Giving up £60k job that I love to be SAHM

[Moomo]

After a lot A LOT of thinking I have pretty much decided not to go back to work and to be a SAHM - at least for a couple of years. But am giving up a £60k job that I really enjoyed to do so. DH earns £30k so it will be a massive drop in our income but I just can't face going back to work and leaving DS in childcare.

I was just wondering if anyone else has done the same thing and whether friends/family etc have been supportive as most people I tell think I am totally crazy and try and convince me not to do it. I'm not so worried about my career but a bit worried about the loss of income - we can still pay mortgage, bills etc but will be alot less luxuries/no saving/pension etc.

Would be really interested to know if anyone else has done the same/similar thing and how it worked out. I'm pretty confident of my decision but when everyone around me tells me I'm crazy I have moments of self doubt!

If the government agreed to pay statutory mat/paternity leave to which ever parent wanted it that would be a start.

I am still very cross 5 years on that I was the one who had to take 5/6 mths out of my career just because I was the one in possession of fanjo.

Ripeberry, years ago they were... but for more years before that they werent.

Im no expert but from what i have researched I beleive it was only after the industrial revolution that men became the main bread winners and women stayed at home.

There will be someone on here far more learned than I who will know more.

fruitstick - that's a very good point. As a single parent to a boy, I think it's critical that he sees my role as supporting our family (albeit a bit titchy). Despite being only 3, he loads the dishwasher, puts his dirty clothes in the laundry basket, puts his rubbish in the bin and tidies up after himself. I want him to be a decent husband/partner when he grows up

ripeberry - i would argue that it is not that our men are pathetic, but that many women now don't feel it fair that their husband shoulder all the financial burden, especially if we have fairly equal education, earning power, prospects etc. Plus many more men (not all, but more than in the past) help out at home today - roles are not as stronglu delineated as in the past. Nothing pathetic about that.

Also in the 50s,60s and 70s people very much had 'jobs for life' so the husband was typically more secure in his job and it was less worryingf to be reliant on just one income. We all know that jobs for life rarely exist nowadays, which is why a sole earner can feel more pressure nowadays than a sole earner in the past.

None of this is pathetic. It is just that we live in a different reality to 30, 40, 50 years ago.

Because, ribeberry, they used to be paid something called a "family wage" which was enough to raise a whole family.
Also, they are not pathetic, many have been raised to believe that women are equal and therefore have equal responsibility.
Different family dynamics are obviously different, but in this household equal responsibility does not mean one person does all of one thing (childcare/housework) and the other do all of another (earn all of the money).

OP - I went back first time after my first (and was desperate to do so) so can't give you first-hand experience, but what I do know is that many of my friends who were planning to give up work went back in their child's second year. It sounds frivolous but the lifestyle you have on maternity leave sort of disappears at the end of the first year when your new friends start going back to work!

As for childcare/nurseries - I would say don't knock it until you have tried it. The emotive language used by people who don't use them is never very helpful. For what it's worth my second started nursery at 8 months, does four days a week 8-5. "Luckily" he is still up so often in the night we get loads of time together .

Find the balance you are happy with, but don't close any doors because so much can change in the next six months. Some days when you have been listening to tantrums all day and trying to convince them to eat and not climb the curtains you might have a hankering for a day "off" at work.

And foureleven is right that the WOHD/SAHM construct is a very recent one - aside from very rich families, this is a 20th century notion rather than existing for time immemorial. Even during the industrial revolution, plenty of women worked out of the home, often for longer hours and in more difficult circumstances than we do today, and then didn't have the labour-saving devices at home that we do so had even less time to spend with their children.

Indeed meg their children were also at work. The notion of "childhood" is also a recent invention. There is a construct that what children need is one-to-one constant care and stimulation, which is a model found nowhere else in the animal kingdom (or indeed the majority of the human world).

I can understand where you are coming from OP. I'm on mat leave at the current time and there are days when the sun is shining and I'm messing about with the kids that I think that I don't want to go back to work. Then reality kicks in and I remember that;

(a) Good childcare can be found - and my children actually enjoy it and are happy.
(b) I enjoy the mental stimulation of my job.
(c) I trained for 6 years to qualify and I get self esteem from my job.
(d) If DH does a bunk then at least I would be able to cope on my own.
(e)We need to pay the mortgage - my salary forms about 40% of our income. I live next door to my family and am NOT moving.
(f)I keep my career ticking over so when the children don't need me as much I can focus on that if I want to.

I'm lucky - I'll go back part time but if you do want to change your life (giving up £60k pa will be life changing) you need to think through all the consequences, like other posters have said.

Just to clarify - I live next door to my extended family. I don't keep the kids in a separate house - just in case anyone was wondering.

Have you got the type of career where you could freelance one day a week to keep your hand in?

I havent read the whole of this thread just the beginning however to OP Moomo I gave up a job which paid a bit more than the job you are talking about and took a job at around half that salary and have since had my two children. the adjustment both domestically and my own mental adjustment of just not having that money in my bank account at the end of every month was hard. Also now that I am paying for both babies childcare and my husband is tasked with mortage / saving up using his salary, it feels a bit thankless to know that my much reduced salary is now only just (I am talking £10 free at the end of every month) covering the childcare costs and nothing more. All for the sake of knowning I won't have a gap on my cv. Sounds pointless but in my line of work any gap in your cv is, literally, fatal and you can forget going back to that line of work. So really it is a decision about the rest of my life as much as it is about being with the babies. It is hard. Adjusting to lack of money is hard. However staying in my well paid job would have been pretty much impossible unless I was prepared only ever to see my babies in the middle of the night when i got back from my job which involves very very long hours and the nanny or childcare I employed had put them to bed. So I settled for the compromise which also has its drawbacks

Not read the whole post, but i think you have to gpo with your instincts and what feels right, however i would be concerned at completely leaving work with no way back.

(I work FT, have done since DD was 10 months old. I love my job, earn quite a bit and am the only one out of DP and I who has a pension, but I do work from home a huge amount, and I could never be a SAHM and DD loves nursery).

One middle ground would be to negotiate 12 months career break once your mat leave finishes. So you get at least another 12 months unpaid to see if you can cope. If at the end you are loving it and all is well, just resign. If not, you have a way back in.

To me, that seems the most logical way forward - after all, if you were so certain it was right, would you even be posting here??
Good luck and at the end of the day if you are certain, then ignore everyone else.

I've been in a very similar situation to you.

i think the most important thing is that you say you enjoy/enjoyed your job.
although i'm the main earner i had major wobbles when deciding to go back to work after maternity leave, and to be honest about once a month when i'm tired and we miss each other i sit down with dh and work out if we could afford for me not to work ( yes we could... but only just). but then i go to work have a really rewarding and interesting day, and i have no regrets about working full time.

i took 6 months off with each and then returned full time with a childminder (who the boys love). with ds2 when i returned to work i was working very antisocial hours so dp took a 6 month career break so someone was at home for the first 12 months. would this be an option for you whilst baby is still small???

yes you do miss them but there are advantages to working full time....the big one for me is what do i want to be doing in 10/20 years when the boys don't need a full time mum at home.

even if you think you dont want to return to work i'd recommend giving it a go for a while... if you can get over the guilt thing you may even enjoy it again

MrsArchchancellorRidcully What a fab idea about negotiating an unpaid year off... I dont know if it would be right for OP or not but excelent outside of box thinking!

I gave up a good job 7 years ago when my DS was born and haven't looked back. My husband and I genuinely believe it's best for the child to have a parent at home with them, if it's financially possible. Our income halved but we managed by buying or borrowing second hand baby equipment and of course, we didn't/couldn't go out much so weren't spending money in pubs, restaurants, etc. Sometimes I'm bored and would like more time to myself, however I am glad that I can do the school run and there are no problems when my children are sick, or I haven't had much sleep, etc. I don't have any family living nearby and my husband works long hours, so my children rely on me. A friend of mine is shortly having to return to work 4 days a week and leave her baby with a childminder from 7 am to 7 pm. She is absolutely dreading it but can't afford not to. I really feel for her. I will look for part-time, preferably term-time work once my youngest is at school, but my priority is definitely my children. Why have them otherwise?

Coming a bit late to the party here, but have read posts so far (skimmed latter posts I admit) and thought I'd add a couple of thoughts.

OP - I had similar feelings to you before I went back to work. I had been planning to go back 4 days and put DS in a lovely nursery 3 days pw (my mum would have him the other day) but he didn't settle, I read up about nurseries a bit and decided it wasn't the way forward for us - lots of my NCT mums said "just persevere, he'll love it in a month", but I just thought, at what cost? I was tempted to give it all up and stay at home, which would have meant leaving £70k job I really enjoy. After exploring various other options (which I won't bored you with), the end result is that DH went down to 4 days pw, I now do 3 days pw and my mum has DS the other 2 days (yes I realise I'm really lucky with my mother!).

For me this works brilliantly - I feel working 3 days pw is the right balance - I still spend a lot of time with DS, when I'm at work I'm confident he's happy at home with either DH or my mum (indeed I've seen DH and DS's relationship, which was always good, bloom so much since they've had one day a week together and I love the fact that DS is being brought up knowing it's not just mummies who do the caring) and, after a few weeks, I started to really enjoy my job again. As others have said, it is really nice to get "yourself" back after maternity leave, however much you enjoyed it.

Final thought (sorry this is long), don't want to be all doom and gloom, but my job is as a family lawyer, so I do divorce work, among other things. I've seen a lot of divorces which seem at least in part to have been caused by the couple growing apart when DH is still at work and mum is SAHM and financially dependent, particularly if she was originally quite successful/a high flier - I think it can (doesn't have to I know) chip away at a relationship over time and it changes the dynamics between the couple, which doesn't work for all...

P.S. It's so true what another poster said about the toddler years being a different kettle of fish from babyhood - yesterday DS was having a "challenging" day and I was SO pleased to be going to work and leaving him with DH for the day! But today he's all sweetness and light and I'm thrilled to be at home

Pammi, I was all behind you and your choice to do whats best for your family - good on you! Until this...

'Why have them otherwise?'

Which ruined it.

I will take it that it was rhetorical and you dont actually need to be told why someone would have children if they dont want to stay at home with them rather than have a career?

Pammi, I'm afraid I also struggled with
'my priority is my children'

I would say everybody on here has their children as their priority (indeed why have them) but everyone makes different choices about what that priority means.

It does not have to mean complete sacrifice for them, nor indeed are you necessarily doing them any great favours if you do.

As other people have said, they may need university fees, or extra money for activities etc which you might not be able to provide. Some people want to build up their own pension so that they don't have to be a burden on their children when they get old.

We all make our choices and people will always draw that line someone but please don't say that SAHM are the only ones who prioritise their children.

sorry 'somewhere' not 'someone'

Just going off at a slight tangent but..I'm really interested in what you all actually do? Lots of people have said they went freelance or started their own business and I'd like to know the line of work.

FWIW I work in the comms area of a large financial services company. Don't have any particular 'skills' - just general admin/customer services really. And I only earn about £21k so not in any of your leagues..

So what do you all do?

Several things Crunchies! Umm.. mainly (my '9-5' as it were) consultancy for people looking to get back in to work after redundancy or long term unemployed. Umm.. I write about make up and get 'paid per click' for it.
I also do some other random business consultancy stuff..

I am also intrigued by what other people do for work.. which helps in my business!

Interesting. When you say you write about make-up, do you mean you review it? How did you get into that?

I saw a consultant when I was made redundant. She was v good.

Well that's me told then!

Ooh i wonder if it was me crunchies!!

I started writing a blog for fun and load sof people followed it.. some new comapnies sent me some samples which I reveiwed, then i got more followers. Then i signed up to pay per click so companies could advertise on my blog, so every time a reader clicks on one of their adverts and buys something I get money for it! Its not loads but it keeps me in make up and wine.. (ok, that is quite a lot!)

It is well know, but I wont 'out' it on here!