To wonder how it is affordable to be a SAHM?

[Moobieboobie]

This is not a WOHM vs SAHM debate but am genuinely curious ....... I am on mat leave with DC2 and keep being asked if I am returning to work. I would love to stay at home this time round but sadly this is not a possibility as both myself and DH earn roughly the same thus my salary is 50% of the household costs. We would not receive any benefits etc as we would still be above the threshold even without my salary. If there is someway around this please let me know as I will try anything!!

I left this thread open on my ipad and DH has been reading it over his coffee. He read a page and then asked "If I scroll back to the beginning of the thread does it turn into hieroglyphics?"

I would LTB but then I'd have to buy my own tampons .

The thing I notice about these threads is that it all looks very different when your DC are little. Childcare does cost a lot when they are pre-school. I think it's very rational to SAHM when they are pre-school (well I would do cos that's what I did). It's what happens when they go to school that becomes interesting.

The thing is, they are at school for 13 years. So there is a spectrum over those 13 school years of what you need and what it costs. Most of my friends had something in place when the kids were in Y1; almost all of them dont need it now they are at Uni . I pay top whack as I have a severely disabled DC and so had to shell out until he was 18, so I am at one end of that spectrum. Friends with biddable, sensible girls who coped well with afterschool club were at the opposite jammy bastards and spent very little.

It's quite rational to work for break-even or even a small loss for a few years if that's the price of keeping your earning potential alive for the future. It's the years between 45 and 65 that I am thinking about. It's supporting DH in retirement because you need two pensions between you. It's saving your salary up so you can help the DC with house deposits. Really, that's what I was weighing up when I decided if I would go back to work- not the short term luxuries, but how we will all live much longer-term.

beast I know so many women who took the decision to SAH with babies and then time marched on and they find themselves with teens and unable to find work.

It's not tragic - most are married to very high earners - but they are a bit stuck none the less...

Chacha - I don't earn enough to support myself and haven't for years.

I'd still leave an unhappy marriage.

People do you know - whether they have money or not.

I have SAH for 15 years. Mainly as I want to but also as it suits better with DH's difficult shifts. no worries re childcare for example. With 5 DC that is a big thing!

Also it is possible because we have a low mortgage (small house poorer end of good town), holiday in UK, share a car and live frugally. We also, like another poster, had DC very young so never built up a two income lifestyle so we only got better off (not well off but we started very poor with nothing). We have a joint pension etc.

I think the biggie is if you and your DP/DH earn a similar amount or a vastly different amount. My DH earns more than 10 times what I could earn if I worked full time. I have a degree and other qualifications but he earns a very high salary. Obviously things would be different if we could or did earn around the same amount or if he earned much, much less.

My youngest child started school today, so I am going to start volunteering to build up a cv again ready to start looking for work. I've enjoyed my time at home, but after 8 years, I'm ready to move on to something new. I'm really enoying the free time while it lasts, though.

My situation sounds similar to chicken.

Me working wouldn't make financial sense for us as a family once the cost of childcare, a cleaner, dog daycare etc is factored in.

We've always taken out mortgages on the basis of one salary (dh's).

Its a personal decision at the end of the day.
I can see the reckoning of Beast even though we decided to do something different.
Our belief is that when our dc leave home they do so providing for themselves and that uni and house deposits are their responsibility not ours.
We looked at providing for our future in simple terms without frills, luxuries and not providing for adult off spring. Obviously a bit of a helping hand or present when they leave is nice if you can afford it.

minifingers, the bottomline is that I feel more secure and feel that I have more choices in my life, because I have a career.

I completely understand and accept that it may not be the way it works for you or many other people. But it's the way it works for me.

In any case, my original point was that it's unfair to characterize those who defend working mothers as obsessed with a shallow monetarized conception of people's individual value. Maybe some do, I'm sure, but overall it's just not true. There's no need to caricature the other side's argument, because both solutions are valid options, depending on your individual circumstances.

We did it by saving lots and investing before we had children, sorting out our pension early on during our careers, cutting everything bare - such as holidays, food bills, energy bills, etc. Very few luxuries. After the first baby was born we moved in with in laws and sold our flat, and after two years sold (and made a killing) the house we shared with in laws to buy two small properties, and now we are mortgage free. I have retrained as a child-minder so we don't have to pay for childcare. We have made lots of sacrifices, it has not been an easy ride. There is not one answer to your question, but I think it would be very difficult to be a sham and not make very important cuts in budgets and readjustment to lifestyle.

As a childcare provider I deeply respect families in which both parents work as I can see how challenging it is, and I also envy some aspects of their choices - such as impressive career progression, more financial freedom, etc. I get many eyes rolling when I say to people that I am a child-minder, and would appreciate it if people (mostly women) had more respect for this profession, but in the end we made decisions that worked for us as a family.

I don't think minifingers was characterising all those defending working mothers as being obsessed with financial contribution, just pointing out that there is quite a militant, but small, minority who only see things in monetary terms. For example, in a similar discussion a couple of years ago I was scolded by another poster for living where I do (an area of low salaries and poor job prospects) because as an educated person I owe it to everyone to be out earning a big salary and contributing through taxation. I pointed out that I'm actually more likely to be saving the taxpayer money by caring for my elderly parents who would otherwise need assistance, but apparently that's not good enough - if it doesn't go into the treasury and out again, it doesn't count.

It's like the very vocal 'childcare is wrong' people - not representative of most sahms, but they definitely do exist.

treaclesoda, tbh I'm not sure who brought it up, I just named minifingers because she responded to my post!

and I agree with you.

Like th eother person with 5 children above we have five and like someone else above we started with nothing (I was 22 when we had our first and always worked full time). We knew I would earn more although both worked full time. I earned 10x what my children's father did ultimately. Where one earns more than 10x the other (which another couple have on this thread except the genders are reversed with the woman earning less) then the lower earner might well stay home although in our case when the children were young we were in our 20s and to start with earned similar amounts and as I said above the childcare costs 100% of one of our identical salaries. We expected to work very hard and both get promotion and the like to be eventually earning many multiples of a nanny's salary and so it transpired. We played the longer game as some mention above too.

Now I will have 30/ 40 years post children with probably well over £100k a year earned and I am not very materialistic but I like my work and I have enjoyed being able to ensure the children graduated debt free, little bit of help with first property deposits for the girls this year and 18 months before that and one even worked for me for a period which was nice. Now the long game for someone else might be that they do not go back to work because as soon as children go to university 4 grandparents have dementia and mother continues to do what she loves - that caring role which has been her life.

Most couples do like two incomes if they can manage it particularly in times when redundancy might strike but a lot of these issues are all about if you have a minimum wage job and will never earn much or a proper career. The gulf is between those not between whether you are male or female.

There are reasons in my own case why we need to help the DC, linked to their disability. My friends with NT kids are less concerned to do this.

I still think its a valid thing to plan around, though. Of course, in theory, it is our DC's own problem when they are grown up. Except we all know that the price of housing being what it is, it's a mountain to climb. If you imagine your DC aged rising 40, still renting and you are not able to help out, it would be very frustrating to be at home, kids grown up and not needing you any more day to day, and unable to get paid work. Whereas if we go back to paid work when they are fairly grown up, at secondary school, there are 20 years for us to earn and save so we can help them.

And the same is true of pensions. Pensions are crap and getting worse. And we are all living longer. It's a big load to place on DH, building up enough pension. Every year that we work, even if it's for barely break-even, is still a year in the pension pot. Obviously not for state pension, because while you get child benefit you get home responsbilities protection anyway so it makes no difference whether you earn or not, but in a private pot.

When they are little, I am sure that a happy childhood outweighs these considerations. As they grow, I think the balance shifts a bit. Well, it did for me, anyway. I only have one left in school now, and he is in his final year, and so I am glad that I have my career.

morethan I don't think many families do have a meaningful choice .

They find themselves doing what they can...

It's fine people like you I at opposite ends of the spectrum which affords choice. But it's just not doable for many.

Yet it is always muggins mum who shoots her career to pieces and ensures her children's future financial ruin if the father runs off with someone younger rather than fathers making these sacrifices even though women under 30 earn more than men on average in the UK. So the choice surely does not always mean mother who earns the same as father is the one to play second fiddle in career stakes. It is fairer when it is a gender neutral choice except when the father sits on the board of BP and the mother serves tea in the canteen (or vice versa if genders are reversed).

Green is right if what ppl want from their career is financial efficiency. It makes sense to pick a skill which earns the max per hour with minimum disruption such as commuting, if that's your motivation.

Of course for many ppl their motivation is different- they may love caring work, or teaching, or making a difference in some other way, and not be in it just for money. That often goes with lower earning power and so the difference between caring for strangers and caring for your own kids is not so great that you would go back to work for a trivial profit.

Deciding to change career and go from a low-earning role to a well-paid role purely to maximise returns- well, I have known ppl do it, but most ppl don't want the money badly enough to compromise. And if job satisfaction is the core reason for work, why should they? except that the finances tend to shut them out from paid work for several years, and then getting back is hard.

I think things are changing.

I've noticed among my younger colleagues that increasingly they have a DH who does a good deal of childccare - perhaps working part time or, increasingly, freelance.

Word
Of course some people don't have a choice, but with the thread title asking the question of how it is affordable I think it fair to point out that many do have a choice.
If your childcare costs are equivalent to a full salary then you don't have to work, you aren't gaining financially.
I can see why people would choose to carry on working for the future or for a career or why some would say we can't afford childcare now so I will stop work. They are choices.

yes, there are lots of daddies at the school gate where I am too.

But when DS1 left school there were lots of mummies saying vaguely that they ought to get back to work now, maybe, as their youngest had just hit 18. And having actually not been worried at all in their younger days about money, they were starting to sweat a bit as they looked at the pension situation, and at house prices and the shitholes their DC were renting with no end in sight.

We do need to make it easier for ppl to retrain and start second careers later in life. But what I did notice, in some cases, is that having had a high level of self-determination over their 20-odd years of SAHM, they were not really convinced of the need to compromise or take orders from other ppl. They were making career choices that were almost as unrealistic as the things they complained about their DC going in for , often linked tio what they did when they were in their 20s.

There is a limit to how much someone will pay a middle-aged woman for a creative career, sometimes you do just have to retrain as a book-keeper...

This thread shows why paternity and maternity leaves need to be equal for each gender.

Beast of burden is right in comments about taking the long view, particularly for our generation who had to rely on tax credits to make up the shortfall in earnt wages (which I am in favour of btw!), the kids grow up (or the Tories fuck around some more) and by then SAHP has sacrificed their career, or at least reduced their earning capacity. And if you are male, as my DH was the SAHP, it seems to have had an ever greater effect on reducing his employability. Sad but true. Sooner we have true equality in the workplace th better.

There is now transferrable paternity leave. A Times journalist just took it for his new baby. I think he was the first one to request it - HR had hardly hear of it and he really enjoyed his months at home once the mother was back at work and wrote about it in the newspaper. However for most men and women in high paid careers very long periods off are not usually too good an idea if you are interested in your career and money which not all mean and women are.

I have always said to my childen pick work you will always enjoy (mine is intellectually satisfying - law and I love it), pick work where hopefully you will be well paid (that does matter unless you can marry a rich man or woman or are happy to live on the minium wage), pick work where ideally ulitimately you could work for yourself ( I have much more enjoyed owning and being in charge than my 11 years as someone's PAYE slave) and most of all within a couple and yourself spread risk - try to have several sources of income and eventually investment so that if one area goes wrong - wife or husband redundant or runs off with the secretary 20 years younger to Thailand with all the money, you have several sources of income and all your eggs are not in one basket.

The extended paternity leave is only allowable if the mother returns to work though I believe? No such conditions on the mothers. I get that this is the likely scenario anyway but the way women and men are perceived in the workplace after children is still so different and absolutely equal parental rights are a starting point.

Dietcoke where on earth do you live that nursery costs that much? Do you mean 100/day for 2 children?

Even in Chelsea the nurseries aren't that expensive.