I think this might be a cultural difference, but all the guys I meet, they lose respect when the wife decides to stay at home. That’s why if I get married, I’m continuing to work no matter what. I would be a housewife if I knew that I wouldn’t get cheated on, be thought of as stupid/lazy, or being forced to have kids.
Children are a gift from God that we should welcome with open arms, not something that we should be “forced” to have.
In my hometown, your value lies in what you can produce financially. When my best friend gave up working to be a SAHM, people thought she was crazy (even her parents made fun of her).
I hear this sentiment expressed all of the time and I wonder why I am the only person on CAF who is offended by it. You didn’t describe any behaviors your students have that make them difficult for you to teach. You said, “they are poor and come from single family homes”.
Whether your husband will lose respect for you if you quit working depends on the man. That’s why I think the OP should know how her husband will react before she makes this decision.
I can only answer for myself. My husband has seen a statue of the blessed mother shed tears and has touched those tears. I can confidently say I’m not worried about a loss of faith on his part. Things would be tough on our own, if we were forced to survive without him, but they are tough now as it is (we have now been two years without running water, although I am fairly confident that in another two years we will have indoor plumbing). There are quite a few things that are worse than being poor…
Sounds like it’s time for a new set of friends that share your values.
Some men do feel that way, but only because our society has taught them that a woman should always do 50% in everything. It is cultural, but since we are Christians, we’re not to conform to it when it opposes our faith. In this instance, I think it absolutely does. We’re to each give 100%, in whatever form that may take, and traditional roles work out best the majority of the time.
Amen to that!
I have also found this to be true. Even with a stay at home mom, I did not learn how to parent, as my mother has some emotional issues and never really saw motherhood as something that she had to work at or pass along to us.
Yes, this can be one of the hardest things about not having that second income. In most cases, you may not be living at the same standard as your friends and peers. Even though you make that decision on purpose, it can still get under your skin when you are living in a tiny house and they are living quite differently, or they send their kids to hockey and you cannot. It’s something I find I have to consciously remind myself of, and remind myself specifically that I don’t think things like bouncy-house birthday parties are important when that is the thing everyone is doing.
I’m the ultimate counter-culture woman. I’m a full time stay at home wife AND I don’t even have children (we can’t due to infertility.) So I stay at home JUST to be a homemaker and my husband’s helpmate. My husband and I would have it no other way. This truly is the best and most fulfilling option for us both. I tried working at the beginning of our marriage and everything at home fell apart. We even grew emotionally apart at the time and had hardly any time together. 
I truly hope that you have a change of heart about children before you have any of your own! Leaving Mass angry because of a few noisy children? Hoping for a return to corporal punishment in schools? You do not seem to understand that children are a gift from God and made in His image and so worthy of respect and dignity. We don’t become human only when we get to be 18 and/or when we stay out of trouble!
But children are horrible becasue their parents refuse to raise them correctly. I’ve worked with children for years (before I got burned out from the neglected children). And children are horrible, I had a first grader say the f-word to me, and I wanted to smack him and his mom/dad/whoever. Too many parents don’t care anymore, they are just looking for another trophy to show of (look at me, I had sex, I had a baby!). I’m glad I’m infertile. My friend had a third grader take a gun to school and threatened to shoot the music teacher if she didn’t play music he liked. lost faith all any goodness from children.
Country Singer, considering you don’t have children, and have said before the birth process is “gross”, which is the kind of interpretation I would expect from a 10-year old, I don’t think you are the best authority on children.
Actually, I was a school teacher until I got burned out. I worked with children whose parents wouldn’t feed them, so guess who bought food for them? Me. Who made sure they were dressed properly? Not their parents. Who tried to teach them even when parents didn’t care? Me. When there was a person with a gun in the school ,who protected her students? Me. Before that, I worked in day cares, student teaching, etc. I might be heartless, but I wasn’t going to let children suffer. After all those years of working with children, I was done. All I know is that I didn’t want any of my own.