 24, and have yet to establish a genuine relationship with my son. She wanted me to drop out of university and start working right away to provide for him. I had to stay in school so I wouldn’t be stuck working a 20-35k a year job while tackling 3 years of university debt. Needless to say, she tried to find money from other guys, leaving me on teh sidelines and abandoning me in her search for a guy to provide her with… Read more »