I want to be SAHM, do I need to marry a banker to become one?

[PoliteEagle]

After being single for a couple of years and doing all the healing, I am now ready for a relationship leading to a family. The thing is, I want a kid but I want to be SAHM, at least till they go to school and then part time max. I have a good professional job but I don't have career aspirations and not really passionate about my job. I just don't see myself juggling work and childcare responsibilities. I have only 3 friends who are SAHMs, two are married to traders and one to big3 management consultant. In nowadays economy is it the only option to be SAHM? to marry a lawyer, banker or a consultant? The last thing I want is to choose SO by their job as it feels incredibly shallow. SAHMs how did you became ones?

@Burglekuttyoureatrolldung I hope your husband doesn't have access to your assets? Mine did (jointly) and he took every penny. But like I say, he was an incredibly shrewd (and very cruel) accountant. He knew what to do. The courts and legal team were no match.
I was very naive in my 20s/early 30s.

Nor mine.

I ended up spending time as a SAHM with a high earning husband @PoliteEagle, although it came about a bit more organically than your situation. Have people arriving for dinner shortly, so I'll post more later.

Then surely you need to find someone that you're compatible with, rather than someone with a large bank balance.

What's ENM ?

How I can be compatible with a low earner if I want traditional family? Not every man wants traditional family and not every man can afford it .

Ethically Non Monogamous. Though I often wonder why I see those profiles whether their partner know that they are ENM 🤔

You can have a traditional family set up on a much lower wage, as PPs have explained. You could have it supporting yourself too. The issue is not the wanting to be a SAHM, it is the luxury lifestyle supplied by someone else.

not luxury, but comfortable. I really wouldn't want to count every penny, but don't need luxury as well. I would be fine with one holiday per year and swapping an expensive gym for a cheap one. I would struggle though if I had to buy stuff second hand or count pennies in a supermarket...

If you want a man with old fashioned gender roles and do not want to employ anyone to look after your DC as you can do a better job yourself, who is looking after the children in your traditional set up whilst you're at the gym multiple times a week?

My current gym has kids section so mums can bring their kids. But I see your point for sure. The only option to leave with a husband for an hour after work for one weekday and an hour at the weekend. Shouldn't be a big issue as it is in a man interest as well. I normally go 3 times per week but can cut to 1-2. Tbh though gym discussion sounds like bringing a cart a way before a horse :)

I hope you find what you're looking for OP but I think you're being unrealistic. I think if you want DC, you should be flexible to make that work as I think most people who want DC would regret not having them later in life because of so many self made hurdles.

It may be unrealistic indeed as I would be finishing in a poodle by the sound of it. Many replies on this thread has been helpful so I will think about my dating strategy and family goals and genera goals in life.

Personally I think people can have any dating standards they want.
It'a up to them whether they choose to remain single or compromise if they can't find well the spouse of their dreams.

A 23 year old has far more time and leeway than well a 33 or even 43 year old. And your views change.

For me personally even finding a decent man on dating apps, meetups etc was such a challenge let alone a high earner. I lucked out and married a colleague earning similar to myself in the end.

@PoliteEagle I just wanted to add something that one has mentioned. You may never be able to have kids even if you find the person you say you are searching. My husband in on 145k but when we met he was on 110k in any case I am full aware things my change. He lost his job for a couple of months and I fully supported our expenses. Being raised in a single income household I would never chose it. Something can happen like and accident , death or divorce.

I knew highly paid man that when he divorced he just increased his pension contributions to decrease the allowance for his wife . He was paying 1k after this and still complaining. You know what he did ? He moved to his home country and worked black money and then he moved to Dubai. Corporate job , he was engineer.

so just make sure you are in a good place and find someone that is in even better place but never rely just on him.

When we got married, DH was a teacher and I was starting in a city-type job, out-earning him by a lot. He went back for a post-grad degree and I was the sole earner for the next three years. We ended up juggling two pretty intense careers and three DC until I decided to take a step back and stay home. I wasn't someone who would ever have imagined myself becoming a SAHM, but I actually loved it.

I loved being able to relax the pace of our lives, not have to deal with nannies and childcare, and crazy diaries and travel. It was lovely being able to be really present with the kids as they entered the tween and teen years, and I got to do so many things I'd always wanted to do and not had time for - volunteered loads (which led to the job I do now, which is about 20 hrs/week), did a second post-grad degree which added to my qualifications, got pretty fluent in a second language, did some writing that got published, did some freelance work, project managed our house renovation.

But I didn't go searching for this, it just kind of came about organically, and I don't think it would have worked if I hadn't felt I was in a marriage where we were on equal footing or if I hadn't had a pretty good sense of myself beforehand.

So I wouldn't jump too fast, @PoliteEagle. Plus, as a pp has pointed out, being able to have a child isn't guaranteed. Choose someone you'd want to be with even if the setup you're looking for never happens.

This has be an absolute wind up and if so one of the most of the depressing threads ever. Any man worth his salt would run a mile from a woman like the OP. Says she isn't money grabbing but would be happy with "one holiday" a year, a gym membership and "depressed" if they had to buy second hand clothes or count the pennies in the supermarket. Jesus wept.

A man's ability to provide for his family and be a good dad isn't based on his bank balance or the status of his job. Having parents who are loving, involved, responsive and caring is much more important for children than if they wear 2nd hand clothes or go on holiday. Its more important than what their parents earn and if you're more concerned about what the husband earns than frankly you don't sound mature enough or ready to be a parent.

There's nothing wrong about being a SAHM however the OP seems to think she find a husband who can bank roll the lifestyle she's become accustomed to than actually accepting that being a parent involves sacrificing.

And if you want to go down the "traditional" role. It's been "traditional" for most of history for women to be working. Being a SAHM is a relatively new concept and one isn't better than the other.

Having insulted me I hope you now feel better about yourself

So you don’t want a child enough to have one in anything other than a very specific set of circumstances, familial and financial, and you don’t want one enough to buy things secondhand or ‘count pennies in a supermarket’?

Are you sure it’s the child part of staying at home that primarily attracts you?

@CitrusBeanie I’d love to see how the whole of the UK views SAHP’s, how employers really see women of child bearing age, whether part time roles are REALLY part time statistically, what life chance outcomes look like for children of working parents’ vs. a stay at home parent, whether those outcomes are influenced to a greater degree by the working or of the demographics of the parents’, what health outcomes look like in 2 generations time for children of working parents or home parent. Just anything really that has any sociological and economical substance. Also really interested to see how womens’ roles will be seen in 200/300 years time as the birth rate declines- what will the narratives be in society around women then and how will people of the future look back to this period in time. Will it be seen as a continuation of women’s’ rights upwards and onwards’, or a period of time when women were trapped between a rock and a hard place doing everything at work and at home. I find it fascinating wondering how the narrative of women’s’ roles evolves.

OP, you claimed a household income of £150k was “barely surviving” and £80k was unmanageably low. When the average salary in the uk is £27k. And then went on to say that because you have been to uni, own a car, and can talk about films, you “bring a lot to the table” for any passing millionaire, which makes you sound absolutely deluded.

What kind of responses did you think you were going to get?

I imagine it would conclude that economical factors have bigger life chance outcomes rather than if a mother is a SAHM or works full time.

Just like how a daughter of a working mother is likely to earn more as an adult than the daughter of a SAHM.

Yes this is true from todays’ research; but there’s so much more to it than just the individual economical outcomes - I’d be super interested in seeing results that covered societal impacts too and over a really long timescale. I can’t help but think the declining birth rate is going to be some kind of huge shift for women. Especially when it starts to really become a barrier to capitalism’s’ quest for economic growth. Maybe that is already happening and one of the reasons we are seeing some of these (typically) far right views that are curbing women’s rights’. I doubt it would exist or be possible to conduct such a study tbh at this point as in the grand scheme of women’s roles’ in history the timeframe of women ‘working’ and having ‘equality’ like we do today is still a new era in the history of womens’ roles. I do wonder how people will see this period in several hundred years. I wonder if they will look back at these type of mumsnet threads and I’d love to know what they would look like from a perspective long in the future!!

My husband and I both work and together bring home around £43k per year. We have no choice but to privately rent as can't afford to buy.
Would I swap my life now to the one I had in my 20's/early 30's - a SAHM with a very wealthy husband and a lovely home?
God no, never.
Divorcing him was the best thing I ever did. I'm free.

What do you think the outcome would be? I'm assuming you believe it would be negative?

I feel like economical outcomes are often linked to so many different things, they are often the root cause of many societal issues. Poverty, crime, education etc.

Look what’s happening in South Korea - a country with the lowest birth rates. 4b movement and unsuccessful attempts by government increase birth rates. Not sure if it happened in 200-300 years but I a very long run some races and nationalities can be extinct.