“He wouldn’t be where he is if I hadn’t sacrificed my career”

[BooFuckingHoo2]

I am expecting a flaming for this .

AIBU to think this is often untrue? I know many men with stay at home wives and kids who, in all honesty, whilst happy to have kids (because the wife does all the wifework) would probably have been equally happy with either no kids or extensive wraparound childcare and an equally high earning wife.

I often see it trotted out on here “I sacrificed my career to look after our children” - but the for the majority of women (aside from some exceptions e.g. husband working abroad) I’m sure it was a welcome choice and not something they were strong armed into. In my experience (unless childcare costs eclipse the wife’s salary) the husband is usually indifferent (aside from the wankers who want a trophy wife) as to whether the wife works or not.

Equally “he wouldn’t be where he is in his career if it wasn’t for me”. I’m sure there’s a small minority of women who’ve accelerated their husbands career but I think for most, they’d have been the same with or without their wife, although granted possibly with no children or higher childcare costs.

AIBU?

I would have advanced much further in my career of I had myself a sahwife!

I think you could absolutely argue that some men's career advancements would have been facilitated by the fact they had someone at home picking up the slack.

I have watched many men advance with ease as they , (very generally), dont have to rush off if a child is ill, can stay late and do weekends/conferences etc, dont have to worry about general household tasks, meals etc. I saw it many years ago with my father and even more recently with men at work.

One of my friends regularly says this- he was 40 when they met and very well off-professional at at the top of his profession- she was 25 and an administrator in the estate agents-she had left school at 16. I just smile and nod.

We had 2 full time careers. People say that I am 'lucky' now to have my job-my children are mid 20s. I am not lucky-like everyone we made sacrifices when we had children- different people chose different sacrifices.

I think in some cases women do sacrifice their career for their husbands, especially where one partner is a trailing spouse on international moves, or the husband works away lots. Equally I do question why anyone would have a child with a man who works away lots / works 75 hour weeks if they didn't want to stay at home or do the lion's share (zero judgement, just it seems inevitable that one parent working away loads means the load will fall on the other).
But I also think some couples (and women have their role in this) seem to view childcare costs as something to be taken off the woman's salary and then that becomes another reason why some women claim they can't work. For some the costs of childcare are prohibitively high and only an arse would deny that, but I do wonder how many people who claim they had to take 10 years out and are the source of their husband's success really did sacrifice their career and how many had jobs they didn't particularly like, would rather have stayed at home but didn't want to own their choice.

One partner making large sacrifices to the point they can claim they are facilitating the other's career strikes me as something mainly true when considering really high fliers because two parents doing that is a logistical nightmare unless you have a nanny, boarding school, extensive wraparound, au pairs, or family on hand.

I only say that because in the couples I know where both people have a good career that they've built up, but not super high fliers, it's rare for one to give it all up unless they actually want to.

DH is where he is because I pushed and encouraged him to achieve his full potential, not because I stayed at home.

What makes you think you know more about other people's relationships and careers than they do themselves? What vested interest do you have in devaluing the SAHP's contribution to the family? Is it that you have a somewhat desperate psychological need to vindicate your own choices?

Silly comment. I don’t think I know more, I was asking for opinions . I also have no wish to devalue SAHMs - I think SAHMs can be great, but that isn’t the point of this post. Also I don’t yet have kids so no choices to validate

It's about choices and making family life with children work.

Maybe I just don't know the right people but I have never heard this said.

“I’m sure it was a welcome choice and not something they were strong armed into. In my experience (unless childcare costs eclipse the wife’s salary)”

You have to be a fairly high earner for childcare to not eclipse a salary... so it kind of depends what circles you move in tbh.

Most people I know where a parent stopped working it was because childcare was more than any salary they could have earned.

We decided both careers progressing wasnt sustainable as I was flying into the country after DH had left. The kids literally didnt have parent in the country for most of that day, yet we didnt earn enough for a nanny, and the grandparents had their own ties to different parts of the country.
So yes, we made a deliberate decision to have a complete change in focus, moved abroad, and I was a SAHM for 5 years. I'm now back in the UK, and have just got a job on a third of my previous salary (all be in reduced hours, so the FTE isnt quite as extreme).
PT working for one or both of us could have been the answer, but was rejected.
My career has been sacrificed, but as a family we are better off. I'm totally screwed if we split.

YABU. My dad was only able to have a high flying career with international travel because my mum organised everything. She really did sacrifice her very successful and academic career for him. She still worked (full time mostly) but wasn't able to get to a really senior level until my brother and I were 16+. We even had an after school nanny until we were both over 12. They've been divorced for over 12 years now (I'm in my 30s) - my dad has a huge pension package that my mum won't see any benefit of, even though she enabled it.

Playing devils advocate, emergencies aside surely he could have hired childcare for school drop offs/pick ups?

Yes but he could be away Mon- Fri for weeks or months on end so I had to be home every night. And emergencies still need to be covered (times when i got called from school to collect a sick child when he was 500 miles away). One parent needs to be available for stuff like that. Thankfully my job at the time allowed me to do that.

Neither of us would be where we are without my MIL . Savings, wrap around care, happy sons... we have both been able to breathe/progress because of that level of support to fall back on for DC. I've been able to progress to a point where my job is more flexible, so I can now take back some share of tasks (DH is able to take time off/do childcare/work flexibly without needing to beg managers the way I had to).

Shout out to all the grandparents or family members helping to relieve any strain for parents (especially mothers) everywhere

All these situations are individual - the nature of the career (shifts, late finishes, early starts, 9-5), availability of reliable childcare (wiaiting lists, childminders who have time off, au-pairs that miss home), the expectation of travel or difficult hours, workplace culture (stay until the job is done) etc etc etc. I teach and would struggle to be promoted at my current school because there is a culture of early morning meetings for SLT and as a single parent, I can only get to work as early as the childcare opens. One half of a couple dropping work enables the other to do what they need to do to move forwards. Far easier to get a promotion if you are in on time, the nursery doesn’t call to say your child has a temperature, and you can play golf at the weekends.

My mum was a SAHM because she didn't want to or need to work. Certainly not because she wanted to spend more time with us kids, we had a nanny. Don't blame her! 😆

Usually where both parents value their career above staying at home they have a nanny or two.

Silly comment. I don’t think I know more, I was asking for opinion

Really?

I also have no wish to devalue SAHMs - I think SAHMs can be great, but that isn’t the point of this post

I'm sure any SAHM's will be eternally...ahem...grateful to you.....

Also I don’t yet have kids so no choices to validate

That figures...

I think it entirely depends on individual circumstances, when I became pregnant me and my husband had a chat about our financial situation, I knew I wanted to go back to work and we earned almost identical salaries at the time, so we both shifted our hours around so that between me and him we can cover 6 out of 7 days childcare. We personally chose to sacrifice a little bit of family time as we only have one day off per week together, rather than our careers, but financially it's beneficial as we only pay for childcare one day per week and it means that nobody's career is hindered long term

When the couple have children, the claim can absolutely be true. If one partner was not at home and instead had an equally full on job, the other would have to at least share equally in approximately 20 hours a week it takes to do parenting that really cannot be done by nannies exclusively or for any extended period (reading stories, listening, cuddling, mediating serious disputes, discipline, attending family events, attending school events, medical appointments, assessing development etc), even assuming only 2 children with 60 hours a week care from a nanny.

That 10 or so extra hours a week at home means you cannot always stay late for that extra meeting, or entertain clients in the evenings, or go into the office for a day on the weekend - it makes it much, much harder to 'go the extra mile', which in the professions at least means the difference between ending up in middle management and making the big bucks.

How do I know? My husband (who works in the same profession as I) took 6 months paternity leave with our first child then worked part time so I could continue making good career progress. His doing so meant that I could take on more challenging work. We still had childcare/a nanny, but this meant that he did the bulk of the parenting that simply cannot be outsourced. We could not both have continued to work 70 or so hours a week and raise a child, so someone's career had to take a hit. (I had 6 further years of making hay before our second child, and now he works the long hours and I work part time ).

If there were no children in the equation then the claim would usually be untrue unless home entertaining and spousal networking was a huge part of the job (eg if one spouse was a diplomat).

I think it depends on your values, and what matters to the man. What would he have chosen without a sahw? Childcare, no kids, or reduced hours himself?

It is true for us that dh wouldn’t be where he is without me, the sahw. Mutual decision and I don’t regret it, but there is no way either of us would have been happy with 2 high flying careers and wrap-around childcare, we discussed it before we got married.

We had to pick, and we picked his less high flying but more reliable income. He has now done very well working very long hours.

If we had chosen the right sort of careers we would both have reduced our hours and be middling along in our jobs. That was our preferred option.

Later in the post OP you talk about the children. That's more recognisable to me. Plus people I've known, mothers and fathers, have had specific issues arising with a child that leads them down a different path than they had planned for.

I 100% was overlooked for promotion on several occasions as I had the (old fashioned but still there) "restrictions" of motherhood whilst the (married with kids) men who were promoted just seemed to be so free.

For most people with a high earning, high flying career, standard wrap around childcare still isn’t enough to cover the hours (especially if either partner’s job involves regular travel, which a lot of those jobs do). Unless you are talking about a full time live in nanny (and even then, they aren’t a slave expected to be on call for every childcare emergency, multiple nights of overnight care at short notice, etc).

High flyers quite often pair off with other high flyers & when kids come along, the dynamic often ends up as the wife (usually) having to try to do her demanding (and not family or part time friendly) job without the benefit of being able to stay late to meet a deadline, jet off on a last minute trip to close a deal, and having to be the one to cover all childcare emergencies while husband (usually) carries on as before.

I do not blame people in this position for choosing to opt out... and in that case, yes, the higher earner’s career has been partially facilitated by the spouse who made the sacrifice

I think YABU. Wraparound childcare doesn't extend to when the kids are up 20 times in the night and whoever is earning the most has to have a full night's sleep to concentrate on their job while the one who earns less goes to work dog tired. I gave up my job in the end as my kids picked up loads of bugs from childcare and I had so much sick leave I was threatened with the sack. High earning DH would never ever ever ever ever ever have taken a day off sick with the kids. Hence why his career ended up being amazing and mine was shit. He wanted a little wife and family to stay home and to have the freedom to swan off on business trips and meals and training courses without having to worry about the children. So yes. There are women who give up their careers so their partners can further theirs.

would probably have been equally happy with either no kids or extensive wraparound childcare and an equally high earning wife.

This. I know an increasing number of men who are in fact not thrilled about their wife deciding to stay at home.

I know a lot of women who basically allocate themselves zero money from the family budget, justifying not working on the grounds it costs the family "nothing" having them at home. I also know the husbands and they dislike bearing all the financial responsibility, they would happily pay for childcare and their wife work & the family as a whole be better off in the long run.

Well, it depends on the careers.
I dont think either mine or DH’s careers would advance in a different way if the other one chose to be a SAHP. But we have reasonable working hours, little need to stay late or work weekends, and can afford the childcare we need.

It is better for dc to have one parent around, not necessarily not working but two full time working parents is v tough on dc. Not a popular opinion on my Mumsnet I know.

So the parent that picks up childcare, home running etc does enable the other to have an easier path to success.