Reply to SAHMs and marriage dynamics?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I stay at home and have the same arrangement with my husband. Everything is equal and I buy whatever I want for myself with *our* money.
You realize that staying home to raise children is a pretty intense job if done right? The alternative is a stranger of questionable intelligence and motivation raising one’s kids for $60-70k per year after tax. So why couldn’t I buy myself jewelry or whatever if I do that job for free and better than a nanny? [/quote]

Are you talking about homeschooling? If not, what do you know that’s so intense once your kids are out of school? [/quote]

School is 8:30am-3pm, 170 days in a year. You do the math.
And yes, kids need us even after they start school. There are health issues, appointments, homework, after school activities, social drama etc to navigate. I cook home made, healthy meals. I read to them every day. And so on.
Sure, someone with inferior decision making abilities owning to inferior education could navigate some of that while I am at work, but that is not what I wanted for my family. [/quote]

I do that stuff and I have a job too. [/quote]

Ok it’s time someone said it. NO YOU DON’T. No one is juggling all the balls and nothing is getting dropped and doing it all! It’s just that simple. Something is getting cut somewhere. You’re cutting time from your kids or from your job and only you know which one it is but it’s BS and no one is buying it. [/quote]

So you’re seriously saying that someone with a job cannot

Deal with their kids health issues
Bring their kids to appointments 
Help their kids with their homework
Enroll their kids in after-school activities 
Help their kids navigate “social drama”
Cook meals every day
And read to their kids everyday?

That is absurd.  Any parent worth a damn does all of these things for their kids, whether they work or not.  You don’t have to malign working parents to justify your decision to stay home.[/quote]

I really think that most working parents either have a situation like OP’s where both people work reasonable hours and share the load evenly, live near helpful and involved family, have hired help for cooking and after school activities, or don’t actually do all of this stuff every day.

[/quote]

I work 30 hrs per week, DH is a big law partner and we have 3 young kids. We outsource a lot, and I actually don’t think two parents who work full time can do this very easily - you can’t outsource the parenting stuff. Maybe if both parents have flexible jobs, but most families I know have one parent with a flexible job, but rarely both, and they are tired.

It’s not just “taking a child to an appointment”, someone has to talk with the doctor and get feedback/next steps. Also, what time are people getting off of work and picking up kids when working full time? I used to drop my kids at school at 8, office by 9, pickup at 6, bedtime 7:30 - that’s not a lot of time for cooking, talking with kids, homework, solving problems, and bedtime. Maybe you split shifts with you spouse and then you are home earlier, but one of the main reasons I went to 30 hrs per week is so I could stop working at 3 pm (and not 5 pm) and have a couple of extra hours with my kids (while not having to go to bed super early and missing time with me spouse). It’s made a huge difference in my quality time with my kids.

I am not saying this to guilt working parents about what they aren’t doing - but there is a reality about the hours of time when your kids are awake and when you are working. Flexible working helps to some degree, but then you are cutting into time with your spouse. And since women are the ones who seem to get the short end of the stick - either doing the majority of the child/house work and lose out more in a divorce, perpetuating this belief that we can “have it all” is not very helpful. It just makes mothers (like me) who were struggling to make it all work feel like we are failing, when it’s really that we are given unrealistic expectations that we can do all the things a SAHP can do while working a FT job. [/quote]

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