Reply to single income family/ SAHM major disadvantage

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.

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How old were you when you stopped working?  [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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