How many women resort to being housewives when their husbands really aren’t financially able to support both of them on their one little salary, just because the job market was even worse for me than it was for him. Part-time minimum wage was all he could get; I’ve been able to get absolutely nothing for the same amount of time. Job-search time in my household is known as “Passover.” I have computer skills coming out my ears, and type 80 words/minute and can never find typing jobs or administrative jobs because all they care about is what you’ve done for pay these last few years. Even temporary agencies are unwilling to help me.

I hope I’m not the only recent-housewife whose reasons for staying out of the workforce were like this. Just the economy and the job market - we have no kids and I refuse to bring any into the world that treats me like this.

For me, subsitute teaching may be the only way back into the paid job market because the California public school districts, at least in the larger cities with more of a dire need for Math and Science teachers, have never had to care if you’ve had recent paid experience, only if you possessed that necessary piece of paper. At least, that’s the way it was back in the 2002-2003 school year, the last time I had to resort to sub teaching after losing a “real” job because of something someone else did.