to give up work and become a SAHM to teenage DCs

[Lauresbadhairday]

I have a reasonably well paid but stressful job. I am lucky to work P/T - one long day (9-7), 3 school hour days (9-3) and a day off per week. Our finances are such that I don't really need to work. Our mortgagee is paid off and DH earns a good enough salary for us to live comfortably.

The bottom line is that I don't enjoy my job anymore and want to give it up. I have no plans to study or get another job but want to be a SAHM. The problem with this is that my DCs are now teenagers (14&13) and are therefore becoming increasingly independent and self-sufficient so I wonder if I am just being lazy and selfish expecting my DH to essentially fund me to stay at home every day. I'm sure I would be happier and less stressed. I enjoy reading, jigsaws, baking so I'm sure I will be able to fill my time plus we have a dog who I will enjoy taking out for long walks. I will of course continue to run the household but I do this already so not much will change in that department.

So AIBU to consider giving up work?

Babycham1979 - I agree 100%

OP - this is you choice - do what is right for your family.

Personally, I would never put myself in a position where I was financially dependent on somebody else, not even my lovely DH. My dependence is too important to me.
In your position, I would be looking for new job, not stopping work.

Thanks for all your comments. I think on balance I am BU to just give up work and expect my DH to support me financially. As many of you have pointed out I have good hours at the moment and a good balance of work and home time. I just wish I enjoyed my job more. I work in a niche field and am likely to find it difficult to get other work as I am trained specifically for this role. I am going to try and be more positive about work and park the idea of what is essentially early retirement for the time being.

Exactly BC.

OP - maybe it's time to think of a career change. What do you value in a job - not the one you have but a job in general? Is it a nice work environment, doing something for the social good, colleagues you like, a big pay cheque, intellectual interest, working outdoors...?

Once you know that you can start engineering a move to a job that's a better fit.

I have a friend who spent 20 years as a personal injury solicitor and who hated it. She wanted to work with people not paper and do something where she felt she made an immediate difference. She's now a paid support worker for a charity that works with people with severe chronic illness and loves it. A big pay cut but significantly happier as a result

But babycham, there's a huge difference between someone retiring. And someone giving up work before retirement because they don't like it to do jigsaws (sorry OP )

OP if you can afford to give up work, why not retrain? For something you'd enjoy more? Or build your own busness? Hard to advise without knowing what you do. But if you have niche skills, chances are you could freelance / become a contractor

You being a SAHM is a luxury for your husband too, though. If the children are off sick, you deal with it. If you need to wait in for the plumber, he doesn't need to worry. Housework and chores don't need to be done on the weekend any more. It will give him less stress and more leisure time.

No DH worth his salt will resent you giving up work if that's what you want to do.

Sorry I don't agree with this either. It can be a huge responsibility to be the sole wage earner and one which the OP has already said her DH doesn't like.

No DH worth his salt will resent you giving up work if that's what you want to do.

Bolloxks.

Swap that round for a minute and insert wife instead of DH. Still ok? What if the wife didn't want to be the sole earner in the household for the rest of their life?

LonnyVonnyWilsonFrickett Mon 07-Sep-15 17:26:58

This mostly, but I think you may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater slightly because you are so stressed and hating your job at the moment.
Rather than quitting work entirely:
You could look for a colleague to job share with - 3 days each overlapping on a Wednesday?
Reduce your hours further. Financially viable by the sound of it but not leaving you with no income at all
Look for a new job or become a contractor
Try to work from home on one of your 4 days
Suck it up, plough as much money into savings as possible so that you can both retire early
Address what it is about your job that is so stressful? I think some jobs are stressful because you could genuinely kill someone or cause pain if you screw up, but if you are stressed out of your head because you work in IT then you need to find a way to switch off a little.
Do you get any exercise or is your life work, kids, housework, DH in that order?

One thing that strikes me about your posts OP is that you don't sound like you actually want to be a SAHP/homemaker. What you want is to not be in your current job, and giving up to be at home is the way you see to achieve this, rather than being something you would like to do in itself. You've taken a lot of stick for the jigsaws and reading comment, but the way I interpreted it was that you were sure you'd think of some way to fill your time, the details would fill themselves in. That would worry me because it doesn't sound like it would be a positive decision, taken in order to get the life you want, but a negative one taken to get away from a job you don't. You're probably fairly burnt out, so I suspect would be pretty happy for the first few months getting your head back into shape and generally sorting the house out, doing bits and bobs etc. But I bet in about six months, you wouldn't prefer being at home to anything else that doesn't involve your current job: you'd be just as well doing a French degree, or driving a bus, or being a Cabinet minister. And I do think that to make a huge decision like giving up work in the long run, you'd need to be going to something you really want to do. So for all that a lot of us have focused on whether DH would want this, tbh I think there hasn't been enough thought about whether you really do.

With that in mind, I do think you might be best served by thinking about other paths. You say your job is very niche, I appreciate that, but can't believe it's equipped you with zero transferrable skills to do anything else. Or that retraining is impossible, or that you couldn't possibly do any contracting or self-employed stuff.

It's a little bit selfish to expect your DH to fund you - what if he wanted to give up work? Can't you find a new job? I would hate to be the sole earner, I would feel very resentful of my partner staying at home all day doing jigsaws.

I reckon talk to your DH before you park the idea, OP

my DH loves me being a SAHM- he's a lovely dad, but his emotional intelligence is about nil, he lacks diplomatic skills, he can't prioritise, has no sense of time and can't buy every item on a shopping list

he's good at his job though

OTOH I am shit at work, so we're both playing to our skills (or lack of)

he works and drives, I do everything else

I worry about women who are completely financially dependent on their husbands. It's an extremely vulnerable position to be in. :-(

Can't believe some of the attitudes being displayed on this thread. I just hope neither of my sons ever get involved with a woman who believes a husband is her personal workhorse.

If it works for you and your DH then fine. I would never give up that sort of independence though I couldn't stand the thought of living off somebody else.

I can't believe some of the attitudes on this thread. This is your choice.

I read this this morning and it seems relevant.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11848710/Why-teenagers-need-quality-time-with-their-parents-more-than-toddlers-do.html

My dh loves me being at home, he always has.
he has never resented the fact, but he loves his profession and will do it until the day he dies.
It isn't something you retire from really.
We are lucky though because we don't have an employer, never have.
So we can take holidays when we like, work when we like and live life to suit ourselves.
Maybe if he had a job or a career he didn't like it would be much different.
i too enjoyed being at home when the dc were teens and also look forward to spending the long holidays with dd, rather than leaving her to go to work.
just the same as we did with her much older siblings.

That's interesting reading hatter.....although I'm not sure about taking and collecting her dd to and from school every day. Suppose she wants to go with her friends?

I can't believe some of the attitudes on this thread. This is your choice.

Actually surely it is both her and her DH choice? ?

Shutthatdoor, I agree he gets a huge say in the decision. It's amazing how many women think it's there right to be supported by others. What are girls being taught?

I can just imagine if a man had posted he planned the quit work to laze around doing nothing bar hobbies, he'd be called every name under the sun with the woman being told to leave the lazy thing.

Wow. I feel there's a lot of SAHM vs WOHM on this thread. Surely both 'roles' are of equal value for the family involved? The decision in this case is one for OP and her DH to make. It may be that he goes . Or it may be that he says 'yes', provided that she take on all or the majority of home duties.

As far as it being considered 'retirement', we were both eligible to retire at the same time (in our mid-50s) and my DH retired about a year before I did, mostly because he was unhappy at work. Should I have told him he wasn't 'allowed' to retire simply because I chose to work an additional 10 months?

I always worked, it was necessary. DSis has never worked a day in her life. Neither of us feels the other is 'not contributing equally' to our families. She doesn't think I was a bad mother because I worked, and I never thought she was 'freeloading' on her husband! We both had roles that worked for our families. Frankly, I would liked to have been a SAHM, but that just wasn't what life dealt out in my case.

As far as 'being dependent' on a spouse, I do agree that there can be a danger element. That's why I feel it's so important for every young girl to get an education or some type of marketable skill. The thing that saved my cousin when her husband walked out on her was that she was still licensed as a Dental Hygienist. She hadn't worked more than a day or two a week (on call) since their first was born but she was able to get more work right away. My DSis, on the other hand, would have been hard pressed if her DH had been the type to be financially abusive or the type to walk out on a marriage. Luckily, he isn't that type.

Spend a day on the Relationships board reading all the men walking out on 20 year marriages out of the blue,,before you give up your earning potential, is all I'll say.

Sorry to be so cynical!

That Telegraph article is hilarious.

No need for dads to stay at home with the teens then? Clearly it needs a woman's touch

bad you may also have missed that the OP works one day a week past 3pm. The rest of the time she is either off or finishes at 3pm.