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.

You are moving from a salaried job where you pay for your own hair to an unsalaried job where your body and mental state are at risk, in order to have a baby you both contributed towards equally (ie one sperm one egg).

If he is a loving husband then he will recognise the sacrifice and hard work you are having to put in to enable this to happen, and he will want to share the burden with you as much as he can.

He can't grow the child in his womb and he can't breastfeed it and likely due to these two things he won't be able to comfort it as well as you, especially in the early days.

He CAN share the financial burden with you and he must.

He can also share nappies and lack of sleep more equally than I bet he's planning to.

Lay it all out very clearly so he's under no illusions that he's going to get a cute baby which adores him to pick up once a day and cuddle for 2 mins without putting in some of the innumerable sacrifices you will be making.

At this stage, we were a family unit, like a small business. Everything went into a joint pot, all outgoings came out of it too.

My partner paid me half of my lost pay. So hypothetically if my normal take home pay was £2000 and I got paid £1000 on mat leave, my partner gave me £500.

The actual amount differed by month - at the start of mat leave I had a couple months of full pay, for the last couple months I had no income at all from work.

Now I'm back at work, childcare is paid out of our joint account that we both pay into equally each month. We both now work 4 days a week although my partner does compressed hours so he hasn't lost as much money as I have through reducing hours.

Why not? Why should you take the financial hit and he continues to the same spending money?
He should be mortified if he's thinking of keeping a large amount of frivolous money and you don't get any luxuries. Or is the baby your treat?

Fair would be you both having the same amount of disposable income going forward and jointly planning any savings targets and taking joint responsibility for any debts. Marriage is a contract that effectively merges your assets.

We’ve had a joint account since we got married, before we had kids I often put in more than him, since kids he’s always put in more. We both have an understanding of how much we have to play with and discuss and agree on big purchases.

A pp is right, nct gatherings are what keeps a lot of women from isolation and postnatal depression. That he'd consider that 'frivolous' and unworthy shows he has no idea what a change maternity leave is.

This is rather shocking.

Your joint income will be somewhat reduced for a time so you both scale back a bit until you return to work.

Childcare costs come out of joint money, as should all expenses, haircuts, food, electricity and so on. He should trust you with the JOINT income in the same way as you trust him with it.

It makes me sad that this is even a question. My DH would never have dreamt about his wages being his money. We’re not big spenders anyway, but if I’d have wanted a haircut or some new clothes, or to go out with a friend, he wouldn’t have thought twice about giving me some money. I say ‘giving’ as we’ve never got around to sorting a joint account.

Now are kids are older, if we need to buy something, we just spend the money from the account which has the most in it.

Wow. You get your husband to pool his money with yours now, because you are married and are having his baby. Do not take no for an answer, otherwise the next 18 years after the baby arrives is going to be very difficult for you and the child.

And keep your job, because you apparently need future leverage with your husband.

There's no way that my husband would have denied me a hair cut or social activity whilst I was on Mat Leave. We are equals.

The way we have always done it is to pay all our income into a joint account from which groceries, and all bills are paid by direct debit (we’ve opted for level pay for utilities to make budgeting easier), we have two savings accounts - one for short term things like holidays and one for the long term that is not touched.

We also have an equal amount of “pocket money”.

We’ve always operated on the principle that we are a household and each of us should have equal access to money and to leisure.

Neither of us have ever been under the illusion that being at home with a baby is leisure.

My husband has supported me during two pregnancies and beyond. Babies are now 13 and 15 and I haven’t “worked” a day since. He values the fact that I run the household and the primary carer for the children physical and emotion needs. To him that is priceless.

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? Well, it was already fair as once we married we combined our finances into joint finances. Our incomes went into the same account and all expenses were paid from that account. Savings were also joint, with set amount going every month into that joint account. Finally, we also gave ourselves equal spending money that was transferred to our own individual accounts for us to spend/save how we wished. This made it easy when the DC came along as it was a matter of simply re-budgeting the family finances while my income was lower.

Do husbands tend to support their wives financially during mat leave? Whoever is taking the parental leave for however long the couple decides ends up being technically being financially supported by their partner. But we never looked at it that way. All money is family money, so it was never a case of using “his” money to support me while I was on maternity leave. It was a case of us both using “our money” to finance the family life we both wanted and agreed on.

I would say having the perspective that the husband is supporting his wife financially with “his money” while she is on mat leave is a red flag attitude. It devalues the unpaid contribution of being a stay at home parent for however long that happens after childbirth. It perpetuates the idea that there is “his money” and “her money” when it should all be “our money”. It’s not working as a team and trust me you need to be a solid team to successfully raise DC.

Clearly a dinosaur here, but explains my financial position as a dad.

Paid equally into joint account when we first got together, SAHM until the start of school. I pay mortgage, car bills and petrol and all the standing orders and direct debits plus £700 a month to feed two or three people at home. Wife spends her small salary as she sees fit - maybe on the child maybe on her, could be on me.

As part of a door-opening, ladies first generation, this was how we were brought up. Are we suckers or have younger generations of men just used equality to their advantage?

We put 40% of our earnings into a joint account to cover all joint direct debits. We also have a joint savings account that anything leftover goes into, we are topping up the shortfall in my salary (by paying me the difference) with those savings so that I won't have any less than normal. We will continue to pay 40% of our income into the joint account during my leave so we won't notice the difference.

Very very very worrying.

Could you pool your finances then each take the same disposable income into your own bank accounts?
Why should you not do stuff because he's a tight fisted twat. What happens if you go back to work? Who will pay for childcare?

It's only in the last 50 years that mothers were even able to work. They didn't starve because they didn't have a job whilst they were looking after their children with their husband. Their husbands provided for them. There are so many things I find strange with this idea that women should pay for their children alone (the opportunity cost of not working basically means you are paying). In that case, why have a partner at all.

I had a 'friend' like this, married, had a child together, she did a cleaning job that fit into school hours, one day she was a bit upset, I asked why and she said her car needed work so all the money she had saved for the 6 weeks summer holidays was gone and she didn't know what she'd do! I looked at her like she'd grown two heads. Her husband was a skin flint busy counting his money in the bank doing a full time job and earning at least twice as much as her (part time cleaner). What a c**t.

Ffs - another one. ANOTHER one.

Hang on. Before we bash OP’s husband, nothing in her post says that he is UNWILLING to pool the money. OP needs to be a bit clearer on that. It may well be that OP feels uncomfortable with the idea. As she puts it herself, they are rather naive questions.

Having a child can reduce a woman's future wages by a decrease of 35% according to this report, and so as your husband is allowed to advance his career while you are being disadvantaged I think that he should take that into account.

microeconomicinsights.org/career-cost-children-career-fertility-trade-offs/

Yes, obviously

So you're going to take the health hit, the career hit, the time hit and the financial hit.

What a prince

Splitting and using shared for most people doesn’t make financial sense as they only get the shared portion at statutory. It’s financially better to just take off two weeks on annual leave.

in terms of should he step up, yes but you need to have the conversation as a unit and move away from bills and then mine and yours, to ours and our child.

what you cannot do is expect him to cover you so he lifts all the additional financials and then still keep spending money for yourself. It’s builds resentment on both sides

You both need to communicate and communicate now. This should have happened earlier

Of course they bloody do.

It's women asking questions like this that makes me question how feminism, or a simplistic version of it, has really screwed women over.

Firstly I think it's a shitty arrangement in a marriage for spouses to have differing disposable incomes. Whatever happened to the what's mine is yours this is a partnership?
You should equally enjoy what you both bring to the partnership.
That's the point of marriage.

Secondly, a child requires producing and caring for and therefore reduces the income generation potential of the partnership. The burden of the cost of a child, and the sharing of the remaining income is equally shared, whatever arrangement you agree.
Again that's the point of marriage.

If your husband can afford to pay for your lunches with your NCT friends but refuses to because it's his money, he is a nasty miserly man.

Him and some warped ideas about feminism have done a real number on you.

Sort this out now before you have 20 years of taking the financial hit for child rearing while your husband uses his monetary advantage to control and guilt you.

This actually makes me really sad that women think this would be acceptable.
Stand up for yourself.