Don't give up work to be a SAHM unless

[akaemmafrost]

You have a HEFTY private income or can work from home.

I gave up work, usual reasons, wages would barely cover childcare, WE wanted kids to be at home with a parent.

Fast forward. I now have two dc, the father of my dc cheated on me, physically, emotionally and financially abused me.

One of my dc has SN and cannot attend school for the moment.

I've been out of work for 10 years now, I have no profession. In 6 years time our child support will stop as will most of our benefits. I will near fifty having not worked at all for 18 years.

My future is shit. Utterly grey and bleak. All I have to look forward to is a state pension. While my ex earns a fortune, travels the world and has new relationships.

This is reality for me. So think long and hard about giving up work to stay at home because no matter how shit your job is it's preferable to my future don't you think?

And it was all decided for me by a man who decided he hated me and didn't want to be married anymore and a child being diagnosed with significant SN.

It's that simple.

And of course there are plenty of families where it's simply not feasible for one parent to remain at home, because the wage earner doesn't earn enough anyway. The whole housing boom did low earners no favours.

But nobody wants to go back to the days when men were paid more than women for doing identical work irregardless of personal circumstances on the grounds that men worked to support a wife'n'kids, and women worked because they wanted money for lipsticks and new hats.

This thread is very sad.

I'm a SAHM, and have been married for 23 years. I'm very lucky that if the worst did happen I would be ok. But I know that is rare and I don't want my Dds to ever be financially reliant on someone else.
But I now feel guilty that I haven't myself provided them with a very good role model. It's all very difficult because they see it all being ok with myself and Dh and probably think they will be ok too. I need to have some serious chats with them!

"on the grounds that men worked to support a wife'n'kids, and women worked because they wanted money for lipsticks and new hats."

you always manage to get a smile out of me SGB. Painfully funny the above.

"The days when men were paid more than women .... on the grounds that men supported wife"n"kids, and women worked because they wanted money for lipsticks and new hats"

You know, I'm not so sure we've moved on so far or so thoroughly from that position after all SG.

Quick - I don't think you've been a poor role mpddel at all! You've shown your children it can work. All you need to do is explain how you protected yourself rom risk.

wordfactory yes exactly. all this "the wife can stay in the house until the dc are eighteen" is all very well, but only if the xh is on board with this idea, which, if the wife has had to go to court to facilitate this, he clearly isn't likely to be.

And our DD's are a new generation. Maybe we did/ are doing the best we could in our generation but we can give them better advice than we had, and hopefully help them make even better choices than we did.

Onwards and upwards my friends !

I dont think that being a sahm is being a bad role model at all. You stayed home with your children, I did, I wouldn't change anything now even if I could have looked into the future - the only thing I might have changed would be to have gone back to work sooner perhaps, and maybe then things would have been different anyway but who knows.

"And our DD's are a new generation. Maybe we did/ are doing the best we could in our generation but we can give them better advice than we had, and hopefully help them make even better choices than we did." but I don't regret the choices I made. And I don't think that we should be raising a generation of women who should feel they shouldn't stay home with their children if that's what they want to do. The role of the sahm should never be underestimated either IMO. I stayed home because I wanted to. Because I didn't want to send my ds to a nursery and because financially we could afford it.

Yes indeed juggling. My view has always been that knowledge is power. And I suspect e may see more and more SAHDs in the future which will cast this issue in a new light I think.

OP I am so sorry for your situation. This thread has brought up issues which have been playing on my mind. I have no career to speak of. I was made redundant 3 years ago and since then my earning has decreased till i was working in a crappy call centre for just above min wage. My few skills are not valued at the moment and i am hopeless at anything computer/database related. I have recently had a baby with DP (getting married in Jan to give me more security) and we have to move abroad for his work. So now i will not be able to work at all. Even if i could I can't rely on DP for any childcare as he works long hours and weekends.

The house is in dp's name as are all our savings - we have been buying shares with a substantial chunk of his wages as our savings/pension investment over the last 3 years. DP keeps saying to me i should retrain to make me more employable, but we have no spare cash to pay for courses and with a small baby and no help with childcare i don't know how i could fit it in.

I would have liked to wait till i had a better job before we had a baby but sadly at nearly 36 now, and in a dead end job with no prospect of progression, i felt it was now or never.

By the time my children go to school i will be unemployable.

So i am basically fucked if anything happened.

Sad thread indeed. akaemma, I can really identify with you. I became a sahm when I was made redundant at the beginning of my maternity leave with dc1. We lived far from family so childcare costs meant I stayed at home while we had dc2 and 3. Dc3 was brain damaged at birth and has significant disabilities. We moved abroad with dh's job and my visa meant I could not work. We got green cards 3 years ago, and I retrained to work part-time from home as a non-sleeping dc3 with many hospital and therapy visits meant I could only work while dc were at school or in bed. Now we are divorcing, and yes I am being awarded the house. But the amount of child support H will be paying me means I cannot afford the mortgage. (There is no requirement to give spousal support here, so I will not be receiving any.) I cannot increase my working hours because of dc3's disabilities. I am not entitled to any benefits in the country I live in, as I am not a citizen. Dc3 will get some state benefits when 18, but not enough to pay for housing, food etc. I cannot return to the UK and claim disability benefits etc for dc3 as I would be breaking the law by removing the dc from their usual place of residence. And to make matters worse, 'd'h does not want me to move house (to something more affordable) as it would "disrupt the children". I will have some other assets in the settlement but I need to live off them for the rest of my life.

Yes, I agree with that wannabe.
The point I want to impress on my dc is that they must recognise that love is great, relationships are great but that ignoring practicalities and just hoping that love will make everyone behave well for ever more is bad. Really bad.
And to treat finances, wills and all that stuff as if it is unromantic or not necessary is a failure of communication and responsibility.

This stuff should be organised. We want more clear headedness and less crossing and fingers and hoping that when things get tough love will sort it all out.

"And to treat finances, wills and all that stuff as if it is unromantic or not necessary is a failure of communication and responsibility"

if you think about it logically, wills, insurances, setting up separate savings account etc IS romantic because you care about what happens to the other person even in your own absense/death, rather than just when you are there to benefit too IYKWIM

You can never of course eradicate all risk. And I'm not sure we should want to anyway.

However, we can at least look at it. Assess it. Work out the major risk factors and protect against them as best we can. (accepting that nothing is 100% caste iron).

Doing otherwise is just plain daft.

I agree with wordfactory. DH was a SAHD for about 18m. He felt deeply uncomfortable about his lack of financial independence. I think if more men took on the nurturing role then attitudes would change as most men simply wouldn't tolerate being totally dependant.

Hey Spuddybean - I'm not sure things are as bad for you as they seem are they ? You're 36 and have recently had a baby with your partner, you're getting married in January, and moving abroad for a while with DP's work.
You might have another child in the future ?
And you might very well have anther job and a whole other career as well !
Seems you may have taken that redundancy 3 years ago very hard ?
Perhaps you'll enjoy living abroad and get a new perspective on things ?
HTH

Spuddybean, is there a reason your name can't be added to the mortgage/savings?

OP I am very sorry that this has happened to you

Another side however.

I had no job prospects I had not got brilliant grades at school. Left thinking I was stupid (in fact I am dyslexic) Just worked in dead end jobs with little chance of promotion of any sort. Then I met dh.. We married and had our 4 wonderful children. I have been a stay at home mother for 15 years now. In that time I have got A levels and a diploma and I have a job part time I can do. It is also a job I can further if I wish to.

Dh and I have also got a pension put aside for me and on for him mine is higher than his as he will get pensions from his work. His career has taken off and He is well aware he would not have been able to do that and had the family he has if I was not around to pull my part at home.

Our youngest is 9 I have expressed a interest into study further dh is fully behind me.

There is no way had i insisted upon staying in work (in the dead end jobs) we could have had the family we have or that I could have done any of the above.

I have a separate bank account dh doesn't. This was at His suggestion.

I agree you need to be careful. You need to not put all your eggs into the same basket. However being a SAHM can be a rewarding experience and it can for some of us be a way of furthering us to a point we are not able to do alone.

Juggling - well i suppose my point is i can only have another career if i retrain, but the money and time isn't there. So by the time our dc go to school if i do not, then i will be virtually unemployable. I already am suffering for my total ineptitude in IT. I have done 6 courses in excel and nothing sticks - it may as well be in another language. If DP left me i would be fucked.

Shotgun - no reason for the house i suppose we have never discussed it (he bought it before we met). He has an allocation to shares thru his work which he takes full advantage of. These are held at work for him so are in his name. But WE have made joint sacrifices for these shares, as we see them as a better investment than a pension. So altho we haven't 'struggled' i haven't had new shoes for a year, clothes from primark, ds's stuff from nct sales, shopping around for cheap groceries, etc. But if he were to leave me now it would look like he owned xthousand in shares and i had bugger all. We spent my 12k redundancy on house repairs as it made more sense than reducing share purchases iyswim.

Great post Frikadellen - and well done to you.
Shows the variety of life - it's not one size fits all
Sounds like you chose a good 'un there too

If you did retrain what would you like to do Spuddy ?
And it may all look much more do-able in a year or two when your baby has grown up a little

Great thread. Thank you OP. I do hope better things come to you.

My dependence and the what-would-I-do-if... is a constant worry at the back of my mind and I sincerely hope nothing bad happens at least until my youngest is old enough for me to work when he is at school... and that I can find some work!

I 'decided' to quit my job to follow my DH. His job means being posted abroad/around on a reg basis. My job was not portable. Not all countries let UK visitors work. What to do? Never marry into the army/international corporation/overseas organisations?

In reality, the only way to get women to continue working would be sponsoring the cost of early years/childcare.

Reading about the fact that the cost of childcare should not come from the woman's salary only was a lightbulb moment. Thank you. I am afraid that I can think of at least a couple of female friends who have made that calcuation and stopped work. It is sad but it seemed like the only rational choice at the time for them too.

Juggling - well the plan is try for another baby when ds is 1 and then the 3rd when that baby is 1. Then retrain when they go to school.

if the money and time were no option i would love to become a counsellor/therapist of some kind. But that is a lot of psychology training and i'd have to start from scratch. dp feels sad that he loves his job so and i hate mine. he feels so fulfilled by his career and i just feel tearful at mine. it is so depressing.