I haven’t posted much, because there is a twisted mass of posts in my head and I haven’t figured out how to untangle them. It is a bizarre mix: our goals for M’s education, privilege vs. options and how to best ensure M’s future, and my discomfort with my new status as a kept woman. That combination probably makes no sense to anyone who isn’t in my head, but whatever.
I am just going to dive in and we shall see what happens.
A and I have a very good relationship right now. In the past we have had our ups and downs, but right now, we are on a very even keel. That being said, now that I stay home full time, I feel much less secure.
Of course, the source of this insecurity is money. He makes a LOT (relatively speaking) and I make NONE. Also, A has the potential of making a lot MORE money in the next 5-10 years and I am already mentally spending it on a mini-van and non-broken house.Yeah, yeah, we both agree that my job taking care of M is important…that isn’t the issue. We share our money 100% and I can buy whatever I want…so that isn’t the issue either.
The issue is that not having any income places me in really vulnerable position. If A leaves tomorrow, I am royally screwed. If he decided he wants to leave, or he needs a new trophy wife or whatever, I am completely without resources to fund the divorce lawyer I would need to take him for everything he is worth to support myself and my children.
Also, even if I found a job that could support us, it would be at a subsistance level and nowhere near the level we currently enjoy.
And the truth of the matter? I *like* the standard of living we have now. I would like to keep it. (I would like to keep A too, but if that wasn’t possible, I would at least like to keep my house and the cleaning gnomes.)
My current standard of living/socioeconomic status is largely dependent on A, his choice of career and his willingness to work his ass off to climb the corporate ladder. I am just along for the (quite comfy) ride. It is weirdly privileged position I never expected to find myself in.
When I was growing up, I was told that if I worked hard and got a good education, I could pull myself up by my bootstraps and live a comfortable life. I always thought I would earn enough money to comfortably support myself and my children in an upper-middle class lifestyle. My husband’s income would just be the icing on the cake.
While that is true for some women, when I look at my family and friends, it really seems that marriage and who you marry (and how much money they make) is in pushing us to one end or the other of the socioeconomic spectrum.*
When I was spending a couple hundred dollars a month to call A in China, I used to joke that it was a long-term investment. Little did I know, that investment will pay of in hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of our relationship. Lucky for me, A gives good phone so I kept calling him.
I didn’t marry A for his money, I married him because I love him. It isn’t feminist to admit it, but riding on A’s financial coat-tails makes my life a lot easier and more pleasant. It just sucks that this feeling of vulnerablility** is the price I have to pay for it.
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*Note: Most of the women I know are lower-middle class or higher SES, so that is the spectrum I am talking about here.
** Yes, I realize that my feeling of minor discomfort is nothing compared to women who struggle to put food on the table for their kids. I am not interested in debating my own position of privilege today. I have just been processing these thoughts lately and thougt writing them down might help me think them through.
I hear ya.
Because of my husband`s frequent international job transfers, I`m a “serial SAHM.” When we were first married, I worked fulltime. Then we moved from Tokyo to LA, and I was at home for four and half years, then back to Tokyo, where I worked fulltime again (and was the main breadwinner for both salary and benefits!) for six and a half years. Last year we moved to SF, where I`m a SAHM again.
The first time was the hardest — it felt like jumping off a cliff. I never admitted to myself how much of my identity, self-worth and personal financial security depended on my job.
This time around, I knew exactly how I`d feel, and anticipating it perhaps made it a bit easier (as well as the knowlege that we`ll move back to Tokyo in 3 years and I`ll almost definitely work again) — but the issues you raise are all great ones, that don`t have easy answers for everyone.
Ditto! Ditto! Ditto! I almost knocked myself out nodding over this post. EVERYthing you said, woman. And yeah, for me, I did not marry my spouse because of his money, I married him in SPITE of it (I had very nasty and uncharitable thoughts about People With Money). But here we are. He’s making a lot, and I’m making a tiny little crumb. I have had a lot of weird thoughts about this. For a while I had this strange compulsion to gamble, which I only played out when we went to Vegas or Reno, like every two years. But I could feel my heart racing when I went to those tables, and I couldn’t figure out WHY and I realized how happy/equal/cool I could feel if I could just go toss an envelope with a lot of bucks on the table, and say, “That’s from ME.” My DH thought this was endearing and silly, of course. But it’s a big issue. Right now I have a job that pays not so much but makes me feel I am somehow in the world. It also changes when your kids get bigger. We had a spate of adolescent nastiness a while back and my daughter spit out that she thought I was MOOCHING off her dad (my husband) because I didn’t have a job. And I realized I did not like the role model I was presenting. Here we are investing all kinds of stuff into her education and gearing her for independence and being smart and engaged and all that stuff. We reminded her that I was very independent and had this whole life before Her, during which I supported myself fine, but when DH and I got together, we realized that we were LUCKY enough that he could do what he loves (which just happens to be lucrative) and I could do what I love and we both believe in, which involves working at a series of shoestring nonprofits. I feel really lucky to be able to do what I do. But it’s a tricky balance, emotionally and socially and all that. All I can say is, keep doing what feels important to you and I think it will all be good.
My husband and I are still trying to adopt our first child, so I don’t have the same situation you do — but I’ve certainly thought about it. My guy makes about triple my own salary, and if we had to, we could probably live off of it. But not only do you place yourself in a position that is financially vulnerable, you also run the risk of losing out on new skills that are part of staying in the rat race. For example, my sister-in-law has been a SAHM for probably 10-12 years. She was a graphic designer before her kids were born — and in the time she was “out,” the entire nature of the business changed over to computers. She doesn’t know any of the software, and is completely out of the loop — despite her history & talent, it would be almost impossible for her to get a graphic design job now. And in fact, she and her husband did recently separate — although the break-up is amicable and he is still supporting the family. But she would be totally screwed if not. So, I totally hear what you’re saying, and have been thinking a lot about the repercussions to my own life if I ever decide to stay at home with kids. It’s definitely a blessing and a curse, you know?
A lot of what you said resonates for me. We aren’t as well-off, but my husband makes a lot more than I ever did, and unless I retrain that will always be the case. I am a feminist, and sometimes it’s hard for me to reconcile my belief system with the fact that I am a stay-at-home mom, depending on my husband for support. I also think culture plays into this a little bit, because I know my parents taught me that I should pursue my own interests and find work that was a “calling”, while my husband’s parents followed the stereotypical Asian-parent path and pushed A to succeed in school and find a high-paying job. Sometimes I think we do kids (especially girls) a disservice by saying, “Do what you love,” without acknolwedging that it may mean living less comfortably, or being dependent on one’s partner. I want K to be happy in her job, but I also want her to be financially secure, with or without a husband.
oh we are sooo on the same page here (except for the working hard part, hubs got his money the old fashioned jewish way: inheritance)
We have the stores, where I work hard, but in case of a divorce, I woulnd’t want to keep doing it without him and i would have no career, no money, and seriously, no lawyer to take my case! It’s a big incentive to keep working on our relationship when it’s not going so well…
If you get divorced will you have a divorce party?
Wow, was this timely (for me anyway!) I am currently 7 months pregnant with my first child. I got laid off 3 months ago (yikes!) I did find part-time work, which would have paid me about 20 grand a year for about 15 hours a week–so, not bad considering. But I was completely depressed and panicked because I was not able to find a full-time job for almost 3 months (of EXTREMELY active searching). I did finally find one, and I start on Monday. I told them during the interview that I was pregnant and would need to take off 6 weeks of leave, and they hired me anyway, which was a relief.
Before this all happened, I had always thought that it would be nice to work only part time when my kids were young. And, I still think that would be nice, IF I could be guaranteed a full-time job to go back to in, say, a year or so. But being laid off (for the first time in my life), made me realize, like someone else commented above, that much of my identity is tied in with my career. I have a Ph.D., and have spent the last decade of my life thinking of myself in terms of my profession, and although I look forward to parenting immensely, for me it can’t completely fill the “identity hole” that would be left if I did not work or only worked a little bit.
Also, my husband makes a pretty good salary–about 25 thousand more than I do, but it’s not quite enough for us all to live on (unless we, for example, got rid of one car and moved from our house to a condo, neither of which I really want to do). As you said, I like our current standard of living, and would like to keep it. But the biggest issue keeping me from wanting to parent full time is that of identity, and of wanting to be more “in the world” and also not feel as though I am financially dependent on my husband–I’d rather us be “interdependent” both financially and parenting-wise.
I should also note that in my case, my mother was a SAHM (who left her profession when I was born), and when my parents divorced when I was 10, really had to scramble to find a job that could support us, as my father never paid child support. So, I’m pretty certain this also colors my outlook on things.
(I know this is, or can be, a very divisive issue among mothers, and please know that I think parenting full-time, for those of us who do choose it, is most definitely “work.” )
You all should read the Mommy Wars — it is NOT at all about any war or animosity between SAHMS and Moms who work outside the home — it is a series of very well written articles by women about the choices they have made and why. It really helped me think about my perspective and deal with my ambivalence being a SAHM — I was a corporate lawyer for 9 years (with two kids) when I stopped to stay home when we adopted my daughter. (About a year and a half ago). She still needs me home, so ambivalence aside, and lack of societal support aside, I am home still. I think it would all be easier if there was societal support. I’d like to see “Most floortime in a week” and “Best study pal for science test” and “Most calm under pressure when puppy puking and toddler screaming” awards!!!
I totally agree with everything said. It’s very comfortable to live off my husband, and I have grown lazy and ashamed of being lazy. But I was raised not to be financially vulnerable. And now I am, just like the all the people I used to feel smugly superior to.
When I got quite overwhelmed by thoughts like this (and I had a potentially very lucrative career, and my husband was very unhelpful about it) I started a bank account in my own name. In which there is *always* enough for the first couple retainers for a divorce lawyer and a down payment. I don’t want it to come to that – but I don’t want to be left high and dry if it does.
And I do think that as a SAHM who is unhappy about having given the other life up, I’m not a good role model for my daughter. And I hate that feeling too.
Much of this resonated with me as well. Except that my husband and I made nearly equal salaries when I left to stay home with our son when he was born last year. THEN, my husband’s company (which he owns) got investment capital a month after and he got a salary raise that nearly equaled my former salary (it always cracks me up when people think that we are rich just because my husband owns a company since he is the LAST one to get paid when shit hits the fan! Which it has a couple of times over the past 6 odd years). Anyway, I can see the questioning in some of my friend’s and family member’s eyes as our lifestyle has changed very little since I quit. And I feel awkward about this – I just admitted on my blog yesterday that we still have a cleaning service and it was very hard to even do that.
I don’t worry about divorce. Not one bit – I don’t say that because we have a perfect marriage, but because I know we are committed to working anything out. It’s hard to explain, but with my husband’s background, adultery/divorce just isn’t in his vernacular – partly due to his Indian Catholic background, I am sure…….However, I do worry about death for either one of us. To that end, we have life insurance policies on both of us. In EQUAL amounts. Damned straight, if something happens to me, my husband will need money to continue doing what he does while ensuring that our son is well-taken care of at the same time.
When I quit my job (3 months before my son was born), I really feared the identiy shift from going as a licensed CPA to a SAHM. I was surprised to find that it didn’t bother me. While we have a nice life financially, we also have a nice life emotionally because what I do plays an important part in ensuring that everything runs smoothly. When my husband comes home, we focus on dinner, spending time with our son and each other. Rarely, are we rushing around. Nah, I am SO not the little wifey with a cocktail at the door, but my staying home does make our life less hurried.
I also make a point of letting my husband know I appreciate how hard he works. I also make a point of letting my husband know how much I do around the house that is just plain grudge work – I do it in a non-complaining way, but I want him to be clear that it is not all fun and game around our house. Of course, the perks are worth it – I GET to spend much more time with our son than he does. And lately, afternoons are usually spent at the park or sitting on the floor and playing. No complaints.
GREAT post and AWESOME comments. I have been thinking about this anyway as I had reserved Mommy Wars at the library and I just received the email that it is now waiting for me to pick up.
I don’t know if I’m quite qualified to comment on this subject. I’m not married. I’m a single mom living just above poverty level. I did give up a career (involuntarily) when my kids were born. Now I just have “a job.” A part-time one at that.
I do understand what you are saying, and how your identity is tied up in your career. I feel the same way. There is very little respect in society for those of us who spend the day on the floor with our kids, and in my case, working part-time helping disabled people. I feel a little out of touch with society these days. (BTW, I’m in my situation now because I got laid off while pg and childcare costs for two children under 2 would all but cancel out any salary I would make. I now almost always get to take my kids to work with me, so I’m lucky there.)
In any case, I just feel like saying to you…relax about it. You’re lucky! And I don’t mean that in a “you’re so privelidged and I’m not” sort of way. I mean that in a way to say that if the arrangement is working well for you and A, just relax and enjoy it. If the worst should happen and he goes off with his trophy wife…you’ll be ok. Really, you will. You will go back to work and take care of your kids. You might lose some of your standard of living and that will suck, but you’ll get used to it and after awhile it won’t seem important anymore.
Basically, I’m saying to enjoy your privilige you have now and don’t worry about ghosts that aren’t there. Just know that if the ghosts ever show up, you’ll handle it. You might have lost a job, but not your abilities and skills and motivation to work hard. It will be there for you when you need it.
Okay, that all probably qualifies as assvice from someone who is not even in your position. So just take it for what it’s worth!
Anyway,
My husband makes more than twice what I do with 1/2 the formal education that I have. I am also greatly struggling with how to deal with my pending dependence on him financially. I plan to stay at home when our adoption is complete. I know that we are stable and he isn’t going anywhere. We share everything completely. But I hate the thought that I might need to ask him for money. I will hate not having my own income. I know I am lucky to have the opporunity to choose to stay at home but it still freaks me out. I’m also afraid I will become an incredibly dull person who has nothing to talk about but poopy diapers but that is another conversation.
A friend of mine, who has been married for almost 20 years, wrote up a contract with her husband when she took time off from her lawyering career to stay home with their two kids. I think she was mostly out of the paid workforce for around 5 years. In the contract she laid out exactly what she was giving up by staying home and how much her at-home labor was worth, and her husband acknowledged the financial and career sacrifice she was making. The contract was kind of a in-media-nuptiual agreement designed to provide some legal protection for her if they split up.
I thought it was a relaly itneresting way of framing things. She did give up a huge amount of earning potential during those years, and I was impressed that she got it written down so that she would be compensated if anything happend to dissolve their marriage.
In thinking about this further today, it occurs to me how this fear of dependency that stay at home moms have just isn’t fair. I get it, really, I do. But it seems to stem at least somewhat from the complete devaluation of what a mom does (working outside or not.)
Remember, your husband is dependent on you as well. What if you just up and left tomorrow? WITHOUT the children. What would he do? Does he know when they need to be vaccinated? Does he know the number of her best playmate? Does he know her favorite vegetables? Would he be forced to stay home at least for a while till he figured out daycare? Would he keep up with all the laundry and diaper changing and housework and still be able to work 60 hours a week? You ladies are enabling your husbands to excell at their careers by raising their children for them.
We don’t think of it this way because it is always taken for granted that the guy can just up and leave and go on to his own life, yet the woman will always keep the kids. Because that is what we do. No matter what, we keep up our responsibilities to the kids. Even the most amicable of divorces allow the father the freedom of not having the kids day to day. This is just a complete lack of respect for the role of women in the family that allows women to feel financially vulnerable if their husbands were to leave, yet lets the husbands get off of the child-rearing burden should the wife leave. Not fair. He is completely dependent on you, too, ladies.
/end soapbox rant/
I just LOVE reading your blog. You hit these things on the head so well! Can’t offer anything other than head nodding.
You struck a nerve, didn’t you?
Me too.
Getting used to being a (and I do call myself this) “kept woman” was really, really hard. It took a LONG time, like years to get used to.
Some things that helped me:
-our big rrsp is a spousal one, all in my name. No, it wouldn’t make up for my husband walking out on me but it wouldn’t hurt me and the kids either.
-I have always had small sidelines going. Caring for other people’s children as a dayhome, working as the lunch lady at school, teaching running clinics. It isn’t a lot of money but it gets me out of the house and reminds me that I can get, keep and maintain a job quite nicely.
-I have a plan for the big horror show of if he left me. It wouldn’t keep me in the lap of luxury or anything, it would be damn hard (I would set up as a dayhome again, only this time it would be for people who worked shift and I would work nights), this has changed as my kids have gotten older.
Having a plan helps me, I realize that although I am dependent on my husband in a lot of ways I am not. And hey if I have a plan, then I could probably actually do even better than that.
It is weird though, what being the stay at home parent can do for your self image.
I’m going to nod along with you. I’m too tired to say anything worth saying, but if you are a SAHM and you aren’t thinking about this…you should be. Everyone needs a plan.
Before we adopted Elliott, I had a career I ADORED. It’s true I made no money, but I loved what I did, and was good at it–2 things vital to me. As much as I loved my job, I have few regrets about my at-home status. It’s the most practical approach to the life we live. My A works too damn much, usually out-of-town, to accomodate my similar work-aholic streak. The fact that A makes 4x what I can and loves what he does (even while working for a soul-sucking corporation) makes it clear that he should be the one who wears the Dry Clean Only labels each day. Occasionally my uber-feminist berates the stay-at-home me, but you know, things are different than in previous generations. I made the choice to stay home after preparing carefully for the career of my choice. If my marriage self-destructs tomorrow, I have the skills I need to go back to work. My standard of living will shift of course, but not by much (life insurance or child support/alimony would help close much of the gap). Not a pretty thing to contemplate, but necessary for my own peace of mind. Like Amy said, everyone needs a plan.
Can you spell relief? A-L-I-M-O-N-Y!
I’ve got your back if anything happens. Granted, I’m not licensed in your state, but hey, what’s one more bar exam?
This is a great conversation, and frankly, much more interesting to me than the “Mommy Wars,” which is so focused on a very narrow demographic (seems like a lot of folks in different financial situations are represented in this comment section).
My perspective is different from all of those posted above in that 1) I’m in a woman in a relationship with another woman and 2) I’m the one earning more money. When we met each other, we were both earning about the same amount, and far less than we felt we deserved, but a couple of years ago, I got a job that doubled my salary, and the dynamic changed between us in such unexpected ways.
We live in SF, and neither of us earns enough that the other person could quit to raise our children (we’re in the process of adopting the first). It’s challenging, from my perspective, to reassure my partner that the money truly is ours (not mine), that her salary isn’t equal to her value, that no matter what happens between the two of us, I won’t leave her high and dry, that I really don’t resent her. I understand her insecurities, and those expressed here, but sometimes I wish there were more room for me to have some of my own (and I wonder if your husbands feel this way as well). For instance, I feel the burden of so much fiscal responsibility resting on my shoulders. Sometimes I like my job, sometimes I do not, but there’s rarely room for the luxury of daydreaming about quitting and doing something more fulfilling and less lucrative – without her feeling like I’m suggesting she’s not pulling her weight. Then there’s the fact that, if I had my druthers, I’d probably be a stay-at-home mom, clearly not an option.
I used to ask her whether she’d have the same insecurities if I were her husband, but reading these comments, I realize she probably would. Good to know. The challenge of the choices feminism opened up to many of us middle class, educated women, is that the same school of thought pushes us to devalue the work that gets done in the home.
Honestly, I think you are in pretty good shape. You have an advanced degree, you’ve worked in (I think) high level positions, and you’d get alimony. It’s good to have a plan, but from a practical standpoint I think you are okay. Emotionally, I’m sure it’s a little weirder.
But the standard of living being based on who you marry? That really strikes close to home for me. I make more money than my husband, but I have a chronic, degenerative illness. My husband is a social worker; it’s important, but it would not pay the bills. I worry about what is going to happen to us. I don’t think anyone would leave, but neither one of us can get good life insurance because of preexisting conditions. I didn’t plan for us to end up this way (obviously) and it’s really scary to think that I might lose the ability to go out and work and make money.
Anyway, I feel like I can sympathize with your position, and I’m not sure why, because I’m not in it. But I can see why it would be hard.
Every now and then I get this fear, all the kids gone, Bert finds someone younger, nicer, less bitchy. And I am left with social security. Because my retirement is squat. If he left me tomorrow, I would be screwed. That comes from 12 years as a SAHM, and 3 years working p/t. I don’t know if I can ever be at the place that I could support myself as well as Bert supports me now. I am 42. It would take a decent amount of time to build a career from scratch at this point.
Thank god I don’t really see divorce in our future. And if there is murder, I have that life insurance premium paid.
God, I love the internet. Where else can you find 20 people who know EXACTLY how I feel? This is better than therapy.
I am still rolling some of this stuff around in my head and might come back to it when I get it sorted out. But for now, YES! as Susan said I don’t want my daughter to think I am “mooching” off her father. I don’t know yet how to let her know that her father and I both think that staying home to parent is just as much a feminist choice as going out to work. Maybe I am worried about it, because I haven’t managed to convince myself of it completely yet.
I think if you are able to have one parent stay home with your child, that is wonderful. When my husband and I complete our adoption, he is planning to be the SAHD. This makes sense in our situation because I make more money and he is an artist. He has a job outside the home now, but he would quit for that. As for feeling awkward about being “kept,” I think my husband does have some of that. Even with the advances in equality our culture still pushes men to provide for their family. However, if Jack can provide our child with the love and support he will need, that will be enough for me. I think the bottom line is to do what’s best for our children.
Really enjoyed this post! Hubs and I are waiting for our first child (LID 11/18) and some of these thoughts have passed through my mind more than once. I grew up as the child on a single mom on welfare, so I am PETRIFIED of not making my own money. On the other hand, it’s occured to me that being a SAHM is something that might be the best choice for our family, at least for some time. Even though being a mom will be the most important work I’ll ever do, I sometimes wonder if I have a strong enough identity to handle not being an earning “professional”. Bizarre. I have no answers, but did want to say that I very much enjoyed your post!