Predicting spousal support
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Anonymous
Over half of the students in medical school and top 14 law schools and nearly half of the students in top MBA programs are women. This is tens of thousands of women with a huge earning potential, and many, many of them are pushed into staying at home or working mommy-tracked part time jobs. That’s why, on average, women in these potentially high earning fields make 75% of what their male counterparts do. Do you really, really think that none of these women are posting on this board? This doesn’t seem to be a message board filled with women working dead end retail jobs. |
Anonymous
This area is the most highly educated in the country. Many women who stay home have graduate and professional degrees. It is super common. Your circle must be a huge outlier if that is what you think about women in this area. |
Anonymous
At look at the attrition rate of women who finish medical school and then are ready to downgrade or drop out of the profession after 5 years. Education and credentials do not change the original premise that the preference for a lot of these women is to not work outside of the home. They dress it up it whatever language about "sacrifice" they need to to save face because the prevailing zeitgeist and their peers would look down upon them making such a choice. Easier to shift those negative feelings toward big, bad hubby. |
Anonymous
Just look at the huge percentage of men who get married, make babies and then completely drop out from parenting duties. This is absolutely the fault of their lazy, negative wives /former doctors and lawyers to be. |
Anonymous
Except some of us would have had to keep up our professional licenses, and we'd still go back and make about 70-80K as you basically have to start over if you aren't in a high-paying profession. |
Anonymous
Staying at home isn't just parenting. A master's degree alone isn't enough if she hasn't worked in 20+ years. And, you both choose for her not to work. Were you willing to step down in your career and be home by 5-6 PM to get kids from day care and drop them off between 7-9 at day care? What about when they are MS and HS, driving them to activities, some right after school? |
Anonymous
| In a similar situation as a SAHM. Are there any lawyers (Fairfax County) that are especially good at representing women in this kind of situation? |
Anonymous
You’re replying to me. I’ve turned it over every which way and I have a few thoughts. First, one of my dear friends who DH also knew received a surprise divorce announcement from her DH 6 weeks before mine filed. This was quite shocking as they were sort of the ideal couple in our circle. DH also has many out-of-state friends from college who divorced with kids with a certain degree of casual callousness (very Belle Burden) in recent years. The men went off to live bachelor lives with high spending and travel, and big career gains, or at least that’s the part my DH saw and maybe envied. My theories: 1) my friend’s divorce kind of put him over the top in terms of him allowing himself permission to consider something that may have been seeded by his friends long before. 2) our DCs had just switched private schools and didn’t follow normal feeder patterns because of our move. If he’d been planning it for a while, I think DH realized he could finally do so in between school years for minimal social censure. 3) his career hit a unique inflection point at this exact same time and he was put on an executive track that changed his compensation mix. With everything else lined up, securing sole ownership of significant deferred compensation probably gave him a now-or-never mentality. The split of shared total assets I’ll get? Less than what he’ll make in one year starting now. With hindsight I can point out signs here and there that he was sometimes self-centered or prioritized his life over mine, but nothing that predicted that he’d bail this far in and leave me with comparatively little. It’s been interesting to quietly share my story with people and hear similar stories in return. My experience is more common than I’d imagined but also met with such incredulity and even shaming that most of us keep it quiet. |
Anonymous
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OP simply didn't want to work--I read the first few pages of this thread before I got bored and saw how she writes, definitely the SAHM type. Good luck, you will need it.
Yes, the corporate grind is hard as a mom, but at least you end up much smarter and more savvy than you would have been if you didn't work. |
Anonymous
I could have written this post + he is constantly out of town for his work. And yet I work full time. I feel very stressed and exhausted all the time. I look at my calendar and its all full with work meetings, doctor's appointments, school activities. I even have to put stuff like *go grocery shopping* on my calendar because ill just forget and there isn't anything to eat. I cook a lot too as I just cannot eat junk food or take outs. The work situation is also not great. I do not have a career, just a job to pay bills. He makes 3 times than me. I have some health issues too. This capitalistic society is not good for anyone, either SAHP or working parents. I am constantly in survival mode. |
Anonymous
With all due respect, some of us working parents with spouses who do their share aren't struggling. I get it that it's easier to blame the system than to look inside how you got where you are, but it's not necessarily the truth. Why did you have multiple kids with someone who wasn't willing to do anything with them? |
Anonymous
So he cooked and cleaned and paid bills while you were dating? And when the first one was born and he didn't do anything with them you decided to have more kids? |
Anonymous
| Stop feeding the trolls. You are entitled to support, op. |
Anonymous
It’s not “after five years.” It’s “after having children.” And I can guarantee you that it’s not a “preference to be home.” It is the hubby who pays lip service to helping out, but he doesn’t. It doesn’t even have to be your husband. It might be your chair who thinks that women are going to want to be home with their kids, and so he takes the program you started or the fellowship you put into place or the multi-site research study you initiated and got through the IRB and puts a man in charge of it and gives you a secondary role. Read the book “Opting Out.” |
Anonymous
Everyone cooks and cleans and pays bills when dating. And if you have already mommy-tracked yourself or decided to be home outside of school hours to take care of one kid, why not have more? |