I think it's as silly to claim that women have ever achieved security through "independence" from men, as it is to claim men can be happy "going their own way".
Being able to house and feed your own children when a man deserts you is not the same order of need as "being happy".
If a man chooses a partner who "doesn't make him happy", well, he can leave any time, or pull the "my wife doesn't understand me" shit in a bar. Either way, he will readily obtain the sex that he desires. Regular sexual access to a woman is all he requires to "be happy".
If a woman is shackled to someone who forces her into sex into return for the money to feed her children, that's a much bigger fucking problem for her than not getting her Nat King Cole.
Women in 2024 are the daughters, granddaughters, great-granddaughters of women who have plenty stories to tell of the "bad husband" who drinks all the family money, or uses his economic power as the sole wage earner to coerce and abuse his wife and family. Every woman currently alive has been sat down and told these stories by her elders at some point, and even in 'conservative' communities, she has been given the advice about having a little bit of secret money of her own. Every woman.
You are completely at the mercy of someone who is the sole support of your children. This is the thing that girls and women all understand and speak of openly, and it is the reason that "traditional marriage" is a fucking terrifying proposition in current year. In current year, you would have to be absolutely fucking
mental to stake not just your own health, welfare and survival,
but that of your children, entirely on the whim of a man. Any man. Not being able to scrape up just-about-enough money for you and the kids to live is the difference between being able to leave him the first time he hits you, and becoming a domestic homicide statistic.
The risk of abandonment and abuse is
just too fucking high to run. The majority of marriages fail. Not even long term relationships involving children, these are actual
marriages, the highest level of legal security a non-working wife and mother can obtain. And most of them collapse.
I adore my personal nigel. I have spent my entire legal adult life with him. I have never once at any time during those decades been financially dependent, let alone solely financially dependent, on him. I would not enter into such an arrangement, not even with him. If he took a runout powder on me tomorrow, then, in a purely material and economic sense, the children and I would be absolutely fine. That's my fucking duty as a mother.
I have to make sure my babies would be alright. I need to know that and have that arranged to be able to fucking sleep at night. It is my absolute highest duty to protect and care for them.
It's not even just about abandonment. You can marry the finest and most loyal nigel ever born, and next week he can die in a car accident, or those headaches can turn out to be an inoperable brain tumour. How the fuck are you going to look after your kids when your sole provider is in the grave. This has happened to women throughout history and continues to happen. You have to have a safety net. You cannot trust to man's goodwill and the plan of God above for you. Especially the latter.
I think that the risk involved in becoming a dependent SAHM and the fear of how that can (and sadly often does) go wrong is one of these things that seems to be less and less generally understood in common discussion. You cannot as a sane adult woman trust your entire survival to the continued goodwill and indeed existence of a man. Any man. It's fucking nuts. You have to pack a fucking parachute, and an education and career is that parachute. Even if you choose not to use it, even if you don't have to use it, it needs to be there.