Unpopular opinion: 2 working parents bad. 1 needs to stay home and raise the children

[Ottonomous]

Honestly an excellent solution would be child employment to subsidize their care and even supplement your income. I am only 33 and I am set to retire in two years with only 7 little workers.

Just make sure to check the minimum age for writing up their job applications

 

[renz20003]

Work is a break from the kids, but they aren't in school yet.

 

[whm1974]

Honestly an excellent solution would be child employment to subsidize their care and even supplement your income. I am only 33 and I am set to retire in two years with only 7 little workers.

Just make sure to check the minimum age for writing up their job applications

Personally I think both the State and Federal governments should subsidize daycare and extra after school programs to help out both single parents, and both parents working.

 

[snoopy7548]

Personally I think both the State and Federal governments should subsidize daycare and extra after school programs to help out both single parents, and both parents working.

Let's get the healthcare thing figured out first. Parents already get tax credits for their children.

 

[Ackmed]

^ Wow, bitter much? Generalizations and nothing but negativity is an outstanding way to look at this. Sounds like you're not speaking from experience.

Edit, took too long to reply. Geekbabe was last reply when I hit respond.

To OP, who cares if it's not a popular opinion, or if some feminist look down on your wife or situation. We've lost contact with a few "friends" because they don't agree with her staying home. Because how dare she not work and show the world who she is. We talked about it a lot, and it was 100% her decision. It's been 3 years last month. It's what she wanted, and I back her. It's such a relief for me working, to know she's got home life on lock. You guys should do what is best for you. Child care can be extremely expensive. Especially for multiple kids. Working for just child care seems silly to me. It can easily be 1k a week for two kids. When they start school, things can change and be easier financially.

My wife stays at home, it was a joint decision. We have 4 kids. 20, 15, 7, 2. Oldest gone to college, comes home some weekends. Can't wait for 15 year old to start driving, will help out. Our 2 year old just started mothers day out, to give her a break. Costs money, but gives her sanity. 2 days a week, 5 hours a day. He loves it.

She's well educated, has a Masters in teaching. Did make good money before. She wasn't happy teaching anymore, it's not like it used to be. She would make enough to offset the kid care, and still be in the plus. It's just not worth it for us, and more importantly her.

A stay at home mothers or fathers job with multiple kids is almost always harder than the working partner imo. There is so much involved, always something to do. I routinely tell her how great she is doing. Because it can get lost in the shuffle. It's a damn hard job. I try to give her breaks when I can. Such as she's out for brunch with friends right now while I'm home with kids.

I would caution you to make time for yourselves. Not that you probably don't know this. Life can be busy, always something. School, sports, work, etc. We use the gym for "dates", drop off two youngest in kid care, and we get a glorious 2 hours alone to workout together. We don't have any family to help really, all parents in their 70's. All my family in 4,500 miles away so no help at all. So we rely on sitters and the gym. Sometimes have to be creative. Rambled, do what you need to do for you guys. Screw anyone else and their negativity.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

There seems to be a number of people who dismiss the effect the economy has on whether both parents need to work or not. Insurance, housing and, yes, food costs are prohibitive for the vast majority of Americans with families. There has been a tremendous concentration of wealth in the last 30 years. Insurance and housing costs have skyrocketed to the point that the obscene rise in food costs is dismissed out of hand because it's such a tiny portion of the costs of the other two. The ' smart' kids live with their parents till they're 26, pick the 'right' degree in college, work for corporations and, buy homes as investments. We have a significant number of people who believe this is getting ahead. 'Obviously,' these people are simply smarter than the rest of us because money is the most important measure of intelligence. Amirite?

 

[Geekbabe]

^ Wow, bitter much? Generalizations and nothing but negativity is an outstanding way to look at this. Sounds like you're not speaking from experience.

Edit, took too long to reply. Geekbabe was last reply when I hit respond.

To OP, who cares if it's not a popular opinion, or if some feminist look down on your wife or situation. We've lost contact with a few "friends" because they don't agree with her staying home. Because how dare she not work and show the world who she is. We talked about it a lot, and it was 100% her decision. It's been 3 years last month. It's what she wanted, and I back her. It's such a relief for me working, to know she's got home life on lock. You guys should do what is best for you. Child care can be extremely expensive. Especially for multiple kids. Working for just child care seems silly to me. It can easily be 1k a week for two kids. When they start school, things can change and be easier financially.

My wife stays at home, it was a joint decision. We have 4 kids. 20, 15, 7, 2. Oldest gone to college, comes home some weekends. Can't wait for 15 year old to start driving, will help out. Our 2 year old just started mothers day out, to give her a break. Costs money, but gives her sanity. 2 days a week, 5 hours a day. He loves it.

She's well educated, has a Masters in teaching. Did make good money before. She wasn't happy teaching anymore, it's not like it used to be. She would make enough to offset the kid care, and still be in the plus. It's just not worth it for us, and more importantly her.

A stay at home mothers or fathers job with multiple kids is almost always harder than the working partner imo. There is so much involved, always something to do. I routinely tell her how great she is doing. Because it can get lost in the shuffle. It's a damn hard job. I try to give her breaks when I can. Such as she's out for brunch with friends right now while I'm home with kids.

I would caution you to make time for yourselves. Not that you probably don't know this. Life can be busy, always something. School, sports, work, etc. We use the gym for "dates", drop off two youngest in kid care, and we get a glorious 2 hours alone to workout together. We don't have any family to help really, all parents in their 70's. All my family in 4,500 miles away so no help at all. So we rely on sitters and the gym. Sometimes have to be creative. Rambled, do what you need to do for you guys. Screw anyone else and their negativity.

not sure if the “ you’re not bitter much” comment was aimed at me? I will say my comments were made based off of threads I have read here over the years concerning divorce, alimony & child support.

That wonderful stay at home mother suddenly becomes a gold digging ho once the divorce papers come out. Divorce...it doesn’t happen in all marriages but it happens in enough of them that it must be factored into such decision be you man or woman.

 

[TXHokie]

All the women on my side of family stay at home to raise kids. Some of them left six figure jobs to do so but they married high earner husbands that could support it, although some days they do lament missing that shopping money or having to drive an older car or not take that great vacation as a tradeoff. But a common theme is that they all wouldn't change it for anything and valued the option they had to choose to stay at home to care for their own kids.

We decided to do the same when we got married and had our first kid. Her side of the family all have working women and they all kind of put her down saying she wasted her college education and career and why not earn more money to drive nice cars blah blah. That got to her at the beginning but now with our first child about to head to college, she is much more thankful she was able to be at home to see them all grew up and becoming successful. She does get a bit jealous sometime when she talks to her old work friends and seeing how they have progressed with their career with promotions and high paychecks. But she feels better after going to her zumba class and spa after her morning coffee while they all slave away.

We made some sacrifice to stick with the stay at home mom plan and I do feel lucky to have had a stable career thus far to carry out that plan. Sure being a single income (thus single point of failure) has had its hairy days during those downturns but we got thru unscathed. It's not for everybody and I wouldn't say it is the way to go for anyone else but it worked for us. For me it's the feeling of stability having her at home knowing someone is there to take care of business at home whatever comes up related to the kids' needs and boy do they have a lot of needs as they grow. She has the time to be active in school, church, and competitive sports and knows all the families of the friends our kids hang out with. A lot of the kids and families in school knows her as well which in turn is like a network to keep tabs on our kids' well being. The overall benefit is a lot of little things that's hard to measure.

 

[whm1974]

Let's get the healthcare thing figured out first. Parents already get tax credits for their children.

Yes let us get the Single Payer Healthcare as well, but I think we do need better and lower cost daycare, and I also support after school programs especially for grade and middle school kids to keep them out of trouble if their parents have to work late hours.
Maybe programs such as this?

https://afterschoolsatan.com/

 

[Chromagnus]

I think people should do what is right for their family. Some parents are happier staying at home, some are miserable. A miserable stay at home parent is worse than a happy working parent. I'm not in a place right now where I'd want to give up my career so it wouldn't be fair to ask my wife to give up hers.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

You know things are screwed up pretty badly when for most, one parent can't afford to stay home to raise a child. This in turn is just going to create more societal problems later down the line.

My wife and I both work from home part-time with our 7 month old. In this way neither of us are giving up our careers, but instead just kind of putting them on hold without really losing anything other than significant progress. But we've already reached points in our careers where more progress comes at the significant cost of time. For example, I'm probably at a salary that's about as high as I can get to without being in a lead or management type position. And right now I don't really feel the drive to be in such a position because I am happy where I am.

We do not regret this decision one bit. Raising a child and especially the first, is one the greatest experiences if not the greatest that life has to offer. It should be fully experienced and something you have little energy for alongside of work. If I could go back and to do it again, I would do it exactly as I did it and am doing it now.

Once he's in school and a little older, I plan on taking at least one month off every summer (on top of my regular PTO) so that we can go do fun family activities. If I have to change jobs every single time I do that, so be it. Work-culture is stupid, and this comes from someone who slaved away much of his 20s earning a PhD believing that's what life was all about. At least it is now paying off big time in my 30s.

 

[DigDog]

IMHO in a perfect world instead of having 2 parents work or 1 stay home, the kid should go to work with the parents.

Ye ye i know, this sounds ridiculous but i've come to believe this is truly the best solution.

 

[snoopy7548]

IMHO in a perfect world instead of having 2 parents work or 1 stay home, the kid should go to work with the parents.

Ye ye i know, this sounds ridiculous but i've come to believe this is truly the best solution.

Even better would be if the kid worked so the parents could stay home.

 

[DigDog]

If i look back at my school days, almost nothing i was taught has had any relevance in my life outside of school. Granted, you do learn *real* stuff in college, and if you have the mindset and life situation that will allow you to get through the whole college thing, including masters and whatnot, then go for it. But if by any stretch of the imagination you don't, then an early start into work is far, far better. You would grow up having an actual connection with your parent's lives, and you would have WAY more work experience than anyone else. Also, correct me if im wrong, but children of professional who are allowed to learn professional material from a young age tend to nearly always excel. If you spend 12 years next to your mom the doctor in a hospital, by the time you are of age for med school you will have spontanepously picked up a ton of vital knowledge that will allow you to zip through it; also, you'd actually be up to date with the times, which isn't always true for standard education.

Or instead you can learn about waterloo and the roman empire.

The principle here is "teach kids ONE thing". When i was put through school i really resisted the fact that we had to learn things which to date have had zero relevance in anything at all in my life. Memorizing the square area of lakes, poetry, assyrian history, roman emperors, yeah it's all cool but it doesnt help me make money, you know, and i gotta pay my bills.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

To each their own. For our family, both my wife and I are fairly ambitious and driven. We both work full time, which is largely made possible by the fact that much of her family lives in the same area as we do.

That being said, we still cook tasty meals at home, we still sit with our children and do age appropriate learning reinforcement (math/reading/writing), and we still chill out and play games/go out/have fun. There just is not a lot of "free" time to do things on the fly, and a lot of planning is involved.

A couple random, scattershot thoughts on the topic:

- Stay at home parenting isn't any more "normal" than both parents working (some of the "good old days" discussion in this thread). Historically, I would argue that multi-generational households are sort of the human base-line family unit, where three or more generations would live together. Grandparents help raise the children while the working age parents work. Smaller babies would just go to work with their mother's, to Digdog's point above. Stay at home parenting grew out of the historical aberration of the nuclear family unit, which is a relatively modern development for humans.

- I've known some absolutely superb stay at home parents that really maximize the time they have with their children. But for every one of those, I can think of five that were socially mal-adapted from basically being shut-ins with children. It wasn't healthy for the mothers, it wasn't healthy for the children, and it wasn't healthy for their spouse. This could be an artifact of generational norms, as not all of these people were necessarily young (an older woman might have stayed at home out of social expectation rather than her own desire to, making her nuts).