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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm OP. A lot of it is that my DW made a lot of decisions in a very passive way without my input. She stopped job hunting after leaving a job she didn't like. She just felt it was impossible to get hired pregnant. And with daycare cost, it was a wash. So, she just made the decision to stop working or looking and that was that. There are jobs she'd be qualified for but she just isn't willing to do the work to hustle for them like she used to.

But I really liked our daycare. Our older thrived and our younger one really would benefit from being in a more structured environment. I actually would have been happier taking a small loss and having the kids go because our time together would be quality time and our time apart would be spent furthering ourselves professionally as adults. And truthfully, the wear and tear on home would be so much less because we'd all be gone for large parts of the day. I can tell you right now the house is a mess and will be until this weekend when I will spend it doing a deep cleaning.

I just think that the decision was a bad one and when I try to bring it up, I get tears, demands that she needs a break and wants to just be a mom as her job (I just point our being a parent isn't a job so much as a role in a family. You don't stop being a mom just because you work). Financially, it's stupid for us to not both be working. We aren't saving for retirement beyond my 401k and we aren't saving for the kids' college or anything beyond a few months of emergency saving. That stresses me out.

I actually started therapy to deal with my resentment. It helped but the therapist mentioned that this might just be a phase. So I wanted to see if anyone else went through this...[/quote]

Dude, look what you just wrote. [b]If your wife worked, her salary would go to paying daycare costs. If your wife doesn't work, you don't have to pay for daycare. If it is a true wash and what comes in goes immediately out, how can you fault your wife for being a SAHM mom if she is not interested in, as she may look at it, working for free? [/b]If this statement is true, then you're the breadwinner anyway whether she works or not because her role - whether working to pay for daycare or not working to not have to pay for daycare - has nothing to do with how much money you as a family have each month.

You may not think that a SAHM is sexy, but I'd loooove to see how sexy you think your wife is when she is working 40 hours a week, doing childcare at nights and weekends, and has even less time to cook and clean for you.

[/quote]

[b]First of all, daycare is an expense counted against BOTH parents' salaries.  Not hers, not his, BOTH.  So it's not "her" salary paying daycare costs; it is the household income paying those costs.

Second:  Working is about more than today's take-home pay.  It is about retirement benefits, healthcare, an investment in one's career (which pays off in higher earnings as time goes by). [/b] The list goes on.  And daycare is a short-term proposition, relative to one's career.  Yes, it is expensive and eats into income - we were in the red for several years when we had both a nanny and part-time preschool - but that is only for a few years.  In the longer run, that becomes negligible vis-a-vis the income that a parent who continues to work earns compared to what s/he would have earned had s/he left the workforce.[/quote]

[b]Actually, he said her salary = daycare expenses. So there you go.[/b]

OP's wife has made it clear she doesn't value investing in her career. So for her working is probably going to be just about money. Which will pay for daycare. Which they wouldn't have to pay for if she was a SAHM. OP is looking at this as a $ thing and he dislikes the options that she makes $ and they spend it on childcare and net at $0 or she doesn't work and they don't pay for childcare and they net at $0.[/quote]

No, not "there you go."  That's just math.  From a household income point of view, childcare for a family with two working parents counts against BOTH salaries.  Not just the mom's, BOTH.

RE investing in her career or not, working is indeed about money.  And daycare ends, leaving a dual-income family with well, two incomes.

OP has clarified the "net at $0" issue and they definitely do not net at $0 given the benefits she had while working.

The biggest issue here, IMO, is OP's selfish wife's unilateral decision to impose sole breadwinner responsibilities on her husband.  Which is bad enough, but add to that the day-to-day routine of Pinterest crafts and next to no housekeeping, and well, my blood would be boiling too.

OP sounds like a reasonable person and a good husband.  His wife needs to arrive at an understanding of her role as part of a marital team, and not a free agent.  [/quote]

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