Reply to Making SAHM get job to pay for private school

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[quote=Anonymous]A few things. And I say this as someone who attended public schools, including college, and would like my child to do the same if possible (though I recognize some key ways that the world is different from when I was growing up).

1) You may be overestimating the cost of private school, as some private schools will offer a discount for a second child if they go to the same school Depending on the school, this can be a significant discount. Not sure what privates you are looking at, but you should talk to your wife about this aspect of it because there may be some middle ground here where you don't pay sticker price.

2) I would be interested to know your familiarity with the local public MS and HS. As I said, I am a public school grad who expects my kid to attend public (and we have nowhere near your HHI). But I have learned things about our local schools that alarm me and have looking at ALL options, including privates, moving, charters, and homeschooling. Stuff like: our IB high school does not even offer AP Calculus. That's a pretty basic course that was definitely available in even my middle-of-nowhere rural HS in the 90s! Probably the public schools are better where you are, but you can't just assume that's the case. Your wife may have more information about the local schools that is driving her motivations, whereas you may just be assuming the public schools are good without knowing the details. You need to know the details before you arguing with your wife, especially if she has put in more legwork on this matter than you at this point.

3) Regardless of how you resolve this debate, be cautious that you don't cut off your nose to spite your face. There are a LOT of advantages to having a SAH spouse, especially for high earners with demanding jobs. You may assume that you could outsource everything your wife does because of your income. You would be wrong. See #2 above -- how do you outsource gathering useful information about school offerings and evaluating options? The best you can do is hire a consultant, which will cost $$$, and you still wind up having to process all the info from them and make choices for your kids. If your wife is working full time, that gets much more stressful. Plus simply not being around the kids as much means being less in touch with what is going on with them, and teenagers can develop all kinds of behavior problems, especially if they feel like their parents aren't around or aren't invested. I am very pro-working moms (I am one) but you are basically proposing having your wife take a FT job as some kind of punishment for this proposed expenditure. That is NOT a good reason for a SAHP to go to work, and could result in all kinds of unintended consequences. Think this through.

Right now, I'm leaning towards moving to a better school district or potentially homeschooling with a heavy investment in extra-curriculars to resolve our own public school issues. But if we had your HHI, I would absolutely be bringing up private with my DH, exploring local privates and figuring out if that might be a good fit for our family. Education isn't the no brainer it once was, and public school is in a bit of a crisis right now. You need to go into this with your eyes open, not some knee jerk reaction that private school is a waste or that your wife is trying to spend "your" money. You're talking about someone you admit is not a big spender, who is suggesting spending a large some on an educational investment. You might be right that it's not worth it, but I absolutely think it's worth a conversation. Treat this like your job -- would you immediately write off a proposed business development expenditure as useless if it came from a trusted colleague with a good track record, just because the price tag seemed high at first and you weren't familiar with it? Or would you have a few meetings, at least, to discuss it?[/quote]

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