Professional couple, now SAHM - does it change your relationship?

[mrschop]

I know having kids results in a big shift, anyway. But I had a good career - same field as DH - which I've given up (at least temporarily) to stay at home with the children and support DH. He's just had a big promotion at work, is under lots of pressure so I'm at home alone a lot. So our day to day lives, which had previously been very similar, are now quite different. I'm 18 months in to my SAHM role, and am quite happy, but I do wonder how things will be in 5, 10 years time: I always assumed we'd be 'equivalent' (socially/professionally) throughout our life, and now his career is motoring off while mine recedes in to the past. Although I don't like to define myself purely in work terms, I do think the woman I am now is quite different to the woman he married! I know others must have gone through this, I just wonder how you get used to your expectations as to how your life together will be being completely turned on their head?

You're right, alfiesbabe, but it's complicated due to particular needs of youngest child. Am working on it though

Good luck Janni! There's always a complication, even if your kids don't have specific needs,but IME it's worth the effort and the planning.

I think you make of it what you make of it tbh. If you spend your time worrying that you're not using your brain/ not doing proper work you will end up hating it.

I was/am a chartered accountant, DH a lawyer. My job required ability to travel/work long hours at the drop of a hat and DH works a minimum 60 hour week. I didn't want to have to juggle child care on top so we made the decision I wouldn't work.

TBH, I am surrounded by women who have made the same decision - professionals who have taken time out to bring up children - barristers/ lawyers/ accountants/ marketing professionals etc (and some interesting people . I also have a lot of good friends who have kept up their careers whilst brining up children - as far as I know we don't have a problem getting on. I don't think of myself as having given up using my brain so why should they -People are more than the job they do.

DH and I get on much like we did before dd - it really hasn't changed anything. Having said that though, I was a sponging postgrad student when he met me so maybe I've just gone back to the woman he met .

I think you make of it what you make of it tbh. If you spend your time worrying that you're not using your brain/ not doing proper work you will end up hating it.

I was/am a chartered accountant, DH a lawyer. My job required ability to travel/work long hours at the drop of a hat and DH works a minimum 60 hour week. I didn't want to have to juggle child care on top so we made the decision I wouldn't work.

TBH, I am surrounded by women who have made the same decision - professionals who have taken time out to bring up children - barristers/ lawyers/ accountants/ marketing professionals etc (and some interesting people . I also have a lot of good friends who have kept up their careers whilst brining up children - as far as I know we don't have a problem getting on. I don't think of myself as having given up using my brain so why should they -People are more than the job they do.

DH and I get on much like we did before dd - it really hasn't changed anything. Having said that though, I was a sponging postgrad student when he met me so maybe I've just gone back to the woman he met .

Janni, totally know what you mean on that one.

• mrsb (you need a new name!)

I really must stop moaning though and sort my life out!!!

But why would yuou be juggling childcare rather than your husband? He would be juggling it as much as you. We had five children and both worked full time all the time. It worked out fine and now I have 3 oldre ones at unviersity a lovely career which will continue seamlessly until I am 65 plus and all the work kudos and money I want. You will regret putting your career second and it is politically unacceptable too and unfair on your daughters and other women. It is a dire and awful dynamic to be boring housewife at home. I do not know how any intelligent woman could ever contemplate it.

I choose to stay at home. I want to be the primary carer; I want to focus on my children without the distraction and pressures of the job I had before. I don't think that showing your children (male and female) that you value bringing them up is a poor example. And I'm not a boring housewife - my post is about adjusting to the change in our roles.

My husband and I are a good team - we have together chosen how we will divide the earning/domestic roles. My question is more about how things work out if you change: I was the primary earner while my husband completed his professional training. He's now very successful in his career; I'm a SAHM.

I just wonder whether we will have as much in common in a few years' time, with me at home, as if I'd gone back to a similar job to his. But my hope and expectation is that I think we'll have a stronger relationship than if we are both under pressure at work and so can't focus as much on our home life. I wanted to see what others thought, and had found.

I've found the posts on here really interesting. And as others have said - balance is the key: being wholly focussed on the sock drawer is probably not the best way forward!

Oh come on Xenia, sometimes it is a fact of life that one parent has to take the bulk of childcare. DH is an international lawyer, his hours are ridiculously unpredictable, I sometimes don't know which country he is in. My job was appointment based and therfore it fell to me to collect and drop the children at the childminder, deal with the nanny, bedtime rooutines etc.

Full time work with both of us just wasn't working, the children were miserable, the weekends full of the mundane tasks there was no time for during the week.

We decided together that I should give up work, because (a) I was happy to do so and (b) no way dh could cope as a full time parent and not an option for both doing part time.

I am intellegent, not a boring housewife, and my daughter has no complaints, and sees me as a productive and useful member of the community. You really do belittle SAHMS sometimes!

There is a pattern here though. The kind of job that means it's financially viable for a man's wife to give up work also seems to be an impossible job in terms of hours. So his job removes him from the domestic arena and all of those responsibilities become the wife's. So her job goes. It may be a fact of life but it's reproduced again and again.

Why could DH not cope as a full time parent? Doesn't he have arms? Can't he wipe bottoms or does he find it demeaning? Is he sexist and incompetent? How can you live with those inequalities, his earnings?

When my mother died I had to sort out her stuff. She had kept years of grateful patients' letters to my psychiatrist father so great was her resentment (intercepted them) that he was getting that glory from his work and she who had worked to support them both for 10 years before I arrived was reduced to washing and cleaning at home. You will feel like this too unless you get back to full time work. May be your husband has to accept a worse paid job with fixed hours as a lawyer locally. May be having more money is not as important as yo both being around at home more. Why should it always be women that sacrifice everything and why do they let it happen to them time after time?

Because he doesn't have the patience to do it, I do. He would loose his temper if he had to deal with the children 24/7 he freely admits it.

He is neither sexist nor incompetent we all have our strengths and weaknesses.

"You will feel like this too unless you get back to full time work. May be your husband has to accept a worse paid job with fixed hours as a lawyer locally. May be having more money is not as important as yo both being around at home more. Why should it always be women that sacrifice everything and why do they let it happen to them time after time? "

No Xenia, I won't/don't feel like this. Why should my husband look for a job more locally when he has a perfectly good one that he enjoys. I've never said it is about having more money, if that was the case I would have remained at my highly paid job. I don't feel I have sacrificed anything nor have I let anything happen to me, I CHOOSE to do this.

Why do you find it so hard to accept that for some people this is a perfectly sensible and suitable solution for their family?

Because I want to look after my children. Simple as that. I don't think that is a result of being oppressed, by social expectations or by my husband. My education and the career (and salary) I've had have enabled me to make an informed choice about how I live my life. Looking after my children and the emotional attachment I have to them is more important than making money for someone else, being at their beck and call, and subject to their opinions/patronage to progress in my career.

My husband's earning potential and willingness to provide for our family's financial needs mean I can exercise that choice. But those comments are not really the point of the OP. I think there is an interesting debate to be had about whether the expectation that women will be able to work has led to many women having to work, through financial necessity, and whether that has restricted women's freedom too much. But that wasn't the point of this post! I was rather enjoying hearing about other people's experiences of how they have adapted to a change in their lifestyle.

Wow, that's astonishing -

in principle, I agree with Xenia.

But there are so many things wrong with what she said I think it's just broken my brain. Which is just as well, seeing as I'm one of those unintelligent, subservient SAHMs.

I agree with nkf that where a husband has a high earning job, he generally isn't around. That means the bulk of of the childcare/domestic arrangements fall to the woman, making the change from work to being a SAHM that much more marked. One day you are a high flying whatever, out most evenings, shopping at lunchtime; the next you can't leave the house without half an hour of nappy changes, shoes on-shoes off etc, or even get out for an evening with your friends or to the gym because either your partner is still at work or you are too bloody tired to get off the sofa.

Xenia I think you make some good points sometimes, but then you go and spoil it with extreme views! Surely expecting the husband to stand down and take a low status job or become a SAHD is regarding him in exactly the way you criticise women for. Surely the better solution is that mum and dad both have well balanced roles. If one partner having a high flying high earning pressurised career means the other partner having to give up work, then surely a better balance is for both parents to have stimulating but not extremely high flying jobs, so that they both have the advantages of working and parenting? You are so clearly unhappy with the traditional roles so I don't get why you advocate a simple role reversal. My DH and I both earn the same. We have careers which keep us busy and interested but which also allow us time to enjoy being with our kids, doing the shopping, sharing the pickups and so on.

Also I would like to point out that if I returned to work full time I would be leaving the house at 6.30am, returning at 6.00pm. My children go to bed at 7.30pm, so I would see them for 1.5 hours a day during the week. If dh cut his hours (by changing his job) he would see them for 1hour in the morning and 1.5 hours in the evening.

As it is I see them for 1.5 hours every morning, and ds 6.5 hours every afternoon/evening and dd 4.5, dh sees them 1 hour in the morning and sometimes 30 mins evening, sometimes none.

Where in that are we better of in terms of time with the children?

Alfiesbabe, I think there are some jobs that can't be done part-time or on a less-hours basis. ComeOV's husband has one; so does mine. If he were to work locally or less hours, he'd basically be changing career. I don't want him to do that. I was interested to hear how and to what extent you can grow together when your day to day lives are so different, having started out (and been attracted to one another) on the basis that you had very similar lives to one another.

Exactly mrschop. DH is in a very specialised field. He can't simply swap that for a local high street law firm.

I agree that Xenia has a lot of valid points, but am sick of the "boring housewife", "diservice to our daughters" and other such ridiculous comments. Is it really so hard to believe that intellegent, well educated women could possibly choose a life path that is not the same as hers?

I think Xenia you are too stuck in your view of being at home = housewife = boring = unhappy.

I am more happy now having been a SAHM than I ever was as a professional in a career I'd qualified for. I hated being defined by my job/role and being answerable to people (be it those above me or clients). Now I feel more independent than then even though you would say I was less so. I am not answerable to anyone now (I know you would argue that i am answerable to DH but I am no more than he is to me as that is how our relationship works thankfully).

I think by being intelligent I have been able to make a choice as to what I do which is best for me and my family. My DH too is a partner in a city law firm doing work he simply wouldn't be able to do in a smaller local firm - you should know it changes the job completely.

Well in our case, mrschop, I did change career. My first career wouldnt have been conducive to working part time for a while. Becoming a parent wasnt the sole reason for changing; I also knew i wanted to do something more socially useful than my first career. The biggest stipulation for me when changing career, was that even though I would be earning less, the job needed to be at least as intellectually demanding and stimulating as my old career. (I'm a teacher now - it's the most interesting and worthwhile career I can think of). If I hadnt changed career, then TBH, my DH would have been the SAHP, because I earned more and had very unpredictable hours. And I knew that if we took that route, our lives would become very polarised. DH was also keen to remain in his career at least part time. He's always been great at the parenting side, but would have wanted more than just being a SAHD.
I think your situation is the hardest dilemna. As you say, a lot of the reasons you got together in the first place is because of who you are, and when one of you has a radical lifestyle change, it can be a big pressure. I know for DH and I, it works much better to feel we are equals; to both have a career and time to feel we are able to parent our children in the way we want. The great thing is though, you are aware of the potential problems, so if you keep talking, keep renegotiating then you should be ok. Don't try to make long term plans. You may be itching to get back to your career 5 years down the line!

I thought she was moaning about how awful it was and I was just saying it's inherently awful and won't make her happy so the answer is get back to work and perhaps get the husband to make a bit of career sacrifice too as plenty of fathers do who take a step down (as my brother indeed has done).

But if you're happy great . I just don't think long term you will be happy.

I also find it hard to understand how anyone can enjoy being a housewife. Yes, I was very emotionally attached to all five children and I still am but I am just like her husband on this - could never have stood to be home 24/7 - it's too boring, too tedious, too much like being a cleaner or servant. A dreddful business which many women cannot stand. If you like it and can cope with the inequalities in the relationship, higher status of the man, all credit to him, lack of appreciation at home etc then fine. But most women work and find that works out better for them.

I did actually change job before becoming pg, to one with less money, but good work and more scope for p/t, family friendly hours etc, which was OK when I had one child. However, with two children and DH's career taking off, even that was impractical. So boring housewifery and jam making it is for me for the foreseeable future at least! But seriously, it is that polarisation, alfiesbabe, that I worry about, as we are in that extreme situation where DH works a lot, so I am at home, a lot.

Xenia, I was asking about the impact of the differences in my life now to DH's. It's not a question of being a housewife and having to clean the house all day - tbh, I have rewarded myself for my years of hard work in my career by hiring in help for the domestic bits I don't want to do. So I fill my time looking after the children, taking them out, going to the gym, doing voluntary work, and evening classes. But it is not, obviously, the same as being in a high profile, high pressure job. As I said earlier, I have to go and find interesting things to do, whereas it all came automatically when DH and I were working in similar fields. I don't perceive DH as being higher status to me, and he does appreciate me. From what you've said, it seems your view is coloured by your experience of the relationship between your parents. I'm not sure that is typical - I honestly don't think I would resent DH, or that he would give me cause to. I just think it is quite a shift to have parallel lives that suddenly diverge quite dramatically when children arrive.