s/o: Retiring vs Back to Work: What about Dad?

[wintermom]

12 hours ago, regentrude said:

We have several threads going about changes mothers make when the homeschool time ends: retiring vs returning to work.
I, too, am in the empty nest stage, am working f/t and having retirement fantasies on a regular basis... but that got me thinking: what about the fathers who have been working all that time? It seems in all these scenarios, it's taken for granted that the guys continue working until retirement age.
Mothers who are done raising children and decide to stay home while the husband continues to work is a very societally accepted path. OTOH, men deciding to quit their jobs when the kids are grown and stay home while the wife works raises eyebrows. Not fair, is it?
 

(To clarify: this isn't personal - just interested in discussion.)

Is it really a "very societally accepted path," though? Doesn't it really depend on the niche of society you're looking at?

In your world of acedemia (and also medicine and research), where it took 10+ years of post-secondary ed to land a job in the field, I don't see that many mothers or fathers staying at home during or after kids. By the time they finally get into the workforce, they're nearly in their 30s. They are not going to stay at home for too long with the dc, neither are they going to retire too soon. Many doctors in Canada don't have private pensions or health insurance, so they need to keep working.

In another niche of society, where there's a family business (including farming), often bother mother and father are involved in the family business. There is no retiring from it until the business of sold or passed on to kids or other family members. 

Edited April 4, 2022 by wintermom

[Faith-manor]

3 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

This has been for us too.  I covered everything so that dh could work whatever hours, stay late, not worry about appointments, sick kids, travel last minute and go international whenever.  I think the weight off of him of me caring for everything for the kids allowed him to go further in his career.  His income has quadruple what it was when our first kid was born.    

I think if I would have stayed in teaching my income wouldn't have matched that.  Although one of my degrees was in that, I was really not wanting to teach in a public school and had started liking the business world so who knows what would have happened.  But I honestly don't know if we would have been financially better off.    I would think we would have both been limited by taking care of the kids and not be able to just do whatever at work because we would have to pick up kids.  Daycare for 5.  In reality we wouldn't have had that many because of money and how sick I got in pg.  But also I doubt we would have had the bandwidth to support 5 kids and 2 full time jobs.

Same here. But the difference for me would have been mental health. I never enjoyed domesticity. It was something I endured for the sake of my family. We had a son with a health issue, we circled the wagons, needed to keep him healthy and out of school, etc. and it made the most sense for me to be the one to do it. However, I was carving out a serious career in piano performance right up until that time. It was VERY hard on me to give that up knowing that it would end any chance of doing the thing I had been obsessed with doing since I was four years old. I eventually came to grips with it, however I spent a lot of years soldiering on, doing it because it needed to be done, putting homeschooling well at the forefront, and doing all the tasks alone that prior to leaving my career, dh and I had shared, and getting exactly zero fulfillment and satisfaction in life because it did not fit my personality at all to be the sahm. And of course the outcome is that now, facing an empty nest, I have no career to go back to, and exactly zero way of rebuilding it because if you don't have your career as a pianist carved out when you are young NO ONE is interested in you 2-3 decades later.

I sacrifice big, and in a way that my husband can never understand, and watched him climb up the ladder of success for years while crying into my pillow. He is a wonderful, wonderful man and my best friend so the relationship is solid despite this. But weighed down now with elder care stuff while he keeps working just makes me depressed. I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns, and resent it. I am seriously considering going back to work full time, to do ANYTHING not even sure I care, and then use the money to pay for care givers and drivers for the  elders so I can have a few years of doing something that challenges my brain and isn't entirely counterintuitive to my own natural personality.

Edited April 4, 2022 by Faith-manor

[mommyoffive]

1 minute ago, Faith-manor said:

Same here. But the difference for me would have been mental health. I never enjoyed domesticity. If was something I endured for the sake of my family. We had a son with a health issue, we circled the wagons, needed to keep him healthy and out of school, etc. and it made the most sense for me to be the one to do it. However, I was carving out a serious career in piano performance right up until that time. It was VERY hard on me to give that up knowing that it would end any chance of doing the thing I had been obsessed with doing since I was four years old. I eventually came to grips with it, however I spent a lot of years soldiering on, doing it because it needed to be done, putting homeschooling well at the forefront, and doing all the tasks alone that prior to leaving my career, dh and I had shared, and betting exactly zero fulfillment and satisfaction in life because it did not fit my personality at all to be the sahm. And of course the outcome is that now, facing an empty nest, I have no career to go back to, and exactly zero way of rebuilding it because if you don't have your career as a pianist carved out when you are young NO ONE is interested in you 2-3 decades later.

I sacrifice big, and in a way that my husband can never understand, and watched him climb up the ladder of success for years while crying into my pillow. He is a wonderful, wonderful man and my best friend so the relationship is solid despite this. But weighed down now with elder care stuff while he keeps working just makes me depressed. I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns, and resent it. I am seriously considering going back to work full time, to do ANYTHING not even sure I care, and then use the money to pay for care givers and drivers for the second elders so I can have a few years of doing something that challenges my brain and isn't entirely counterintuitive to my own natural personality.

I am feeling that so much right now too.  I loved staying home when the kids were little and didn't really miss or question things until Covid.  We stayed home for 18 months and it just seemed like my whole identity was taken away during that.  I feel lost.  I just want to get a job for my own mental health not even the money.  Just something that makes me feel more than all I am is a mom.  I feel like in life when people ask what you do and you tell them the just kind of end the conversation.  Vs when they are talking with someone that has a job they start this long conversation with them about it.  I am tired of being invisible.  Although I know in my head what I do is work, it feels like invisible work.  

[regentrude]

8 minutes ago, wintermom said:

Is it really a "very societally accepted path," though? Doesn't it really depend on the niche of society you're looking at?

In your world of acedemia (and also medicine and research), where it took 10+ years of post-secondary ed to land a job in the field, I don't see that many mothers or fathers staying at home during or after kids. By the time they finally get into the workforce, they're nearly in their 30s. They are not going to stay at home for too long with the dc, neither are they going to retire too soon.

Sorry - I was referring to mothers who homeschooled and were already home or had significantly reduced careers.
You are correct, in academia it is rare for women to quit and stay home. I am very much an outlier as a homeschooling mother- teaching faculty who has forgone a "real" professor career.

[wintermom]

14 minutes ago, regentrude said:

Sorry - I was referring to mothers who homeschooled and were already home or had significantly reduced careers.
You are correct, in academia it is rare for women to quit and stay home. I am very much an outlier as a homeschooling mother- teaching faculty who has forgone a "real" professor career.

You're making a lot of assumptions, though. Homeschool moms come from a very wide variety of backgrounds. I know a mother of 10 kids who never worked once she started having kids. Now she's in her 60s and getting pressure from many different sides to step up and start earning $ to support her dh and herself. The whole family have a very strong religious background. 

I guess I'm struggling to understand where it's very acceptable in society where women never working after being home with the dc for many years simply 'retire' and never re-enter the workforce. It's certainly not promoted or embraced in general to my knowledge. 

Edited April 4, 2022 by wintermom

[Dmmetler]

Even with never fully not working during the time I was homeschooling, my earning potential if I went full time is about half of DH's currently. And that's if I can get a full time contract with benefits at one place, vs teaching at a couple of colleges at less than full time. Honestly, it would likely require going back to the public school system in order to have benefits, and that's something both DH and I are reluctant to put me through. It was physically hard on me at 25-30, and I can't imagine it would be any easier at 50, and I was sick a lot while teaching even without COVID in the mix. And most things I am qualified for outside of public schools won't be full time, although they pay better than teaching in a school. I love teaching music, but it just doesn't pay well, and add that I honestly prefer to teach beginners and love teaching at the "everyone is welcome" community center vs the more high pressure programs doesn't help-I'm very overqualified for what I am doing, but it's also what I love doing. 

 But it also leaves DH feeling obligated to basically support the family financially on his own, and he is in an industry where he is both expensive and seen as less desirable due to age, and where the trend has been to send more and more projects offshore. He's been managing teams in the Phillipeans, India, and Pakistan for the last decade or so, and is very much about the last pure engineer in the USA in his division. That's not a tenable position either, and it frustrates me that there is no way I can tell him "go ahead, do what you want to do, I've got this". Because even in the best of circumstances, I don't. 

 

 

 

 

[fairfarmhand]

3 minutes ago, wintermom said:

You're making a lot of assumptions, though. Homeschool moms come from a very wide variety of backgrounds. I know a mother of 10 kids who never worked once she started having kids. Now she's in her 60s and getting pressure from many different sides to step up and start earning $ to support her dh and herself. The whole family have a very strong religious background. 

I guess I'm struggling to understand where it's very acceptable in society where women never working after being home with the dc for many years simply 'retire' and never re-enter the workforce. It's certainly not promoted or embraced in general to my knowledge. 

Hmmm. I don't know tons of "retired" homeschool moms, but I do know many people who stayed at home or worked very part time when their kids were in school. These moms are not really condemned or criticized when the kids grow up. Maybe the people I'm around mind their own business? Or more often, the moms are supporting their nieces, nephews, grandchildren or someone else by "mothering" those young kids. I do live in an area where families stick around for generations, so it's pretty normal for families to look after each others kids. 

[Dmmetler]

4 minutes ago, wintermom said:

You're making a lot of assumptions, though. Homeschool moms come from a very wide variety of backgrounds. I know a mother of 10 kids who never worked once she started having kids. Now she's in her 60s and getting pressure from many different sides to step up and start earning $ to support her dh and herself. The whole family have a very strong religious background. 

I guess I'm struggling to understand where it's very acceptable in society where women never working after being home with the dc for many years simply 'retire' and never re-enter the workforce. It's certainly not promoted or embraced in general to my knowledge. 

Most of the SAHM's of my mother's generation seem to have done just that. Having said that, they were also major volunteers when they had kids, when kids  were in school, and didn't change that. For my mother, my brother and I graduating and going to college didn't change her life much. She was basically a full time volunteer, and I think the biggest thing that has hit her emotionally since going home following the accident is that she's not able to do that job anymore. 

It's not so much that they "retired". It's that they had been working, unpaid, for decades already and just kept going. 

 

Homeschoolers are a little different. We HAVE a full time job. I was very active in leadership for my homeschool group, ran multiple clubs and activities, etc, but when L graduated (actually, COVID, but graduation likely would have done it), it was clear there really was no place for me there. This is the one place I still have any connection to the homeschool community. When L graduated, I essentially got fired. 

[TechWife]

We considered it briefly. Very briefly. With an 18+ year gap in my work history, there is no way I could even begin to make the needed income. While I have a robust resume with years of volunteer leadership experience, it is simply not given the same weight as paid employment in both opening job prospects and in salary packages. While I could bring in a modest second income, I could not begin to entertain the idea of being the primary wage earner for the family. 

[Jenny in Florida]

Thank you for posting this. I was having a lot of the same thoughts.

My husband and I have talked about this, and he has acknowledged that he would have had a lot of trouble feeling good if I had raised the possibility of not returning to work once the kids were launched. We started our relationship as a partnership in which both of us contributed financially to the best of our ability. For the first few years, I earned more than he did. Then we achieved parity for a while, until we had the first baby and I ended up freelancing from home. Once I got pregnant with our son, I stepped away from paid work and did the full-time mom thing for the next couple of decades (with occasional forays into part-time retail work when things got rocky financially). 

Throughout all of those seasons, however, the expectation was always that we both did our part. In his case, that meant working full-time. 

Once I was "done" with hands-on child rearing, it would have seemed pretty glaringly inequitable for me to choose anything other than returning to paid work as long as I was able to do so.

Of course, the picture would change if either of us were incapacitated in some way that made it necessary to step away from paid work. However, as long as both of us are able to earn a paycheck, I can't imagine a scenario in which one or the other would not do so without a lot of discussion and negotiation about why and how we were changing the expectations.

(I should probably mention that it took me a few years after re-entering the workforce to begin earning a salary that was anything more than a drop in the bucket compared to my husband, despite the fact that I have more educational credentials than he does and had more "professional" work experience than he did by the time I dropped out to be a mom. At this point, my salary is about half of his, and he carries the health insurance because his employer offers better options.)

(He will likely retire a couple or possibly a few years before I do, because he is not a person who "needs" work to structure his days as I do. We're both okay with that.)

Edited April 4, 2022 by Jenny in Florida

[Jenny in Florida]

13 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

Mothers who stay at home to raise children are working. They just don't get paid for it. 

Maybe both parties could work p/t, once children are launched,  making things 'fair'. 

I do not debate that full-time motherhood is valuable work, especially when you add in the homeschooling part. Those decades were the hardest and most rewarding of my life. 

In our case, however, it took a serious financial toll having me out of the paid workforce for those years. Not only is there no way we could "both work part-time," but the only way we were able to get moving towards anything like a comfortable retirement was for me to get back into a full-time work as soon as possible. We were keeping our heads above water on a single salary, but my paychecks have allowed us to pay off a lot of the debt we accumulated during those years, sock away enough in retirement savings to let my husband sleep at night and buy a house so we can age in place without concern about unpredictable housing costs.

[wintermom]

I get the sense that this particular homeschooling forum is not representative of the general population (and therefore "society") in terms of the category "women re-entering the workforce." Having said that, I still think that there is a certain degree of pressure in the general population, as well as the homeschooling community, for women to return to the workforce after raising kids (however long the "raising" takes). 

Once the kids are of a certain age (in school/high school/post-secondary), there are still a great number of expenses, and there aren't that many families I know who can afford to have one healthy adult in the household not actively contributing to the financial side of things. Weddings, first homes, post-secondary expenses, are just some of the things a lot of parents try to help their kids with, either through providing money, or simply living in a certain location to facilitate their kids' lives. 

In some way, shape or form, women are essentially 'working' after homeschooling, even if it's providing childcare to grandchildren or aging parents. The typical "retirement" of travel, and participating in volunteering and hobbies is not usually a full-time option

Edited April 4, 2022 by wintermom

[Hilltopmom]

Dh “says” he wants to retire now that I’m working full time but realistically he makes twice what I do and we have another 16 years before the youngest is grown- so it’s not going to happen. It’s a pipe dream & he knows it 🙂

[Hilltopmom]

14 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

Mothers who stay at home to raise children are working. They just don't get paid for it. 

Maybe both parties could work p/t, once children are launched,  making things 'fair'. 

Except in the US, someone in the family needs to work full time for health care insurance. And retirement benefits.

[theelfqueen]

14 hours ago, regentrude said:

We have several threads going about changes mothers make when the homeschool time ends: retiring vs returning to work.
I, too, am in the empty nest stage, am working f/t and having retirement fantasies on a regular basis... but that got me thinking: what about the fathers who have been working all that time? It seems in all these scenarios, it's taken for granted that the guys continue working until retirement age.
Mothers who are done raising children and decide to stay home while the husband continues to work is a very societally accepted path. OTOH, men deciding to quit their jobs when the kids are grown and stay home while the wife works raises eyebrows. Not fair, is it?
 

(To clarify: this isn't personal - just interested in discussion.)

I could work ten years to cumulatively make as much as my husband makes in a year. He has been building his career all that time while I've been at home/homeschooling.

If I was just working for healthcare purposes I could see this but from financial perspective? It's not a practical option. 

All the time I was at home benefitted his career - he never had to take a sick day for a sick kid or deal with the running around from activity to activity etc. 

I cannot return to my former field without some continuing ed and recertification- that's a real paid cost. 

Edited April 4, 2022 by theelfqueen

[Jenny in Florida]

14 minutes ago, theelfqueen said:

I could work ten years to make as much as my husband makes in a year. He has been building his career all that time while I've been at home/homeschooling.

If I was just working for healthcare purposes I could see this but from financial perspective? It's not a practical option. 

All the time I was at home benefitted his career - he never had to take a sick day for a sick kid or deal with the running around from activity to activity etc. 

I cannot return to my former field without some continuing ed and decertification- that's a real paid cost. 

I made very little when I first started back to work, too. 

One of the reasons I insisted on having a separate checking account into which to deposit my paychecks was that it was the only way I could "see" my contributions. I chose a few small bills that I paid out of that account so that I had something to point to as my contribution.

However, after a lot of hard work -- including earning a couple of new credentials (which I paid for out of said tiny account) -- I now earn about half of my husband's salary. It still bugs me sometimes that I am so far "behind," but the financial benefit is a whole lot more obvious now.

[Bootsie]

DH and I have not chosen a path in which he is 100% responsible for the financial well-being of the family and I am 100% responsible for child-rearing.  So, I do not personally relate to the notion that as a mom I was working 24/7 while the kids were home and DH worked 8 to 5, so I will use my comp time and retire, but I can see how others with a different household setup see it that way.  

It may be typical for a dad to have been working in a career that he enjoys. He enjoys the things he has been doing for 30 years and enjoys his coworkers.  While there are things about retiring that sound good, he does not find his job distasteful (or he would not have done it for 30 years).  He has built his life so that it includes work and some other activities he enjoys.  Perhaps he plays golf on Saturday morning with coworkers; perhaps he is on the Habitat for Humanity build team through work...  His job is still there and is a reasonable path to continue; he doesn't think much about change.

Mom, on the other hand, is at a crossroad.  Although working brings monetary rewards (and often less than dad makes for a number of reasons), she has not built the social and emotional network in the workplace.  Continuing on the same path she was on is not an option, but it is a very different decision set--it is starting something new (not a choice of whether or not to continue what she was doing).  As she explores what to do volunteering, gardening, or other activities are all possibilities she faces.  

 

[KungFuPanda]

2 hours ago, wintermom said:

Is it really a "very societally accepted path," though? Doesn't it really depend on the niche of society you're looking at?

In your world of acedemia (and also medicine and research), where it took 10+ years of post-secondary ed to land a job in the field, I don't see that many mothers or fathers staying at home during or after kids. By the time they finally get into the workforce, they're nearly in their 30s. They are not going to stay at home for too long with the dc, neither are they going to retire too soon. Many doctors in Canada don't have private pensions or health insurance, so they need to keep working.

In another niche of society, where there's a family business (including farming), often bother mother and father are involved in the family business. There is no retiring from it until the business of sold or passed on to kids or other family members. 

I thought the whole point of being Canadian was the universal health insurance?!?!

I do get you’re point. SAH moms are over-represented in homeschooling and Gen Xers were probably in a better financial position to pull it off than women still having their families today. A lot of educated women won’t trade their lifestyle for full-time motherhood if it means they can’t put their kids through college. 

[wintermom]

2 minutes ago, KungFuPanda said:

I thought the whole point of being Canadian was the universal health insurance?!?!

I do get you’re point. SAH moms are over-represented in homeschooling and Gen Xers were probably in a better financial position to pull it off than women still having their families today. A lot of educated women won’t trade their lifestyle for full-time motherhood if it means they can’t put their kids through college. 

I think there's a misconception of what 'universal health insurance' actually covers in various countries that have this. In Canada, it's doesn't cover any dental, and the health coverage is limited. There's no meds coverage, and it does cost to pay into provincial health coverage. Sometimes people see their monthly bill, but I believe most people don't and it's hidden in their provincial taxes. 

We don't actually have some kind of 'health costs' angels floating over Canada, sprinkling money down to cover people's health expenses. 😉 

[SKL]

I recall reading that men tend to die an average of maybe 2 years after retiring.  I'm sure the reasons for that are complex, but part of it is thought to be that men's jobs tend to have a lot of meaning for them, that feeling that they are important / needed in ways retirement doesn't usually provide.  So retirement isn't all positive for many men.

Bringing into the discussion women who haven't had long careers outside the house, they probably suffer less from retirement because they haven't found meaning from paid jobs to the extent that the average retirement-aged man has.

Women who've worked for a long time, especially in jobs that are somewhat meaningful, probably suffer the same way as men do from retirement.

I'm a woman who has never not worked full-time since I was a teen.  Do I think about retirement a lot, in times of work stress?  Yes!  Do I really think I'd be better off with no work responsibilities?  Not really, at least not for a while. 

I think it's better for both men and women to figure out a way to gradually ratchet down our responsibilities in proportion to our changing abilities, needs, and interests.  At my age I'm thinking a lot about replacing work/childrearing responsibilities with other important things like health-positive changes, optimizing financial management, home improvements for sustainable senior living, age-appropriate community service, and senior activities that are intellectually and socially stimulating.  But at some point I really just want to be able to take a walk in the park, sip tea, read, and watch old black & white movies.  😛  At least part of the time.

[Arcadia]

1 hour ago, wintermom said:

Having said that, I still think that there is a certain degree of pressure in the general population, as well as the homeschooling community, for women to return to the workforce after raising kids (however long the "raising" takes). 

There is a pressure from the elders for women in my generation to return to the workforce when kids are in school, being the sandwich generation, unless the parents and/or in-laws are financially comfortable. 

[Jenny in Florida]

3 minutes ago, SKL said:

I recall reading that men tend to die an average of maybe 2 years after retiring.  I'm sure the reasons for that are complex, but part of it is thought to be that men's jobs tend to have a lot of meaning for them, that feeling that they are important / needed in ways retirement doesn't usually provide.  So retirement isn't all positive for many men.

Bringing into the discussion women who haven't had long careers outside the house, they probably suffer less from retirement because they haven't found meaning from paid jobs to the extent that the average retirement-aged man has.

Women who've worked for a long time, especially in jobs that are somewhat meaningful, probably suffer the same way as men do from retirement.

That's exactly what I have struggled with after being forcibly retired from homeschooling/full-time mommying. Although I had worked for a decade or so before having and staying home with the kids, those mom years were the most meaningful of my life, my identity. When that time was over, I was completely lost and frantic to replace that sense of purpose.

Seven years later, I still haven't found that replacement. And, yes, it's awful. The only thing that helps is staying very busy, and my job helps with that.

[Selkie]

Dh and I retired at the same time. We ran our businesses together for 30 years while sharing child rearing and homeschooling duties. Last year, a great opportunity arose to sell our businesses and we jumped at it. We’ve both got so many interests and activities and projects going on that we haven’t had a moment of boredom yet.

[wathe]

2 hours ago, wintermom said:

I get the sense that this particular homeschooling forum is not representative of the general population (and therefore "society") in terms of the category "women re-entering the workforce."

Agree.

I'm a homeschooling outlier:  I work FT in a professional job with non-traditional hours, and I do the homeschooling.  DH is a SAHD who runs the household and makes it possible to work the hours I do (I suppose that it would be otherwise possible with nannies, but that's not what we want.). We both have volunteer and unpaid advocacy side-gigs.

I'm also a professional outlier:  I am the only homeschooler I've ever heard of in my professional circle, and one of very few with a stay-at-home-dad spouse.  The vast majority of my colleagues are dual professional families with nannies and private schools etc.  My family's lifestyle is a complete anomaly.   

I have no idea if DH will want to re-enter the workforce once the kids are grown and gone.

It is true, I think, that many careers benefit from having a stay-at-home spouse, for all the reasons PP have posted - flexibility with travel, work hours etc.  I read "The Meaning of Wife" when it first came out, and IRRC, one of the topics was look at how men's careers benefit from having a stay-at-home wife.  The effect is measurable in $ and very real.

[ktgrok]

15 hours ago, KungFuPanda said:

 I get why people are tired.  I think my DH is probably more helpful than most, but I still do a whole lot more at home even when he's not at work.  Also, he does 100% of his job from a chair.  I'm not implying that he doesn't work.  He does.  He works hard, but hard is relative.

Yup. DH cleaned the house the other day while I was at an event and was astonished at how tired and sweaty he was. 

[Condessa]

I think that couples who have been comfortable with a traditional division of labor and responsibilities for many years are just often disinclined to change that unnecessarily for limited financial benefit. The wife is often earning peanuts when trying to get a late start career going at the husband’s taxation rate.  My fil tried to convince my mil not to work after their kids were grown for this reason; her job netted them close to zero with the effect on their taxes.

[Sneezyone]

19 hours ago, regentrude said:

We have several threads going about changes mothers make when the homeschool time ends: retiring vs returning to work.
I, too, am in the empty nest stage, am working f/t and having retirement fantasies on a regular basis... but that got me thinking: what about the fathers who have been working all that time? It seems in all these scenarios, it's taken for granted that the guys continue working until retirement age.
Mothers who are done raising children and decide to stay home while the husband continues to work is a very societally accepted path. OTOH, men deciding to quit their jobs when the kids are grown and stay home while the wife works raises eyebrows. Not fair, is it?
 

(To clarify: this isn't personal - just interested in discussion.)

My DH is working on returning to a life of leisure . He’s considering becoming a FT real estate investor so I’m simultaneously helping him launch that endeavor and going back to work myself. It’s gonna be a really, really tough year (DDs senior year begins in Sept) along with ongoing family issues. If I can survive last year and this one, I can do anything. Our goal is for DH to retire from the military and be self-employed by the time DS graduates high school. DH could easily go work as a contractor but he’s so tired of the BS and wants to be done. Worst case, he works a civvy job for 5 years while we build. He’s only 41 tho so there’s a lot of living left to do. I won’t be able to earn what he does for a while yet but with his retirement pay it should even out in about 5 years.

Edited April 4, 2022 by Sneezyone

[Alte Veste Academy]

4 hours ago, Bootsie said:

Mom, on the other hand, is at a crossroad.  Although working brings monetary rewards (and often less than dad makes for a number of reasons), she has not built the social and emotional network in the workplace.  Continuing on the same path she was on is not an option, but it is a very different decision set--it is starting something new (not a choice of whether or not to continue what she was doing).  As she explores what to do volunteering, gardening, or other activities are all possibilities she faces.  

I love how you phrased the bolded. Mom is at a crossroad, yes. This is so perfectly stated. And mom is at a crossroad for the second or third time, the first being deciding whether or not to stay home after having children and the second being deciding whether or not to homeschool. Those first two crossroads were easy, almost non-decisions for me. This third crossroad is fraught. And my DH says he will support whatever I do, so any anxiety is all mine, all internal! 

I'm going to be honest about what is a huge part of it for me. I kind of resent that this decision comes at a time when I'm (euphemism alert) not at my best. I am, frankly, a peri-menopausal mess. I am tired. I am angsty. I need to be left alone. I have no patience for nonsense. And, frankly, the idea of having a boss after all these years rankles me so much I'm almost ashamed of it. I've made myself sound awful to be around, LOL, but in reality I'm relatively pleasant ONLY because I'm at home and the boss of my own day and schedule. 

When DH and I met, I was in college getting a BSW. While we were dating, I got an MSW. The plan was always to follow that with a JD and pursue social justice law. I was happy enough to postpone the JD because I wanted to pay down my student loans, and I was so happy in my first job after grad school. Then DH found his passion, which involved the Army and moving around for the next 20 years. Military wifing is no joke. I worked. I always felt like I never did enough, yet I did everything...but earn income.   

DH retired from the Army in 2016. Throughout his military years and since, he has become an expert in his field. He is at peak earning potential. Thanks to his military retirement and health insurance for life, we will never be impoverished. We bought a house well under our means and financially all expenses will be covered by that retirement check. He could technically retire from his current job whenever he likes, but he's only 52 and would be too bored at home. Plus, the retirement pay isn't enough for expenses AND the types of adventure that would keep him from being bored. LOL So he socks company matched money into his 401K, and sticks around for raises and bonuses and promotions. He likes his job. 

Any guilt I feel is more about my own dreams postponed—maybe evaporated—and a tiny bit about not contributing financially toward retirement, not about "swapping" with him so he can stay home while I go to work. I mean, that's not a fair trade, as other people have pointed out. I did the hard, dirty, thankless work. I was up at night with babies, sometimes all night, and back to care taking the next day. I was up with sick kids while he slept because he had work the next day. I made/make appointments and ferried kids. I did mountains of laundry. The kids now do their own. I fed little people 3 meals a day, and then cleaned up. They can now feed themselves or drive themselves for food or order from UberEats and (at least theoretically) clean up for themselves. There is no swapping time for what I did vs what the needs are now. Minus the active homeschooling, which isn't his lane, what's left basically amounts to puttering around the house. 

My oldest is graduated. My middle DD is doing an extra year of high school due to a combination of tough times (that were no fault of her own) and the opportunity to remain a homeschooler but participate in a fantastic two year technical program through the public school. My youngest will be a sophomore next year. I have given myself the three years before he graduates to decide what to do with myself and prepare myself for whatever that will be. 

This month, I am starting some local classes in a topic of interest to me. I may volunteer to immerse myself in the field and make some friends with others who have the same interest. It may go somewhere. We'll see. I can think of literally a dozen things that would interest me as a career right now, but it's almost like I'd rather just learn the stuff and then not do them. LOL Homeschooling may have ruined me.

Edited April 4, 2022 by Alte Veste Academy

[Alte Veste Academy]

28 minutes ago, Condessa said:

her job netted them close to zero with the effect on their taxes.

And holy crow, this is a real thing. Our tax rate is out the wazoo, which will shrink my paycheck even more.

[Sneezyone]

11 minutes ago, Alte Veste Academy said:

I love how you phrased the bolded. Mom is at a crossroad, yes. This is so perfectly stated. And mom is at a crossroad for the second or third time, the first being deciding whether or not to stay home after having children and the second being deciding whether or not to homeschool. Those first two crossroads were easy, almost non-decisions for me. This third crossroad is fraught. And my DH says he will support whatever I do, so any anxiety is all mine, all internal! 

I'm going to be honest about what is a huge part of it for me. I kind of resent that this decision comes at a time when I'm (euphemism alert) not at my best. I am, frankly, a peri-menopausal mess. I am tired. I am angsty. I need to be left alone. I have no patience for nonsense. And, frankly, the idea of having a boss after all these years rankles me so much I'm almost ashamed of it. I've made myself sound awful to be around, LOL, but in reality I'm relatively pleasant ONLY because I'm at home and the boss of my own day and schedule. 

When DH and I met, I was in college getting a BSW. While we were dating, I got an MSW. The plan was always to follow that with a JD and pursue social justice law. I was happy enough to postpone the JD because I wanted to pay down my student loans, and I was so happy in my first job after grad school. Then DH found his passion, which involved the Army and moving around for the next 20 years. Military wifing is no joke. I worked. I always felt like I never did enough, yet I did everything...but earn income.   

DH retired from the Army in 2016. Throughout his military years and since, he has become an expert in his field. He is at peak earning potential. Thanks to his military retirement and health insurance for life, we will never be impoverished. We bought a house well under our means and financially all expenses will be covered by that retirement check. He could technically retire from his current job whenever he likes, but he's only 52 and would be too bored at home. Plus, the retirement pay isn't enough for expenses AND the types of adventure that would keep him from being bored. LOL So he socks company matched money into his 401K, and sticks around for raises and bonuses and promotions. He likes his job. 

Any guilt I feel is more about my own dreams postponed—maybe evaporated—and a tiny bit about not contributing financially toward retirement, not about "swapping" with him so he can stay home while I go to work. I mean, that's not a fair trade, as other people have pointed out. I did the hard, dirty, thankless work. I was up at night with babies, sometimes all night, and back to care taking the next day. I was up with sick kids while he slept because he had work the next day. I made/make appointments and ferried kids. I did mountains of laundry. The kids now do their own. I fed little people 3 meals a day, and then cleaned up. They can now feed themselves or drive themselves for food or order from UberEats and (at least theoretically) clean up for themselves. There is no swapping time for what I did vs what the needs are now. Minus the active homeschooling, which isn't his lane, what's left basically amounts to puttering around the house. 

My oldest is graduated. My middle DD is doing an extra year of high school due to a combination of tough times (that were no fault of her own) and the opportunity to remain a homeschooler but participate in a fantastic two year technical program through the public school. My youngest will be a sophomore next year. I have given myself the three years before he graduates to decide what to do with myself and prepare myself for whatever that will be. 

This month, I am starting some local classes in a topic of interest to me. I may volunteer to immerse myself in the field and make some friends with others who have the same interest. It may go somewhere. We'll see. I can think of literally a dozen things that would interest me as a career right now, but it's almost like I'd rather just learn the stuff and then not do them. LOL Homeschooling may have ruined me.

I’m going back to work. 1/2 of it is a desire to do something new, 1/4 is so DH can chase a second dream after his 24 years of service, and 1/4 is so I can pay for all the awful stuff my family has done without hurting my own kids/dh. I would like to have been able to do things on my own timeline and be more selective about the job I took but circumstances forced my hand. The cherry on top is not being at my best. My DH tells me I am more aggressive and he’s right. My patience and social niceties capacity is stuck on zero.

Edited April 4, 2022 by Sneezyone

[Alte Veste Academy]

19 hours ago, regentrude said:

Mothers who are done raising children and decide to stay home while the husband continues to work is a very societally accepted path. OTOH, men deciding to quit their jobs when the kids are grown and stay home while the wife works raises eyebrows. Not fair, is it?

Several of DH's coworkers have retired recently, though their wives still work. It didn't raise any eyebrows. They were active men who felt they had worked and saved enough and wanted to move on to time intensive hobbies. Sadly, one who had been a model of health and fitness died of COVID less than a year after retirement. 

I mean I guess it would raise eyebrows if the men retired without being financially prepared and forced their wives to start or continue working? That would raise eyebrows at any life stage though, with one partner in a marriage not doing their fair share in keeping a family afloat. 

[skimomma]

We never had assumptions about this and often our employment decisions are not planned.  We are newly empty-nested and while I called myself a SAHM, I did work part-time through it all.  I am now full time and I carry the benefits while dh stepped into a lower-pressure, lower-pay job after a Covid-complicated period of unemployment.  It could have gone either way, really.  I just happened to be the one to land the main breadwinning job this time.  That was also true before we became parents.  We are nowhere near retirement age and there is a good chance we will never truly retire.  Our finances are such that we both have to (had to) work as much as we reasonably could at any given time so there was no expectation that dh or I would retire once the nest emptied.  I know literally no one my age that is not working, male or female, nest full or empty, so there is no real "socially acceptable expectation" other than to work.

[Jenny in Florida]

47 minutes ago, Condessa said:

. . . her job netted them close to zero with the effect on their taxes.

The only thing I will say about this is that the net zero thing is probably temporary. Yes, when one first goes back to work after an extended time at home, the pay tends to be upsettingly miniscule. However, if you stick with it and make smart moves, that changes. Eventually, you earn enough to outstrip the potential temporary losses in taxes.

(My experience was that my earnings increased quickly. For the first few years, I doubled my salary every year.)

On the flip side, if you opt not to go back to work at all, you earn nothing ever.

Edited April 4, 2022 by Jenny in Florida

[Alte Veste Academy]

7 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

I’m going back to work. 1/2 of it is a desire to do something new, 1/4 is so DH can chase a second dream after his 24 years of service, and 1/4 is so I can pay for all the awful stuff my family has done without hurting my own kids/dh. I would like to have been able to do things on my own timeline and be more selective about the job I took but circumstances forced my hand. The cherry on top is not being at my best. My DH tells me I am more aggressive and he’s right. My patience and social niceties capacity is stuck on zero.

Yep. Definitely the cherry on top to not feel your best. I get what you mean by aggression. No patience whatsoever. And I'm glad you brought up social niceties because whenever I go out I come home convinced I am the only one left on the planet with manners AND it exhausted me to the bone to use them on the outing while everyone else did not. Working feeling like that scares me. 

I am VERY lucky that DH loves his job, which is an extension of what he did in the Army. He was sick of the politics in the Army, but loved the actual job.

I wish you the very best in your new job!

Edited April 4, 2022 by Alte Veste Academy

[Eos]

26 minutes ago, Alte Veste Academy said:

I am angsty. I need to be left alone. I have no patience for nonsense. And, frankly, the idea of having a boss after all these years rankles me so much I'm almost ashamed of it. I've made myself sound awful to be around, LOL, but in reality I'm relatively pleasant ONLY because I'm at home and the boss of my own day and schedule.

This, combined with our desire to have our kids with us and homeschool was why we've always had our own business.  I'm a really good boss because I had terrible ones in high school and college jobs and I never wanted to be an employee again.  Sometimes I do little jobs for a friend's catering business and it's like free money to just show up and not have to make any decisions, but generally I would be a terrible employee in the same way that I would have been a terrible school mom.  Set in my ways.  Allergic to bs.

[fairfarmhand]

1 hour ago, Alte Veste Academy said:

And holy crow, this is a real thing. Our tax rate is out the wazoo, which will shrink my paycheck even more.

Mmmhmmm. I work for myself with a bit of this and that to bring in a bit of extra money. My 12K that I earned last year shrank to 8K after taxes. Totally demoralizing. (self employment taxes)

Edited April 4, 2022 by fairfarmhand

[Ausmumof3]

There’s another thing I haven’t seen mentioned on this thread.

A lot of what many women do hasn’t changed but has become monetised. My mum went and volunteered in school. She helped with reading groups and canteens. My mil helped a couple of families with kids that had learning difficulties or other extra needs. Now, return to work people I know are doing similar things but getting paid to do them. They are called SSOs and NDIS carers. There’s no major change to the work they’re doing other than it now requires a certificate and it’s now paid not volunteer.

[Arcadia]

2 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

There’s another thing I haven’t seen mentioned on this thread.

A lot of what many women do hasn’t changed but has become monetised. My mum went and volunteered in school. She helped with reading groups and canteens. My mil helped a couple of families with kids that had learning difficulties or other extra needs. Now, return to work people I know are doing similar things but getting paid to do them. 

Parents and grandparents can still volunteer to help out in reading groups and at the canteen, library, computer room. However the teacher aides for learning disabilities and for ESL learners are paid.

[Ausmumof3]

6 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

Parents and grandparents can still volunteer to help out in reading groups and at the canteen, library, computer room. However the teacher aides for learning disabilities and for ESL learners are paid.

Volunteer roles are becoming more and more limited here because of the admin required to keep everyone’s working for children checks sorted and then Covid has pretty much stopped it completely with parents not being allowed on the school grounds. I’m not sure if that’s changing but most parents are working and don’t have the time either.

[Sneezyone]

15 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

There’s another thing I haven’t seen mentioned on this thread.

A lot of what many women do hasn’t changed but has become monetised. My mum went and volunteered in school. She helped with reading groups and canteens. My mil helped a couple of families with kids that had learning difficulties or other extra needs. Now, return to work people I know are doing similar things but getting paid to do them. They are called SSOs and NDIS carers. There’s no major change to the work they’re doing other than it now requires a certificate and it’s now paid not volunteer.

It should be monetized tho. One of my great frustrations in being a military spouse is the extent to which essential communications and family outreach services rely on ‘volunteers’. It’s an outdated system. These skills are valuable and those performing these essential functions should be compensated appropriately. It’s not necessarily noble to do it for free when ‘free’ restricts participation from those representing groups closer to the demo being served who need $$.

[regentrude]

28 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

A lot of what many women do hasn’t changed but has become monetised. My mum went and volunteered in school. She helped with reading groups and canteens. My mil helped a couple of families with kids that had learning difficulties or other extra needs. Now, return to work people I know are doing similar things but getting paid to do them. They are called SSOs and NDIS carers. There’s no major change to the work they’re doing other than it now requires a certificate and it’s now paid not volunteer.

That was always a weird thing to me that the US has set up a society where essential services are underfunded and rely on volunteering and donations. Schools that can't run without volunteers and donated supplies,  Gofundme's and money jars in bars to donate for medical expenses... it seems a ridiculous system.
People who work in schools should be paid. We should allocate enough resources to education so that the system runs without relying on retirees who have extra time on their hands. Just like we should have a healthcare system that does not rely on sick people begging for money from kindhearted strangers.

Edited April 4, 2022 by regentrude

[Ausmumof3]

13 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

It should be monetized tho. One of my great frustrations in being a military spouse is the extent to which essential communications and family outreach services rely on ‘volunteers’. It’s an outdated system. These skills are valuable and those performing these essential functions should be compensated appropriately. It’s not necessarily noble to do it for free when ‘free’ restricts participation from those representing groups closer to the demo being served who need $$.

I think there’s pros and cons. There’s a bit less flexibility once things are a paid position. It is good to see monetary acknowledgement on some level for the huge amount of unpaid work done by one part of society and also having a pay cheque and position definitely increases the sense of respect that attaches to the work.

Edited April 4, 2022 by Ausmumof3

[Ausmumof3]

1 minute ago, regentrude said:

That was always a weird thing to me that the US has set up a society where essential services are underfunded and rely on volunteering and donations.
Schools that can't run without volunteers and donated supplies, there are Gofundme's and money jars in bars to donate for medical expenses... it seems a ridiculous system.
People who work in schools should be paid. We should allocate enough resources to education so that the system runs without relying on retirees who have extra time on their hands. 

Yes. There’s a massive problem here with lack of volunteers for rural fire services. It would cost a fortune in government funds to pay enough full timers. Some of the bigger towns have a kind of retained arrangement where people work a full time job but have to be able to leave that at the drop of a hat to go to fire or road accident and then they get paid for those hours. Even some paramedic positions in rural areas are volunteer. 

[Melissa Louise]

I didn't go back to work so then dh could retire, but because he was very suddenly unable to earn an income. 

I resented it terribly. Becoming the main (only at the time) worker in the household after being the main parent in the household with no break in between, will always feel horribly unfair. 

I think people really do discount work that isn't paid, including mothering. It isn't a vacation, when you are full time at it, and educating as well. 

None of which denies the fact that often, we do have to return to work.

Here, thankfully, healthcare is not tied to employment. 

 

 

[Sneezyone]

21 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I think there’s pros and cons. There’s a bit less flexibility once things are a paid position. It is good to see monetary acknowledgement on some level for the huge amount of unpaid work done by one part of society and also having a pay cheque and position definitely increases the sense of respect that attaches to the work.

I’m really not seeing the cons. There are plenty of well-paying jobs that require off-hours availability. It’s not the commitment that’s at issue. You could get people to do the work for less $$, including teaching, if there was less money attached for altruistic reasons as long as there was autonomy. Increasingly tho, people are unwilling to do this sort of work for free and that’s resulted in unfilled, critical roles/needs. Altruism isn’t enough. I welcome volunteers. My first job out of college was as a non-profit’s fundraising assistant/volunteer coordinator. I believe in the value of that work. I also know it can never be the backbone for essential services.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Sneezyone

[Ausmumof3]

4 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

I’m really not seeing the cons. There are plenty of well-paying jobs that require off-hours availability. It’s not the commitment that’s at issue. You could get people to do the work for less $$, including teaching, if there was less money attached for altruistic reasons as long as there was autonomy. Increasingly tho, people are unwilling to do this sort of work for free and that’s resulted in unfilled, critical roles/needs. Altruism isn’t enough. I welcome volunteers. My first job out of college was as a non-profit’s fubdreaising assistant/volunteer coordinator. I believe in the value of that work. I also know it can never be the backbone for essential services.

I guess I see stay at home parents and retirees as kind of “spare capacity”? Like how during covid we learnt the downside of not having spare capacity in the supply chain, same goes for people who aren’t maxed out with paid work. Like I can work and homeschool but only because I know if there’s an emergency my sister will drop everything and look after my kids. If someone gets injured or Ill there’s enough people to help out. When someone has a volunteer position there’s some flexibility around that. Once it’s a job they are much more tied in? Plus, maybe because I’m doing one of those school paid positions I’m massively seeing the downsides for kids of parents not having enough time to help with their own kids education, homework etc? 

[Sneezyone]

9 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I guess I see stay at home parents and retirees as kind of “spare capacity”? Like how during covid we learnt the downside of not having spare capacity in the supply chain, same goes for people who aren’t maxed out with paid work. Like I can work and homeschool but only because I know if there’s an emergency my sister will drop everything and look after my kids. If someone gets injured or Ill there’s enough people to help out. When someone has a volunteer position there’s some flexibility around that. Once it’s a job they are much more tied in? Plus, maybe because I’m doing one of those school paid positions I’m massively seeing the downsides for kids of parents not having enough time to help with their own kids education, homework etc? 

They’re not always ‘spare capacity’ tho. In the military communities I’m familiar with, the families in need are families that NEED additional resources to make ends meet, even if there are other people who can grab a child (or several) from school in an emergency. It’s a joke among military spouses. “Hey, I know we just met and I just moved here but would you be my emergency contact?”. It’s funny, not funny.

Edited April 4, 2022 by Sneezyone

[Carrie12345]

2 hours ago, Alte Veste Academy said:

can think of literally a dozen things that would interest me as a career right now, but it's almost like I'd rather just learn the stuff and then not do them. LOL Homeschooling may have ruined m

SAME. 

P.S. I took a CLEP Bio practice test this morning  with 0 study. I didn’t teach high school bio directly (thank you, modern resources.) It’s been 30 years since my own high school bio course. I have taught the kids elementary bio and most middle school bio directly. 
I scored 81% before a full cup of coffee.

 I’m going to kick that test’s butt with some prep. 
Just because. 

[Carrie12345]

44 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Yes. There’s a massive problem here with lack of volunteers for rural fire services. It would cost a fortune in government funds to pay enough full timers. Some of the bigger towns have a kind of retained arrangement where people work a full time job but have to be able to leave that at the drop of a hat to go to fire or road accident and then they get paid for those hours. Even some paramedic positions in rural areas are volunteer. 

It’s a mess. 
My township can go weeks without a call. It’s hard to pay for a full time staff with no calls!

But we can and have gotten 3 calls in a day, so…

Just a big mess. 

[Melissa Louise]

16 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I guess I see stay at home parents and retirees as kind of “spare capacity”? Like how during covid we learnt the downside of not having spare capacity in the supply chain, same goes for people who aren’t maxed out with paid work. Like I can work and homeschool but only because I know if there’s an emergency my sister will drop everything and look after my kids. If someone gets injured or Ill there’s enough people to help out. When someone has a volunteer position there’s some flexibility around that. Once it’s a job they are much more tied in? Plus, maybe because I’m doing one of those school paid positions I’m massively seeing the downsides for kids of parents not having enough time to help with their own kids education, homework etc? 

I wish I could volunteer. I'd like to do adult literacy programs for women recently released from prison. And I'd like to do twice weekly literacy sessions at the indigenous school in town - they need as many volunteers as they can get at the moment. There isn't enough $ to pay people to do these things. Anyway, in my ideal life, that's what I'd be doing. Writing, yoga and volunteering. 

There's a really unique sense of purpose that comes with volunteering, I reckon.