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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What if one half of a lesbian couple chooses to stay home with the kids?[/quote]

I don’t know a lot of lesbian couples with kids, but every one that I do know has super traditional roles with one person staying at home with kids and one person acting as the breadwinner. 
Maybe if you take all of the anxiety about gender roles and the patriarchy out of it and just do what makes sense for your family, this is it.   [/quote]

As a lesbian with a kid, I think if you look at the choices made by lesbian parents it can help bring the structural factors that shape our choices into focus. Among couples I know:

1. Two professional equal earners happy in their jobs/each took half time maternity leave and then used full time paid childcare (this was me and my spouse)
2. One person has a high paying professional job with benefits, the other person has an hourly low wage job (low wage person become SAHM)
3. Two professionals, but one was a trailing spouse. After relocation it made sense for the trailing spouse to stay home with the baby rather than restart career with a baby at home.
4. One professional with solid job and benefits, spouse works parttime with flexible hours and they fill in with hourly childcare. Spouse may identify as a SAHM or WOHM depending on the crowd.
5. One person has a high paying job but variable salary, the other person has a lower paying job with good benefits, both continued working and they used full time childcare.
6. Two professional workers, one always dreamed of being SAH, so they agreed that she would SAH until the last child is in K.
7. One spouse works a job with regular m-f hours, the other spouse does 2 or 3 12s on the weekend or overnight and then takes on childcare during the day so they have no childcare costs.
8. One spouse really wanted to SAH but the other spouse got laid off, so they swapped roles.

I think lesbian couples tend to align more with the expectations of their socioeconomic community and structural realities about how to use the resources they have. When we had our child, we were both young in our careers making low professional salaries. It made sense for us to pay for childcare and keep working. Now that my spouse makes more than double what I do with good benefits, I might make a different choice. I also think there are many more women in between SAH and WOH than we usually recognize. Thankfully most of us find a way to make peace with the choices we have but don't go so far as needing to tear each other down about different choices.[/quote]

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