Whining Like It's 1975

I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for women who apparently grew up reading that awful book The Cinderella Complex and now are complaining that their husbands dumped them and cut them off from their cushy lives to face the cold, cruel workplace. This column is practically a ripoff of that early 1980s book in that we women are supposed to prepare for "careers" as a "safety net" when in reality it is having that second income of a spouse that is the true "safety net."

That safety net, as long as you are married or you get remarried, will be there throughout retirement, unless you are one of those public employees who gets ripped off because of WEP and later GPO through being widowed. Of course there is also life insurance, too, to cushion the blow, if you are widowed. When you are never married or don't get remarried, it is almost impossible to make it.

There is NO guarantee that having a "career" or a job will insulate you from destitution. Try being nearly 60 years old, never married, who had a career kicked out from under her thanks to age discrimination and administrator stupidity. Thanks to a horrible economy, it is impossible to get back on track.

Most married people or people have been married have no clue how utterly difficult it is to have never had the safety net of a spouse. I swear this opinion piece was written in 1975, but there are many more factors today that make working even more risky than ever before.

This piece is simply more whining from somebody who has enjoyed at least a middle class standard of living. When she is unemployed in her late fifties and not remarried, I'll have sympathy for her then.