Two stories:
We have a lady who is helping us through the sale of her mother's home. THe daughter is in her 30's, I am not certain of her mother's age. Her father died. He was the sole breadwinner of the family and made very good money. He died and left his wife with nothing. No life insurance, no pension, hardly any savings. He had his own business and actually made a lot of money while alive. When he died the business went under as the wife had no experience running the business or working at all. She is now in foreclosure and has zero income. Her daughter is helping us gather all the documents needed to do a short sale on her mom's house. The family is devastated at the fact that their mother has nothing and has no idea how to produce income.
A childhood friend got pregnant and married at the age of 18. Her and her husband moved to a very small town in PA. She never had a job, ever. Her child was her first "job" ever. They ended up having a total of 3 kids and were happyas could be with him working in masonry and her as a stay at home mom. Something happened and he started getting dizzy spells at the age of 29. One night driving home from work, he had a dizzy spell and he lost control of the car and the car ran into the side of a restaurant, killing him instantly. My friend had 3 children, the youngest not even 2 years old. She had never worked in her life. She had no skills. Her husband died with no life insurance, no savings, and pretty much nothing. Some friends gathered together a fund raising event for her and were able to generate some money to pay her bills for a little bit. About a year later, she married one of her deceased husband's friends. Everyone was in total shock. But think about it, what else would you do in that situation? She had to make the best call to feed her kids.
These are both real life stories. The first one is happening right now and the second was a couple of years ago. I know both of these people personally so it really scares me. People say that moms should stay home and take care of their children but you have to protect yourself. You cannot count on anyone else to protect you financially except you. Every woman should really be able to make money should something happen to their husband. These two are not the only instances that I have ran into like this in my life. In fact, I can think of two other incidents right off the top of my head - my high school boyfriend's brother inlaw died leaving his sister and child with nothing and an old friend of mine died leaving his wife and daughter behind. So divorce is not the only reason women need to be able to support themselves. I don't ever want to be defenseless, how about you?
There are still some families out there, in fact, a lot, where they don't believe that the woman should have anything to do with the finances at all. I even have a SAHM friend now who doesn't even have a credit card or bank card in her name and has to meet with her husband everytime she needs money to buy diapers, etc. She has no idea about any of their finances and that is how they feel that marrige/kids/motherhood should be.
I dont think that anyone should work out of fear of the future. But I think that if yo uhave never worked before in your entire life that it puts you at a disadvantage. If you at least worked in your 20's or something, then you have some experience and things won't be so frightening for you.