Reply to Does you relationship change if you stay home ( for moms)?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Different experience here.

I did almost exactly what you are talking about -- I intended to go back after my leave, discovered I was very much not ready to leave my baby, extended my leave, and then wound up just staying home for a couple years. I have zero regrets about it -- it was 100% the right choice for me.

It did change our relationship but not for the worse.[b] One thing it did was really force us to reckon with what it means to "work" in our family.[/b] We realized that even though we'd been contributing equally financially for a long time, I'd been doing a lot more of the housework and "invisible load" well before we had a kid. Sure, some of that was because I like it and because I worked at home and it was convenient. But it was also a lot because of gender expectations, and we had to talk through that and discuss what it means.

The upshot was that [b]we all (but especially DH) became a lot more aware and appreciative of the unpaid work of taking care of the house, dealing with finances, planning vacations, as well as now, childcare. We are more explicit about the fact that this is valuable work even though it doesn't technically earn us money.[/b] And my DH has started going a LOT more of it. He's had to grow up a bit as a person. It's been good for us.

I will also say that one of the best things I did was continue to keep a toe in my career even though I was mostly not working. That first year, I took on a couple small freelancing projects for my old employer that were easy to do while my baby was napping or playing. As she got older, I started taking on more work but also realizing she needed more focused attention, which led to me starting to get some childcare, until eventually I was working close to full-time and she was in close to full-time care. It was a gradual progression that wrapped up around the time she turned 3. I did not experience that feeling of having to start from scratch to go back to work because I was already working. I kept my work contacts. I maintained a website for my freelancing. I only earned a few thousand dollars in freelance income those first 2 years, but I stayed in the game enough that I honestly never felt like it was hard to return to work.[/quote]

New poster.

The post above pretty much could have been written by me with the exception of the gradual use of child care and gradual return to full-time work.

I stayed home. I loved my job but knew I would want to stay home with our baby because we had her fairly late (though not "late" for DCUM moms). I freelanced for my old employers for years but wasn't out to make a certain dollar amount--I was just keeping my hand in. Stopped for a few years, focusing on a lot of volunteering with our middle school/high school kid's schools and some very time-consuming extracurriculars and other things. Resumed freelancing when DC went to college and still freelance but no, it's not equivalent to full-time hours or pay, not by a long shot. It is absolutely a privilege to be able to freelance and not have to earn a set amount of money and to be able to pause to do other things. I recognize that.

The key, OP, whether you totally focus on being an SAHM or do any form of work, is your spouse. Like the PP above, I have a spouse who does not think "work" is only real if it involves certain types of jobs, hours and paychecks. My spouse is and always has been exceptionally good about seeing what I do as valuable, whether that's freelancing, not freelancing, volunteering, most of all being there with our kid. He has always been this way and has not looped around to some kind of "Well, you need to bring in X percent of household monies now" at any point. Nor has he ever been a "You should handle all household stuff since you're 'at home.'" And nope, he doesn't expect me to have a perfectly clean house and put a perfect dinner on the table every night. (Thank God.)

If you and your husband are on the same page with expectations for housekeeping, meals, shopping, maintenance, scheduling stuff like appointments etc., and if he is a person who is not hung up about "If you're SAH, you will have to handle X, Y and Z." Communication about expectations is key. And you both have to understand that expectations will change -- you kid will get older and have many more places to be, which requires a chauffeur for many years, and if there's another kid, it complicates logistics, etc. etc.

Our relationship was great before I started staying home and has been great since I started staying home. But we communicate a lot and really easily. It really helps, I now realize, that DH was raised in a home where his dad's job .was at home at many points during daytime, and cooked meals because mom's job meant she might be out one night at dinnertime but not the next, etc. DH was raised to believe dads did whatever was needed without grudging it or expecting their wives to do specific tasks because, wives. Makes me very grateful for my late in-laws....[/quote]

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