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?

We work on that income roughly. We only have one tv subscription service, never have takeaways, only run one second hand car. I budget around food a lot. But its worth it for the time I get with DD.

Our mortgage is more than yours but we compare on all bills every time they're up for renewal. Phones for DH and I are around £30 a month, we dont have phones.

Holidays are caravan trips In UK and the one luxury we have is a English Heritage card. Worth it as we can go to loads of places.

We run/cycle for exercise instead of gym fees. DD is 3 and goes to park and play dates. Very occasionally expensive outings.

Sometimes I dream of buying a small holding in rural Wales where we'd have 5 bed rooms and enough money for the odd Chinese but we 'd leave DH's parents behind :(

They lower their expectations. You cut your cloth etc....

Taking financial gains out of the equation and if we had a much more supportive Scandinavian-type welfare/support system for parents, how many women would really choose to work rather than be at home with their children? Just musing really….

There are also ways of mitigating the risks of becoming a SAHM, it doesn't have to be "go back to work or face financial ruin in the event of divorce" which is usually how it's painted on Mumsnet. I trust my husband implicitly but I insisted when I gave up work that we continued to contribute to my pension, also almost all our savings and investments are in accounts in my name. In the event we divorced they'd be divided as joint assets, but if DH randomly has a complete personality transplant one day I've got enough that I can access immediately to support me and the kids while I get my career back on track.

I stayed home for a few years…I ran back to work. I love my dc but it’s not for everyone.

I think enabling parents to spend as much time as they can with their children is a good thing. Enabling/expecting men to think about this before having children can only be a good thing for women, in my view.

Oh no, I agree with that! Doesn’t matter who it is. I chose to job share because my husband had just got a big promotion which enabled me to. If it had been the other way round he would have job shared.

It was actually my dad who looked after my first two days as a week as my mum was still working.

Quite. And we did that too. Spent 10+ years establishing our careers, buying our forever home, making investments (I’ve never not paid into a pension since I was 18). DH wanted to be a present father so he worked on ensuring his work was flexible so that he could be there. In fact, his work turned out to be more flexible than mine so he’s more the default parent than me these days.

I have my mother’s work ethic - I wouldn’t have married a man or had children with one that expected me to give up work to enable them to have a family without doing at least half of the heavy lifting. DH’s mother never worked so there was a risk there would be that expectation - I made absolutely sure there wasn’t before committing to becoming a parent.

Another poster who hasn’t returned after starting a “discuss” type thread. There seems to be an increase in these as well as the rash of zombies lately.

They cut their cloth.

I've never doubted that. I said I'm not criticising and that there are ALSO (not only) benefits to being at home.

But if someone can be quite critical and disparaging of SAHMs because they're "erroding skills" and "losing opportunities" then can I not speak from the other side of the argument and explain why some women make the choice?

“DH wanted to be a present father so he worked on ensuring his work was flexible so that he could be there” - are parents who can’t work flexibly and “be there” not present parents?

You don’t see the irony in your own posts do you? You’re criticising women for coming out of work to spend more time with their kids but praising how you and your husband have managed to do it without sacrificing your career. Not everybody has the same options as you. Is your point that you and your husband have figured out the ultimate superior way of doing life and the rest of us who haven’t followed suit are doing it wrong?

The OP simply asked SAHMs how they make it work in the current economic climate- what point are you actually trying to make on this thread?

The OP simply asked SAHMs how they make it work in the current economic climate- what point are you actually trying to make on this thread?

it should be obvious, but

a) that childcare isn’t a female only responsibility
b) the risk of stepping out of work for a period of time on future opportunities, employability, pension contributions etc
c) the risk should the relationship fall apart
d) the broader impact that childcare being seen as a female responsibility has on women’s opportunities at work and earning power more generally
e) the benefits to children and women of having engaged fathers which is potentially harder/seen as unnecessary if there is a SAHM.

You didn’t answer this question:

“DH wanted to be a present father so he worked on ensuring his work was flexible so that he could be there” - are parents who can’t work flexibly and “be there” not present parents?

A- nobody has said this
B, C- you are infantilising women on this thread, multiple of whom who have told you being a SAHM was a considered choice. Do you really think these are things they haven’t thought about or considered? Not all SAHMs are victims.
D- do you take issue with women who want to become childminders or work in daycares? If SAHMs didn’t exist, childcare would still largely be viewed as a female-oriented role because the fact is the majority of people who look after young children in paid roles are women. Are these women letting the side down by pursuing a job in childcare, even if it’s what they want to do? Should they be chasing after higher paying jobs in male-dominated fields?
E- I am a SAHM and my husband works full time. He goes to work and I look after the kids. Outside of his working hours we split childcare and household running 50/50. If I worked my husband…would still work full time while a different person (likely another woman!) looks after his kids. I’m struggling to see how my husband’s engagement would change if I worked.

Why are you finding it so hard to accept that for SOME (not all) women coming out of work is the best choice? I am not trying to argue one choice is better over the other I am pushing back because I am getting a strong impression that you think you have the right to tell other women how to think about what they do with their lives and families.

If this thread were posting by someone considering becoming a SAHM and asking for advice on what to think through beforehand, fair enough. I would still find your tone patronising and arrogant but could at least understand why you’re making your case. But this isn’t what this thread was and you know that.

Agree with this. Women are allowed to make their own choices.

They aren’t made in a vacuum.

DH wanted to be a present father so he worked on ensuring his work was flexible so that he could be there” - are parents who can’t work flexibly and “be there” not present parents?

Well, as he was working 200 miles away and only home at weekends, no, he wouldn’t have been a “present parent”.

I am a SAHM and my husband works full time. He goes to work and I look after the kids. Outside of his working hours we split childcare and household running 50/50. If I worked my husband…would still work full time while a different person (likely another woman!) looks after his kids. I’m struggling to see how my husband’s engagement would change if I worked.

You’re proving my point. Why would your husband still work full time if you went back to work? Surely that would give him a chance to go part time and to do the SAHP things you do for part of the week? Does he currently attend sports days or assemblies or school events with your children? Having more flexibility might allow him to be more present at those. Just examples.

(You’re going to come back and say he earns more than you could so that would be silly, which just proves my point that women are both the victims and arbiters of limited earning capacity because of the impact of the choices they make on broader society.)

No I’m not going to come back and say that. My husband didn’t want to be a stay at home dad. I wanted to be a stay at home mum. If that hadn’t worked out for me the solution wouldn’t be to then force my husband to do something he doesn’t want to do. Same way a woman shouldn’t be forced to be a SAHM if she doesn’t want to be one.

How many children do you have? A factor for us was knowing we wanted to have a small gap between children. I was pregnant before my oldest child turned 1. I would have been going back to work to come out again on maternity leave in 7 months. If he had gone part time, I would have been on maternity pay and my husband wouldn’t have been bringing in a full wage.

It’s almost as if everyone’s circumstances are different and there isn’t a one size fits all approach…..

But they are the ones making them whether you agree or not.

We have 3 DC. 2 are grown. I only started going back to work last year doing something basic and small and part time.

DH just earned enough and looked after us.

If your “other bills” NOT counting food add up to £700, there’s probably a bit of wriggle room in your budget! I’m always amazed at how much people spend on car finance, for a start!

They do. But in many cases doing so cut their children’s too.
No to extracurricular activities, private school, residential camps, university…
and the cycle continues.
when a mum tells me she doesn’t work outside the home, I always think “what do you do for money? You rely on your husband? How very 1950’s…”
and in working full time, my daughter knows she will too…

Honestly my experience is the opposite. Families where both parents work full time have kids who don't get to try extra curriculars because they are in before and after school club every day. One of the reasons I don't really plan to return to work full time once my youngest is in school is because I want to be able to pick them up every day at 3 and take them to swimming, ballet, rugby, brownies, hockey, ice skating etc etc.

I only started working again last year. But in the past 20+ years before that I would look after and raise my kids. Sat with them and helped them with studies. Always could help with maths. Had plenty of money for trips and extra curriculars. All went to good unis and thrived.

Well we work FT and my dc have always done extra curricular activities…so there’s that theory gone…