Reply to no 2nd child because DH won’t support SAH?

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[quote=Anonymous]I would talk to him and spell it out clearly. My DH also "seemed" uncomfortable with the idea of me being a SAHM. But by the time I actually said to him "I'd like to stay home for a while," he was 100% on board. I think the difference for him was in thinking about it conceptually versus thinking about it practically.

Conceptually, he prefers two incomes to one and the idea of being the sole breadwinner is stressful. Both understandable. I also prefer two incomes to one, if that factor is taken in isolation. And I totally understand why being the sole breadwinner is stressful. I also think he worried that if I stayed home, we'd drift apart because I'd be focused on home life and he'd be focused on work life and we wouldn't have as much in common anymore in terms of our day to day.

But when the decision was actually made, we were talking about it practically -- the cost of childcare, what we want for our children, who does drop off and pick up from daycare, what that daycare is actually like for our kids, what home life is like, the cost of things like take out/meal kits/cleaning services to make up for the fact that we are both working all day, etc. Plus, just what our home feels like when we are both working, especially when I was working in my high stress job while trying to adjust to being a new mother. What it means like for us to relax or take vacations or just enjoy each others company when we are stretched thin on time.

When we discussed it in practical terms, the benefits of that second income became a lot less appealing. Plus being a sole breadwinner is stressful, but so is the constant grind of working all day, coming home to a house where grocery still need to be bought and dinner still needs to be made and your partner is exhausted from their job and you want to spend quality time with your kids but there's too much chaos and you wind up just wanting them to go to bed so you can relax.

Ground the conversation in reality. Talk details and logistics. Yes, many families make the dual income thing work. Those families aren't your family. They might have different jobs, different resources, different thresholds for stress, etc. That's fine. Focus on your family, your needs, what you guys want out of life. For us, having me stay home and then work PT got us exactly where we wanted to go, with less money but more of everything else. Help him see that whole picture.[/quote]

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