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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]SAH moms get bashed on DCUM all the time for being lazy, unmotivated, or worse. The reality is often much different.

Imagine that you met your spouse in grad school when you were both young and ambitious. You fell in love, got married, and decided to take the next step and have a family after a few years on the job. Baby arrives and Mom is instantly Mommy-tracked by her bosses. Dad's career takes off and he feels pressure to work more. Travels more, takes on more responsibility at work, and income continues to rise. Moms career gets stalled because she can't travel as much or work til 10 pm. Baby #2 arrives and Mom SAH because she makes a fraction of spouse and DH is working all the time. Add in taking care of aging parents. Life happens, and not always as we planned.
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Allowing this model to continue is terrible for both the future of our sons and daughters.

Men need to raise their kids and stop using work as an excuse. [/quote]

I think that's easy to say, but sometimes harder to put into practice. My situation pretty closely tracked what PP laid out, except that I was the big law associate who was very openly being groomed to make partner in a couple of years while my husband was struggling to find a place professionally. After baby #1, I was very explicitly mommy tracked no matter how hard I worked, while DH finally found a firm that looked promising. We were killing ourselves working, he started making headway while I continued to stall, and when baby #2 was on the way I looked at our lives and realized it wasn't worth killing myself for something that wasn't going to happen and that it would be better for everyone if I gave up, stayed home with the kids and supported DH's career instead. I don't think that's a decision I ever would have made if my career had continued on its pre-baby trajectory, it was directly the result of pretty blatant discrimination at work. Sure, we could have decided that DH would be the one to step back and I'd keep beating my head against a brick wall in the name of gender equality, but neither of us would have been all that happy.[/quote]

It's not about gender equality at work, it's about your children having 2 parents at home.

You chose 1 huge income instead of 2 reasonable incomes that accommodate your children having 2 parents. [/quote]

Again, things that are easy to say from the cheap seats. We got into those careers before kids were even an idea for us, and we didn't have a realistic understanding of what it would take to balance those careers and kids at the time. By the time reality hit us, we were in the thick of it and basically took the clearest route to sanity, which was for me to quit and DH to keep working. Trying to figure out two simultaneous career changes (that probably would have required a lot of extra work time on their own to make the transition) when no one was sleeping enough and we were stressed to the hilt just wasn't happening. Or smart.

Since then I've gone back to work, I run my own business from our home that lets me control my own schedule and be available to my kids when they're not in school (but I still don't do 7 pm Target runs). Now that he is a mid-level partner, DH has been able to reclaim some control over his professional schedule and has made adjustments so that he gets meaningful time with our kids every day. He puts the scout meetings and soccer games in his calendar and schedules work around them as best he can so he's there most of the time (and when he can't, I make sure I'm there). We have 1 big income, one significantly smaller income, and kids who know they can count on us because we've made it a priority and structured our lives around making sure they don't get the short end of our choices. [/quote]

Your choices were exactly that choices. Your H chose to miss a huge chunk of his kids life for money, it was a choice nothing that was put upon you.  I am glad he is finally engaging in his kids life, kids should have 2 parents when there are actually 2 parents.

You can color code it any way you want but you children missed out on a bond with their father for parts of their life. Nice to see he is making up for it. [/quote]

You are reading a lot into my posts that isn't there. My DH has always been engaged, and they didn't miss out on a bond with their father for parts of their life. Even during the periods when he had less control over his schedule and less time at home during the week, I viewed part of my responsibility as SAHM as getting all of the household work and errands out of the way during the week so that when he was home with us, we were all present as a family and not distracted by yard maintenance or trips to Target. Through this whole discussion, I've never said that OP's kids weren't bonded to her and their dad, that's a separate issue from whether the kids have an adult who's present and engaged at any point during the week. We don't always get it right (no parent does), but we make a conscious effort to pay attention to what's happening in our household and to make changes when we realize things are off balance.[/quote]

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