How do families have SAHMs?

[LikeDaisies]

Financially - I cannot comprehend how it’s possible!

Husband is a teacher. Earns around £44,000. That isn’t enough to cover our bills if I were to leave my job and stay at home with our baby.

Mortgage is £900. Other bills come to around £700 - not considering food, leisure, etc.

Not that I’d want to leave my job, but I’d love to be able to drop down to 3 days a week. But financially it just isn’t possible. We wouldn’t be able to afford our mortgage and bills.

So it leaves me wondering how I see so many families who are able to manage having a SAHM.

Please can anyone who is in this situation explain how it is possible/how you make it work?

Because most men earn more than women. Is it fair? No, of course not.

The lower earner takes the hit because otherwise the family can't afford to feed and house themselves.

Surely that question should be why, in 2026, do men still out earn women?

And this is why women tend to be in the lower paid jobs in the first place.

My aunt we told her education wasn’t important because she’d only work till she had kids in the 1940s. We really haven’t moved much further on, have we?

I would argue that we've come a LONG way since the 1940's.

But people have to make decisions that make sense to them - they don't say "well, I'm going to put my family in debt and leave us unable to pay the mortgage because it's not fair that I earn less", because that would just be stupid.

How will it ever change if women keep taking themselves out of the workforce?

Those individual decisions compound and impact on the expectation of all women.

Some of us are prepared to push back against it.

(Size of mortgage, number and timing of children, how you structure your relationship and expectations as parents and partners are all choices.)

We cut our coats according to our cloth.

When the kids were tiny I’d have had to earn £30k minimum (10 years ago) to make up for nursery costs plus loss of income related benefits, and that doesn’t even consider the fact that my kids have SEN, so I couldn’t be a reliable employee. Plus I live in a very shitty town with very few well paid jobs. The best I’d ever managed even in management was £25k. DH was on £20k.

Now we were lucky to have sufficient inheritance to buy a house. But we live in a shitty area with a very high crime rate, we didn’t run a car until DH got a new job. Our last holiday was pre kids. Fortunately the kids don’t want birthday parties. We have a second hand free tv. I bake from scratch and have time to shop around for reductions. We don’t pay for memberships anywhere. Clothes are from charity shops. We use libraries. And I home educate, which also saves on school lunches my kids can’t eat and £250 uniforms each year.

So don’t allow the system or my husband tell me what to do, let other women tell me what to do? Have I got that right?

Me too . We didn't sadle ourselves with a huge mortgage . Lived within our means . Was savvy with money ! I loved being a sahm until the last of 4 went to school .

But no matter how well you plan, things can go awry.

You could lose your job, you could end up pregnant with multiples, your child could be born disabled and require constant care, your childminder could close down leaving you with no choice but to look at nurseries etc etc.

"Pushing back against it" is really easy to say, but not easy to do when it's your home and your children who are going to suffer because of it.

But women wouldn't have to keep taking themselves out of the workforce if childcare was more affordable and society made it easier for them to continue in paid employment, or if they were properly supported to stay at home.

Do you get UC top up?

But they should be paying half of the fees so it shouldn’t take up their entire salary. If the fees are e.g. £1500 a month and a woman takes home let’s say £1400 then her salary shouldn’t be ‘wiped out’ because she should be paying £750 max. I don’t know if I’m missing something but I always split childcare costs with my partner (I now earn much more than him so I pay more than him overall for household costs). Isn’t this the norm?

I don’t know why a woman, who likely earns less than her DH, would pay ALL childcare costs, see her entire salary consumed and so just drop out of the workforce while her DH continues to progress in his job and keep his income, pension etc.

Just rub another braincell against it before putting a noose around your own career is my advice.

Or, women could have children with men who take an active part in child rearing, including making sacrifices at work to take care of them, and for their partners to continue having all elements of life available to them.

Newsflash: ownership of a vagina is not a prerequisite to caring for children. Men can actually do it too.

Its been explained several times. When childcare costs MORE than one persons salary, then the family cannot afford to pay that bill. Doesnt matter if you say its from whichever parents salary.

With the new childcare hours in England, ots only really going to be those where one parent earns over £100k now.

There are a number of obvious reasons as I'm sure you know (and in fact there is no longer a gender pay gap for younger women without children, but there is a motherhood pay penalty). But one people are less aware of is that women tend to marry men older than themselves.

Now that in itself probably needs unpicking, but in career terms on average it means the man is that bit ahead which then compounds following childbirth.

I saw some really interesting labour market analysis once that suggested the largest positive gender pay gap (as in, in favour of women) is for lesbians.

Or even just available let alone affordable. In most places there is shockingly little or none at all sen childcare.

In particular, I don't think I've come across many men earning 100k+ worrying about the impact of their earnings reducing the availability of free childcare. Women seem to tie themselves in knots getting under this by piling into pensions, reducing hours or turning down promotions. Men I've spoken to are more keen to push on and earn more, regardless.

It wasnt my responsibility. We have a shared pot of money, whether it came.from mine or dh's wages, it was going to reduce the size of the pot because outgoings wouldve increased more than incomings would have. It's not that difficult.

You are missing something.

If fees are £1500 a month and Jane earns £1400 a month, and Bob's salary of £2000 covers all their other bills with nothing left over, where is the extra £100 a month going to come from to cover the childcare costs?

It's not about Jane paying for everything, it's about when you add both salaries together, it's still not enough to cover all their outgoings. Jane's salary alone is not enough and therefore they cannot afford for her to work and pay for childcare, whereas if Bob carries on working, they can still cover their bills.

Exactly.

Where I live, a rural town of 7k people, there is ONE childminder and ONE nursery and infants school. That's it.

I have never been a SAHP but did work PT and that stage of life was 20 years ago.

DH earning 50k
My PT salary was 21k.

Just looked at figures for present day on The Bank of England website and the equivalencies

DH 87k
My wage 36.5k

Our house cost 62k in 1998 the exact house next door sold a couple of years ago for 300k! Interest rate we had was very low and we paid it off early.

Nursery fees were £25 per day in 2001.
So my pension took a hit but as married if we break up it would go to 50/50 including his much better pension.

Very different times.

“Just rub another braincell against it before putting a noose around your own career”

• Patronising tone - check
• Claiming you know what’s best for all women despite having no idea of their circumstances or personal preferences - check
• Jumped onto a thread where SAHM’s were asked how they make it work and started talking about your own experience and derailed it into a debate where some women’s choices are shamed - check
• Prepared to “push back” against other women's’ personal choices - check

Ah - you’re a man! It all makes sense now! Have a good evening, Sir.

@CharSiu thanks for acknowledging that things were very different years ago!

@VikingLady you say you ‘cut your cloth’ whilst accepting the huge privilege of an inheritance to buy a house. The point is that the average person can’t make it work without an inheritance. Also, I’m not sure everyone wants such a frugal life, apart from the home educating - it sounds a lot like my childhood and frankly, it was a bit shit never having a holiday, second hand clothes and not going on school trips or experience things my friends did. I am not materialistic but I know that I want to enjoy life, see the world and have financial peace of mind.

and @Needlenardlenoo this is exactly the point - it is motherhood that often creates the financial disadvantage which then grows as women take time out of the labour market. I find it mad that so many can’t see this.