SAHMs and marriage dynamics?

[Anonymous]

Two incomes solves some problems and create other problems. However, for a woman in today's world, its too risky to give up her career.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone else view being a SAHM as being a luxury? We can't afford it, but I view the option to live off 1 salary as being a luxury. A few of my friends have the same view.

One of my closest friends switched to living off one salary for two years before even trying to conceive, both to save money and to see if they could handle that. They went on to have a happy, stable SAHM/three kid dynamic.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'm a big law partner and a lot of my male colleagues have wives who are SAHMs. I'm not super involved in their marriages, obviously, but just from hearing how they talk amongst themselves, it seems like a lot of them lose respect for their wives. All conversations become about the kids or the household, and they start seeing their wives more as a mother to their kids than a true partner and equal. They do love their wives, and I think their marriages are mostly happy, but it does sometimes feel like they see their colleagues (male and female) as their peers and their wives as a step beneath - and that's with the good ones. As you probably know, cheating is rampant in big law. This may be unique to law, and big law in particular, where people tend to make their career their personality and most of their self worth.

Yes - I have also seen this from male friends of mine. Not until 40s - I think it’s based on the kids being at school full time and the wife is still like - spending the day walking a dog and saying stuff takes up the whole time. Women get super mad when you suggest this but when so many women work and raise school aged kids it creates a cognitive dissonance

I am in my 40s, and my wife is a SAHM with school aged kids. I don't feel this way at all. When I see the families with two full time parents with multiple kids, it creates no cognitive dissonance at all because they seem overstretched and generally pretty harried and unhappy. So, yes, we could have more money if my wife worked full time, but I don't think it's worth and am glad she doesn't. I know several other men in my same circumstance, and I never hear that they wished their wives would work more. So it is all anecdotal, but I doubt you are really seeing this from your male friends, or you just have a different social set than I do.

I am not one of the PPs but I would consider that you probably would not hear your male friends talking about their dissatisfaction even if they had it. I worked for years in heavily male-dominated environments and as one of the few women, men confided in me in a way they didn’t confide with others. I remember several “please don’t tell anyone but…” conversations over the years. So I think both you and women you are responding to can both be right: you don’t hear their unhappiness, and the women you are responding to do, and it can be the same group of people.

I actually didn’t like being in that role and deliberately moved away from it: I ended up staying home myself for a period and then gravitating towards work that had a better male/female balance. But while I was there, I saw and learned a great deal about male unhappiness. It wasn’t inappropriate, and they certainly weren’t mean about their wives (they clearly loved them) but I saw a side of them that I’m pretty sure they didn’t show a lot of people.

This is actually a professional issue for women who work in male-dominated environments: the only woman gets put unconsciously in an an “office therapist” role. I was too young to realize it at the time, I just knew I didn’t like it. It’s only been years later that I’ve understood that this is a not uncommon work dynamic that nowadays women are warned about in professional conferences and such.

I’m just saying that people are complicated and I think men can simultaneously be proud and happy about having a SAHW and also very stressed and unhappy about it. It is very possible to hold all those feelings at the same time.

They were trying to get in your pants and figured putting down the SAHM wife to a career woman would win them points. For real. I’m not even a dude and can figure that one out!

I’m the PP, and no, I don’t think so. But even if that were true, surely that itself is a pretty problematic fact. And they weren’t putting their wives down, not exactly. Just more talking about how stressed and unhappy they were being the sole provider and sometimes wondering about their lives if their SAHWs brought in more income. That seems like an odd pick-up line to me, but who knows. I was young and did not know enough to redirect the conversations. Either way, I think it remains true that I saw a side of them they probably didn’t show many people.

I'm the original PP you responded to up thread. You might be right. I think there's no doubt that having one parent stay at home is a sacrifice, obviously less so the more the other parent makes. I think that you have to have a clear picture of why you think it is worth it, up to the point you have so much money that it truly doesn't matter. I'm sure that being the sole earner of not much money makes the sacrifice all that more stressful, and I commend the people who do it even though it is financially difficult. But that's just because I think it is a great thing to do for kids and for society at large (assuming the stay at home parent is doing it for good reasons, rather than laziness, addiction, unemployability, etc.). That's what I'd say to someone supporting a family in that situation.

[Anonymous]

Just my personal experience, but I had a high power job that was pretty much 24/7. I loved it when I was in my 20’s and early 30’s. It became my identity. Then I realized that if suddenly disappeared, things would just go on. I wasn’t all that important- no one is. What was I doing? So when I had my first child, I decided to put my energy into something that actually mattered. We are not high income, but we’ve made it work on one salary. If we ever divorced, I would get half of what we’ve accumulated over the years (2 million), so I’m not worried. I feel very lucky- I got an exciting career, and I got to be the mom I wanted to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just my personal experience, but I had a high power job that was pretty much 24/7. I loved it when I was in my 20’s and early 30’s. It became my identity. Then I realized that if suddenly disappeared, things would just go on. I wasn’t all that important- no one is. What was I doing? So when I had my first child, I decided to put my energy into something that actually mattered. We are not high income, but we’ve made it work on one salary. If we ever divorced, I would get half of what we’ve accumulated over the years (2 million), so I’m not worried. I feel very lucky- I got an exciting career, and I got to be the mom I wanted to be.

I’m a man who has a job like this and this post really resonates with me.

[Anonymous]

To the law partner who keeps insisting that her colleagues are stressed and unhappy being breadwinners and worrying about what their wives will do for money if they die:

This doesn’t make sense to me. How can you worry about money when you make millions a year? I’ll give you an example. In my case, we have liquid savings of over 5 million (in this down market), our house which is paid off, and 2.5 mil in life insurance. I think I’ll be fine if the worst happens. St the very least, I would sell the house and move somewhere smaller/cheaper. I think I would actually prefer to rent in that duration so as not to have home maintenance issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To the law partner who keeps insisting that her colleagues are stressed and unhappy being breadwinners and worrying about what their wives will do for money if they die:

This doesn’t make sense to me. How can you worry about money when you make millions a year? I’ll give you an example. In my case, we have liquid savings of over 5 million (in this down market), our house which is paid off, and 2.5 mil in life insurance. I think I’ll be fine if the worst happens. St the very least, I would sell the house and move somewhere smaller/cheaper. I think I would actually prefer to rent in that duration so as not to have home maintenance issues.

I don’t know their situation, but it’s possible they have multiple wives they are supporting (not married to them all at the same time, of course, but still supporting), so that money gets diluted down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why does division of labor in a two adult partnership have to be SO gender-based?

Women do the non-paid labor, men made the decisions that impact lots of people or make lots of money. Men have offices and staff, women wash dishes, vacuum and dress drooling toddlers.

If we are actually intellectual equals, why is this not offensive? (And who thinks it is not sending negative messages, to the children growing up in such environments?)

My husband and I met in college. I was actually a much better student than him. He respects my intellectual abilities because of this. But when we had kids, I genuinely wanted to be with my babies and preschoolers. I had a lot of fun back then and remember it very fondly. My kids are school aged now but I SAH for other reasons (teen has some mental health struggles which more support and oversight, I have a chronic health condition, we like to travel frequently and enjoy the flexibility of not having to work around 2 job schedules, DH travels for work last minute a lot). He makes a lot of money so we have no financial concerns. He could quit and retire early if he wanted to.

I own that I actively made this choice. It’s worked for us and, health issue aside, I’ve been very lucky.

It’s strange to me that you would look at our situation and see it anything other than incredible privilege.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does division of labor in a two adult partnership have to be SO gender-based?

Women do the non-paid labor, men made the decisions that impact lots of people or make lots of money. Men have offices and staff, women wash dishes, vacuum and dress drooling toddlers.

If we are actually intellectual equals, why is this not offensive? (And who thinks it is not sending negative messages, to the children growing up in such environments?)

My husband and I met in college. I was actually a much better student than him. He respects my intellectual abilities because of this. But when we had kids, I genuinely wanted to be with my babies and preschoolers. I had a lot of fun back then and remember it very fondly. My kids are school aged now but I SAH for other reasons (teen has some mental health struggles which more support and oversight, I have a chronic health condition, we like to travel frequently and enjoy the flexibility of not having to work around 2 job schedules, DH travels for work last minute a lot). He makes a lot of money so we have no financial concerns. He could quit and retire early if he wanted to.

I own that I actively made this choice. It’s worked for us and, health issue aside, I’ve been very lucky.

It’s strange to me that you would look at our situation and see it anything other than incredible privilege.

Me again. To add to this, when my teen is having issues, I genuinely want to be there for him, keeping him company. There’s no where else on earth is rather be. I’m lucky that I have this freedom to choose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just my personal experience, but I had a high power job that was pretty much 24/7. I loved it when I was in my 20’s and early 30’s. It became my identity. Then I realized that if suddenly disappeared, things would just go on. I wasn’t all that important- no one is. What was I doing? So when I had my first child, I decided to put my energy into something that actually mattered. We are not high income, but we’ve made it work on one salary. If we ever divorced, I would get half of what we’ve accumulated over the years (2 million), so I’m not worried. I feel very lucky- I got an exciting career, and I got to be the mom I wanted to be.

I’m a man who has a job like this and this post really resonates with me.

Yes. One life to live and it's short. I SAH so that we both have more time to enjoy the fleeting years our kids are at home. I worked for 15 years and witnessed enough to know that my "important nonprofit work" wasn't actually that important over the course of my life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just my personal experience, but I had a high power job that was pretty much 24/7. I loved it when I was in my 20’s and early 30’s. It became my identity. Then I realized that if suddenly disappeared, things would just go on. I wasn’t all that important- no one is. What was I doing? So when I had my first child, I decided to put my energy into something that actually mattered. We are not high income, but we’ve made it work on one salary. If we ever divorced, I would get half of what we’ve accumulated over the years (2 million), so I’m not worried. I feel very lucky- I got an exciting career, and I got to be the mom I wanted to be.

I’m a man who has a job like this and this post really resonates with me.

Did you quit your job to become a SAHP after your first child was born?
If so, how did your wife take it?

-NP

[Anonymous]

To the poster who complained about her colleagues not being happy about sole breadwinning. Trust me, if their wives were high powered career women they would be complaining about them not being home for their family, having to share the family workload and how SAHMs are better. There are some personalities for whom the grass is always greener on the other side. As for anecdotes, I know gorgeous high powered women law partners that are divorced as their partners couldn’t handle their careers. Sometimes it just comes down to two people in a marriage, there’s no secret formula.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone else view being a SAHM as being a luxury? We can't afford it, but I view the option to live off 1 salary as being a luxury. A few of my friends have the same view.

One of my closest friends switched to living off one salary for two years before even trying to conceive, both to save money and to see if they could handle that. They went on to have a happy, stable SAHM/three kid dynamic.

It's very common with religious men. My husband puts zero pressure on me to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just my personal experience, but I had a high power job that was pretty much 24/7. I loved it when I was in my 20’s and early 30’s. It became my identity. Then I realized that if suddenly disappeared, things would just go on. I wasn’t all that important- no one is. What was I doing? So when I had my first child, I decided to put my energy into something that actually mattered. We are not high income, but we’ve made it work on one salary. If we ever divorced, I would get half of what we’ve accumulated over the years (2 million), so I’m not worried. I feel very lucky- I got an exciting career, and I got to be the mom I wanted to be.

I’m a man who has a job like this and this post really resonates with me.

Did you quit your job to become a SAHP after your first child was born?
If so, how did your wife take it?

-NP

I don’t think that as many women would be as upset by that as this board seems to imply. I know a few men who are retired military or police and SAH with young kids while their wife works a professional, more family friendly, job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just my personal experience, but I had a high power job that was pretty much 24/7. I loved it when I was in my 20’s and early 30’s. It became my identity. Then I realized that if suddenly disappeared, things would just go on. I wasn’t all that important- no one is. What was I doing? So when I had my first child, I decided to put my energy into something that actually mattered. We are not high income, but we’ve made it work on one salary. If we ever divorced, I would get half of what we’ve accumulated over the years (2 million), so I’m not worried. I feel very lucky- I got an exciting career, and I got to be the mom I wanted to be.

I’m a man who has a job like this and this post really resonates with me.

Did you quit your job to become a SAHP after your first child was born?
If so, how did your wife take it?

-NP

I don’t think that as many women would be as upset by that as this board seems to imply. I know a few men who are retired military or police and SAH with young kids while their wife works a professional, more family friendly, job.

Same. My husband would love to quit to SAHM so I couldn't earn enough to support us

I really think much of the gender issue is do to women's internalized sexism. A guy staying at home taking care of a baby and the house just isn't sexy enough to them, so they used this "well what if a man did it" as this gotcha because to *them* it would be distasteful.