Men: What was your reaction when your wife said she wanted to SAHM?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have you two talked about what his role would be post baby? Jobs with high salaries usually require long hours. Maybe he wants to downshift to a normal 9-5 job or even go part time. In that case, you becoming a sahm might result in lifestyle sacrifices he's not comfortable with.

No he doesn't want to do that and has never mentioned it. If anything, he has been pushing harder lately at certain projects.

PP here. If he has no intention of parent tracking post baby, then it makes even more sense for you to sah. Dual career households work best when both parents have 9-5 jobs. In your case, the demands of his job would mean that the bulk of childcare and household management would fall to you. Since he clearly makes more than enough money to support the household, there's no point in you doing two jobs.

[Anonymous]

He said we'd make it work. I told him how expensive everything was. Average daycare costs etc. He was supportive but I went back to work after 9 months being SAHM through a change of job. After I had my second job, his reaction was, "I want you to do what you want but we cannot afford to not have a dual income." What BS. I predicted this way back telling him about COL here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He said we'd make it work. I told him how expensive everything was. Average daycare costs etc. He was supportive but I went back to work after 9 months being SAHM through a change of job. After I had my second job, his reaction was, "I want you to do what you want but we cannot afford to not have a dual income." What BS. I predicted this way back telling him about COL here.

Correcting the above. I told him how expensive having a child was (activities, college costs, etc).

After I had my second *baby*, not job.

I want to work PT but we break even on my FT job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP went to college and pretended to be an ambitious alpha woman — and when she sank her claws into a rich schmuck she drops the 'lean in' aspirations. The ole bait & switch. Happens all the time.

People's priorities change as life changes. When you are in college and the early career years of course you see yourself as an alpha male/alpha woman. But then you grow up a bit and realize that you are not defined by your career and their is more to life than work. Not everyone grows and changes of course - some people stay exactly the same. But for those ambitious types it can be tough to balance parenting/family life with a thriving career. Many women can be the "best" at both so they need to choose one. This is not bait and switch, it is life.
I remember long conversations with my then fiancé about how we would divide childcare and housekeeping so we could both work - oh we had such plans of partnership. But wait! Two years and one baby later, the old bait and switch. No sharing household duties at all. The man never even took out the trash, made the bed or put his laundry away. During the week he couldn't or wouldn't miss happy hour or whatever it was so that I could get to my job at 6:00pm. I wound up asking a family member to help so that I could work in the evenings. On the weekends he also did his own thing - didn't spend time me baby and me and left all of the housework to me.
Eventually he suggested that I quit working altogether since he made enough money to support the family - it didn't make sense to him to have to worry about childcare and household chores since he was such a high earner. So yeah, bait and switch. Guys do that too.

[Anonymous]

My now wife told me on our third date that she had no problem working, but her preference would be to SAHM some day. She worked really hard for our first ten years of marriage, put me through law school, and then transitioned to SAH. No complaints here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Whaaattt? We can't afford that!!!" But he only makes 500K.

New Poster. Your husband won't let you SAHM on an income of half a million dollars? How badly do you want to do it?

I know my fiancé never would. He thinks everyone needs to "pull their own weight" and be "self sufficient" and he cannot imagine a husband supporting a wife. I can't stand him so often.

Did you respond by asking how he pulled his weight by growing a baby, labor and delivery and breastfeeding??

This +1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He makes 3/4 of a million annually and you need to have someone else raise Junior? Is this a troll?

+1000

Using child care isn't having someone else raise Junior.

All my friends where both parents work spend one hour (or less) with their babies in the evening before they go to sleep.
That sure looks like someone else raising your kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He makes 3/4 of a million annually and you need to have someone else raise Junior? Is this a troll?

+1000

Using child care isn't having someone else raise Junior.

Using child care for 8+hours a day absolutely is having someone else raise your kid. You are simply babysitting for a couple of hours in the evening. It's totally different when they are school aged. Infants and young children belong with their mothers. We are biologically designed to feed and care for our babies.

So unless you homeschool your kids through high school, you're a failure as a parent too??!

Give me a break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not happy. I didn't think being home full time was really the issue. We both had good paying jobs with predictable hours. (8-4). The kids went to full time Montessori school and were thriving. We had a weekly cleaner and honestly in terms of the day to day details, I actually did more managing of our lives because my job was more flexible and easy than hers. I did all of the sick days, doctor visits, planning, etc. Yes, we were busy, but I felt very content.

I actually gave in and agreed that she should try to take some time off and it didn't help. But my wife didn't want to pull the kids out of full-time Montessori school, wanted to keep the same lifestyle in terms of expenses and refused to down size, etc. It was magical thinking because she hated her job and wanted a graceful out. She also admitted she felt trapped by the demands on her time, attention, lost in terms of what she wanted for her life etc. She was STILL depressed and now felt useless. I encouraged therapy and even offered to go with her. She refused.

Finally, she just left. I walked in the door with the kids and there was a note that said she regretted every having children and being married and being tied down and that was it. From what I can gather from my former in-laws, she lives in Asia and basically started over. Our kids were 2, 4, 6. That was 12 years ago. My oldest left for college last month. She missed everything.

Anyway, didn't want to go dark, but I think being home can be a great thing. I would approach it in a more healthy way and really think about the role in terms of the family and in terms of yourself. I would make a financial plan and would think through issues like insurance, etc. If it makes sense, then go for it.

This is such a sad story for your kids (I cannot wish you to have stayed with such a selfish person, hope you found someone else during those 12 years). How did your kids cope? Have they seen her during those years??

No, she hasn't seen the kids. She hasn't been in contact at all. She didn't even attend her parent's funerals, so I don't know what would make her reconnect if that didn't. It was a sad situation.

My kids went through cycles of grief, ending with a realization that untreated mental illness is a horrific thing basically. I don't know exactly what went wrong beyond depression, but it's something serious.

And I think they don't really "think" about their mother deeply. They are self-involved teenagers now. There's more going on and they are busy. As kids it was hard. I spent years with them in my bed because they didn't want to be alone at night. But it's better now. They are close to my sister and her children and I think our sense of what is a family is probably different from a lot of people. But they are goods kids.

I haven't dated seriously. Honestly, I don't think I can bring myself to open myself up again in the way I did. I am a completely open heart when it comes to my kids, but I'm a lot more careful otherwise. It's the scars I guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He makes 3/4 of a million annually and you need to have someone else raise Junior? Is this a troll?

What? Did you read my post? I said I want to quit my job and be a SAHM, probably permanently.

I DID read your post and maybe should have written "HE needs to have some else. . ." Because I cannot imagine why you need to work once the baby is born other than to be making a show of being a career-oriented person OR to wallpaper your pacer room in $50s.

Working is not just about the money. There are plenty of women who's husbands make the same or more who work. I'm not going to rehash it all here bc that's not what op asked but I can tell you that my dh would not be happy about it if I wanted to stop working and his income level is not the issue.

[Anonymous]

My wife put in what we call the "doctor years" where she had the steady income to keep us going while I got my businesses off the ground. After ten years money wasn't an issue so the transition to SAHM was the most logical step; why send a kid to daycare when you don't need to work.
We're all pretty happy, sure a few extra bucks would be nice but kids are only little once.

[Anonymous]

Just a thought - if you do end up SAH, you might consider some sort of post-nup. That might sound horrible and not romantic, but if you are planning on being out of the workforce for an extended period of time, you won't likely be able to just jump back in with a similar salary (barring amazing luck). Having kids can put a serious strain on marriages. I don't want to be all doom and gloom, but I think it's helpful to protect yourself. My husband loved me like crazy and my marriage was also viewed as amazing by all of our friends but, long story short, he cheated on me repeatedly and has said he wants to leave in the past though we are trying to work it out. You don't want to have to go through that and also be fearful of finances in such a situation.

[Anonymous]

This is something my husband and I talked about before we had kids. It was important to both of us that I SAH with them.

It was an amazing 7 years for them and me!

Now my kids are in K and 2 and I have a full time job that happens to have the same hours as they to (teacher!) so it works out.

[Anonymous]

My husband makes more than OPs, and I make a very small fraction of his salary. I tried staying home for a year but I didn't like it so I went back to work. One of the reasons why I didn't like staying home (in addition to the fact that I get a lot of personal satisfaction from my job and don't have the temperament to be home with three kids all day) was that, even though I earn significantly less than him, my husband really appreciated having me rowing our financial boat with him. And I also liked being a contributor. There were also some subtle changes in our power dynamic in that I went from being somebody who was professionally respected to somebody who my husband thought should be available to deal with whatever house chores he had thought of, regardless of what I might have been planning to do with the kids, because I "had nothing to do and was around anyway." He never mentioned the financial contribution, but he really perked up when he heard that I would be bringing great health insurance to the table.

[Anonymous]

Hi OP, real life man here with a very educated SAHM. Want me to clue you in on what the men REALLY think? I mean, are you really ready to know the truth of what men feel about this when we are out having drinks and its unfiltered conversation??[u] I am in a field where the average pay for men in early to late 30s when the babies come is 125-250k. My rough guess is about 3/4th of our wives SAH after kids, and 1/4th continued to work .

Here's the truth: It doesn't really come up. Seriously. The men with SAH never really complain about it. If anything, we occasionally comment something like "it's nice having a SAH so I don't have to worry about rushing home." The men with dual incomes? They might comment that it's nice to have two incomes. The men with two working parents don't look up or down on those with one income and vice versa.

Want to know what we talk about? Sports, the hot girl from accounting, the lack of sex in the early childhood years. Work, occasionally the kids. And the hot girl from accounting.

My point - just talk to your husband. Most men are going to be fine with whatever works for the family. Since your husband makes big coin, either option is going to work for your family.