Why I decided to be a stay at home wife

[Xantippe]

Also, speaking from the perspective of it taking 15 years of marriage and 3 kids before we were able to buy a house, a downpayment for a house is a very nice thing to have.

When we were in marriage prep, our priest recommended living on one income and saving the other. At the time, it seemed (and probably was) impossible for us as a young graduate student couple, but I think it is excellent advice for those who can follow it.

(No doubt this particular woman is making a little money from her writing, but this is general advice for young couples.)

 

[Book_Worm]

Agh, I remember well the idyllic visions I had of the life of the SAHM, the immaculate house, the marvelous dinners at the beautifully set table, the adorable baby cooing up at us or sleeping angelically. Then I entered the delivery room, and reality intruded.

I know several mothers who truly feel that their vocation is to be a SAHM and possibly even home school their children, but because their DH’s jobs do not provide affordable medical insurance, they are compelled to work to provide it.

 

[gracepoole]

If this young woman has **any **student loans, she should be knocking them out right now, for the sake of her future family.

It’s never going to be easier.

Edited to add: The same goes if her husband has any student loans.

Amen! And honestly, if she can work now to put money aside as a safety net, that would be a tremendous blessing. Let’s assume she’s going to have many children. She can’t possibly anticipate all of the costs that will pop up as a result. Gathering enough to pay for life insurance for herself later when she isn’t working would be reason enough to reenter the workforce temporarily. Not enough SAHMs think about that part of the equation.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

I sincerely appreciate your comments here, but I’d like to add something as well. At least in our family, my wife and I both choose to work outside them home because we have unique skills that we thought we could share with the world around us to make it a better better place (she’s a doctor and I’m a college professor). We still both spend as much time as possible with each other and with our kids of, and the kids always have one of us at home.

I know all of this won’t be the case for everyone, and that we’ve been extraordinarily blessed to have jobs to make this kind of schedule work for us. That said, I wanted to share this additional perspective.

To clarify, I realize that there certainly are many people who see their paying jobs as more than just a paycheck, I actually count myself as one. I also am fortunate enough to have flexibility to cut back my hours if I ever do get married and have children.

But I have seen this idea that Working Mothers are somehow “selfish” and just working to satisfy their own egos and are giving short shrift to their True Vocation. When I suspect the vast majority of WMs are doing so out of financial necessity, or a wish to give their children a better life. And I have noticed somewhat of a double standard. Men who work hard to give their children a more financially stable life are rarely, if ever, accused of being selfish, materialistic, neglecting their True Vocation, etc. Even though there certainly are cases of “workaholic” men who neglect their children, I have seen cases both on CAF and in Real Life.

I should also point out that the WM vs SAHM dichotomy is overly simplistic. Many women do not have full-time jobs, but work part-time, as my mother did. Or they may decide to leave the workforce temporarily when their children are very young, but go back to the workplace once they are older.

ETA: On the other hand, I don’t think SAHMs are automatically lazy and selfish, either. And that’s the vibe I’m getting from some of the other posts here, that the blogger is actually being selfish by NOT working and contributing to the family budget. Imprudent, possibly. But not necessarily selfish.

 

[EasterJoy]

I have an advanced degree, but decided to become a SAHM about 18 years ago. I now substitute teach on an occasional basis.

My caution would include this:
Preserve your ability to contribute a meaningful income to the household unless you have some other viable option if the breadwinner spouse can’t do that any more. You and your spouse have to have a plan for that. Your plan needs to include how you are going to pay all the marital student loans, save for necessary purchases, and so on. (I’m going to assume the author and her husband covered this in their heart-to-heart talks.)

Whether you are a SAHM or a stay-at-home writer, lack of discipline will kill you. When you treat what you do at home as your career by giving yourself deadlines and making commitments to your own goals that you take as seriously as commitments to an outside employer, you can take your alternative direction as an accomplishment instead of a “waste of your education.” If you go through a period where you don’t discipline yourself, though, you will look back and see you did squander time. You cannot get it back.

A substitute teacher normally has a lot of flexibility about whether they are available on a particular day. Schools simply do not pay substitutes enough to expect you’re never going to have a conflict when they need you on short notice. Reliable people are called more often, but that doesn’t mean you can’t say “no, I’m on a deadline for another project, I can’t do it.” That is not a bad job for someone who wants to write until they have children that need an every-day commitment.

Finally, there are people suited to marriage who are not suited to doing all their work for the sake of the family from home. They are better spouses and better family members when they take outside employment. It is not realistic to tell them to “suck it up and stay home” when that is not a good fit for them, not any more than it is a good idea to tell a couple that they’re foolish to have one of the spouses working primarily or exclusively in the home.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

Finally, there are people suited to marriage who are not suited to doing all their work for the sake of the family from home. They are better spouses and better family members when they take outside employment. It is not realistic to tell them to “suck it up and stay home” when that is not a good fit for them, not any more than it is a good idea to tell a couple that they’re foolish to have one of the spouses working primarily or exclusively in the home.

I think it should also be said that the idea of SuperSAHM doing all the childcare, all the housework, and (often in more conservative Christian circles) doing all the schooling for the children, is NOT actually what was historically the case for most families.

Not only were extended family members expected to help out, it was expected for older children to take care of the young ones, and by “older” I mean a 6 year old being expected to “mind the baby”, something that would probably invite a CPS call if anyone tried that today, at least in most US states. Not to mention the reality of child labor back then, again, something that’s outlawed now, at least in the “developed” world.

Also, everyone who was middle class, even barely so, had at least one maid to entrust the drudgery of household chores to. And in the upper middle class, and the elites of society, hired “nurses”, nannies, and governesses as a matter of course to assist in child care. Children were often sent away to boarding school at a young age, as in, 10 or 11. Many “helicopter parents” these days, wouldn’t even let kids have sleep-overs or go to summer camp at that age.

The Proverbs woman, supposedly the ideal Christian wife and mother, also had servants and carried out business transactions.

 

[Elena321]

Sweet couple.
I’m glad she has made a decision that works for them instead of giving in to societal pressure and perceptions.
The reality is though,that many people could not be SAHW even if they wanted to due to the cost of living.
This likely varies country to country but here,rent is approx $500 a week which is hard for just one person to pay on their own and groceries,bills etc on top of that.

I don’t think it’s an “either or” situation.
Eg:my mama worked factory jobs to help buy the family house but once I was born became a housewife/sahm.

I think women should have hobby or intellectual pursuit regardless of whether they do paid work or not.

It would be good for society to change and not view sahm as just lazy,uneducated or sometimes even welfare bludgers.
In my European background it’s completely accepted for a woman to be a housewife but in OZ,where I live,some people look down upon it and think women who do this are lazy or “bogans”.

 

[EasterJoy]

I think it should also be said that the idea of SuperSAHM doing all the childcare, all the housework, and (often in more conservative Christian circles) doing all the schooling for the children, is NOT actually what was historically the case for most families.

Not only were extended family members expected to help out, it was expected for older children to take care of the young ones, and by “older” I mean a 6 year old being expected to “mind the baby”, something that would probably invite a CPS call if anyone tried that today, at least in most US states. Not to mention the reality of child labor back then, again, something that’s outlawed now, at least in the “developed” world.

Also, everyone who was middle class, even barely so, had at least one maid to entrust the drudgery of household chores to. And in the upper middle class, and the elites of society, hired “nurses”, nannies, and governesses as a matter of course to assist in child care. Children were often sent away to boarding school at a young age, as in, 10 or 11. Many “helicopter parents” these days, wouldn’t even let kids have sleep-overs or go to summer camp at that age.

The Proverbs woman, supposedly the ideal Christian wife and mother, also had servants and carried out business transactions.

If you’ve watched any of those reality shows about middle-class life before electric gadgets, you’ve seen that a) a lot of what the servants had to do can now be done with labor-saving devices such as a washer, drier, dishwasher, and so on and b) the work expected of a homemaker has this way of expanding to take up whatever time the homemaker has. It is up to the homemaker to draw the line by establishing priorities on where time and effort go.

If the author of the original piece were a friend of mine, I’d be concerned that she wasn’t choosing between being a writer and being a homemaker. If she’s going to stay at home and be a writer, she will of course treat that as her job and make herself unavailable for household chores for a certain number of hours a day. For a writer, she’s in an era of her life that is not going to last for very much longer: that is, she has a lot of work hours at her disposal and can be extremely flexible about how she uses them. When she has children and becomes a stay-at-home mother, even the stay-at-home-mother of even one child, her work life is going to look very different than it does now. She would do well to use this time carefully while she has it.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

I think it should also be said that the idea of SuperSAHM doing all the childcare, all the housework, and (often in more conservative Christian circles) doing all the schooling for the children, is NOT actually what was historically the case for most families.

Not only were extended family members expected to help out, it was expected for older children to take care of the young ones, and by “older” I mean a 6 year old being expected to “mind the baby”, something that would probably invite a CPS call if anyone tried that today, at least in most US states. Not to mention the reality of child labor back then, again, something that’s outlawed now, at least in the “developed” world.

Also, everyone who was middle class, even barely so, had at least one maid to entrust the drudgery of household chores to. And in the upper middle class, and the elites of society, hired “nurses”, nannies, and governesses as a matter of course to assist in child care. Children were often sent away to boarding school at a young age, as in, 10 or 11. Many “helicopter parents” these days, wouldn’t even let kids have sleep-overs or go to summer camp at that age.

The Proverbs woman, supposedly the ideal Christian wife and mother, also had servants and carried out business transactions.

My Dad grew up in Italy. His family had a farm where they did a bit of everything, cattle, sheep, a bit of produce and grain etc. My Nonno did much of the outdoor farm things my Nonna did much of the indoor farm things. My father grew up being cared for by both parents. Husband and wife worked together.

 

[AClaire11]

Agh, I remember well the idyllic visions I had of the life of the SAHM, the immaculate house, the marvelous dinners at the beautifully set table, the adorable baby cooing up at us or sleeping angelically. Then I entered the delivery room, and reality intruded.

I know several mothers who truly feel that their vocation is to be a SAHM and possibly even home school their children, but because their DH’s jobs do not provide affordable medical insurance, they are compelled to work to provide it.

Yep, toys are scattered faster than I can pick them up. And she pulls all our books of the shelves now, haha.

I was a SAHW for a short period, but 1) my husband was still in the military and we were about to move across the country, 2) I had no debts, and 3) I was able to finish a manuscript. I didn’t end up publishing because I realized I needed to go fix some plot holes and decided to take a break, but I did make myself sit down and write every day.

 

[pensmama87]

My oldest is almost six, so depending on how you look at it I’m still mostly in littles-land, but I would like to offer encouragement to the moms who’ve posted on this thread who have only very small children: what you are going through right now is, IMO, absolutely the most difficult time of parenting.

My husband and I are likely to have more children, but here’s a few things that have happened since that time:

• Our older children are capable of doing some things for themselves and even helping around the house, and with the baby. Not anywhere near a “child labor” level, but my almost 6yo can do a lot, and is still pretty enthusiastic about learning new household tasks. My 4yo is very eager to be “grown up” and help too. He does more at 4 then his older brother did because he has another person he looks up to.
• My husband and I know ourselves and each other better with our accompanying strengths and weaknesses.
• We know how to ask each other for help and have a better intuitive sense of when help is needed even when it’s not asked for, and we’re better at accepting it even when it’s not asked for.
• My husband is more settled in his career and we have more financial stability, which makes our home lives much less stressful.
• We’ve learned how to make friends with other parents. When we first had kids, we had very little social support.
• We’re also just better at doing the things that were new to us with our first. I was super exasperated with my oldest when he reached the stage my youngest is in now - old enough to have lots of opinions and impulses, but not so much capability to do the things he wanted or the ability to reason whether or not it’s safe. It’s still frustrating with my youngest, but I don’t feel helpless about it now. Just “oh, here we go again. ”

That’s not to say I’m never going to be thrown for a loop again. Stuff happens. But I do get to get out regularly for social time, with or without the kids, my house is reasonably clean, and my marriage is in a good place, and I don’t feel like I’m killing myself to do it. A couple years ago, though, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine that, because life with only toddlers and infants is insanity, simply put. Sometimes fun insanity, but insanity nonetheless.

God bless you mamas!

ETA: The other thing that I didn’t put on my list, but just remembered and it was huge emotionally speaking: having legitimate common interests with your kids! Being able to play games with my kids and read books that appeal to the both of us is great, really great. Even the best “babies and toddlers only” stuff can grate on you after a while. Now that stuff isn’t my entire life.

 

[Xantippe]

Yep, toys are scattered faster than I can pick them up.** And she pulls all our books of the shelves now, haha.**

I was a SAHW for a short period, but 1) my husband was still in the military and we were about to move across the country, 2) I had no debts, and 3) I was able to finish a manuscript. I didn’t end up publishing because I realized I needed to go fix some plot holes and decided to take a break, but I did make myself sit down and write every day.

She’ll stop doing that eventually–when it’s not fun anymore.

 

[Xantippe]

My oldest is almost six, so depending on how you look at it I’m still mostly in littles-land, but I would like to offer encouragement to the moms who’ve posted on this thread who have only very small children: what you are going through right now is, IMO, absolutely the most difficult time of parenting.

My husband and I are likely to have more children, but here’s a few things that have happened since that time:

• Our older children are capable of doing some things for themselves and even helping around the house, and with the baby. Not anywhere near a “child labor” level, but my almost 6yo can do a lot, and is still pretty enthusiastic about learning new household tasks. My 4yo is very eager to be “grown up” and help too. He does more at 4 then his older brother did because he has another person he looks up to.
• My husband and I know ourselves and each other better with our accompanying strengths and weaknesses.
• We know how to ask each other for help and have a better intuitive sense of when help is needed even when it’s not asked for, and we’re better at accepting it even when it’s not asked for.
• My husband is more settled in his career and we have more financial stability, which makes our home lives much less stressful.
• We’ve learned how to make friends with other parents. When we first had kids, we had very little social support.
• We’re also just better at doing the things that were new to us with our first. I was super exasperated with my oldest when he reached the stage my youngest is in now - old enough to have lots of opinions and impulses, but not so much capability to do the things he wanted or the ability to reason whether or not it’s safe. It’s still frustrating with my youngest, but I don’t feel helpless about it now. Just “oh, here we go again. ”

That’s not to say I’m never going to be thrown for a loop again. Stuff happens. But I do get to get out regularly for social time, with or without the kids, my house is reasonably clean, and my marriage is in a good place, and I don’t feel like I’m killing myself to do it. A couple years ago, though, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine that, because life with only toddlers and infants is insanity, simply put. Sometimes fun insanity, but insanity nonetheless.

God bless you mamas!

ETA: The other thing that I didn’t put on my list, but just remembered and it was huge emotionally speaking: having legitimate common interests with your kids! Being able to play games with my kids and read books that appeal to the both of us is great, really great. Even the best “babies and toddlers only” stuff can grate on you after a while. Now that stuff isn’t my entire life.

Yay!

 

[ThePCWife]

I hope that SAHW talks to her dude about child spacing. Stairstepping babies is a big deal and is very different from kids spaced 3+ years apart. Obviously NFP can’t guarantee either, but as the OP is Catholic, it is still worth looking into and weighing the pros and cons of family planning. As far as writing goes, if the kids are closely spaced, you can pretty much kiss writing goodbye for up to 10 years. Even with just two, she could be facing a four or five year stall-out. There are rare exceptions, but in general, SAHMs just don’t get much writing done until they have school-aged children unless there is a lot of hot and cold running gramma/auntie/nanny. Even the exceptions tend to let all the domestic stuff slide into oblivion, so they’re not much of an exception to the general rule either.

 

[AClaire11]

I hope that SAHW talks to her dude about child spacing. Stairstepping babies is a big deal and is very different from kids spaced 3+ years apart. Obviously NFP can’t guarantee either, but as the OP is Catholic, it is still worth looking into and weighing the pros and cons of family planning. As far as writing goes, if the kids are closely spaced, you can pretty much kiss writing goodbye for up to 10 years. Even with just two, she could be facing a four or five year stall-out. There are rare exceptions, but in general, SAHMs just don’t get much writing done until they have school-aged children unless there is a lot of hot and cold running gramma/auntie/nanny. Even the exceptions tend to let all the domestic stuff slide into oblivion, so they’re not much of an exception to the general rule either.

I think it depends on the child. Mine plays independently a lot, so I’m able to get a lot of housework done during the day (to be fair, we live in an apartment) and I’m able to write or knit during naps and after she goes to sleep. I still read to her and play with her, but I’m not sitting next to her the entire day.

 

[Viki63]

pensmama87:

ETA: The other thing that I didn’t put on my list, but just remembered and it was huge emotionally speaking: having legitimate common interests with your kids! Being able to play games with my kids and read books that appeal to the both of us is great, really great. Even the best “babies and toddlers only” stuff can grate on you after a while. Now that stuff isn’t my entire life.

That was one of the best parts of raising kids: between the ages of 5 or 6 and 13 I read to them every night, – the Lord of the Rings, all the Narnia books, a lot of Oz books. Even when my daughter could read to herself she still liked being read to - she went the longest.
I was guilty of keeping them up too late to read sometimes, but they remember the books fondly.

.

 

[Xantippe]

That was one of the best parts of raising kids: between the ages of 5 or 6 and 13 I read to them every night, – the Lord of the Rings, all the Narnia books, a lot of Oz books. Even when my daughter could read to herself she still liked being read to - she went the longest.
I was guilty of keeping them up too late to read sometimes, but they remember the books fondly.

.

Awwww!

 

[EasterJoy]

That was one of the best parts of raising kids: between the ages of 5 or 6 and 13 I read to them every night, – the Lord of the Rings, all the Narnia books, a lot of Oz books. Even when my daughter could read to herself she still liked being read to - she went the longest.
I was guilty of keeping them up too late to read sometimes, but they remember the books fondly.

I’m pretty fond of books on tape, even now.

 

[Elena321]

Also businesses should become more supportive of flexible hours,part time work and work from home arrangements.

 

[AClaire11]

Also businesses should become more supportive of flexible hours,part time work and work from home arrangements.

Yes. I would love it if more jobs allowed telework. It would be much easier to move to a more affordable place if we didn’t have to worry about commutes. Of course, working from home doesn’t eliminate the need for childcare, but it would be a big improvement.