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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am a full time working mom with two kids in Elementary School.  Personally I don't have the choice to not work, so I have always worked and always will continue to work.  I don't see Stay at Home Parents as lazy, but I do think they are taking a big risk by choosing to stay home, and that risk increases the longer they stay out of the work force.   Their spouse (which let's be honest is typically the man) often sees his career benefit due to having a stay at home partner.  They immediately fall into the mold of the traditional ideal employee - a hard working man with a family to support -- and their career improves because of it.   Meanwhile the longer their stay at home wife stays out of the work force, the more stale her skills become and her earning prospects decrease if she ever wants to start working again.   This can create a big power imbalance in the marriage, which can really change the relationship between spouses.

I've seen two friends who are SAHMs go through nasty divorces over the past few years, and they have both had to struggle with reentering the workforce, and it has reinforced for me that staying home is very risky for the stay at home spouse.   One of my best friend's is a divorce attorney, and as she says, hitching yourself to someone else's wagon is never a good life plan. 
[/quote]

EGADS!!!
Let's also lay to rest the "equality in marriage" Kool Aid that working women drink.  I personally don't know any working couple in our acquaintance in DMV where both parties are earning equal amounts.  Most of my WOHM friends (with few exceptions) are earning a fraction of what their husbands are earning. If they get divorced they will not be able to maintain the same lifestyle.  Most of them are also taking on the full mental load of dealing with their kids schooling, ECs, health, nutrition, mental health, home, summer camps, socializing, holidays etc, etc.  Yes, a lot of them have husbands who cook and will occasionally carpool  but the house is being run by these moms and the kids are being raised by these moms.  Mostly, the main thing the dads are providing is money.  When the DH does not make enough money, the WOHMs fill pages about their loser, low earner DHs on DCUM.

I have seen divorces among WOHM friends. Most of them had husbands who were travelling a lot and had affairs with their co-workers.  As for the one high powered, high income  working mom that I knew, she was unable to divorce her low earning scumbag husband  because she would have had to give him alimony.  SO, for married moms,  earning a paycheck as a way to safeguard against divorce or financial insecurity is not the magic bullet. The only way you can protect yourself is not marry a scumbag and not have kids with a scumbag.  Good luck!!

SAHMs who divorce can get better alimony and child support. Yes, divorce will make them poor, but that is because women usually have less money even when they are working.  WOHMs who divorce also see a sharp decline in their HHI. Death of spouse, disability of spouse?  I would suggest that everyone needs to be very well insured and also have disability and long term care insurance, once they have children.

Reproductive cost for women is tremendously high.  Which means that women should be careful who they marry and  who they have kids with.  Isn't it interesting that even on this forum it is only the WOHMs who are posing the question "What do SAHMs do all day?", "How do you manage housework and working?", "Why are PTA moms creating more work for us?", "How to simplify holidays?"...blah, blah, blah.  None of the husbands of WOHMs are posing these questions on this forum so what is the "Equality in Marriage" BS these women are talking about? Their husbands are not worried about or tackling the issues that these women are. Most the men are saying that they are not getting enough sex. That is all. They are not asking one question about simplifying housework, schooling of their children, dealing with ILs, juggling care of their SN kids or anything else. DHs of SAHMs are obviously not carrying the mental load of all of this because that is what the wives do.

I also find it interesting that WOHMs criticize SAHMs with school going or grown up kids as being "lazy" if they outsource chores.  The weird flex when they can afford "cleaning lady" because they make "their own money" and martyr/superwoman complex of "I do my work and everything else that SAHMs does" if they can't afford outsourcing  is frankly very disturbing and  strange.  I am a SAHM who employs a human cleaning lady (not AI robot) who also happens to be a WOHM.  However, no WOHM posting here mentions any kinship with these kinds of poor WOHMs who are cleaning their toilets, wiping their kids butts, and giving baths to their elderly parents.

Why all this frothing and foaming at mouth when a SAHM employs a poor WOHM to clean her house just like a WOHM does?  If the DH of the SAHM does not care about her spending money on a cleaning lady, why do WOHMs do?   And if a SAHM wants to provide childcare to her own children, which WOHMs pay other WOHMs to do, why would that be a problem?

WOHMs should be grateful and try and reflect on their own priviledge.  Compare your life with your childcare provider and your cleaners, because you all work outside of the house to make money.  Compare your lives with other WOHMs.  It makes zero sense to compare your lives with SAHMs because  they are not living your life. [/quote]

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