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?

I don't know anybody who does interior design courses or aromatherapy studies or whatever they are. Then again I don't live in London!

Oh boo-hoo. They could do all that and have a job.

I am here talking about a lot of spoiled former-professional women I know. I m not talking about hard-working, no-childcare, no-cleaner women who run households. Most of these, anyway, flood back into low-paid flexi hours jobs as soon as their kids are at school anyway.

You're just

I'm not. Because none of them ever stop whingeing.

How odd. All the women I know whose DH earns enough to support the whole family very comfortably know how bloody lucky they are to have so many choices in life and count their blessings daily.

It is just the same old rollercoaster isn't it? You are damn if you don't damned if you do. TBH whatever you decide to do with your life as long as you are happy your patner is happy/unboard with the decision, your children are happy and it is not to the financial detriment of others (and by that I don't mean your partner) - whose business is it?

CoV - you are quite right, it is nobody's business but their own how a couple manages their joint financial affairs. Thank goodness.

Dullwitch, my OP wasn't be bemoaning my situation. I know I am very, very fortunate to have had the education and opportunities I've had, and now to have the choice to stay at home. And like CoV, I'm now using my skills for voluntary work. But my question was how things change when one half of a professional couple gives up work to enable the other to focus fully on their career, while they take on the domestic responsibilities.

It could be (but usually isn't) the man giving up work. But the few couples I've known of that have had the man staying at home are now divorced/separated. So my own experience is that the divergence of lifestyles doesn't work very well when it's the man who has to take the step back from earning! Women are more accustomed to doing that, and seem to cope better, but does changing from a high earner/professional to a SAHM adversely affect the relationship between that couple? Do you grow apart when, having been a fellow professional, you become a SAHM. And do all those 'worthy' activities we've been talking about - studying, volunteering, community work (for the sake of argument, leaving aside the indulgencies of aromatherapy etc!) really help to bridge the gap between the working husband and the SAHM? Or does the husband/earning partner alter the basis of their feelings towards their partner - gratitude/admiration for them in their role as mother/carer, as opposed to professional admiration that might have been part of the initial attraction? And if so, is that a bad thing?

mrschop - you know what - I don't think that there is a universal answer.

Some men (my partner included) admire professional career women when they are young and think that they want that kind of wife, and it is only when they have children that they realise all the family sacrifices that being in a dual career couple entail - and change their mind. And those men probably do admire and value mothering/family management skills pretty highly, because they are used to the idea of holding their wife in high intellectual esteem and living with their intellectual equal.

Quite a lot of marriages sadly fail over disagreement about whether both parties in a couple should pursue their careers or not once children arrive.

Interesting what someone said about education and a waste of taxpayers money. Perhaps true, but how many of us own a crystal ball and know what our circumstances may be 5 -20 years down the line? Should women not be allowed to persue careers in the medical , legal field incase they have children and decide not to go back to work, or should they be forced to "serve" a minimum number of years, what if they left fot other reasons - illness, emmigration, hated the job?

We are moving to a system where students will pay for their own degrees fully (like in the US) to avoid this issue in future.

It's silly to say that giving up work when you have children is due to superior love. Do men who work not fall in love with their children? Is the reason they're able to work long hours due to a deficit in affection? Of course not.

And not to have a pay check is significant. I'm not proposing to suggest that everyone is and should be defined by work but to be unemployed is a different life condition than being e,m

That was meant to say "employed".

nkf - it's not silly. Some mothers fully intend to return to work and then the overwhelming desire to be with their baby once he is born incites them to give up. Other mothers fully intend to give up and then find themselves not particularly enamoured of SAHMdom.

I went back to work full-time after my son was born and for a while it worked well. We had excellent, stable child-care in place and my son seemed happy. I think at first the novelty of being back at work after a year on maternity leave made me think I had made the right choice.

As this year has dragged on I have felt increasingly unhappy. When at work, and engrossed in the challenges of the day, I feel very satisfied indeed. I try not to think about what my son is doing. When I come home, and find him grizzly and tired after a busy day, I wonder just how much quality time I will ever manage to squeeze into a day.

It took a miscarriage for me to realise that I wasn't overly happy working full-time. Well, actually I am happy working full-time but not in the context of being able to be an effective parent. In fact, I think to be successful in my professional life I need to feel fulfilled in my personal life. I have negotiated part-time working and start this week.

I plan t0 continue working part-time until my son starts school at least, and the reassess. I have a vague plan to be more involved in the community, in addition to my paid work. I might also consider some freelance work. I think the key to my happiness as a woman is to find the right balance between doing the best I can for myself professionally and for my family.

I am very lucky to have the sort of career that pays well enough and is flexible enough to lend itself to part-time working.

I don't think there is ever going to be a "right" answer. What matters is what feels right for each woman individually. Choice is the key element, I think.

Would you say that men who don't give up work when their babies are born love their children less than the women who do? That seems to be where that argument leads.

I don't think we are talking about fathers, but about mothers. Maternal feelings for babies are largely conditioned by hormones that fathers do not have.

So if a woman does go back to work early on, do you think she has some kind of hormone deficit?

So Comeo married someone who woul dmarry more - the usual marrying up therefore stays at home.

Obvioulsy i agree with The Dullw

"What upsets me about domestic/childcare work Vs career work, is the former is mostly invisible and utterly taken for granted (unless a man has done it then, he certainly tells you). It may be just as boring booking a meeting room and balling odd socks. But the former has some status, whilst your family pull socks out of their drawers and chuck them around the room without even thinking you did this for them, so you have to do it all again...

Being the person who looked after everyone else's mundane needs - rather than using my brain (and I don t think looking after kids is brain work, it is largely repetitive and mindless) ? day after day would just make me feel miserable and enslaved.

But I can understand some women can subliminate that part of themselves and enjoy feeling needed, caring and coping."

I cannot understand how women want that role. But obviously different people have different views. Surprising most men don't want to be home 24/7 if babycare is such a bundle of laughs and intellectually challenging isn't it?

Sorry Xenia, I don't understand your first sentence?

I think the comparisons with fathers are entirely apt. Many men cut back hours to spend time with children. Many men are devastated on divorce to be parted from their children. It is only by looking at the position of men and how they can work without being criticised or told they don't love their children that we see the intense sexism in so many relationships.

Also, as I have already said being a SAHM isn't 100% about the mundane household chores and childr care, if you choose there are plenty of worthwhile and mind stretching endeavours that you can get your teeth into.

It's not really about degrees Anna, although that is where it starts. I was thinking about training in high-value-added careers. Competition for those sorts of roles is intense and why would you as an employer, looking at 23-28 YO women, choose to make an investment which would not reap rewards in the medium term?

What the OP says about failing relationships where there is a sahf doesn't especially resonate here because I frankly don't know any. It is rare for a father to give up work. I don't buy the hormonal argument beyond six months after the birth - it sounds illogical to me.

The thing is you can do anything you like with your home time. That's not the same as a job. It may be interesting and valid and socially useful but a job demands certain things of people that other kinds of activities don't. That's why it's very difficult for people to "sell" the skills achieved outside work to employers.