Anonymous wrote:When we were engaged, I told stbDH that I would never ever ever be a SAHP. ever. Life has a way of happening that messes up ones plans. We ended up with two children that needed more intensive parenting for much longer than NT children. In order to have a life where we both spent more time with them, one of us needed to be at home. I have been a SAHP since. I was definitely a more natural WOHP and it took a very long time to acclimate to the cadence of being a SAHP. We now have two relatively independent adult children who have finally blossomed and are contributing members of society (well one is there and one is nearly there)- something that was much harder to achieve for both.

You know, you don't need to justify your decision to stay home by saying your kids were special needs. Any woman's choice is valid if it's what works for her. When women continually put that qualifier on their time out of the workforce, it smacks me as so misogynistic.

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Anonymous wrote:Does everyone just decide to keep working if they don't come out ahead? Anyone make decisions based on wanting to be with your kids?

No. You see your kids plenty after they are about 5. My experience was that moms who wanted to be with their kids had tons of family, friend or paid help.

Your experience is limited. I decided to stay home with my DC for the first two years of her life and I have no local family and we had zero paid help at that time (we didn't even hire sitters for date nights except a couple times because me being home meant we had to be very careful with expenses). I also have no idea what kind of help people get from their friends -- mine are great but are definitely not providing childcare help, lol.

The reason I decided to do this is that I had my child late after not being sure I would have a baby at all. I knew it was unlikely I'd have another. I didn't expect to love the baby phase (always assumed I'd like the older kid/teen stage best) but I did. When it was time for me to return to work as planned, I realized that what I really wanted was to stay home, to really enjoy these early days with what was almost certainly my only child. I stayed home for two years and then started working PT. My kid is in school now but I still don't work FT and my priorities absolutely start with being a parent -- work is how I make money so that our family can afford certain things. But it is not my life's work. That's my kid.

I'd never judge anyone for returning to work after leave and being a WOH mom. I had every expectation that would be me. My priorities changed drastically when my child was born and I realized that I wanted something specific out of this experience and in order to get it, I'd need to be home or at least PT.

The idea that NO ONE makes this decision based largely on wanting to spend time with their child is false. I know other women like me. We are well-educated professionals. I know a couple who have spouses who are just very high earners, but most of us don't -- we SAH for some period of time based entirely on just wanting that time with our kids. It's really not uncommon.

If you don't know people like this, that's fine. But you don't know everyone. Stop assuming your experience is universal. It's very much not.

No wonder then why women are their own worst enemy in the workplace. If you're going to change your mind about working when you have your first kid at, say, 35, doesn't that mean women like you pose a risk greater than a man's to an employer?

How is it different from an employer’s perspective from when a man chooses to switch careers or change jobs? It’s not like hiring a man is a guarantee he’ll still be there 29 years later.

Anecdotally, every woman I know married to a man who doesn’t do his share, actively does things to enable the behavior. From quitting her job, EBF, not sleep training, never leaving the kids to go away for a weekend, not demanding her husband takes any parental leave etc. I am in a egalitarian marriage with a husband who does 50/50 and supports my career. I have taken a different path than some of my friends but they would probably describe me as lucky to have a husband who actively parents and does his share.

But my friends never:

1. Formula fed so their husband was responsible for a window of time for the baby
2. Left their young baby without instructions for the day with their husband
3. Returned to work
4. Went away for the weekend with girlfriends
5. Refused to have more kids if their husband didn’t take parental leave

If you EBF and quit your job while your husband returns to work, you’re essentially saying the child is 100% your responsibility and not your husband’s. You’re saying your husband earns the $ and you do the housework/childcare. It’s very hard to break these habits. Men get very used to having a career while their wife stays home and does everything else.

Such a weird and specific post.

I don't work outside the home because working will cost me time. I am basically giving my time to the employer to earn money, aren't I? If I don't need that money and can live a comfortable life without it, then why do I need to work? This time is time away from my kids, my DH and my leisure time. I am gaining time by being home and having a leisurely life. DH thinks it is worth it because he does not have the stress of making our lives, our kids lives run smoothly. It is like I am retired from working for a paycheck but while young. I can live with that. If my family needed the money, I would work. If I could not afford to outsource some work, I am sure I would have been resentful.

I did EBF and did not sleep train. DH is a hands-on dad, and he has done equal caregiving than me for the babies since the day they have been born. Some men like being dads. He does cooking, wash dishes (because he is particular about the dishwasher), and he wakes the kids up and takes them to school (because he wants to spend time with them). I sleep in in the mornings. As for going away for the weekend with our girlfriends and buddies was never something DH or I liked to do. We went places with our kids as a family. We are wired to be happy with each other and our kids. This may be the reason that the pandemic has been smooth for us.

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Anonymous wrote:Where is gender equality here? If I was the breadwinner husband and if my wife decided not to work anymore, I think I would lose some respect for her. Will most of those marriages end when one of the sides hit a mid life crisis?

By our third date, my husband was telling me he only wanted to marry a woman who would continue to work after marriage and kids. I appreciate his forthrightness and as I never had any interest in SAH, we ended up getting married and being dual WOHP. My guess is that most people discuss this extensively with prospective spouses.

I think that’s a really unfair thing to ask of a woman. You’d never had a baby before - what if you’d changed your mind once you actually gave birth? And your husband will never know what it’s like to give birth. Also, that just seems slimy to me of your husband to ask that. To me it sounds like, “I don’t care how you feel when you actually have the baby. The most important thing to me is that you keep making money for us.”

+1 I was ambitious and shocked when I realized I wanted to stay home. I went back to work, had a second kid, went back to work again and through it all I consistently wanted to be at home. I was super thankful my DH supported that, and that I’d paid off my strident loans rather than wait for PSLF to kick in. I think we still could have made SAH work even with the loans, but it was nice that wasn’t a factor.

This. I never thought I'd want to stay home with my kids. But when they were small, it's all I wanted. People told me that it would be hard to go to work at first but that it would get better. It didn't -- I hated it every day! I hated that I was working so that we could pay someone else to do the things I wanted to be doing. It made no sense to me. I quit and have no regrets about it. My only regret is in not listening to myself when I was miserable returning to the office and trying to convince myself it was "just" hormones (it's definitely partly hormones but that doensn't make it wrong -- sometimes when your hormones scream at you, you should listen to them!) and that I'd get over it and that this was normal and right.

Basically all the PPs in this thread giving 101 reasons why women should never SAHM -- that was my inner monologue. And then I finally listened to my own mind instead of all the influences telling me that only regressive trad wives become SAHMs, and realized that it's what I wanted.

If you really want to stay home with your kids for some amount of time, and you and your spouse figure out together how to make it work financially, do it. And ignore these people yelling at you that you're betraying feminism for that your DH will leave you tomorrow. They don't know you, and they don't know your marriage. Do what works for you. There are lots of ways to live.

Just don't make the emotional decision without running the numbers and fully understanding what you're giving up first.

Wow this is so dismissive. An "emotional decision."

You know, there are women who benefit from returning to work, emotionally. I've heard some women say that returning to work was the best thing for their PPD, because it gave them time to themselves and away from their baby and that's what they needed. Would you criticize them for making an emotional decision? Would you tell them "well don't make an emotional decision without really understanding fully what you are giving up in terms of time with you child?" I'm guessing no.

Just accept different people have different priorities and make different choices. It's honestly none of your business. Being a condescending jerk about it and assuming that someone is being over-emotional or dumb because they weight these factors differently than you isn't progressive or feminist. It's actually really obnoxious.

When we were engaged, I told stbDH that I would never ever ever be a SAHP. ever. Life has a way of happening that messes up ones plans. We ended up with two children that needed more intensive parenting for much longer than NT children. In order to have a life where we both spent more time with them, one of us needed to be at home. I have been a SAHP since. I was definitely a more natural WOHP and it took a very long time to acclimate to the cadence of being a SAHP. We now have two relatively independent adult children who have finally blossomed and are contributing members of society (well one is there and one is nearly there)- something that was much harder to achieve for both.

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Anonymous wrote:Assuming everyone on dcum is of the professional working class, the question should actually be flipped: what’s the cost of not working?

Not arguing that upper middle class educated women shouldn’t be SAH, but there is a huge financial loss when they do make that decision. There is also the risk they take in trusting that their spouse will always be there to support them financially. For example, you SAH for ten years and then Dh wants a divorce, no 401k of your own, no marketable skillset except for cleaning and wiping butts… Eeek

.the cost is missing out on your kid's childhood, spending little time with them, having someone else instill their values into your kid.

So dad miss out on their childrens' childhood by working, or is it just moms? The dad spend little time with their kids, just because they work full time? Ditto with their values? Come on, this is shallow rhetoric. My kids definitely know what my values are.

Total BS with the previous post. My kids went to a daycare. They learned what it is like out in the real life. I supported them with the right values, they didn't get brainwashed, they can judge correctly for themselves.

I am starting in a new field after being a sahm for 5 years and am pretty much breaking even. All the kids are young so we have a nanny. In a few years, though, the kids will be in school and I’ll have progressed my career enough that I will be contributing a solid amount to our HHI.

Short term, I think it can make financial sense to stay at home with young kids but, as they enter school, I felt like it was important to build my own career and attain some financial independence.

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Anonymous wrote:Where is gender equality here? If I was the breadwinner husband and if my wife decided not to work anymore, I think I would lose some respect for her. Will most of those marriages end when one of the sides hit a mid life crisis?

By our third date, my husband was telling me he only wanted to marry a woman who would continue to work after marriage and kids. I appreciate his forthrightness and as I never had any interest in SAH, we ended up getting married and being dual WOHP. My guess is that most people discuss this extensively with prospective spouses.

I think that’s a really unfair thing to ask of a woman. You’d never had a baby before - what if you’d changed your mind once you actually gave birth? And your husband will never know what it’s like to give birth. Also, that just seems slimy to me of your husband to ask that. To me it sounds like, “I don’t care how you feel when you actually have the baby. The most important thing to me is that you keep making money for us.”

+1 I was ambitious and shocked when I realized I wanted to stay home. I went back to work, had a second kid, went back to work again and through it all I consistently wanted to be at home. I was super thankful my DH supported that, and that I’d paid off my strident loans rather than wait for PSLF to kick in. I think we still could have made SAH work even with the loans, but it was nice that wasn’t a factor.

This. I never thought I'd want to stay home with my kids. But when they were small, it's all I wanted. People told me that it would be hard to go to work at first but that it would get better. It didn't -- I hated it every day! I hated that I was working so that we could pay someone else to do the things I wanted to be doing. It made no sense to me. I quit and have no regrets about it. My only regret is in not listening to myself when I was miserable returning to the office and trying to convince myself it was "just" hormones (it's definitely partly hormones but that doensn't make it wrong -- sometimes when your hormones scream at you, you should listen to them!) and that I'd get over it and that this was normal and right.

Basically all the PPs in this thread giving 101 reasons why women should never SAHM -- that was my inner monologue. And then I finally listened to my own mind instead of all the influences telling me that only regressive trad wives become SAHMs, and realized that it's what I wanted.

If you really want to stay home with your kids for some amount of time, and you and your spouse figure out together how to make it work financially, do it. And ignore these people yelling at you that you're betraying feminism for that your DH will leave you tomorrow. They don't know you, and they don't know your marriage. Do what works for you. There are lots of ways to live.

They are trying to justify their choices by putting down others. My mom worked. I did not realize it was an option till my husband said it when we had child care issues. I regret staying at a job I was miserable at to please others. I love the time with my kids. They only get one childhood. I am glad my mom worked as she was not a good parent and I was better off with Nannies, day care and own my own. But I want more for mine.

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Anonymous wrote:Where is gender equality here? If I was the breadwinner husband and if my wife decided not to work anymore, I think I would lose some respect for her. Will most of those marriages end when one of the sides hit a mid life crisis?

By our third date, my husband was telling me he only wanted to marry a woman who would continue to work after marriage and kids. I appreciate his forthrightness and as I never had any interest in SAH, we ended up getting married and being dual WOHP. My guess is that most people discuss this extensively with prospective spouses.

I think that’s a really unfair thing to ask of a woman. You’d never had a baby before - what if you’d changed your mind once you actually gave birth? And your husband will never know what it’s like to give birth. Also, that just seems slimy to me of your husband to ask that. To me it sounds like, “I don’t care how you feel when you actually have the baby. The most important thing to me is that you keep making money for us.”

The point is, we both agreed that neither of us had a choice to SAH. We bought a house with a mortgage that required two salaries. I'm not really the kind of person who has changed her mind much as an adult. It's not slimy; he saw his dad live under tremendous stress because his was the sole income. Who wants that kind of stress? The important thing is that we were both clear from the beginning about what we wanted, and communicated that to the other early on the relationship.

It sounds like you created stress by your spending choices. We bought a house we could afford on one salary just in case one of us lost our jobs.

Same. We've made a lot of financial choices that keep us below our means specifically so we'd have flexibility when we had a kid. Me SAHMing for a while was totally doable on one income, even with our mortgage. And I'm not married to a high earner. I think he was making 90k at the time? But we had lots of savings and a low mortgage and it was doable for 4 years.

But one of the best parts is that now that I'm working again, we are seeing a huge increase in our income right when it feels most useful. When our kid was really little, we weren't dying to go on big, expensive vacations. We didn't need a bigger house, we didn't want new furniture or a new car that would just get wind up with crackers ground into the upholstery. Now we have a school age kid and our income has doubled, plus we are accustomed to eating at home, figuring out how to get good quality toys and kids clothes on the cheap, etc. So we feel super rich even though we're middle class. And our kid is in public school so all we pay for is aftercare and summer camp, which seems like no big deal on our current HHI, after being very careful with our spending for the last few years. We're putting most of the added HHI into savings and still getting to spend a bit more freely everyday in ways that feel luxurious to us. We'll probably move to a bigger home in the next 4 years or so, but we're not stressed about it even with the price increases, because we have a ton of equity in our current small house because we stayed here longer instead of upgrading pre-kid, and our house fund is growing fast thanks to our frugal outlook and my income.

The idea that having one parent stay home is automatically a bad financial choice is weird to me. It's true that the amount we saved on childcare was a lot less than my salary. But it's also true that learning to live on less when your kids are young can pay huge dividends, as we are currently seeing. Even if it wound up costing us money in the long run (I'm sure it did, realistically) it's worth it because we were happy -- happy kid, happy parents, calm house. Especially with Covid! Obviously we didn't see that coming but when Covid hit, we were definitely glad we had a SAHP rather than relying on out-of-home childcare.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Where is gender equality here? If I was the breadwinner husband and if my wife decided not to work anymore, I think I would lose some respect for her. Will most of those marriages end when one of the sides hit a mid life crisis?

By our third date, my husband was telling me he only wanted to marry a woman who would continue to work after marriage and kids. I appreciate his forthrightness and as I never had any interest in SAH, we ended up getting married and being dual WOHP. My guess is that most people discuss this extensively with prospective spouses.

I think that’s a really unfair thing to ask of a woman. You’d never had a baby before - what if you’d changed your mind once you actually gave birth? And your husband will never know what it’s like to give birth. Also, that just seems slimy to me of your husband to ask that. To me it sounds like, “I don’t care how you feel when you actually have the baby. The most important thing to me is that you keep making money for us.”

The point is, we both agreed that neither of us had a choice to SAH. We bought a house with a mortgage that required two salaries. I'm not really the kind of person who has changed her mind much as an adult. It's not slimy; he saw his dad live under tremendous stress because his was the sole income. Who wants that kind of stress? The important thing is that we were both clear from the beginning about what we wanted, and communicated that to the other early on the relationship.

It sounds like you created stress by your spending choices. We bought a house we could afford on one salary just in case one of us lost our jobs.

It was the kind of stress we preferred. Shrug.

Then your comment is means less as you created the same stress you are complaining about. It just looks different to you.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where is gender equality here? If I was the breadwinner husband and if my wife decided not to work anymore, I think I would lose some respect for her. Will most of those marriages end when one of the sides hit a mid life crisis?

By our third date, my husband was telling me he only wanted to marry a woman who would continue to work after marriage and kids. I appreciate his forthrightness and as I never had any interest in SAH, we ended up getting married and being dual WOHP. My guess is that most people discuss this extensively with prospective spouses.

I think that’s a really unfair thing to ask of a woman. You’d never had a baby before - what if you’d changed your mind once you actually gave birth? And your husband will never know what it’s like to give birth. Also, that just seems slimy to me of your husband to ask that. To me it sounds like, “I don’t care how you feel when you actually have the baby. The most important thing to me is that you keep making money for us.”

+1 I was ambitious and shocked when I realized I wanted to stay home. I went back to work, had a second kid, went back to work again and through it all I consistently wanted to be at home. I was super thankful my DH supported that, and that I’d paid off my strident loans rather than wait for PSLF to kick in. I think we still could have made SAH work even with the loans, but it was nice that wasn’t a factor.

This. I never thought I'd want to stay home with my kids. But when they were small, it's all I wanted. People told me that it would be hard to go to work at first but that it would get better. It didn't -- I hated it every day! I hated that I was working so that we could pay someone else to do the things I wanted to be doing. It made no sense to me. I quit and have no regrets about it. My only regret is in not listening to myself when I was miserable returning to the office and trying to convince myself it was "just" hormones (it's definitely partly hormones but that doensn't make it wrong -- sometimes when your hormones scream at you, you should listen to them!) and that I'd get over it and that this was normal and right.

Basically all the PPs in this thread giving 101 reasons why women should never SAHM -- that was my inner monologue. And then I finally listened to my own mind instead of all the influences telling me that only regressive trad wives become SAHMs, and realized that it's what I wanted.

If you really want to stay home with your kids for some amount of time, and you and your spouse figure out together how to make it work financially, do it. And ignore these people yelling at you that you're betraying feminism for that your DH will leave you tomorrow. They don't know you, and they don't know your marriage. Do what works for you. There are lots of ways to live.

Just don't make the emotional decision without running the numbers and fully understanding what you're giving up first.

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Anonymous wrote:Where is gender equality here? If I was the breadwinner husband and if my wife decided not to work anymore, I think I would lose some respect for her. Will most of those marriages end when one of the sides hit a mid life crisis?

By our third date, my husband was telling me he only wanted to marry a woman who would continue to work after marriage and kids. I appreciate his forthrightness and as I never had any interest in SAH, we ended up getting married and being dual WOHP. My guess is that most people discuss this extensively with prospective spouses.

I think that’s a really unfair thing to ask of a woman. You’d never had a baby before - what if you’d changed your mind once you actually gave birth? And your husband will never know what it’s like to give birth. Also, that just seems slimy to me of your husband to ask that. To me it sounds like, “I don’t care how you feel when you actually have the baby. The most important thing to me is that you keep making money for us.”

The point is, we both agreed that neither of us had a choice to SAH. We bought a house with a mortgage that required two salaries. I'm not really the kind of person who has changed her mind much as an adult. It's not slimy; he saw his dad live under tremendous stress because his was the sole income. Who wants that kind of stress? The important thing is that we were both clear from the beginning about what we wanted, and communicated that to the other early on the relationship.

NP. My dh and I made that decision also while dating. So many reasons
-more household income
-DH doesn't have to lean in, work nonstop, and can be home for dinner at 5:30 every night
-makes husband and wife 50/50 partners

But we did get a mortgage that we could support on one income in case the worst happened (like a special needs baby) and one of us needed to stay home.

You can have all of that with one parent working.

It's much harder on one income.

No, it’s not. We do it just fine. You wanted an expensive house that takes two incomes.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where is gender equality here? If I was the breadwinner husband and if my wife decided not to work anymore, I think I would lose some respect for her. Will most of those marriages end when one of the sides hit a mid life crisis?

By our third date, my husband was telling me he only wanted to marry a woman who would continue to work after marriage and kids. I appreciate his forthrightness and as I never had any interest in SAH, we ended up getting married and being dual WOHP. My guess is that most people discuss this extensively with prospective spouses.

I think that’s a really unfair thing to ask of a woman. You’d never had a baby before - what if you’d changed your mind once you actually gave birth? And your husband will never know what it’s like to give birth. Also, that just seems slimy to me of your husband to ask that. To me it sounds like, “I don’t care how you feel when you actually have the baby. The most important thing to me is that you keep making money for us.”

The point is, we both agreed that neither of us had a choice to SAH. We bought a house with a mortgage that required two salaries. I'm not really the kind of person who has changed her mind much as an adult. It's not slimy; he saw his dad live under tremendous stress because his was the sole income. Who wants that kind of stress? The important thing is that we were both clear from the beginning about what we wanted, and communicated that to the other early on the relationship.

NP. My dh and I made that decision also while dating. So many reasons
-more household income
-DH doesn't have to lean in, work nonstop, and can be home for dinner at 5:30 every night
-makes husband and wife 50/50 partners

But we did get a mortgage that we could support on one income in case the worst happened (like a special needs baby) and one of us needed to stay home.

You can have all of that with one parent working.

It's much harder on one income.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where is gender equality here? If I was the breadwinner husband and if my wife decided not to work anymore, I think I would lose some respect for her. Will most of those marriages end when one of the sides hit a mid life crisis?

By our third date, my husband was telling me he only wanted to marry a woman who would continue to work after marriage and kids. I appreciate his forthrightness and as I never had any interest in SAH, we ended up getting married and being dual WOHP. My guess is that most people discuss this extensively with prospective spouses.

I think that’s a really unfair thing to ask of a woman. You’d never had a baby before - what if you’d changed your mind once you actually gave birth? And your husband will never know what it’s like to give birth. Also, that just seems slimy to me of your husband to ask that. To me it sounds like, “I don’t care how you feel when you actually have the baby. The most important thing to me is that you keep making money for us.”

The point is, we both agreed that neither of us had a choice to SAH. We bought a house with a mortgage that required two salaries. I'm not really the kind of person who has changed her mind much as an adult. It's not slimy; he saw his dad live under tremendous stress because his was the sole income. Who wants that kind of stress? The important thing is that we were both clear from the beginning about what we wanted, and communicated that to the other early on the relationship.

It sounds like you created stress by your spending choices. We bought a house we could afford on one salary just in case one of us lost our jobs.

It was the kind of stress we preferred. Shrug.

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Anonymous wrote:Does everyone just decide to keep working if they don't come out ahead? Anyone make decisions based on wanting to be with your kids?

No. You see your kids plenty after they are about 5. My experience was that moms who wanted to be with their kids had tons of family, friend or paid help.

Your experience is limited. I decided to stay home with my DC for the first two years of her life and I have no local family and we had zero paid help at that time (we didn't even hire sitters for date nights except a couple times because me being home meant we had to be very careful with expenses). I also have no idea what kind of help people get from their friends -- mine are great but are definitely not providing childcare help, lol.

The reason I decided to do this is that I had my child late after not being sure I would have a baby at all. I knew it was unlikely I'd have another. I didn't expect to love the baby phase (always assumed I'd like the older kid/teen stage best) but I did. When it was time for me to return to work as planned, I realized that what I really wanted was to stay home, to really enjoy these early days with what was almost certainly my only child. I stayed home for two years and then started working PT. My kid is in school now but I still don't work FT and my priorities absolutely start with being a parent -- work is how I make money so that our family can afford certain things. But it is not my life's work. That's my kid.

I'd never judge anyone for returning to work after leave and being a WOH mom. I had every expectation that would be me. My priorities changed drastically when my child was born and I realized that I wanted something specific out of this experience and in order to get it, I'd need to be home or at least PT.

The idea that NO ONE makes this decision based largely on wanting to spend time with their child is false. I know other women like me. We are well-educated professionals. I know a couple who have spouses who are just very high earners, but most of us don't -- we SAH for some period of time based entirely on just wanting that time with our kids. It's really not uncommon.

If you don't know people like this, that's fine. But you don't know everyone. Stop assuming your experience is universal. It's very much not.

No wonder then why women are their own worst enemy in the workplace. If you're going to change your mind about working when you have your first kid at, say, 35, doesn't that mean women like you pose a risk greater than a man's to an employer?