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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Op here. I wanted to clarify some things. At my ivy, I was part of a religious group and many, many of the women assumed they would stay home so I've been surprised by how many have continued to work while having several kids. There are two waves of child-bearing- the more religious are ahead of the curve and are on baby 3 or even 4.

My more nonreligious friends are just starting but I anticipate will likely end up with more in the next few years (in talking with them they want big families). Even the nonreligious people I was friends with had kind assumed it would be very hard to balance a career with their future husband's high profile job and the common understanding was that they may need to take some time off when their kids were young. Now the people making those comments have like 1-3 kids and work full time (one is a CEO!). I think the flexible work arrangement is a big part of this.

I do think that if you are SAHM w/ a rich husband (prior goal/ status), you are at a disadvantage. I'm estimating that most of my friends have dual incomes exceeding 250 but I assume most are making between 300-500k + combined. [/quote]

I also assumed id stay home because my mom did, while she had young kids. But so far I haven’t, because I a) had maternity leave (this was far less common for our parents generation) 2) I have a more flexible work arrangement (also didn’t really exist for corporate jobs in our parents generation) and 3) while my partner is a somewhat high earner, he’s not biglaw type earner and staying home would be a financial sacrifice. Life is more expensive and competitive these days. Our generation likes to travel, do travel sports, have tutors for their kids if needed, private schools or expensive school districts etc. cost of living was not as high when we were growing up, “feminism” was in its infancy, and single earner families were more common amongst the UMC.

I also ran with a religious circle in college. I’m Jewish. Not personally so religious anymore, but I’m also in two worlds- the one where many of my childhood friends who are somewhat religious were married by 23/24, having babies by 25/26, three by 30/32. In this crowd, some women have demanding careers, but most chose more flexible or traditionally female careers like education, OT, speech therapy, physical therapy, nursing anticipating a more traditional household structure.

In my current world, more secular, most people started having kids in their early thirties or later. A lot of my friends a few years older than me who had kids in their 30s say they would have had a third if they’d had more time- they didn’t feel up to it in their late thirties. The ones who did have three or more had them much closer in age, or are having their third kid in their mid to late thirties with 3-4 year age gaps. The women who work have more corporate or professional jobs (law, medicine, finance, marketing etc.) but there are still many SAHMs who either stopped working once they had kids or never really intended to work.

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