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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I will give you my thoughts.

a. If I see a rich SAHM with her Lululemons and Barre classes, driving around in her BMW I get annoyed because of jealousy. She must have married well enough to have to not worry about earning a living and enjoying a plush life. Must be nice.

b. Mostly what is disturbing to me is usually these SAHM types are very well educated and come from well off families to begin with. They grew up supporting women's rights and access to equal opportunities. They also tend to be tiger moms and fight to get their daighters into the best private schools and colleges and discuss plans to have their daughters become scientists and diplomats...

They themselves could have had fantastic careers. It just seems hypocritical, lazy and...fake.

c. The middle class SAHMs do not bother me. They were probably not very ambitious or well educated to begin with.[/quote]

I am one of these women. What you might not know about me is that my husband is out of the house every work day for 11 hours. Plus he occasionally has to put in some hours at home or on the weekend. He has an unpredictable travel schedule. If a client wants him to pitch his product or take a meeting, he gets on a plane when it is convenient to them (usually the next day or so). If I was working full time, I'd still have to deal with that plus the demands of my own job plus the kids and the house. Fwiw he makes around 750k with occasional equity grants which helped us to pay off all our debt including school loans and our mortgage and to build our net worth from there. The salary alone is enough to cover all of our needs and most of our wants. So why would I work when the extra ~40k I might bring in would actually make my life more miserable and not better? That's not even taking into consideration the material cost of childcare or the psychological cost of putting our kids in wraparound care when they are used to mom being home with them all the time.

We also really like to travel as a family. It's one of our greatest joys and biggest splurges. We plan 4 week long trips per year plus occasional long weekends here and there. I also usually take the kids on a trip by ourselves for a week in the summer. If I got a job, I'd be locked into their schedule, which might not align with my husband's and I'd be lucky if I got 2 weeks off. One of my brothers works in an hourly position and doesn't get any paid time off at all.

I am highly educated and proud of it. I have a master's degree in history from a top R1 university. I might not use it to earn any money but I don't think you can "waste" your education. It's not like all of the knowledge I gained in my history classes suddenly leaked out of my head when I quit my job. I never set out to be the woman driving around in her beemer on her way to Barre class. It's just the way life worked out. Someday I will go back to work just to have something to do but right now is not a good time. You can really look at what I'm telling you and find something to judge? This is what I don't get about these kinds of conversations. They become so angry and derogatory so quickly but they involve real people who are just trying to do the best they can with what they have to work with. These are the cards I was dealt. I married a man with a very demanding job. There are pros and cons to that. One of the pros being the money, one of the cons being the schedule. More than that though, he loves what he does and I love that he loves it. If I want to stay married to him, I have to accommodate that. That's just how it is.[/quote]

[b]Your earning potential is $40k and your DH makes $750k?  You must be super hot! Classic secretary marries executive situation. Timeless. [/quote[/b]]

This is a really terrible thing to say. I am a woh mom. I make $40,000 a year. My husband makes $450,000 a year. I keep working because I enjoy my job. But I am certainly no minion to him who tried to marry up.

You don't know people situations.

I've been married to my husband since both of our incomes were only in the 40,000, in our very early 20s.  Some people have different priorities. Try not to be such a raging bitch[/quote]

[b]True but I suspect when you married your DH making $40k, he wasn't a history teacher who's earning potential would stall out. You knew his career income potential.  [/b]

Or was his income path radical like he was a history teacher and then started blackboard.com?[/quote]

I was in grad school and he was in the military when we married right after undergrad. He took a different path and made unexpected changes after separating from his branch and his income did skyrocket.  I stayed in higher education which unfortunately for where I work, does not may much, but I do love.

I did not know his income potential nor could I even imagine s such a huge change. I know a few couples like us; in some cases, the gender roles are reversed. Sometimes when you marry, one partner makes less or has to make sacrifices for the family. And it isn't always the woman, though it usually is.

At any rate, not everyone, not even anyone I know, marries for money or potential therein.

The suggestion seems to be that income disparities and SAH mean 1. gold-digging "marrying up"and/or 2. Intellectual disparities that can only be explained by the hotness of the wife.
If you can't see how offensive these generalizations are, and I am NOT a SAHM, I don't know what to say. 
[/quote]

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