single income family/ SAHM major disadvantage

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a SAHM to law partner husband.

The thing is, my DH and I also both believed in both partners contributing financially and domestically (and we met when we were teens). But by the time he was making 3M+ a year, my 200K income was not contributing. It just wasn’t. So it’s a weird thing, to feel like I ought to be contributing financially, and I’m educated and accomplished, but I literally can’t.

My career became more like a hobby - and one I frankly didn’t like all that much. I still dabble part time so I can pick things up when the kids are older, but no question the only way for me to feel like contribute was to devote more of my time to family tasks. If I contributed 200K a year I wouldn’t be stopping us from being “dependent” on one income. If his income changes drastically, our lifestyle will change drastically (though we’d be ok).

Anyway just throwing that out there. Sometimes not working, even with school aged kids, IS the best way to contribute.

How old were you when you stopped working?

PP here. I was 35 when I stopped working. Had one kid already, went on to have two more. My youngest just started K.

The thing I'll add in response to some of the recent comments: at 3M+ income from DH, and 200K from me, I easily could have continued to work and had an au pair for evenings and weekends, a nanny for regular hours, and a daily housekeeper, as well as anything else we wanted to outsource. (Full confession: even as a sahm we have a daily housekeeper who does the laundry, and when the kids were really young we had a part-time nanny so I could focus on one or two kids at a time.) And it would have been WAY cushier and easier to have worked with all that help. And I think that would have been a great choice for me if I loved my career. Honestly I sometimes long for it. But can someone in that situation really act like they are "contributing" to the household as a "working mom" MORE than a "sahm" if they still make 1/15 what their spouse makes, and they outsource so much? You just don't have any idea what contributions someone is making to a family, unless you are inside that family.

I actually think there are many ways to build a family and have zero judgement against anyone EXCEPT the families in which NEITHER parent spends any quality time with the kids. And I've known families in which both parents work intense jobs and the kids are neglected... and I've also known families in which one parent SAH but spends all their time playing tennis and ignoring their kids. I judge THAT. Everything else is just two people figuring out how to balance their family's needs.

[Anonymous]

lol it would blow your mind to know there are families in which the wife is the bigger breadwinner

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a SAHM to law partner husband.

The thing is, my DH and I also both believed in both partners contributing financially and domestically (and we met when we were teens). But by the time he was making 3M+ a year, my 200K income was not contributing. It just wasn’t. So it’s a weird thing, to feel like I ought to be contributing financially, and I’m educated and accomplished, but I literally can’t.

My career became more like a hobby - and one I frankly didn’t like all that much. I still dabble part time so I can pick things up when the kids are older, but no question the only way for me to feel like contribute was to devote more of my time to family tasks. If I contributed 200K a year I wouldn’t be stopping us from being “dependent” on one income. If his income changes drastically, our lifestyle will change drastically (though we’d be ok).

Anyway just throwing that out there. Sometimes not working, even with school aged kids, IS the best way to contribute.

How old were you when you stopped working?

PP here. I was 35 when I stopped working. Had one kid already, went on to have two more. My youngest just started K.

The thing I'll add in response to some of the recent comments: at 3M+ income from DH, and 200K from me, I easily could have continued to work and had an au pair for evenings and weekends, a nanny for regular hours, and a daily housekeeper, as well as anything else we wanted to outsource. (Full confession: even as a sahm we have a daily housekeeper who does the laundry, and when the kids were really young we had a part-time nanny so I could focus on one or two kids at a time.) And it would have been WAY cushier and easier to have worked with all that help. And I think that would have been a great choice for me if I loved my career. Honestly I sometimes long for it. But can someone in that situation really act like they are "contributing" to the household as a "working mom" MORE than a "sahm" if they still make 1/15 what their spouse makes, and they outsource so much? You just don't have any idea what contributions someone is making to a family, unless you are inside that family.

I actually think there are many ways to build a family and have zero judgement against anyone EXCEPT the families in which NEITHER parent spends any quality time with the kids. And I've known families in which both parents work intense jobs and the kids are neglected... and I've also known families in which one parent SAH but spends all their time playing tennis and ignoring their kids. I judge THAT. Everything else is just two people figuring out how to balance their family's needs.

That’s crazy your DH was at $3M income already when you were only 35. You hit the lottery!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ehh, young men these days are all about "being a provider" so women can "be in their feminine" but they still expect you to work and pay 50%. It's a bizarre facade.

Sure is. My daughter wants to marry a doctor.. but is worried because a lot of doctors want to marry doctors/similar She graduated with an Engineering degree from Yale and makes good money, but wants to be a SAHM and raise a lot of kids, but there aren’t a lot of guys happy about that.

Imagine that. Men don’t want a loaf of a wife that doesn’t contribute financially. Your daughter can work and still be a mother.

Eh everyone is different and what works for some people doesn’t work for others. You know theory of mind and all that. I think the bigger piece here is that it sounds like she makes enough money where even if the spouse is making $1M+, you miss the income when it’s gone. Worth noting the younger generations are much more focused on FAT FIRE / coast FIRE and all that jazz and losing $200-300K year even if you’re making $1M or whatever hurts those goals.

She’s fine with working, but wants to focus on kids (4 minimum), and with that many kids working full time would be challenging for her, she isn’t avoiding working at all and could work part-time. She wastes zero time with guys that aren’t for her, and she’s still very young, ambitious, and is fully into her goals including becoming a wife of a doctor, she’s used to the prestige.

We raised her to chase her goals and dreams, and she worked hard in school and college. She’s an adult now, so that means we’re not going to stop her from making her own career choices, whether that means being a stay-at-home mom or a working mom. That’s entirely up to her. We let her decide. I don’t get the stigma against SAHM. My kid is financially set for life, and can always get right back into a career if needed, or can stay home too (whether married or not).

Imagine writing this and feeling proud of your parenting and your child. What a disgusting mindset. I feel bad for whatever sucker she ends up baby trapping.

Calm down, PP is a troll. No one aspires to be a ‘wife of a doctor’ these days!

This. Except for some specialties, it’s impossible to cross $1M and comp is stagnating and mid-levels are ruining a bunch of stuff and it doesn’t look good long-term. Everyone I know who went into medicine the past 10 years regrets it as their big tech peers make multiples way earlier.

Sounds like they went into medicine for the wrong reasons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even in well paying jobs, I’ve noticed that the men with SAHMs notice the men with the same jobs but who have wives who work have less pressure and more income and are envious especially if the spouse has good enough hours they do a lot of the SAHM duties.

Being the sole breadwinner is quite stressful. Makes sense.

But it's much easier to advance at work and much less stressful if you never have to worry about the kids or anything at the house. You go further than the guy who has to take the day off for sick kids or leave MWF at 5:30pm to do daycare pickup

+1 Its very stressful especially when you get that random call from school asking for you to pick up your kid. My private school has all these off days for professional development and theres always a scramble to find child care.

+2
Someone noted our school district (Anne arundel) had only 12 days in school this month (14 full days in December.). If your kid got hit with the flu (like many did this year) it’s even less. Very few workplaces accommodate that schedule. School is not the childcare solution people seem to think it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I always laugh at all the sahms who think having high salary good jobs consumes so much of life that you have no time for your kids or ability to attend to the home life.

This is either a delusion you tell yourself to justify not working, or if you're basing this on your husband working crazy hours, then your husband is either terrible at his job or he hates his family since he's choosing to spend all his time at work. All the men and women i know in the best, highest paying careers have pretty flexible lives. It's the people in low and middle class jobs that have the crappy life and no flexibility. But most men and women with high paying successful careers who want to carve out time for their families absolutely can. If your husband "needed" you to stay home to succeed at his job, sounds like he's not very good at his job.

Interestingly, the exception to the above is... doctors, who often are required to work very long hours, depending on specialty. And for that reason, make absolutely lousy uninvolved husbands and fathers. My friends married to doctors are all miserable, or alternatively, have little to do with their husbands in order to stay happy. Yuck. Good luck to the OP's daughter.

Jobs often become much more flexible as you get paid more. Certainly was the case that when I was at $100k I had no flexibility. How at $1m plus, complete flexibility as I am now very senior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I always laugh at all the sahms who think having high salary good jobs consumes so much of life that you have no time for your kids or ability to attend to the home life.

This is either a delusion you tell yourself to justify not working, or if you're basing this on your husband working crazy hours, then your husband is either terrible at his job or he hates his family since he's choosing to spend all his time at work. All the men and women i know in the best, highest paying careers have pretty flexible lives. It's the people in low and middle class jobs that have the crappy life and no flexibility. But most men and women with high paying successful careers who want to carve out time for their families absolutely can. If your husband "needed" you to stay home to succeed at his job, sounds like he's not very good at his job.

Interestingly, the exception to the above is... doctors, who often are required to work very long hours, depending on specialty. And for that reason, make absolutely lousy uninvolved husbands and fathers. My friends married to doctors are all miserable, or alternatively, have little to do with their husbands in order to stay happy. Yuck. Good luck to the OP's daughter.

Do you know any executives in the tech world? At small to mid size companies (think 400-2k employees). That are global companies?

Apparently you don't. Because those who get to the exec level there work long hard hours and go above and beyond, especially if the company is private (and your big payout only comes when it sells)
It's not optional to the in a call from 8pm-11pm and then back on at 7 am because the team is global.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I always laugh at all the sahms who think having high salary good jobs consumes so much of life that you have no time for your kids or ability to attend to the home life.

This is either a delusion you tell yourself to justify not working, or if you're basing this on your husband working crazy hours, then your husband is either terrible at his job or he hates his family since he's choosing to spend all his time at work. All the men and women i know in the best, highest paying careers have pretty flexible lives. It's the people in low and middle class jobs that have the crappy life and no flexibility. But most men and women with high paying successful careers who want to carve out time for their families absolutely can. If your husband "needed" you to stay home to succeed at his job, sounds like he's not very good at his job.

Interestingly, the exception to the above is... doctors, who often are required to work very long hours, depending on specialty. And for that reason, make absolutely lousy uninvolved husbands and fathers. My friends married to doctors are all miserable, or alternatively, have little to do with their husbands in order to stay happy. Yuck. Good luck to the OP's daughter.

It's this. These women would rather marry someone who is around 2h a week than have an actual partner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a SAHM to law partner husband.

The thing is, my DH and I also both believed in both partners contributing financially and domestically (and we met when we were teens). But by the time he was making 3M+ a year, my 200K income was not contributing. It just wasn’t. So it’s a weird thing, to feel like I ought to be contributing financially, and I’m educated and accomplished, but I literally can’t.

My career became more like a hobby - and one I frankly didn’t like all that much. I still dabble part time so I can pick things up when the kids are older, but no question the only way for me to feel like contribute was to devote more of my time to family tasks. If I contributed 200K a year I wouldn’t be stopping us from being “dependent” on one income. If his income changes drastically, our lifestyle will change drastically (though we’d be ok).

Anyway just throwing that out there. Sometimes not working, even with school aged kids, IS the best way to contribute.

How old were you when you stopped working?

PP here. I was 35 when I stopped working. Had one kid already, went on to have two more. My youngest just started K.

The thing I'll add in response to some of the recent comments: at 3M+ income from DH, and 200K from me, I easily could have continued to work and had an au pair for evenings and weekends, a nanny for regular hours, and a daily housekeeper, as well as anything else we wanted to outsource. (Full confession: even as a sahm we have a daily housekeeper who does the laundry, and when the kids were really young we had a part-time nanny so I could focus on one or two kids at a time.) And it would have been WAY cushier and easier to have worked with all that help. And I think that would have been a great choice for me if I loved my career. Honestly I sometimes long for it. But can someone in that situation really act like they are "contributing" to the household as a "working mom" MORE than a "sahm" if they still make 1/15 what their spouse makes, and they outsource so much? You just don't have any idea what contributions someone is making to a family, unless you are inside that family.

I actually think there are many ways to build a family and have zero judgement against anyone EXCEPT the families in which NEITHER parent spends any quality time with the kids. And I've known families in which both parents work intense jobs and the kids are neglected... and I've also known families in which one parent SAH but spends all their time playing tennis and ignoring their kids. I judge THAT. Everything else is just two people figuring out how to balance their family's needs.

I can't fathom the mindset that $200k/year is worthless and not "contributing" to you. You seem really out of touch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I always laugh at all the sahms who think having high salary good jobs consumes so much of life that you have no time for your kids or ability to attend to the home life.

This is either a delusion you tell yourself to justify not working, or if you're basing this on your husband working crazy hours, then your husband is either terrible at his job or he hates his family since he's choosing to spend all his time at work. All the men and women i know in the best, highest paying careers have pretty flexible lives. It's the people in low and middle class jobs that have the crappy life and no flexibility. But most men and women with high paying successful careers who want to carve out time for their families absolutely can. If your husband "needed" you to stay home to succeed at his job, sounds like he's not very good at his job.

Interestingly, the exception to the above is... doctors, who often are required to work very long hours, depending on specialty. And for that reason, make absolutely lousy uninvolved husbands and fathers. My friends married to doctors are all miserable, or alternatively, have little to do with their husbands in order to stay happy. Yuck. Good luck to the OP's daughter.

This is DC. The majority of high paying jobs come from law, where you dedicate your every waking hour to hit 2k+ billable hours a year.

The majority of high earners here work long hours

[Anonymous]

I think it is possible to have a single family income and SAHM but that requires a lot of lowered expectations.
No private school, almost no eating out, almost no vacations, hand me down clothing, etc...
The above is possible during the early years because who wants to take toddlers out to dinner or on vacation?

The sweet spot is to take advantage of full-time school to secure a part-time job. That would allow additional income to buttress the additional expenses of children's extracurriculars and the increasingly expensive family life.

SAHM-hood is great but gets awfully boring when the kids are late teens getting ready for college.
Having a mom who works is inspirational for kids too and gives them a model for "can-do".
I have been both and, well, each family is different with different needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I always laugh at all the sahms who think having high salary good jobs consumes so much of life that you have no time for your kids or ability to attend to the home life.

This is either a delusion you tell yourself to justify not working, or if you're basing this on your husband working crazy hours, then your husband is either terrible at his job or he hates his family since he's choosing to spend all his time at work. All the men and women i know in the best, highest paying careers have pretty flexible lives. It's the people in low and middle class jobs that have the crappy life and no flexibility. But most men and women with high paying successful careers who want to carve out time for their families absolutely can. If your husband "needed" you to stay home to succeed at his job, sounds like he's not very good at his job.

Interestingly, the exception to the above is... doctors, who often are required to work very long hours, depending on specialty. And for that reason, make absolutely lousy uninvolved husbands and fathers. My friends married to doctors are all miserable, or alternatively, have little to do with their husbands in order to stay happy. Yuck. Good luck to the OP's daughter.

Ok, please list all the high paying careers with flexible hours so I can at least encourage my kids to do what I didn’t!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I always laugh at all the sahms who think having high salary good jobs consumes so much of life that you have no time for your kids or ability to attend to the home life.

This is either a delusion you tell yourself to justify not working, or if you're basing this on your husband working crazy hours, then your husband is either terrible at his job or he hates his family since he's choosing to spend all his time at work. All the men and women i know in the best, highest paying careers have pretty flexible lives. It's the people in low and middle class jobs that have the crappy life and no flexibility. But most men and women with high paying successful careers who want to carve out time for their families absolutely can. If your husband "needed" you to stay home to succeed at his job, sounds like he's not very good at his job.

Interestingly, the exception to the above is... doctors, who often are required to work very long hours, depending on specialty. And for that reason, make absolutely lousy uninvolved husbands and fathers. My friends married to doctors are all miserable, or alternatively, have little to do with their husbands in order to stay happy. Yuck. Good luck to the OP's daughter.

This is DC. The majority of high paying jobs come from law, where you dedicate your every waking hour to hit 2k+ billable hours a year.

The majority of high earners here work long hours

They work long hours but all find time to attend kids’ events that personally interest them…usually sporting events.

That may mean they leave the office at 3, go watch a game for 2 hours and then work from home after dinner.

I coached my kid’s LL with two law partners (one from Hogan and the other at Steptoe)…they rarely missed a practice or any midweek games.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I always laugh at all the sahms who think having high salary good jobs consumes so much of life that you have no time for your kids or ability to attend to the home life.

This is either a delusion you tell yourself to justify not working, or if you're basing this on your husband working crazy hours, then your husband is either terrible at his job or he hates his family since he's choosing to spend all his time at work. All the men and women i know in the best, highest paying careers have pretty flexible lives. It's the people in low and middle class jobs that have the crappy life and no flexibility. But most men and women with high paying successful careers who want to carve out time for their families absolutely can. If your husband "needed" you to stay home to succeed at his job, sounds like he's not very good at his job.

Interestingly, the exception to the above is... doctors, who often are required to work very long hours, depending on specialty. And for that reason, make absolutely lousy uninvolved husbands and fathers. My friends married to doctors are all miserable, or alternatively, have little to do with their husbands in order to stay happy. Yuck. Good luck to the OP's daughter.

This is DC. The majority of high paying jobs come from law, where you dedicate your every waking hour to hit 2k+ billable hours a year.

The majority of high earners here work long hours

They work long hours but all find time to attend kids’ events that personally interest them…usually sporting events.

That may mean they leave the office at 3, go watch a game for 2 hours and then work from home after dinner.

I coached my kid’s LL with two law partners (one from Hogan and the other at Steptoe)…they rarely missed a practice or any midweek games.

You knew what every kid’s parent did for work on the team and where they worked? Come on…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Even in well paying jobs, I’ve noticed that the men with SAHMs notice the men with the same jobs but who have wives who work have less pressure and more income and are envious especially if the spouse has good enough hours they do a lot of the SAHM duties.

Yeah but what woman wants to work FT (or even nearly FT) and “do a lot of the SAHM duties”? Who would sign up for that?

As a SAHM to a high earner husband I do NOT think mine is the ideal. I think the ideal is TWO flexible family friends jobs with TWO fully engaged parents. But I didn’t know this when I got married at 24 to someone attending law school. My mom worked AND did everything at home and I saw how miserable she was. My dad worked but did nothing else.