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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If this is what you want, you need to talk openly about it BEFORE you get engaged!  I wanted to stay at home with my boys until they went to Kindergarten and that's what I did.  I was upfront.  It was the best thing I did.   My boys are 12 now.  I went back to work when they started school and while I sacrificed 5 years of income, the time with them was precious.  Find a man who will support this for you and your family.  You are not planning to be a SAHM for 20 years.  [/quote]

+1 DH and I talked about it after dating for a bit. I was 30 and he was 36 so if we weren't on the same page about kids neither of us wanted to waste time.

I was clear that I wanted to be able to scale back my career to be home at least for the first 3 years for each kid but had thought about how I might freelance to keep up my career. We'd both had SAHMs but I'd seen the downside with my mom being a long-term SAHM and kind of depressed and aimless until she went back to work when my siblings and I were in HS. I was clear that I did not want to be a long term SAHM. DH also thought it good to have a parent at home in the early years and said he'd be willing to do that if I didn't want to. We had similar salaries but my job was more flexible and better able to maintain via freelancing.

In the end, I did freelance and was SAH until our youngest started K (7 years total). Didn't have trouble returning to a FT job at that point. When the oldest started MS, DH chose to shift his work so he was WAH because he was concerned about our son being unsupervised after school (DH got into a bit of trouble as a teen).

I loved my time at home and am very glad I was able to do it but also don't know that I'd have felt I had to if I was having a baby today in a much more WAH-friendly environment. My young coworkers at my current company all WAH full time and seem to manage the FT work/baby balance really well (with nearby childcare). But 20 years ago, I had full time in-office job with a long commute. DH was also full time in office but had a short commute so if we kept our work schedules it would have all been on him for drop off/pick up and evening baby routine until I could get home. Not the lifestyle we wanted. And, switching to a new job when your planning to soon have a baby isn't great either when you need to lean in and prove yourself.

I don't think many men would be thrilled by the idea of a permanently SAH/housewife spouse these days. But wanting to adjust the emphasis on parenting/work over time and being realistic about how you plan for that is not unreasonable.[/quote]

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