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!!

Oh I get all that beast. And I may plan to return to something when I am older, who knows. But I just hate this assumption green has that if you choose a path like some sort of cosmic ordering () you are destined to have a fantastic life and if you don't then you are fucked. I am somewhere in the middle in terms of career... I did have a career. I didn't like it. For now I like being at home. Not everyone wants lots of money or to have a challenging and intellectual job. Sometimes just doing the washing and making a tea and plodding along is very nice indeed.

It is. I loved my 7 years at home ....

Free time is not to be underestimated

When I was in my 20's I received the best advice of my life, from a co-worker that was getting married (I didn't get married until my 30's):
If you want to stay home while children are young, don't ever depend on two salaries starting from engagement on, if you both agree.

Personally, I told dh from the minute we started thinking about kids (we were engaged, not married yet) that if he wanted me to go back to work while they were young, that I wasn't interested in having them. I wanted to give him plenty of time to think about marrying me with this stipulation. Of course, if he lost his job, etc. I'd pitch in (this actually happened and I did go out on job interviews whilst dc was a baby).

Dh whole heartedly agreed, we were both brought up that way, and we both made good wages but him more so, and he told me he would fully support the idea of me staying home. From that second on, everything I made went into the bank (I moved back home with my mum to do this) and for a year and a half saved every penny for when/if we had a baby.

I know this is after the fact for you, but it worked out great for us. Dh and I both had good jobs, we could have lived a very different lifestyle but we live modestly and are so happy that we did what my old co-worker suggested. It is so easy to start off with less and continue with less, than start off with 'more' and go 'down'!

I think part of it for me is I'm just incredibly anti social.... I enjoy mumsnet as I can just turn it off and go and do something else but the thought of having to be around people and even worse having to be polite and get on with them fills me with dread. Every single role I have ever had has been a people pleasing role - even senior marketing manager is people pleasing and working with colleagues - and I just got to the point I didn't want to please anyone except myself.

Oh well. I'm destined to be a poor old woman with a load of cats clawing away at me anyway. Which suits me fine as I won't have to see anyone and I can just slob about in aldi all day and watch daytime tv. And maybe read the occasional book from the library for a treat!

.. ignore me. Half true though.

I can do the odd meeting dip in and out, but the thought of sitting in an open plan office gives me the hives.

I received your advice Dark and Stormy and that's how we proceeded. I stayed at home for 10 years then went back to a job with family friendly hours where I have been for the last 16 years - increasing my hours over the years as the kids grew up. (I have never quite made the leap to five full days though and love my one day a week off!!)

Open plan office -

I'd need to bring in my own bamboo fencing.

I actually left one job because they made me share my office with someone else. Ridiculous really but it just made me miserable. I can just about cope with my dh and dc (just about) but anyone else and i'm inwardly starting to rock in a corner wondering when I'll get my personal space back!

I know right, I'd forgotten and took a job and lasted 3 hours. Every minute was agony.

I got so twitchy I had to get out.

O god I hate open plan. I have my own room and it is completely clear, no paper anywhere. If ppl put stuff down I begin to twitch.

I also hate company I am an extreme introvert. I spend most of my day silent and alone, thinking.

It used to drive me insane the way the kids would want my attention, and poor DH would hover waiting for his turn. And the minute I got any peace he would be in there, wanting to chat. I felt like a flight path at heathrow.

Actually "chat" is my most hated thing.....

Ha at heathrow. Chat argh I agree. Work chat. Pointless.

I have silence at home and it's bliss.

They keep making noises about employment as a step up. Oh no way I'm happy as I am.

... oh yes. I know that only too well. I often say I need a wee more often than I do just to have a moments peace in the toilet. And even then sometimes my toddler cheers me on from the other side of the door

Ah well. Everyone is different.. One persons hell is another's heaven and all that. :)

One simple reason: childcare would have cost more than I was making.

What are we going to do when,our DH retire? Luckily mine never will, he has the kind of jb where you don't retire, ppl stop paying you but you kind of go in anyway. I am so looking forward to being alone at home all day, I so don't want him hovering about wanting attention.

I love a busy open plan office

But then I'm a nosy cow

(I loved my 6 years as a SAHM to three children under five and now I love my middle aged full time creative job even though I fear soon I will be that odd older lady in the corner in bobbly cardigan tsking at stray apostrophes)

High pay isn't just about hard work you know Greengrow

Well done to you for making the choices you did (I mean that), but don't you realise that some people just don't have those same choices open to them? Others make their choices based on different priorities, such as helping others or making the world a better place. Your view is very simplistic, to say the least.

ime, if you can't figure that out you're on a good salary.

I do see where you're coming from Rally but there is something in what Greengrow says about making choices and pushing for what you want be that solicitor or greenpeace activist. Making the choice rather than drifting into something.

I did the latter, it's worked out but I could perhaps have been more active than passive in my career.

The thing is that as a teenager you are utterly dependent on someone else being able to explain to you that you can plan a career. At my school we were pushed into university, and pushed into studying our teachers choices not our own. I had no idea how to find a job. I was about 30 before I discovered that you don't need an accountancy degree to become an accountant. When I was 18 I didn't even know what an accountant was, only that they worked with numbers. I didn't know until I read it on this thread earlier today that you don't have to have a law degree to train in a legal field. And the reason I didn't know these things is that my (very up itself grammar) school didn't actually tell us. And it's fine to say 'but you need to take responsibility for finding out' but when you're a teenager and you have no idea that you need to find these things out, because your school have told you that you don't need to...well, I was a very trusting teenager and when my teachers told me that a degree would open doors, I believed them. Why wouldn't I? They were meant to be the adults I looked to for guidance. I had no idea that they didn't know their arse from their elbow.

MY dear old comprehensive didn't give careers advice involving universities, that wasn't what 95% of ppl did. Most left at 16. I had never hear of accountancy until I was in my last year of Uni and the employers came round on the milk round. By then other ppl had told me about law and law degrees too. There is a careers service at every Uni, there are other students who went to different schools and had different advice. I don't think that what you are told at school is what you look to for advice once you finish your degree.

Also, I do think that we all have multiple choices and many stages at which we can switch direction. Isn't that the point of what we are saying? Being a SAHM is a fine thing to do. We are talking now about the process by which you keep your options open for the stage after that, when the kids are older and you want something else. How many of us are still doing our first job, our first career, by then? I know I'm not.

beast I agree that what happened at school isn't the whole picture, my post was really in response to Greengrows comments about how she had made her choice as a teenager and that everyone else could have done the same.

Universities do have careers departments but by the time you are at university you are already a particular course, so by that time it's quite late. The total of the advice from my university careers service was that if I wanted a graduate level job I would need to move to England, which was something I couldn't do. If I had known that in sixth form I wouldn't have bothered with university at all.

Treaclesoda my experience was the same. You don't know what you don't know!

Greengrow has been insensitive and strident when she makes her points but I suspect she knows perfectly well that life isn't smooth and sometimes ppl have a rocky start that takes a while to get through.

But I do think it's very important to believe that you can make your own luck, eventually. We all have set-backs in life, at various stages. I know many other mothers of young adult disabled DC, and some of them feel that their situation is insoluble; others, whose DC have very similar challenges, make it work for them.

I agree that the important thing is to try to take a long term view. It is difficult when you have a tiny baby who needs you and the idea of being away from them is so hard. It is almost impossible to imagine them being less needy.
We can't plan our whole lives ahead...all kids of things happen to interrupt our plans. And if we are thrown off course,not doesn't have to be a disaster, because of course there are many possible paths.
Coming back to the original question, I would say that YES you can become a SAHM if you want to badly enough. Up thread, I listed various ways to achieve it, but suspect many people would just see some of those ways as not an option for them. Things like moving to a smaller home or flat are always possible and create opportunities to require less income....but there are sacrifices clearly. It depends on your priorities, but I think being a SAHM can be done if it really is your top priority and you se willing to do whatever is necessary to make it happen.
We should be aware too of the longer term implications of the choice. It may well limit career or job options later. We won't always have small children at home,mor indeed children at home at all. Many think the years at home with the children outweigh the possible lack of options later. Again, that is a choice everyone needs to make. I think the real issue is that many people make the choice without having fully considered both the short and longer term implications. I don't think there is a right choice at all, but the choice needs be based on as much information as possible. Talk to those who are 10 or 20 years down the line. It just gives you a different perspective to consider.