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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You say he has an academic job?  Is he an assistant professor, who will be working toward tenure for the next six years?  I am a tenured prof, so I am surrounded by other academics, and I don't know a single male academic who was the default parent while working toward tenure.  [b]In fact, the most successful mid-career scholars in my field are the men whose wives SAH or have less-intense careers. [/b] The thing about academia is that the work is infinite, and the standards are vague.  You could always collect just one more set of data, publish just one more article, etc., and you never feel like it's enough until you've got tenure.  And then you're working toward full.  I know there are a lot of jobs that you can never "turn off" but academia is unusual simply because the work is self-driven and limitless.

So, I'd be thinking about how he's going to resist that pressure to publish more and more and more and focus on running the household while you pursue your career.

The research shows that the most likely person to get tenure is a married male, the most unlikely is a married female.  (Unmarried men and unmarried women fall in between.)  The typical explanation for these differences is that men are successful because women are running their personal lives, and women are unsuccessful professionally because they're having to run their family life too.

So, is your husband going to step outside of these well established patterns in academia and somehow be a default parent and a successful scholar?  There are certainly examples of men who have done it, but it takes commitment on their part to buck the dominant trends.[/quote]

A man who only bring home scraps of bacon for his dutiful wife to cook up? Not attractive. If you are going to be a slave to your job you better bring in some money. otherwise you are just a selfish prick.[/quote]

More and more this is how I feel. It’s getting harder and harder not to see having kids in this marriage as a truly raw deal. I am still weighing it, but it is highly likely that I don’t have kids with him and we divorce in a few years when I feel that I am in solid financial footing. I may not meet someone else in time, but I am starting to feel at peace with that given how unattractive my current situation is to me. -OP[/quote]

You seem generally unhappy now, and also haven't once expressed that you would really like to have a baby. I think that's the conversation you need to have with yourself - do you want to be a mother?  If you do, then you need to figure out how that happens.

A baby certainly isn't going to make your marriage easier or better.  [/quote]

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