Do husbands support wives financially during maternity leave?

[DogsAndGin]

Hi everyone,

Pregnant with our first baby and starting to think about saving up and preparing for mat leave.

Currently, DH earns more than I do, and we spend the same proportion of our income on bills etc, and then the rest is ours to do with what we wish.

However, when I go onto mat leave, I will be getting about £800 a month on average across 12 months. If I am very careful, this will just about cover my direct debits and responsibilities, and will leave me with absolutely nothing at all for any spending money, birthdays and Xmas, trips out etc.

This will be too tight, so, looking at my options:

• I can’t save anything in advance (every spare penny is going on home renovations).
• I don’t have a job where I can get any overtime or bonuses.
• I could sell my car (would probably get £2000, plus save on insurance, tax, mot, fuel).

DH’s income will remain largely the same throughout baby’s first year, as he’ll only take two weeks paternity leave.

So, my very naive questions! -

For those of you in the same situation, (married/cohabiting and both full time employed) - is there a way families tend to make this inequality in loss of earnings fairer?

Do husbands tend to support their wives financially during mat leave?

Neither of us want to put baby into nursery during their first year, and I don’t think that would be cost effective anyway.

DH refuses to take more than 2 weeks paternity leave, so we can’t split the leave (and loss of earnings) that way. Both he and I want for me to stay with the baby for the first year.

My what a list of assumptions!

@SleepingStandingUp surely you can see you have made all of that up!

You can phrase it how you like but I don't think it's fair to expect him to pay for all the bills, all the baby stuff and then hand over hundreds every month to OP so she can do her own stuff when she's got a reasonable wage coming in.

In the very first post, OP said,

However, when I go onto mat leave, I will be getting about £800 a month on average across 12 months. If I am very careful, this will just about cover my direct debits and responsibilities, and will leave me with absolutely nothing at all for any spending money, birthdays and Xmas, trips out etc.

She's not asking him to pay all the bills AND give her money AND for her to keep her £800. Her £800 is going on expenses and afterwards she'll have nothing left. Because the idea seems to me that she must contribute to joint bills at the same level as before.

All income, bonuses, side jobs, everything, goes in one pot. We take get equal fun money each month.

I know each to their own and all that but I really do find it bizarre when married couples with children don't share money. Why would you want the person you supposedly love the most in the world to have a lesser standard of living than yourself?

What? Of course, the child is both of yours.

If you assume house costs are say £1500 and she used to pay £500 to his £1000 as she earn ££1k a month to his £2k then he's now paying £1500 from his £2000 plus giving her half of what's left, so say £250 for him and £250 for her, plus she's then a banking £800 a month mat pay and £80 CB.

@SleepingStandingUp who's saying ANY of that? You've made it up.

If they put both incomes into a joint account, play essential bills, the each have equal spending money, your maths falls apart. As does your implication that the OP is a gold-digger.

It isn’t just mat leave you need to consider here in terms of costs.
if you’re the one taking all the mat leave now (and possibly again in the future) and if at any time you decide as a household that you may change your working hours etc, which may be for childcare costs or work/life balance or any number of reasons… then you will be impacted in the long term in terms of pension, career progression, earning potential etc…
highly recommend you and your husband read “pregnant then screwed” by joeli brearley now to consider all of these things in more depth

We just figured the key thing is everyone gets the same spending money. In our case we keep it separate so we don't need to feel judged for e.g. buying a £12 farm shop sandwich or yet another niche sports kit bit to go with the eleventh billion we have already. So if he cuts back on his fun money so do you.

1. Joint account for all and every bill for running a household and a family. Toys, nappies, council tax, food, insurance, holidays, car etc.

1. Own accounts to spend whatever you want to on. Highlights, lunch with the girls etc.

1. Work out how much is required for account number one. Take both incomes and subtract that cost. Divide the remaining amount by two. Then leave that amount in each individual account and everything else goes into joint account.

1. Adjust amounts accordingly when respective incomes go up and down.

You both made the baby so you both pay for it and it doesn’t matter who puts what in the pot, all the money comes out of the family pot. Does he expect you to pay for all the baby purchases with your maternity pay because maternity = baby stuff? You’ll be doing all the housework because…maternity leave. You’ll be doing all the baby care because you’re on maternity leave. If you want DC to go to nursery for a break will you be expected to pay for it out of maternity pay? When you go back to work will you be doing all the drop offs and pick ups? Who gets the call when DC is ill? When you’re on maternity leave, you’re effectively making his career progress easier. You then get into the position of “making sense” for you to get the reduced pay/hours job as he earns more. Then, because he earns more he can’t possible do drop offs etc as he can’t take the time off. You’ll be working potentially full time and still doing all the childcare/housework/mental load basically because you’re a woman. Ask him now how he’s expecting things to work when you go back to work. Does he expect to maintain his lifestyle ie lots of treats and plenty of free time or is he going to parent too? Ask him if he thinks he should take over childcare when he gets in at night because you need a break after doing it all day. If he says anything along the lines of “no…you won’t have been doing anything all day” then you know where you stand and can set you’re expectations of what he’s going to bring to the family appropriately low.

If you are looking after your joint baby full time for the first year you doing unpaid labour. If you put your child in nursery etc somebody would be paid accordingly.

So in terms of if he thinks it’s fair to pay for your highlights, you are doing something important (although completely unappreciated by society) that benefits you both and your child.

Of course he should make sure you have money to do things like see friends and get your hair done (although I will be impressed if you find time to get hair done tbh) as the reason you are loosing income is you are benefiting him. (It’s actually quite ridiculous that women loose income at all when raising future tax payers ultimately benefits the economy and I expect in the future mat pay will increase)

As long as you aren’t literally taking the p, he should equal out your spending money.

Snap.

And from years of reading MN relationship boards I've come to realise what a good man I married.

Pooled all resources.
Financially supported me when raising the children.
Never questioned my judgement on finance. Trusted I'd only have lunch with NCT friends if we could afford it. (As previous poster said: he didn't think he'd married a pilliock.)
Totally supported me when I went back into my profession, to the point he took a back seat professionally and now I earn more than him.

And I'm the one on here that gets called 'retrograde' in my views.

We've really done a number on young women with what 'independence' means..

Thread after thread.

Yeah, this.

We found this a bit trick to navigate, being so used to splitting everything 50/50 before babies. It was a bit of a mental adjustment, and we didn't TTC until we had worked it out.

We ended up completely changing the way we managed our money, putting everything into a joint account, and having equal "spends" in separate accounts. That way, I could spend my money on whatever I wanted and there was always money for essentials in the joint account.

It is hard, I think, fully merging your financial lives, if you haven't done that before. You will do both give up a bit of control.

Another here where we pool everything. If you love someone enough to have a child with them, why would you make life financially uncomfortable for them when there's no need? We have separate credit cards for presents etc but the balance is paid off on both every month from the joint account.

If you're going to do a year's maternity leave you need little treats/time out for your mental well being IMO.

Right, so he wants you at home raising his child but expects you to suffer financially as a result? He wants the mother of his child to have no money because she’s taken time off to raise his baby and would begrudge sharing family money for basic socialising and self care?

This is awful OP and absolutely not normal.

What exactly does he think should happen? That you take a year off work to raise your joint baby (and recover from birthing it) but that this doesn’t impact him financially and you spend the year being deprived of the same standard of living as he enjoys? Like some kind of second class participant in the marriage?!

You really need to understand how messed up this is. This is not a family man and this really, really doesn’t bode well for you.

Like so many others, once I was pregnant with our first child DH and I put every bit of income into one pot, paid our bills out of it and took the same amount of ‘pocket money’ for our personal spending. Including while I was on mat leave and earning nothing of course! That’s a marriage, that’s a family!

He wants it both ways and for you to make all the sacrifices while he gets his family. Imagine being so unkind and tight that you begrudge helping to pay for a coffee or a haircut for your wife who has just had your baby and is on maternity leave raising it!! So fucked up, sorry.

I find this crackers. When DD was born, her twatty father supported me by 'letting me off' the rent for 3 months. In his house. Not the only reason he's an ex, but a bloody good indication of just how vile he would get.

DH earns, I don't. He puts 3/4s of it in my account. I pay most bills, and have about 25% more of the leftover disposable income left, because I tend to spend more on food / activities / DDs school expenses. Because he's not twatty and couldn't even imagine suggesting he was somehow paying for my social life. We are paying. It's our money. I work hard with 3 kids and lots of household stuff, him with outside work. When he's finished, I get a break because they are his kids, he misses them and wants to parent them.

Lol. Presumably then hes going to "pay " you for raising his child?

Your problem is thinking of your earnings separately in the first place, OP. They are family earnings. It's easy enough to imagine it isn't the case without kids, but pretty much impossible afterwards.

If you are giving up income, and he isn't, and there is a shortfall in covering your expenses, yes, the income from his job should be distributed more fairly. You are doing work that benefits the whole family, as is he.

I am sort of doubting OP will be back, as she will have to confront some uncomfortable truths.

But OP if you do, you should really think about whether to retitle this thread to "do husbands share with their wives?" Or "do all SAHMs live in poverty whilst their husbands buy themselves nice clothes?"

See, it is ridiculous where your DH's principle leads. Couples share the financial consequences of joint decisions, especially having kids.

(I'm not a SAHM, we pool all but a bit and keep the same amount back for fun. We discuss finances as equals.

Good god op this is worrying, I can see why the majority think your dh attitude is wrong. Even back in the day when woman stayed home to look after dc and keep the house they still got housekeeping to spend , I’m sure even they managed a hair cut on occasion.
so he’d pay for things for the baby but you can’t go to the hairdressers ffs .
I get that he can’t expect to fund a lavish lifestyle if income dropped but if your having a baby you need to discuss this with him questioning if it’s for the baby or for you is so wrong . Do not start a family with this man until you have discussed this properly.

"DH refuses to take more than 2 weeks paternity leave, so we can’t split the leave (and loss of earnings) that way. Both he and I want for me to stay with the baby for the first year."

So, he wants you to not earn any money for a year, have zero income for a year, and to facilitate that he's doing - absolutely fuck all. You are to take the entire hit, he will sacrifice two weeks income and no more.

That's not a marriage. Not in my book. That's a man making no changes in his life to accommodate his family, turning his wife into a dependant housekeeper / drudge / domestic appliance. Not. A. Marriage. There's a reason why the vows include 'with all my worldly goods I thee endow'. Did he not say it, or did he not understand it?

A marriage is a joining of two individuals into a unit. A household, an emotional support, a financial unit. Is money the only thing that matters to him? Or you? Do neither of you value time and caring? Because that's what raising a child needs - time and caring. And for that year that you're taking off earning, you will be providing your time and your care to your joint child. Does he not value that at all?

The pair of you need to recognise that we contribute more than money to the household. We contribute our time, our care, our practical skills, our efforts, our love. When you're not earning outside the home, these are your contributions. Do you and he think these are worthless? If he wants you to be at home for a year, changing your contribution from earnings to time/caring, then he's going to have to change his contributions too.

As an example of that change :

When we moved in together, we earned in the same ballpark. We had our salaries paid into the joint account, which met all our joint bills. For personal spending, we set up standing orders to transfer a monthly sum from the joint account to our personal accounts. Importantly, the same sum was transferred to both accounts. Our situations varied over the years. Our incomes, both relative to each other and absolute, have gone up and down. The personal monthly money has gone up and down depending on what we, as a family could afford - but that monthly personal funds has ALWAYS been the same as each other, regardless of who was the bigger earner / earning at all. Because we are a unit.

So, it's time for a serious conversation together. Are you a unit, or are you not? If he refuses to take paternal leave, what if you did the same? What if you insisted that you go back to work after two weeks (the legal minimum I believe), what is his solution? Because this isn't a problem for just you to solve - this is a joint problem, solving the practicalities of caring for a joint baby. He doesn't want to contribute time and care, he only wants to contribute money. That will only work if you pick up his selfish slack by contributing all the time and care. For that to happen, he must value your time and care as much as he values his earnings. I would suggest the way my husband and I manage our finances works.

It's a miserable life , living with a man who values only money.

But I would like to slightly defend the OPs husband. In part he thinks that way becuse the workplace culture and society has enouraged that perspective. If you set up a household where both partners pay their way as if they were almost roomates, and there are things like maternity leaves meant to cover women who have babies, it seems logical that women are supposed to use those and carry on with the same old arrangement.

By the same token a higher earning woman might balk at giving her husband some of her earnings so that he could afford leisure activities at the same level she did. Not all of coure, many people would have no qualms, but there are plenty of people that think that way. In part it's not seen as often because women are a lot less likey to marry lower earning men, even before children come into the picture.

The employment and tax systems also overall encourage people to think of themselves as atomic economic entities rather than as a family, and lots of women get the advice to keep it that way.

If that's your starting point it's difficult to change your thinking.

Of course they do. The ones that don't? I have no words.

I can't believe you are considering selling your car because your tight DH won't fund your maternity leave.

When DH was a SAHD we just pooled all the money and spent what we wanted. .