Anonymous wrote:To my first-grade DD, from a school parent. "Larla can't believe your mommy is here! She thought you were pretending to have a mommy!"
Doors slammed in my face when I was carrying younger DD in her car seat during drop-offs.
"I can't believe your husband makes you work!"
"Mrs. Jones assigned XYZ books. This is so much more than Mrs. Smith's class. Is DD behind in reading because you're never home?"
"Do they MAKE you wear heels, or are you just trying to show us up? ahahahahaha"
"You'll never get these years with them back."
"I know you have to work to send DD to (inexpensive parochial school), but (less-desirable neighborhood school) has gotten A LOT better. Is it really worth it?"

All from SAHMs at inexpensive parochial school. Shall I go on?

I'm sorry, PP. I've been on the receiving end of mean comments too as a WOHM in a school with a lot of SAHMs, including one who essentially told me that my DC's (inherited) dyslexia was my fault because I worked. DH is dyslexic, as was DH's father.

BUT.

SAHMs also receive mean comments. There is just a subgroup of women who are mean to other women and they'll use whatever they can, whether it's SAH, WOH, whatever. I decided early on that I had two choices: I could avoid trying to befriend all the moms, or I could assume that the ones who made comments had their own issues, and try to befriend everyone else. I chose the latter. Years later, those SAHMs I befriended are some of my closest, most wonderful friends. I would have missed out entirely if I'd let a few comments from a few insecure women keep me away from all the rest. I think the world of them and honestly, I think they'd cut somebody if they heard me criticized for working, as I would if I heard them criticized for SAH.

I'm sorry you're going through this, but try not to assume everybody is like this. They're not. And, perhaps open yourself up to the idea that people who say something mean are doing it out of ignorance or personal issues rather than spite. There was one woman who said something pretty mean to me very early on. Years later, we became friends, and I learned that she'd been going through a really rough time personally during that period. She has no memory -- I am sure -- of what she said, and I know she'd be horrified if I told her now. People go through really hard times and sometimes don't handle it in the most perfect of ways. I am not perfect and I don't expect my friends to be perfect.

Hang in there. It will be better when your kids are older, even if you don't end up making friends out of it. When the kids are older, all this certainty about how one way of raising kids is better than another falls away in the face of glaring evidence that the kids are who they are.

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Really? I think they're lucky. It's like retiring at 27. I'd love to not work. There are aspects of my job that I like but if they stopped paying me, you better believe I'd stop coming in.

+1. I retired at 40 to SAH. I worked like a mule all my life and now I have a life of leisure that I had never imagined having. I also was working for money and I was a worker bee in corporate America. If I was a doctor saving lives, I would have reconsidered my decision maybe.

As it was, when money was not the consideration for working, I quit. My DH still works because he likes his work and having me at home frees him from obligation at home. He can walk through the door in the evening and he does not have to roll up his sleeves and pitch in. I have continued to employ house cleaners etc, because house work is not my forte but house management is.

I am still working like a mule at 52 even though I don't need the money. I'm sure you tell yourself your DH likes to work to rationalize you not working.

I'm a husband in this situation: work hard while wife stays home even though kids are in elementary school. I don't mind it one bit. The thing is, we married right out of undergrad and she was around when my first job was for an amazing $30k/year. After I climbed the corporate ladder and started making more I decided to go to law school. She worked her ass off to carry the household while I was back in school. She also worked her ass off while I did my stint in big law and wasn't around much. Then, when a client asked me to leave the law and jump into investment banking she was supportive through that.

Over the years she's carried her fair share and she runs a tight ship at home. We've both worked hard to get to this point and now that things are such that we don't need a second income, why add the stress of a second job? It's not like I'm going to take a less demanding job if she goes back to her six figure job.

Sounds like your family has a great set up including a partnership that works for all concerned. I've got friends who lived similar stories and TBH the at-home spouses know they couldn't do job and household with husbands who do regular int'l travel and long hours. I probably couldn't hack that myself.

My friends in this situation are great and we all do various activities like Girl Scouts and weekend coffees or jogging together. The difference between this and the nonsense I see on line is my friends don't say they have the hardest job in the world (a nutty claim for a woman whose spouse is regularly sent to the Middle East and Central Asia for his company) not that they are doing what their kids need or that I and those with jobs have it easier and aren't parenting as well. I've never heard that nonsense IRL except from my extremely conservative and frankly sexist family members from the Boomer generation. But this is not how rational people who've actually worked or been close with is hose who work speak, think, or talk. It's just on line shit stirring.

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Really? I think they're lucky. It's like retiring at 27. I'd love to not work. There are aspects of my job that I like but if they stopped paying me, you better believe I'd stop coming in.

+1. I retired at 40 to SAH. I worked like a mule all my life and now I have a life of leisure that I had never imagined having. I also was working for money and I was a worker bee in corporate America. If I was a doctor saving lives, I would have reconsidered my decision maybe.

As it was, when money was not the consideration for working, I quit. My DH still works because he likes his work and having me at home frees him from obligation at home. He can walk through the door in the evening and he does not have to roll up his sleeves and pitch in. I have continued to employ house cleaners etc, because house work is not my forte but house management is.

I am still working like a mule at 52 even though I don't need the money. I'm sure you tell yourself your DH likes to work to rationalize you not working.

I'm a husband in this situation: work hard while wife stays home even though kids are in elementary school. I don't mind it one bit. The thing is, we married right out of undergrad and she was around when my first job was for an amazing $30k/year. After I climbed the corporate ladder and started making more I decided to go to law school. She worked her ass off to carry the household while I was back in school. She also worked her ass off while I did my stint in big law and wasn't around much. Then, when a client asked me to leave the law and jump into investment banking she was supportive through that.

Over the years she's carried her fair share and she runs a tight ship at home. We've both worked hard to get to this point and now that things are such that we don't need a second income, why add the stress of a second job? It's not like I'm going to take a less demanding job if she goes back to her six figure job.

To my first-grade DD, from a school parent. "Larla can't believe your mommy is here! She thought you were pretending to have a mommy!"
Doors slammed in my face when I was carrying younger DD in her car seat during drop-offs.
"I can't believe your husband makes you work!"
"Mrs. Jones assigned XYZ books. This is so much more than Mrs. Smith's class. Is DD behind in reading because you're never home?"
"Do they MAKE you wear heels, or are you just trying to show us up? ahahahahaha"
"You'll never get these years with them back."
"I know you have to work to send DD to (inexpensive parochial school), but (less-desirable neighborhood school) has gotten A LOT better. Is it really worth it?"

All from SAHMs at inexpensive parochial school. Shall I go on?

I found it very off putting when my kid started school and I felt like I had walked into a buzz saw as a working mom of an elementary schooler. The SAHMs were so breathtakingly mean. Nothing prepared me for it since other moms I met at our FT daycare worked as much or more than I did. The shift to kindergarten and meeting SAHMs en masse who were mean just for fun was a real shock to the system. Now, many years later with kids in HS, I really don't perceive anyone being mean based on WOHM or SAHM status. I either don't notice it anymore or it really isn't a thing after a certain age.

Fortunate not "first Nate"

Whatever works for you! I would've liked to have gone back to work but we decided I should stay at home after my husband became CEO . It was just going to be too stressful on the family to have me working and traveling too. It's had its pluses and minuses. I'm a curious person so I read a lot and have interests, I'm well informed and we ended up with two special needs kids so there's that! We're very financially secure but there are days I wonder what kind of bigger impact I could have made with my life or contributed towards. Other days I just am grateful and realize were first Nate I can help with the kids needs at this time.

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Do you think it's fair to your husband that you don't bring in any money?

I think this attitude must come from someone living in a very high cost of living place. Men really do not care if their wives bring in money if they can afford to cover everything in a job that they do not hate. Maybe the person who wrote that has a husband who likes his job and makes plenty of money. Men lucky enough to be in that position spend 0% of their time thinking that it's "unfair" that they are working while their wife is at home making the household run smoothly and enjoying her life.

+1 The families I know like this, the wife makes very few demands of the dad to help with house/kids/life and the dad appreciates having someone to run everything. Not an arrangement everyone would like but it works for a lot of SAHP families, as long as both are happy with their role.

My husband makes enough to support the family financially, but doesn't want the stress of being the only breadwinner, and he's more than happy to handle half of the doctor's appointments, sick days, etc. in order to have two incomes.

Respectfully, this doesn't make any sense. My husband wants me to work too to bring in extra money, but it's because he doesn't make enough for us to have a cushion, savings, and comfortable lifestyle on his income alone. He freely admits that if he made more that he'd have no problem being the only income. This is the reality for most people these days. It's nothing to be ashamed of. No need to imply that people who make more money and really don't need two workers in the household are somehow doing something wrong or that one of them is taking advantage. If you want to direct anger at something, pick the economy or the modern world instead. That would make more sense.

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Do you think it's fair to your husband that you don't bring in any money?

I think this attitude must come from someone living in a very high cost of living place. Men really do not care if their wives bring in money if they can afford to cover everything in a job that they do not hate. Maybe the person who wrote that has a husband who likes his job and makes plenty of money. Men lucky enough to be in that position spend 0% of their time thinking that it's "unfair" that they are working while their wife is at home making the household run smoothly and enjoying her life.

+1 The families I know like this, the wife makes very few demands of the dad to help with house/kids/life and the dad appreciates having someone to run everything. Not an arrangement everyone would like but it works for a lot of SAHP families, as long as both are happy with their role.

My husband makes enough to support the family financially, but doesn't want the stress of being the only breadwinner, and he's more than happy to handle half of the doctor's appointments, sick days, etc. in order to have two incomes.

This has been debated approximately 1,000,000 times on dcum. When your kids get older, no one cares about who stayed at home or who worked. It's a short-lived mommy war, but so many people are willing to play.

The more important question is why people care about what an anonymous message board poster thinks about their work/life/kids balance?

Just say no to ridiculous arguing.

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Anonymous wrote:I think there is some jealous there. In the DC area, one partner has to be making a lot of money to enable the other to stay home and still maintain a nice lifestyle (nice house in a close in nabe, vacations, nice cars, pricey extracurricular activities for the kiddos, maybe private school, etc.)

To have an UMC lifestyle with a SAHP, the breadwinner has to be making 300-400k +.

On my end its less jealous and more...disbelief. I was raised to be independent and to own my own financials. When I went into my marriage I was comfortably set in a career and had two properties free-and-clear. That only helped when we made future decisions together to buy our 'dream' home. It boggles my mind that some women will rely solely on another person's generosity to live their life.

It disturbs me even further when these same women, some of them friends, were die-hard Hillary fans and very much into telling their daughters that 'this will be the first woman president, someone to look up to, someone to emulate' and yet the closest rolemodel to those daughters completely opted out of a career. How can you tell your children to aspire to be the head of NASA or a president or a multi-millionaire CEO, but you didn't bother to do anything yourself?

I'm a sahm with school age kids and it's not mind numbingly dull. In fact I think my life is more interesting than those who have no time for anything but work and child rearing, because I actually have time to pursue my interests.
Interesting comments. Most of the SAHMs I know here in the DC area became parents later in life and already had successful careers - and made big financial contributions to the family - before taking time off of work to spend more time with their children. And many plan to go back to work in some capacity.

This is in fact what happens in most cases. Even as a former sah, however, I do think permanent sahs are a bit lame.

Really? I think they're lucky. It's like retiring at 27. I'd love to not work. There are aspects of my job that I like but if they stopped paying me, you better believe I'd stop coming in.

You would understand if you were ever a sah with kids in school. It's mind numbingly dull after a few months, all the smart moms are back to work. A good gig if you like event planning as that is what permanent SAH moms seem to obsess over (fundraising, teacher appreciation day, mom's night out, etc. .) Frankly, I'd rather just attend.

I'm a sahm with kids in school and my life is not dull. In fact, I think it's probably more interesting than those whose lives revolve around work and child rearing. I actually have time to pursue my own interests. I'm convinced that people like the poster above are the same ones who plan on working as long as they can because they can't imagine being retired.

Nice that your husband is willing to work so you can pursue your interests.

I know you meant this sarcastically but it actually IS nice. I know I am very fortunate, in many ways. I got super lucky for some reason.

Do you think it's fair to your husband that you don't bring in any money?

No. He makes a lot of money, to be frank. We don't need anymore. After a certain point, you have to ask if the additional stress and burden of responsibility is worth it and to us it's not.

He's 100% on board. It was his idea and every time I make noises about maybe going back, he looks at me like I'm crazy. He knows we have a nice set up that works for our family.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Do you think it's fair to your husband that you don't bring in any money?

I think this attitude must come from someone living in a very high cost of living place. Men really do not care if their wives bring in money if they can afford to cover everything in a job that they do not hate. Maybe the person who wrote that has a husband who likes his job and makes plenty of money. Men lucky enough to be in that position spend 0% of their time thinking that it's "unfair" that they are working while their wife is at home making the household run smoothly and enjoying her life.

+1 The families I know like this, the wife makes very few demands of the dad to help with house/kids/life and the dad appreciates having someone to run everything. Not an arrangement everyone would like but it works for a lot of SAHP families, as long as both are happy with their role.

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Anonymous wrote:I think there is some jealous there. In the DC area, one partner has to be making a lot of money to enable the other to stay home and still maintain a nice lifestyle (nice house in a close in nabe, vacations, nice cars, pricey extracurricular activities for the kiddos, maybe private school, etc.)

To have an UMC lifestyle with a SAHP, the breadwinner has to be making 300-400k +.

On my end its less jealous and more...disbelief. I was raised to be independent and to own my own financials. When I went into my marriage I was comfortably set in a career and had two properties free-and-clear. That only helped when we made future decisions together to buy our 'dream' home. It boggles my mind that some women will rely solely on another person's generosity to live their life.

It disturbs me even further when these same women, some of them friends, were die-hard Hillary fans and very much into telling their daughters that 'this will be the first woman president, someone to look up to, someone to emulate' and yet the closest rolemodel to those daughters completely opted out of a career. How can you tell your children to aspire to be the head of NASA or a president or a multi-millionaire CEO, but you didn't bother to do anything yourself?

I'm a sahm with school age kids and it's not mind numbingly dull. In fact I think my life is more interesting than those who have no time for anything but work and child rearing, because I actually have time to pursue my interests.
Interesting comments. Most of the SAHMs I know here in the DC area became parents later in life and already had successful careers - and made big financial contributions to the family - before taking time off of work to spend more time with their children. And many plan to go back to work in some capacity.

This is in fact what happens in most cases. Even as a former sah, however, I do think permanent sahs are a bit lame.

Really? I think they're lucky. It's like retiring at 27. I'd love to not work. There are aspects of my job that I like but if they stopped paying me, you better believe I'd stop coming in.

You would understand if you were ever a sah with kids in school. It's mind numbingly dull after a few months, all the smart moms are back to work. A good gig if you like event planning as that is what permanent SAH moms seem to obsess over (fundraising, teacher appreciation day, mom's night out, etc. .) Frankly, I'd rather just attend.

I'm a sahm with kids in school and my life is not dull. In fact, I think it's probably more interesting than those whose lives revolve around work and child rearing. I actually have time to pursue my own interests. I'm convinced that people like the poster above are the same ones who plan on working as long as they can because they can't imagine being retired.

Nice that your husband is willing to work so you can pursue your interests.

I know you meant this sarcastically but it actually IS nice. I know I am very fortunate, in many ways. I got super lucky for some reason.

Do you think it's fair to your husband that you don't bring in any money?

I think this attitude must come from someone living in a very high cost of living place. Men really do not care if their wives bring in money if they can afford to cover everything in a job that they do not hate. Maybe the person who wrote that has a husband who likes his job and makes plenty of money. Men lucky enough to be in that position spend 0% of their time thinking that it's "unfair" that they are working while their wife is at home making the household run smoothly and enjoying her life.