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?

But some jobs require a massive time commitment, and the intrusion in to the family's life is intolerable when both parents are doing it. A lot of women decide they don't want to miss bedtime every night, don't want to work Christmas Day and Boxing Day (as happened to a lawyer with very young children that I know). And if you don't work under those conditions, you're out. Brutal, but true.

I don;t have girls but if I did I would tell them that they have a choice. They can either choose not to have children and commit themselves wholly to their career (fine) or have children and continue to commit themselves fully to their career or take time to care for their children. However whatever they choose they may well feel as if they have compromised part of their life. I think the problem stems from the oft spoken about myth that we can have it all. We can't but that doesn't mean you should feel guilty whether you do as Xenia does or whether you become an earth mother. Both are probably superb mums in their own way and in the way that makes them feel comfortable. Girls should be told to go with whatever makes them happy within the bounds of what is possible for them. I think that Amanda Platell spoke of this a few years ago. She broke down in tears during an interview about being childless and she said that if she had her way she would talk to teenage girls in an honest and realsitic way about the 'choices' they will face if they embark upon motherhood.

Very true and if both parents are working like that, then it's understandable that something has to give. And so bye bye her job. Because she earns less. Why? She might be just as clever and very well trained but her earnings will be less. That seems to be the pattern. Every time. How come? Are women on the whole choosing lower paid professions? Are they marying "good providers"? There has to be a reason for the almost universality of this particular pattern.

mrschop - why would any parent want to do the job you describe? I don't think it's a matter of gender. Why would a father want to miss his children's bedtime every night, or work Christmas and Boxing Day?

Well, I don't think most men chat around about things like that in the way that women do, they seem more interested in various sporting results and I have known men (dh included) raise their eyebrows and shrug about other colleagues who seem to spend very little time at home due to work committments.

It does depend upon the job. DP and I were doing tag team parenting in the evenings. With work to prepare for the following day, the hours between returning home and going to bed were fraught.

Alfiesbabe - lots do! Money, prestige, inability to say no to work - lots of jobs require that commitment. So it is do it or find a new job - but if that is what you do (and you are supporting a family) - you can't change just like that.

Whenever anyone says to me they want to do the job I do (did?!) I always mention the unsociable hours and pressure. But I wouldn't have listened or understood when I was 21, and I don't think people realise until it is too late. You've already got the kids, the mortgage (and the stay-at-home wife...) before you realise what an imposition your chosen career is. So you just make the best of it.

I agree with you CC that staying at home for a few years does not necessarily mean abandoning a career but at the age of 41 now, for the vast vast majority of women (yes it is usually women) who give up work very few of my friends have actually returned. It's a pattern.

I guess you must be right mrschop - how sad though! Of course job changes arent always easy, but I suppose the long term answer is for men and women to have a more fluid approach to our working lives. I think it's a thing of the past that people should feel they go into a job for life. There's no reason why both men and women can't approach their adult life intending to maybe have 2 or 3 careers. You move through various phases as an adult, and surely it works best if your work life reflects this? I worked ridiculously long hours in my first career (I played hard as well though!). That suited me fine - I was in my twenties and up for it. Now I'm 40 something with kids, it wouldnt suit me. But then neither would it suit DH.

Some people though - a scroll through MN archives will show this - don't manage for both in a couple to take a flexible role. He stays high flying, she doesn't. I think the OP was wondering about what might happen later if they continued down these diverging paths. You could argue that the ability to weather major changes is one of the strengths of a relationship.

I can't be bothered to discuss things like "having it all". I think the phrase is a media invention. But I do wonder if young women realise exactly what it can take to return to work if they take a lengthy career break. I think women assume that it will be easier than they think. And as another poster said, their confidence can dip. Do young women realise that their brains and hard work may not be rewarded at the same level as men's.

I suppose we could tell our daughters that they have a choice. But I would hate to think that my lovely glorious bright eyed girl will sort out her husband's sock drawer.

alfiesbabe - I don't agree. My partner has an extremely high status role in his company but it is totally separate from his "self".

My job is a bit different as it isn't within a company structure - I write training and educational materials and it is highly self-generated and I'm on a perpetual hunt for new ideas - but I can give it up tomorrow (as I did for nearly three years) and be unchanged as a person and in my relationship.

Quattro - I think it is about degrees in that the state has up until recently met the costs of higher education in the UK. So education was being received by the few at a cost to society as a whole. That cost is gradually being transferred to the recipient of education (a good thing IMO, it makes students work much harder and demand more of their institutions).

Professional training for high value added jobs is generally paid for by employers while employees are also generating value. It's a win-win situation. Some employees will choose not to continue with the employer, and some (hopefully for the employer, the best employees) will reach the pinnacle and create enormous value for themselves, their employer and the state. No problem there as far as I can see.

Yes nkf, that is what I was asking, though the discussion has widened quite a lot - has been interesting.

I was hoping, when posting my original message, that maybe people with older children (mine are 1 and 3) would pop up with a few examples of how they have got on and what they would have done differently (if anything).

Yes nkf, that is what I was asking, though the discussion has widened quite a lot - has been interesting.

I was hoping, when posting my original message, that maybe people with older children (mine are 1 and 3) would pop up with a few examples of how they have got on and what they would have done differently (if anything).

"Professional training for high value added jobs is generally paid for by employers while employees are also generating value."

That's only partially true. Significant value is only generated up to 3/4 years down the line - at the point of maximum broodiness for women.

It depends on the way you raise your daughter NKF. My lovely bright-eyed clever girl is simply not going to spend her life sorting out her husband's sock drawer. We have a responsibility as rolemodels as well don't we?

Well I have older children. I certainly make sure the girls know they have a fairly narrow window in which to have babies. For me having a lot of children was my number one aim for life and I'm delighted to have five. Second was to have a career I enjoyed. It would have been nice to have a happy marriage too but about 47% fail so I haven't done too badly.

I suppose you need some 50 something women on here who gave up good careers 20 years ago and see how they feel and what they think. Some will be fine. Some will resent their husband's career success. A good few will have been abandoned into poverty by a man escaping abroad with a younger lover. Some will have serially divorced rich men. A few will have build a new career but a good many will resent the irretrievable damage they did to their careers like I suppose my mother, even stooping to hiding the notes of - You saved my life, you're wonderful - he got from his psychiatric patients. Other will be perfectly happy.

I think happiness and internal contentment doesn't have a huge lot to do with external factors. Some people are miserable whatever they do and some aren't. Actually may be asking the 50_ isn't wise because they'll be in the thick of menopause. Perhaps the 60+ would be a better group.

You have to go what you feel is right but if in doubt I would have the men at home just until women's position at work is consolidated. You have a duty to women to do that at this crucial point for women.

Xenia, you didn't answer my question. What exactly where you suggesting with regards to the comment re my marriage/ Did you read my post of 20:28:24pm?

COV - you should know by now that Xenia doesnt do answers!!
What I'm loving at the moment is her approach to statistics. Look on the education threads - she pities the 93% of us who attended state schools and send our own children there, but over here, she counts herself as not having done 'too badly' because she's among 47% of people with unhappy marriages! Classic!

Just trying to establish if she is suggesting I married dh basically for his money. Is she saying dh married beneath him, and/or I married "up" above myself? If so I am rather and at such an untrue and ill informed comment!

I think she's on a mission to ensure all women are financially independent and won't end up exploited by our husbands when we grow lazy and fat from sitting on our arses all day and they trade us in for a younger model.
Only she's too busy banging the drum to notice that many of us are earning good money and have happy marriages anyway!! Which is all slightly ironic when she seems to be the one who got fleeced by her ex.

There was a typo in that post you couldn't udnerstand. I thought I'd clarified that above. I was saying you gave up work because you married someone who earned or came to earn more as many women do and the reason women's careers are messed up is more to do with marrying up, someone better, richer, cleverer etc than because of any discrimination.
I certainly was not saying you married him for money but that most people tend to gravitate to someone who will be a stable father and be able to keep them even if they are unaware of that.

Go into a bar. Girls tend to target in terms of husband material (not sex) the man in the suit not the refuse collector in the corner in his dirty jeans.

Message withdrawn

I gave up teaching two years ago to move abroad to join my husband who had a second posting to Brussels. I went from a fairly hectic lifestyle to one that seemed to stand still, but worked out it was up to me to make it move again.

I started learning a new language; am still sorting out the 15 years worth of 'stuff' that we brought with us from our house; run the Youth Club at ds's school; got involved with a book group; started going to an exercise class; am doing an OU course; and am hoping to start my MA in January. I also keep up professionally by marking GCSEs.

I'd worked for 16 years of our marriage when I kicked in teaching to move, and dh appreciates that I have given up my job to be with him. He has always seen what we earn as joint money and that we are an equal partnership. I was worried that there would be a marked inequality when I moved here, but things haven't changed. I grew up with dh's line of work so we can talk about that and I make sure that I read the UK papers and am aware of what's going on. He is also pleased that now I've moved he isn't having to cope with all the domestic niff naff and trivia that he had to do when unaccompanied, so his life is easier on the domestic front.

I would however say that he takes a great interest in the contents of his sock drawer, especially as he has to wear uniform, and gets quite agitated if there is only one pair of black socks left in the drawer!

My Mum gave up work to have children. She had been an (trainee so never qualified) accountant before children, gave it up, did part time menial work to fit in with school hours whilst my father worked long hours in a successful career.

When I was at secondary school my Mum got a fulfilling job for a charity doing craft stuff which was/is her real passion. She loved that job and without stopping the 'career' job to have children she wouldn't have found it.

My father was the victim of some nasty boardroom antics which meant he was suddenly out of work having been working long hours in a high powered job. My parents then had to support at least 1 of us at university and feed themselves on my Mum's part time job whilst my Dad had a bit of a breakdown.
Then my parents decided there was no point in my Dad having a high powered career anymore and he is still working (this all happened 15 years ago) but in a non-high powered way. They are still very happily married and have been for 43 years (oh and they've always shared finances).

My point - Whilst they had v. traditional roles during our childhood a set of unforeseen circumstances meant that actually my Mum turned into the main breadwinner BUT because they have always worked as a team and done what is best for the family/them they are both v. happy.

What has it taught my brothers and I ? My brothers are probably more domesticated than me as my Mum made sure they were. My eldest brother does a lot of the child care as both he and his wife works. My other brother is yet to have children. Me - well they encouraged me through univerisity, a postgrad degree and professional training and then gave me the self confidence to choose what would work best for me and my family at the moment.

Xenia, you did clarify your typo, I just didn't understand the context of your post. You really make sweeping judgements don't you?!?!

Dh and I met in our teens, we were still unsure of where we were heading career wise, I had no picture of my future, was I having children etc etc. I didn't search out a husband, and certainly didn't view dh in terms of potential father material nor as a breadwinner so I could be a kept woman. DH is neither cleverer, better, nor richer, (because I am as wealthy as he is because it is our money) - if anything I was certainly "richer" when we married, and my qualifications are "higher/better" than his.