Article on being a SAHM

[leeannpal]

I found this article today and read it, curious as to what someone would think were the downfalls of being a SAHM. I have been a SAHM before but am not now. What do you guys think?

 

http://living.msn.com/family-parenting/mom-to-mom/article?cp-documentid=262223117

[almondbutterandjelly]

Obviously she was speaking from her own experience, but it sounds to me like she was only a SAHM during the baby/toddler years.  That's a rough time.  You do lose yourself a little bit.  It doesn't mean that five years from now (assuming a happy good marriage), that you wouldn't find yourself again.  I feel like she blames the stay-at-home-mom-ness rather than the stage of parenting a child that age.  So I guess I largely disagree.  

.

[kewb]

I think there is some truth in what she says. 

From a fiscal standpoint you should always have something put aside that is just yours,  You never know what the future holds.  Death, divorce, disability.  You just don't know.

There is definitely an adjustment from double income no kids to family.  With effort from both partners you get through it.

I had days where I looked at my life and thought "yeah, I get why all those moms in the 50's were pill popping alcoholics".  It takes effort to find time for you.

Losing my sexy-yeah, that happened too.  Who can think about sexy when you are exhausted.  Again, takes some effort but you can get it back.

 

Like anything else there are pros and cons to stay at home motherhood.

[LucyStoner]

There is an opportunity cost either way. Working has costs. Staying at home has costs. Financial, emotional, familial, mental, physical costs. For me the family needs math right now means the opportunity cost of working is too high and I need to be home. In the past the math was different and it may be different again in the future. I am certainly keeping an eye on the future work wise with education, volunteering and pt contract stuff because I do not want to be an empty nester out of the workforce for 15 years with no contacts or good job prospects.

 

One thing that my husband and I have done is to continue to contribute to my IRA while I am home. The lost retirement savings and SS credits are a big deal and we both see the IRA contribution as a way to mitigate some of the longer term consequences of being out of the workforce for an extended period. We are on a modest student budget (my husband works .8FTE while in school FT) in a HCOL area but making that financial investment now is worth it. We can't afford to max out, so we do enough to get the most match from his employer in their retirement plan and then we put something, even if it is not the full amount, in my IRA. When he graduates we can start upping that and restart contributions to his IRA.

 

I will say that I disagree on the sexy thing, at least past the baby induced funk. When I was a FT WOHM of 2, I often had no time left over for me to exercise or even cook a healthy meal for my family. Granted I didn't start staying home until my older son was nearly 9 and my younger son was 3 but I am way, way, way more fit now. And we eat better. It's just a matter of waking hours. When I was working I was lucky to get an hour of exercise a day 3-4 times a week. For short bursts I could keep my fitness higher but inevitably it would fall apart so that I had enough time for my kids, job and marriage, house/cooking. In that order. Now my marriage gets a heck of a lot more time and I get plenty of time for my own fitness and health which makes me way more attractive, IMHO. My husband was too sweet to ever say anything about it then but he certainly appreciates the physically active version of me.

[Joker]

I didn't really agree with any of it. My relationship with dh didn't suffer at all and considering he seems to find me sexiest when I feel I look my worst (after exercising, cooking, etc.) that area didn't suffer either. I didn't really feel like I lost myself and wasn't bored when they were home with me all the time. I really enjoyed all of that. Now, they are both in public middle school and I am bored a bit, but I like it. I have more time to do things I want to do and I have more time with dh (we have lunch together most days).

[Joanne]

I would have HATED and vehemently disagreed with this when I was a married, stay at home, homeschooling mom.

 

I now find truth in content I previously I would have disagreed with. It is difficult for me to strip my reaction from my own lived experience in which my SAH "status" was a vehicle for narcissistic and abusive power/control. However, I do think that the potential for those pitfalls exists in SAMothering - and I think that there is a sentiment against admitting it.

 

 

[Soror]

I can see that some of those are true, some of the time. Some are just insulting stereotypes. My brain didn't fall out since I gave birth, we still have intelligent conversations. My dh still thinks I'm brilliant and although we discuss the kids plenty  we also have plenty to talk about besides them, philosophy, religion, history, etc. We talk a lot, generally daily about various things, unless it is an unusually busy day.

 

I've been fit most of the time since giving birth for the first time nearly 10 years ago, right now I'm not very fit due to exhaustion from sleep dep and hormonal issues (hopefully I'm finally on the rebound for good and can get my groove back :) ). A lot of husbands and wives let themselves go when they get married, I don't think that is a SAHM only phenomenon. Personally, the stereotypes help spur me to take care of myself.

 

It is harder to carve out your identity when you a mom, that has been a struggle for me and it seems many moms. The financial cost is real but with small children there are trade-offs and pros and cons to consider. I'm thinking about that all now when considering going back to school. Unfortunately it isn't always an easy line item comparison.  Seeing the moms who have crashed and burnout makes me feel I should be proactive. I don't want to be one of those women. 

 

Lastly we are all individuals and what is true for some isn't true for all. Sometimes it is true part of the time and not all of the time. Like Lucy mentioned earlier those toddler years are often the toughest in those areas she discusses. 

[carriede]

I think the issues she addresses are worthy of discussion, but they're not specific to SAHMs. It seems her bad experience is based mostly on marital problem and unrealistic lifestyle expectations.

[Freckles]

It sounds like she had more problems with her marriage than she cares to admit. I can totally understand her views on being a sahm if her needs aren't being met in her marriage. Being a sahm is hard work just like working out side the home is hard.

[SKL]

While this article wasn't really written to me (a working single mom), I just wanted to point out that some of that happens when you become a mom, whether you work outside the home or not.  I remember being actually alarmed at how my brain switched from being interested in entrepreneurship, continuous improvement, politics, languages, countries, bla bla bla - to somehow always going back to the topic of poop!  Poop?  It seemed inescapable.  I would never have believed it if I hadn't lived it.  :p  Six years later, my interests still barely resemble what they used to be.  And I am certainly not living a sheltered life.

 

The financial stuff is scary and true.  It's a hard position to be in either way.  A mom I know had to become a SAHM because of her daughter's special needs.  Therefore she depended on her husband's income and health insurance in a very big way.  She was having a lot of marital trouble; counselors and a divorce lawyer told her to take her kids and leave.  But as she pointed out, what then?  Who even wants to rent to someone without a job?  What were the chances (in this recent economy) of her getting a good job with good benefits, given her lapse in employment and need for baby-friendly work arrangements?  What was to stop her husband from diverting all the liquid assets, leaving her with only those retirement assets that require her signature to move?  Can't feed your kids a 401K statement.  It was kind of a hopeless picture.  Despite having been roughly an equal breadwinner up to the birth of her second child, she would have probably ended up living in someone's basement, and depending on state health care for her medically fragile child.  She decided to wait it out with her husband.

[mamaraby]

Much of what the author of the article writes about is rather foreign to me. I respect her lived experience, but mine has been quite different. I agree with other posters that much of what she experienced seems to be predicated less on her being a SAHM and more on difficulties in her marriage. It's entirely possible she'd still have ended up where she was even if she remained in the workforce. Maybe things would have been easier, maybe not. Hard to say at this point.

 

The financial stuff is scary and true. It's a hard position to be in either way. A mom I know had to become a SAHM because of her daughter's special needs. Therefore she depended on her husband's income and health insurance in a very big way. She was having a lot of marital trouble; counselors and a divorce lawyer told her to take her kids and leave. But as she pointed out, what then? Who even wants to rent to someone without a job? What were the chances (in this recent economy) of her getting a good job with good benefits, given her lapse in employment and need for baby-friendly work arrangements? What was to stop her husband from diverting all the liquid assets, leaving her with only those retirement assets that require her signature to move? Can't feed your kids a 401K statement. It was kind of a hopeless picture. Despite having been roughly an equal breadwinner up to the birth of her second child, she would have probably ended up living in someone's basement, and depending on state health care for her medically fragile child. She decided to wait it out with her husband.

I think this sort of struggle is the sort of thing the author was keying in on, but it tends to get lost in the prescriptive what women need to do phase and never gets to the culture/society level. It's all fine and dandy to take steps to mitigate risk or plan for the future, but what about giving all parents, regardless of gender and employment status, a healthy work/life balance and greater support when things go pear shaped?

 

Why can't we as a society make it easier for stay-at-home parents to reenter the workforce? Why is the only "work experience" that we value that which involves the exchange of money? Why can't we have a more sane healthcare policy that enables people to take risks be that starting a business or leaving a marriage that isn't working for both partners? Why can't we make our culture family friendly regardless of what the family looks like?

 

I don't have any of those generally wise safety measures to fall back on simply because there isn't room in the family budget for any of those things. Somehow all of the other needs always seems more important. I've often pondered the "when" and "what next" questions. When should I return to work? Is there a point at which going back to work in this economy becomes impossible after x number of years out? And then the wisdom of further education in order to better enter the workforce. IMO, I find these sorts of questions far more intriguing than advice about how I should work out more and attend classes to network with other mothers.

 

But again these kinds of questions still focus on the individual woman and give culture, society, and business a pass.

[shawthorne44]

 

 

not to mention the cruddy marriage to the man who hadn't touched my body in more than three years (but that's another story).

 

 

Well, gee, do you think that might have something to do with her issues?  If I were tethered to a man who didn't want to touch me, I think I might start to have some problems.  "Losing my sexy" would be the least of them.  

 

[SKL]

...

Why can't we as a society make it easier for stay-at-home parents to reenter the workforce? Why is the only "work experience" that we value that which involves the exchange of money? Why can't we have a more sane healthcare policy that enables people to take risks be that starting a business or leaving a marriage that isn't working for both partners? Why can't we make our culture family friendly regardless of what the family looks like?

...

 

To be fair, I think a lot of this is the state of the economy.  There have been other times when companies were strategizing how to attract more moms to their workplaces.  But now, there are so many people begging for work, candidates have to market hard to the employers instead of the other way around.  Hopefully that turns around, though I'm not sure, since now there are influential folks saying that the optimal employment rate is not as high as we are used to thinking.

 

The health care policy - I would rather not trust my medically fragile child's health care to the government, but with regulations making affordable options scarce, a lot of folks are between a rock and a hard place on that.  I don't know that I'd blame that on culture, really.  Laws prevent folks from coming up with better individual options.

 

But speaking of culture, why is it culturally unacceptable for a wife and husband to have separate financial resources?

 

I was considering marrying a guy who had much less financial wealth than I had.  He was very conservative and expected that finances would be pooled and I'd have to ask permission to dip into the savings.  I had actually started funneling some of my own hard-earned money into an account unknown to him so I could use it to help my parents if I so chose.  While that relationship was all kinds of unhealthy, why does this consideration even come up?  I understand why it's a good idea to pool money for necessities, but beyond that, why the macho man control issue in our culture?

[mamaraby]

But speaking of culture, why is it culturally unacceptable for a wife and husband to have separate financial resources?

 

I was considering marrying a guy who had much less financial wealth than I had. He was very conservative and expected that finances would be pooled and I'd have to ask permission to dip into the savings. I had actually started funneling some of my own hard-earned money into an account unknown to him so I could use it to help my parents if I so chose. While that relationship was all kinds of unhealthy, why does this consideration even come up? I understand why it's a good idea to pool money for necessities, but beyond that, why the macho man control issue in our culture?

I guess I don't see it as culturally unacceptable at all. I think there are certain subcultures where it's very male centered/controlled much as you've described, but I think that's outside of the wider culture. If anything, I think the general/wider cultural narrative is that women control the famly finances and the man has to ask permission because he's so inept that he can't handle the family finances. It's usually of the wink, nudge, my wife won't let me variety. Sort of the bumbling buffoon, Tim Taylor variety.

 

The only instance I've seen of macho man control is within certain religious/patriarichal belief systems which is not to say that the broader culture is any more friendly towards women in general - particularly when it comes to how women are paid for their work or how their experience is valued.

 

The rest of your post I'll simply leave as a "we'll agree to disagree" - you and I have a different take on these topics and I don't think we will convince the other of the veracity of our respective pov.

[SKL]

I'm not wondering why its culturally unacceptable for husband and wife to separate the finances as financial planning is part of a partnership, but more wondering on why the husband's culture fails to put any importance on the wife's wellbeing, or the childrens' launch into adulthood. 

 

Or the attitude that DH's reponsibility is to make sure DW is OK as long as she is with him.  I suspect some (many?) men might be a little paranoid if they think their wives could leave without taking a financial hit.

[Alte Veste Academy]

I agree with a lot of her suggestions, but it was so very bitter. She kept repeating "you" when she really should have stuck to saying "I" and then reflected on how some of the fixes she suggests could have helped her, hindsight being 20/20 and all (except that your own personal hindsight cannot actually be generalized to produce 20/20 clarity as to what works for all women, including the millions you don't even know, because you are not them, but I digress...). She sounds like a bitter divorcee who is probably skeptical that any woman could be happy and fulfilled (not to mention sexy, capable of having an intelligent conversation, knowing who they are...) as a SAHM. 

 

Anyway, those are certainly ugly truths, but they are not universal truths. 

 

Well, gee, do you think that might have something to do with her issues?  If I were tethered to a man who didn't want to touch me, I think I might start to have some problems.  "Losing my sexy" would be the least of them.  

 

No kidding! That's not "another story" lady! That's a HUGE part of the story. 

[LucyStoner]

My husband and I live in a community property state and both entered the marriage as self supporting college students with very little in the way of cash. Our financial resources are pooled because we don't have separate financial lives really.

 

Also as a full-time homemaker, I would never ever want to be in a position of not having access to funds or being on an allowance merely because my contribution to the family doesn't at this moment come with a paycheck. I've earned the bulk of the income we have ever had thus far and it is wholly irrelevant whose money is in which account. We have both felt this way even when I was our only income (he was in school and the primary daytime caregiver during the day), when we both worked and now when he is providing our only income baring a few bucks I pick up here and there on contract work.

 

FWIW SKL the setup proposed by your might have been husband is hardly common in mainstream America. It sounds more controlling and dysfunctional than typical. I don't think that it is culturally unacceptable at all to have separate funds in some form or another. But I reject the idea that it needs to be separate either. What works for different couples is, well, different.

[Joanne]

FWIW SKL the setup proposed by your might have been husband is hardly common in mainstream America. It sounds more controlling and dysfunctional than typical. I don't think that it is culturally unacceptable at all to have separate funds in some form or another. But I reject the idea that it needs to be separate either. What works for different couples is, well, different.

 

 

One of the personal finance gurus (Dave Ramsey) is categorically, completely, always against separate funds. He tends to have a "conservative" following.

[Carol in Cal.]

Whenever an adult stops earning their own money, they become extremely vulnerable legally and financially.

Becoming a SAHM is brave (some would say foolhardy), given the way divorce law works now.

But I loved my SAHM years--still I feel that I kind of dodged a bullet. 

And I never kidded myself about just how vulnerable it made me.

[LucyStoner]

One of the personal finance gurus (Dave Ramsey) is categorically, completely, always against separate funds. He tends to have a "conservative" following.

Just one of many reasons that I ignore that dude.

 

To be fair though, Ramsey doesn't suggest that one spouse have to ask the other for permission to get money like the scenario SKL described. Statistically the most common financial arrangement for hetero married couples in the US is joint with her as the point person for finances.

 

In my marriage we split it up a little more than usual. He does the monthly bills, I handle taxes and investments and we both set goals and make the budget together. I used to do it all and it wasn't helpful for either of us- he was clueless about the flow of things and I was feeling lonely as the sole finance person. We usually do our financial checkins over a glass of wine and some nice music, lol.

[shawthorne44]

....

FWIW SKL the setup proposed by your might have been husband is hardly common in mainstream America. It sounds more controlling and dysfunctional than typical. I don't think that it is culturally unacceptable at all to have separate funds in some form or another. But I reject the idea that it needs to be separate either. What works for different couples is, well, different.

 

I used to work with a couple that met while working the same manufacturing job, starting at basically the same time.  After they became serious, she learned that he made more than she did and he said "Of course, I'm a man."  Compounding the problem was that her numbers meant that if anything she should be the one with the higher salary.  She went on the war-path with both her employer and her future husband.  It was rough enough that they came close to splitting up.  They made a decision that they wouldn't even tell each other what their income.  Ever!  It worked for them.  

[regentrude]

deleted. too much private info

[Mergath]

Wow.  She sounds really bitter. 

 

I don't agree with most of her article.  The financial risk is true, of course, but there aren't many ways around that if you want to stay home with your kids, and I'm willing to take the risk.

 

As for the rest, I haven't had any of that happen.  My relationship with dh has steadily improved since dd was born.  (And according to the author of this article, I'm supposed to be heartbroken that dh and I can't sit and talk about our respective jobs for hours every day?  Lol.  I'm crying on the inside. ;) )  I haven't lost who I am, because I never defined myself according to my job.  On the contrary, I have more free time now to explore my interests than I did when I worked full time and was always tired at the end of the day.  And my sexy has stayed about the same.  There's probably some decline in the sexy whether you have kids or not, I think, because that just happens when you've been with the same person for half a decade or more.

 

Like others have said, I think a lot of her issues had more to do with her personality and her marriage than with being a SAHM.

[PeacefulChaos]

I can see where she is coming from, but by no means are what she's saying true for all stay at home moms.  

It's interesting to see that perspective being written about, though.  Many times, SAHMs are painted only as wonderful martyrs.  :)  I personally don't find myself aligned with either extreme, however, that tends to be the case with everything - there will be a small percentage of the population that really understands and agrees with a viewpoint 100% - the rest are here or there or all over the place in between.  

[PeacefulChaos]

 

 

But speaking of culture, why is it culturally unacceptable for a wife and husband to have separate financial resources?

 

Is it, though?

 

I guess I'm honestly not sure.  I know many people who follow DR (who I'm not a big fan of, though his recent-ish blog post about private school hit the nail on the head, IMO - but that's another story, for real this time ;) ) and I don't think that DH and I are in the minority as far as sharing funds, however, I don't know of any sort of unacceptance (not a word lol) of the opposite.  

We have some friends who have separate resources because she loves to shop and spend money.  Seriously.  She's the one who told me this.  She doesn't use her DH's money because she would spend it all on clothes or something.  So she did ask his permission to use his account to purchase new furniture.  From what it sounds like from our conversations, he pays most of the bills with his income and she pays for her phone, maybe, and then the rest is her play money.  Which is fine, it's what works for them.

Another couple has separate accounts and splits the bills evenly.  I will admit that I don't necessarily understand this - if you are paying all the bills evenly anyway, why not just have a joint account that you pay them with? - BUT that really isn't my business.  

 

In general though, even amongst those who pool their resources (including DH and I) it is not a patriarchal thing.  It's just an ease of use thing.  All the money goes here, the bills go out.  And pretty much everyone I know ascribes to the 'whoever is better at it handles the finances' idea - which is different for everyone.  Here, it's me.  

 

 

On a side note, why isn't my avatar working?  :(  Sigh...