SAHM’s - anyone successfully convince DH to support their staying home long term?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Things no man is thinking: Gee, I wish I could get off this boring conference call so I could wash the cloth diapers and clean the oven. My wife is so lucky.

I'll bet you there are a good number of them who would like to have a few years to think about nothing but those things, to go to work out when the want and be freed from the breadwinner pressure.

Then they should have married a woman who has a job and split the breadwinning and the oven cleaning. The fact is that SAH is unpaid and low status, and very, very few men are going to see that as a better option than even the most tedious of paid jobs. I don't blame them! I have nothing but contempt for the women who continue to accept unpaid and low status work BECAUSE they are women and then call themselves feminists for having "chosen" this lifestyle.

You think you are being a feminist but what you are actually doing is buying into the idea that the work men do is important and the work women do is not. Like not only are you putting down SAHMs, you are putting down the many, many women (mostly POC) who do childcare and housework for a living. Who took care of your kids when they were young? Who cleans your house? Do you have contempt for them, too? It sure sounds like it.

Something a lot of SAHMs realize is that this work has inherent value and can offer a sense of meaning and accomplishment they never experience in paid work. I was in a corporate career for nearly 20 years before becoming a SAHM and I do not miss it. I have not convinced myself of anything (my DH would definitely have supported me continuing to work) -- I just genuinely prefer what I'm doing now to what I was doing before.

I am NOT putting down paid work of any kind. I think it is disgusting for anyone to participate in a gender based system where women do all the cooking and cleaning and childrearing year after year while the men have all the economic power. Of course cleaning and chlidrearing has inherent value, but why don't the men get to enjoy that same inherent value? Because they are not stupid--they realize that if they have a paid job they can pick and choose which parts of housecleaning and childcare they want to do while their wife is stuck doing all the rest of it.

Look at this entire thread - the husband wants his wife to go back to paid work now that the shitty part of childrearing is over and she is annoyed because she is finally getting to the stage where she gets to slow down. AND she has to start all over with her career because she took so much time off to raise the kids. It is a system that screws women over again and again.

Why is wiping butts valuable if they’re strangers and I get paid and of no value if it’s my kid and I’m not paid? Does your husband slip you a $20 every time you have sex?

If you take care of your neighbor's kid and your neighbor takes care of your kids - you both will be working women. If you take care of your own kid, you will be a SAHM. Go figure.

I am just at the thought of my DH slipping $20 for sex to me. I will be truly a Working Girl if he does that.

Right? That’s just silly! I think honestly the people making these arguments think childcare and housekeeping are not valuable no matter who’s doing them, but they feel mean saying that about hardworking poor WOC (though not, I’ll note, about hardworking white UMC women) so they do this weird “it’s different if you’re paid for it” dance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SAHM are pathetic. At home doing the unpaid labor their husbands don't want to do. Who wants to spend their days cleaning house and grocery shopping?

I know so many super liberal SAHMs in DC who are all up in arms about their daughters' future reproductive lives while they literally are stepford wives modeling for their daughters how men have oppressed women for generations and the woman lap it up like they have won the lottery because they can take yoga at 10 am before the pediatrician appointment.

But what if they genuinely want to be able to take yoga at 10 am instead of going to what they consider a tedious, demanding job?

That's the thing. Not everyone wants the same thing. I don't want to work. I know that sounds bad but it's the truth. I consider myself lucky that I don't have to.

have you asked your husband if he would like to go to yoga at 10 am?

He’s semi retired so he could if he wanted to. He’s playing golf tomorrow.

Listen, everyone’s experience is different. I come from the tech world where everyone is about FIRE. Many people keep working after that but it’s different when you know you have the money to say eff it at any time.

What I’ve learned is that when people come into money, they usually quit their demanding jobs. If they stay in the same field, it’s as investors, or they work on passion projects, or do hey consult. But most people give up the daily grind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why should he work if you won’t?

OP here - my view is, why should I do everything I do now plus a job? I would be insane to agree to that. He’s not going to magically do half.

Well, you shouldn't, so he'll need to step up, but you also likely have to realize that some things you do he may not consider valuable like baking fresh bread every day.


OP, my mother was a SAHM and I honestly don't think I benefited from it greatly. She like you wanted to stay home and do all the things you list. Great ! Live your dream, except her dreams came with the cost of her kids having to take out loans to go to college.

Your kids don't need freshly baked bread every day. They would hugely benefit from not having to take out loans to go to school and your income could help build a nice little nest egg so college could be covered for them.

I agree. My mom was SAHM and I never liked that. It was five of us, we literally were poor. I wanted my mom to work and hustle for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SAHM are pathetic. At home doing the unpaid labor their husbands don't want to do. Who wants to spend their days cleaning house and grocery shopping?

I know so many super liberal SAHMs in DC who are all up in arms about their daughters' future reproductive lives while they literally are stepford wives modeling for their daughters how men have oppressed women for generations and the woman lap it up like they have won the lottery because they can take yoga at 10 am before the pediatrician appointment.

But what if they genuinely want to be able to take yoga at 10 am instead of going to what they consider a tedious, demanding job?

That's the thing. Not everyone wants the same thing. I don't want to work. I know that sounds bad but it's the truth. I consider myself lucky that I don't have to.

have you asked your husband if he would like to go to yoga at 10 am?

He’s semi retired so he could if he wanted to. He’s playing golf tomorrow.

Listen, everyone’s experience is different. I come from the tech world where everyone is about FIRE. Many people keep working after that but it’s different when you know you have the money to say eff it at any time.

What I’ve learned is that when people come into money, they usually quit their demanding jobs. If they stay in the same field, it’s as investors, or they work on passion projects, or do hey consult. But most people give up the daily grind.

So you really don't belong in this discussion. Neither you nor your husband are working full time and trying to raise a family. Why don't you butt out?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Things no man is thinking: Gee, I wish I could get off this boring conference call so I could wash the cloth diapers and clean the oven. My wife is so lucky.

I'll bet you there are a good number of them who would like to have a few years to think about nothing but those things, to go to work out when the want and be freed from the breadwinner pressure.

Then they should have married a woman who has a job and split the breadwinning and the oven cleaning. The fact is that SAH is unpaid and low status, and very, very few men are going to see that as a better option than even the most tedious of paid jobs. I don't blame them! I have nothing but contempt for the women who continue to accept unpaid and low status work BECAUSE they are women and then call themselves feminists for having "chosen" this lifestyle.

I am a SAHM. I am not an Employee. I am an Employer. I employ low paid WOHMs to do domestic work at my house. I guess they are not feminists because they work for peanuts and work a low status job then?

I understand from DCUM that there are three kinds of WOHMs.
1. Those who have the money to hire other poor WOHMs to do domestic labor for them.
2. Those who are not rich enough to hire these poor WOHMs and hate rich SAHMs and WOHMs.
3. And the poorest WOHMs who work in low paying jobs for others.

So do we even talk of the plight of the poorest women or are we glad that they are available to become our maids? They are accepting low pay and low status so that makes them sub-humans, I suppose?

If you are a SAHM and you employ others to do domestic work, you are just lazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SAHM are pathetic. At home doing the unpaid labor their husbands don't want to do. Who wants to spend their days cleaning house and grocery shopping?

I know so many super liberal SAHMs in DC who are all up in arms about their daughters' future reproductive lives while they literally are stepford wives modeling for their daughters how men have oppressed women for generations and the woman lap it up like they have won the lottery because they can take yoga at 10 am before the pediatrician appointment.

I think WOHMs should spend their energy on getting equal pay for equal work. Perhaps also work hard in fighting for flex schedule, maternity leave, on-site day care, ability to remote work etc - instead of berating SAHMs.

Because when schools and daycares closed all these WOHMs left the workplace in droves because they were royally Phucked!! COVID the great equalizer.

Well, in some ways there is equal pay for equal work. The pay gap doesn’t really come into play until women have children, start taking on the lion’s share of (unpaid) domestic tasks at home, and put in fewer hours at work.

As much as some of the posters on this thread want to pretend that anyone who values their time at home over their time at work is lazy, stupid, in a bad marriage, or unmotivated, the truth is that nearly all women put a high value on our time at home after we have children.

I don’t know if the cost of childcare or if it’s biological or if it’s social conditioning. Frankly, I’m in the process of raising three boys, and I think the drive to be around the is biological. It’s, unfortunately, men who are the victims of social conditioning and a social structure that has them thinking they “can’t” care for children or that their biggest contribution to their families is financial.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SAHM are pathetic. At home doing the unpaid labor their husbands don't want to do. Who wants to spend their days cleaning house and grocery shopping?

I know so many super liberal SAHMs in DC who are all up in arms about their daughters' future reproductive lives while they literally are stepford wives modeling for their daughters how men have oppressed women for generations and the woman lap it up like they have won the lottery because they can take yoga at 10 am before the pediatrician appointment.

I'd much rather spend my days cleaning and grocery shopping and then I have my nights and weekend free to spend with my family or do what I want. I feel bad for you that you don't know how to relax and enjoy your family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why should he work if you won’t?

OP here - my view is, why should I do everything I do now plus a job? I would be insane to agree to that. He’s not going to magically do half.

Well, you shouldn't, so he'll need to step up, but you also likely have to realize that some things you do he may not consider valuable like baking fresh bread every day.


OP, my mother was a SAHM and I honestly don't think I benefited from it greatly. She like you wanted to stay home and do all the things you list. Great ! Live your dream, except her dreams came with the cost of her kids having to take out loans to go to college.

Your kids don't need freshly baked bread every day. They would hugely benefit from not having to take out loans to go to school and your income could help build a nice little nest egg so college could be covered for them.

I agree. My mom was SAHM and I never liked that. It was five of us, we literally were poor. I wanted my mom to work and hustle for us.

It probably didn't pay for her to work given child care costs for 5 kids or that would have meant the oldest would have to parent the youngest.

Paying for college doesn't have much to do with SAH. Its partly how you choose to spend your money. If they were low income, it was better for her not to work so you could get financial aid. I know rich families who will not pay for college and I know modest income families who save everything, live in small homes, etc to be able to pay or college. It was our priority regardless of if I worked or SAH and when our kids were born we bought prepaid plans and then saved in 529's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I think that most people who do freelance work or work less than about 20-30 hours a week still refer to themselves as SAHMs in these threads.

I have seen people refer to themselves as SAHMs even though they:
- work at their kids elementary schools every day that the school is open
- own and manage multiple rental properties
- do freelance, hourly, or consulting work
- do part time shift work (doctors and nurses)
- do the books and some of the management for their husband's small business

This is me — I make about 35k a year doing freelance consulting work but refer to myself as a SAHM on here. I also basically feel like a SAHM in life. I do not have the same juggle with job/commute/childcare that WOHMs deal with. I can always scale back work to accommodate parenting. Today I’m lying around the house cleaning and relaxing while my kid is at school because I’m between projects with work.

I don’t think WOHMs want me as “one of them.” Especially on these boards, there’s a ton of martyrdom that goes along with it, like look at me, I do EVERYTHING a SAHM does PLUS I work, SAHMs are lazy, etc.

I just want to enjoy my life, make enough money that we can live fairly comfortably, get to spend time with my kid, and not stress too much. I learned a long time ago that my career is not that fulfilling, and motherhood offered me something more rewarding. So I seized that and just kind of finagled a solution on the work side. If we were independently wealthy, or my DH made a ton of money (he doesn’t, he makes around 100k which is less than I used to), I would not work at all, I’d write a novel or take up painting or volunteer at a museum.

Life is short and precious and I don’t want to spend it doing boring corporate work if I can avoid it, which it turns out I mostly can.

Ha! I feel you.

I like do like my job and work 1-2 evenings a week. I started homeschooling my kids when the pandemic started and have continued because we have all been so happy with it. I pretty much function as a homeschooling SAHM in my day to day life. I don’t think the WOHMs want me as “one of them” either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Things no man is thinking: Gee, I wish I could get off this boring conference call so I could wash the cloth diapers and clean the oven. My wife is so lucky.

I'll bet you there are a good number of them who would like to have a few years to think about nothing but those things, to go to work out when the want and be freed from the breadwinner pressure.

Then they should have married a woman who has a job and split the breadwinning and the oven cleaning. The fact is that SAH is unpaid and low status, and very, very few men are going to see that as a better option than even the most tedious of paid jobs. I don't blame them! I have nothing but contempt for the women who continue to accept unpaid and low status work BECAUSE they are women and then call themselves feminists for having "chosen" this lifestyle.

You think you are being a feminist but what you are actually doing is buying into the idea that the work men do is important and the work women do is not. Like not only are you putting down SAHMs, you are putting down the many, many women (mostly POC) who do childcare and housework for a living. Who took care of your kids when they were young? Who cleans your house? Do you have contempt for them, too? It sure sounds like it.

Something a lot of SAHMs realize is that this work has inherent value and can offer a sense of meaning and accomplishment they never experience in paid work. I was in a corporate career for nearly 20 years before becoming a SAHM and I do not miss it. I have not convinced myself of anything (my DH would definitely have supported me continuing to work) -- I just genuinely prefer what I'm doing now to what I was doing before.

I am NOT putting down paid work of any kind. I think it is disgusting for anyone to participate in a gender based system where women do all the cooking and cleaning and childrearing year after year while the men have all the economic power. Of course cleaning and chlidrearing has inherent value, but why don't the men get to enjoy that same inherent value? Because they are not stupid--they realize that if they have a paid job they can pick and choose which parts of housecleaning and childcare they want to do while their wife is stuck doing all the rest of it.

Look at this entire thread - the husband wants his wife to go back to paid work now that the shitty part of childrearing is over and she is annoyed because she is finally getting to the stage where she gets to slow down. AND she has to start all over with her career because she took so much time off to raise the kids. It is a system that screws women over again and again.

Why is wiping butts valuable if they’re strangers and I get paid and of no value if it’s my kid and I’m not paid? Does your husband slip you a $20 every time you have sex?

No he doesn’t but you’ve given me a new idea! If your husband did that you’d make what, a hundred a year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SAHM are pathetic. At home doing the unpaid labor their husbands don't want to do. Who wants to spend their days cleaning house and grocery shopping?

I know so many super liberal SAHMs in DC who are all up in arms about their daughters' future reproductive lives while they literally are stepford wives modeling for their daughters how men have oppressed women for generations and the woman lap it up like they have won the lottery because they can take yoga at 10 am before the pediatrician appointment.

But what if they genuinely want to be able to take yoga at 10 am instead of going to what they consider a tedious, demanding job?

That's the thing. Not everyone wants the same thing. I don't want to work. I know that sounds bad but it's the truth. I consider myself lucky that I don't have to.

have you asked your husband if he would like to go to yoga at 10 am?

He’s semi retired so he could if he wanted to. He’s playing golf tomorrow.

Listen, everyone’s experience is different. I come from the tech world where everyone is about FIRE. Many people keep working after that but it’s different when you know you have the money to say eff it at any time.

What I’ve learned is that when people come into money, they usually quit their demanding jobs. If they stay in the same field, it’s as investors, or they work on passion projects, or do hey consult. But most people give up the daily grind.

So you really don't belong in this discussion. Neither you nor your husband are working full time and trying to raise a family. Why don't you butt out?

Why should I butt out? I’m a SAHM too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SAHM are pathetic. At home doing the unpaid labor their husbands don't want to do. Who wants to spend their days cleaning house and grocery shopping?

I know so many super liberal SAHMs in DC who are all up in arms about their daughters' future reproductive lives while they literally are stepford wives modeling for their daughters how men have oppressed women for generations and the woman lap it up like they have won the lottery because they can take yoga at 10 am before the pediatrician appointment.

But what if they genuinely want to be able to take yoga at 10 am instead of going to what they consider a tedious, demanding job?

That's the thing. Not everyone wants the same thing. I don't want to work. I know that sounds bad but it's the truth. I consider myself lucky that I don't have to.

have you asked your husband if he would like to go to yoga at 10 am?

He’s semi retired so he could if he wanted to. He’s playing golf tomorrow.

Listen, everyone’s experience is different. I come from the tech world where everyone is about FIRE. Many people keep working after that but it’s different when you know you have the money to say eff it at any time.

What I’ve learned is that when people come into money, they usually quit their demanding jobs. If they stay in the same field, it’s as investors, or they work on passion projects, or do hey consult. But most people give up the daily grind.

So you really don't belong in this discussion. Neither you nor your husband are working full time and trying to raise a family. Why don't you butt out?

Why should I butt out? I’m a SAHM too.

DP.
I don’t know. These threads always seem to assume that:
1). No women want to quit their jobs unless they are lazy, lack ambition, and have no self-respect
2). All men DO want to quit their jobs, no matter how ambitious they are, how much they love their job, or how much of their identity is tied up in their job title
3). Men need to be protected from these lazy women who are making them work.
4). If part of the reason a woman isn’t working is because she is taking care of everything at home, then that is her own fault. She should have married better.
5). Even if she married a “bad man” who isn’t contributing to household chores and childcare, this man still needs to be protected against this evil, lazy woman who is keeping him from retirement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Things no man is thinking: Gee, I wish I could get off this boring conference call so I could wash the cloth diapers and clean the oven. My wife is so lucky.

I'll bet you there are a good number of them who would like to have a few years to think about nothing but those things, to go to work out when the want and be freed from the breadwinner pressure.

Then they should have married a woman who has a job and split the breadwinning and the oven cleaning. The fact is that SAH is unpaid and low status, and very, very few men are going to see that as a better option than even the most tedious of paid jobs. I don't blame them! I have nothing but contempt for the women who continue to accept unpaid and low status work BECAUSE they are women and then call themselves feminists for having "chosen" this lifestyle.

Are you kind of hoping that these high earning men will see you, leave their wives, and marry you instead? Is that what all of the contempt is about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Things no man is thinking: Gee, I wish I could get off this boring conference call so I could wash the cloth diapers and clean the oven. My wife is so lucky.

I'll bet you there are a good number of them who would like to have a few years to think about nothing but those things, to go to work out when the want and be freed from the breadwinner pressure.

Then they should have married a woman who has a job and split the breadwinning and the oven cleaning. The fact is that SAH is unpaid and low status, and very, very few men are going to see that as a better option than even the most tedious of paid jobs. I don't blame them! I have nothing but contempt for the women who continue to accept unpaid and low status work BECAUSE they are women and then call themselves feminists for having "chosen" this lifestyle.

I am a SAHM. I am not an Employee. I am an Employer. I employ low paid WOHMs to do domestic work at my house. I guess they are not feminists because they work for peanuts and work a low status job then?

I understand from DCUM that there are three kinds of WOHMs.
1. Those who have the money to hire other poor WOHMs to do domestic labor for them.
2. Those who are not rich enough to hire these poor WOHMs and hate rich SAHMs and WOHMs.
3. And the poorest WOHMs who work in low paying jobs for others.

So do we even talk of the plight of the poorest women or are we glad that they are available to become our maids? They are accepting low pay and low status so that makes them sub-humans, I suppose?

If you are a SAHM and you employ others to do domestic work, you are just lazy.

Dp here. Our house is over 10,000sf. I am not sorry for having a housekeeper. I decided to leave my lucrative career to focus on my children, not to cook and clean all day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Things no man is thinking: Gee, I wish I could get off this boring conference call so I could wash the cloth diapers and clean the oven. My wife is so lucky.

I'll bet you there are a good number of them who would like to have a few years to think about nothing but those things, to go to work out when the want and be freed from the breadwinner pressure.

Then they should have married a woman who has a job and split the breadwinning and the oven cleaning. The fact is that SAH is unpaid and low status, and very, very few men are going to see that as a better option than even the most tedious of paid jobs. I don't blame them! I have nothing but contempt for the women who continue to accept unpaid and low status work BECAUSE they are women and then call themselves feminists for having "chosen" this lifestyle.

I am a SAHM. I am not an Employee. I am an Employer. I employ low paid WOHMs to do domestic work at my house. I guess they are not feminists because they work for peanuts and work a low status job then?

I understand from DCUM that there are three kinds of WOHMs.
1. Those who have the money to hire other poor WOHMs to do domestic labor for them.
2. Those who are not rich enough to hire these poor WOHMs and hate rich SAHMs and WOHMs.
3. And the poorest WOHMs who work in low paying jobs for others.

So do we even talk of the plight of the poorest women or are we glad that they are available to become our maids? They are accepting low pay and low status so that makes them sub-humans, I suppose?

If you are a SAHM and you employ others to do domestic work, you are just lazy.

About the bold....

DP, not the one you're responding to, but: If you are an SAHM and you employ others to do domestic work, you are contributing to the economy and providing employment.

Fixed that for you.