Reply to Explain to me the financial risk of SAH if partner is a high earner

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a therapist and I seen more than a few married and divorced men in my practice. They can often know intellectually their wives have a difficult job as a sahm, they love them, they love their kids, they know their spouses are good mothers. They feel proud, too, of themselves, that they can provide.

But they can also simultaneously resent the burden of being the sole breadwinner. Almost all have a keen sense of what they believe are their wives imitations at home, what she doesn't do well. They keep tabs on it, in their mind. When they are frustrated they are prone to honing in on those things. If a child acts out, or has behavioral issues, since you are with them more, expect him to think you are part of the issue.  Unconsciously or consciously, he may see most aspects of raising the children as your job, especially at that income level.  It can wear over time and many of them (again, there may be a selection bias at play) are conflicted. Appreciative but potentially pissy as well. Not exactly a clinical term but you know what I mean.[/quote]

I’m a SAHM and this tracks in my marriage. We planned from the time we were engaged for me to SAH, and DH has never so much and hinted that he wants me to get a job to share in the breadwinning burden. But there has never been this total acceptance of the way I do “my” job. He has questioned and criticized everything from my parenting philosophy to the way I load the dishwasher. I know that I am a good parent and a mediocre housekeeper but sometimes his criticism makes me feel like I’m a mediocre parent and the worst housekeeper ever. I think that now that the kids are older and we have a better sense of why our kids struggled and can see in hindsight that the way I approached parenting was absolutely die the best (the child he thought I wasn’t firm enough with turned out to be autistic), and he is more understanding about my housekeeping skills. But except for my very part-time job, I never have any work that isn’t subject to his scrutiny. He has gotten a lot more understanding, but I still hate it. I think people who are highly successful sometimes have no patience for people who don’t things as well, and that attribute of DH has caused a lot of friction. Therapy has helped a lot.

But on the other hand, I don’t know that working while raising  a special needs child would have been better. I really think that DC’s emotional health would have been much worse had she not benefited from daily, patient, contentious parenting. Yeah a nanny could have done it but it would be hard to guarantee that level of quality care.

Honestly sometimes feel like the best option is just not having kids. [/quote]

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