I get 1 years mat leave, and after that I will return to working with youth part time for some adult interaction, working a couple of nights a week. We don't need the money, but I like interacting with others and our winters are so long and crappy that staying home would bore me to death. I will also go back to school part time, so we will see if I can balance all 3, and if not I won't return to work until the kid(s) are in school, at which time I will work while they are in school during the day. Also, after having worked in daycare, my preferance is to not have my child attend until they are preschool age.
Me staying at home just made the most sense for us.
Daycare for 2 infants is ridiculously expensive. I was burned out on my job, and my schedule included a lot of evenings and weekends. My H works long hours and does a lot of travel. We can live comfortably on his salary and we don't have to juggle 2 crazy schedules.
Plus we are only having our twins and I know they will grow up before I blink, and I don't want to miss a minute.
Post by juliagoulia on Jun 24, 2013 10:00:22 GMT -5
I like working and love my job. I stayed at home for 1 year after my son was born and I was going crazy at the end, I really needed to get back to work. I just don't think staying at home is right for me.
Also, I don't know how realistic this is, so any teachers can weigh in, but my thought process is that if I SAH I would stop once they are school age, since I'll have a similar schedule. I know I'd miss out on a lot of room mom stuff, etc, but I'd have the same breaks as them, and I could feasibly get home earlier than I do now and alter how I handle outside of school hours work. (Now I get in early/stay until 5 and then go home and take no work home with me)
My parents are both retired elementary school teachers; kinder and 5th grade. When we were in kinder and younger my mom only worked part time (half day kinder) and then went back to full time when I went to first grade. (I'm the youngest child.)
My dad actually taught at the elementary school my sisters & I attended so we'd go to school with him and then ride the bus to an in home child care center on days he had after school meetings/a lot of work to do. We almost never stayed past 4:30pm which is an hour after school got out. As we got older we'd more frequently hang out with my dad after school (doing homework etc) until he was ready to go home. Starting in 6th grade we just rode the bus straight home and dad would be home by 5pm at the latest. My mom as a kinder teacher had a lot more work to do than my dad so she was at work from 7-7:30am-5-6pm unless we had after school activities.
FWIW my sisters and I loved our in home child care provider. We call her our second mom still to this day. I go visit her when I go visit my parents. My sisters and I try to all get together with her at least once a year.
Also, my dad brought things to grade home with him frequently and would do grading after dinner. My mom less frequently brought stuff home. As my sisters and I got older we helped them (not with grading), but with getting projects ready and stuff. Also in HS/college my sisters and I volunteered in my mom's kinder class after school/on breaks.
I really thought I was going to want to SAH when DS 1 was born, but like a few others here I realized during my maternity leave that I really needed the intellectual stimulation and adult interaction that came with working outside the home. Plus, I really love my job. Now that my oldest is going into kindergarten, though, I'm starting to think about transitioning into more of a part-time situation (I'm currently a high school English teacher and am almost done with an MA in Literature that would allow me to adjunct at a community college) so I can be home with him and my younger son before/after school. Since high school here goes from 8:30-4:15 and the elementaries let out at 3:00 there's no way to keep my current position and be home earlier than 5:00 most weeknights, and that's really not how I want to live at this point.
macmars45, thanks for your input. I teach middle school, so in many ways my job is less intensive than an elementary teacher (just like your mom's K class was more intensive than your dad's, sounds like). Still, I need to be realistic about how I would balance outside of work work with kids.
It's funny, IME its more typical for parents to want to SAH the early years and then go back to work once the kids are school age. I feel like I'm the opposite. For a variety of reasons, I wouldn't want to SAH now. But my memories of being a kid include my mom home in the afternoons, and I get a little heartsick thinking that my kids won't have that experience.
But that's a mind over matter thing. The financial security of a dual income family will keep me in the workplace.
For some odd reason I am struggling with this. Putting Jack in after school care is making me feel guilty. I have no idea why since he has been in daycare his whole life.
Schedules. We're lawyers. My practice area is not one that is conducive to a two parent working situation. Neither is my husband's, but especially mine. I had regular all-nighters, and he travels out of the country a lot. There's no way we could have sustained our lifestyle the way we were living. One of us had to quit. I could have stayed and made partner in another year, but it wasn't worth it. I could have left and gone to an in-house position, but all of the opportunities I found were supremely boring, with a gigantic pay cut to boot. Not worth it. So I quit, and I am happy every single day that I made that decision.
My only regret is not choosing a more family friendly practice area right out of law school, so I could have actually found a part time position when I wanted one. But that was years ago, way before I considered kids.
I don't have kids yet but when the time comes I want to keep me PT job that I currently have. We'll see what happens and what works best for us. I've told H that I'd rather not SAH full time when we have kids, but really I have no idea what to expect. H had a SAHM and loved it. When we first dated he thought all moms SAH (home-schooled kid). When I told him that if he wanted one of us to SAH full time with our future kids and home-school them it better be him he shut up about that plan. I seem to be coming full circle now that kids are hopefully in the close future. Now I feel more open to options of SAH. So we'll see.
FWIW, I work for a public school district. I'm a classroom aide; hence the PT hours.
Post by Mrs. ChanandlerBong on Jun 24, 2013 10:18:20 GMT -5
The earning potential at my job wasn't great. At the salary I was at when we had our first, most of my income would have gone to daycare. The majority of the rest to taxes and the "cost" of working...more frequent dinners out, dry cleaning, etc. We used an IRS calculator and found that when all that was factored in, I would be making a dollar an hour. Even with years of experience and/or going into management someday, the money just didn't work out.
Now that my oldest is in school, latchkey would be the big money suck. With the hours I worked, the kids would have needed at least an hour of morning and an hour of afternoon latchkey.
I don't love staying home. There are many days that I miss work tremendously. But it has come down to what is best for us as a family than my whim to want to work again.
FWIW, the thread last week about alimony scared the ever living shit out of me. H has been able to do much more in terms of his career because I am home and I hope to God he doesn't have the "work or get out" viewpoint in 20 years.
edit: not that I"m opposed to working, but because my options are already limited after 7 years out of the field. I am looking into teaching water aerobics again, though. It's definitely part time money, but IMO can open the door to moving into personal training or teaching other classes somewhere down the line. At least it's better than nothing. I taught classes to supplement my 9-5 income before we were married. We moved more than 45 minutes away from the facility I taught at originally so I left and didn't pursue it again until now.
i like my job and worked hard to get here. i like the money i earn at my job (we could make it on my husband's salary or mine individually, but it would be a different lifestyle. i recognize that this is a luxury). i like having something that's MINE and not my family's (collectively or individually).
sometimes, i'm at work longing to be home. but overall, i never thought i'd be a SAHM and thus planned my life accordingly (including what i practice and where i practice it). should my feelings on this change, i'll reassess.
It's funny, IME its more typical for parents to want to SAH the early years and then go back to work once the kids are school age. I feel like I'm the opposite. For a variety of reasons, I wouldn't want to SAH now. But my memories of being a kid include my mom home in the afternoons, and I get a little heartsick thinking that my kids won't have that experience.
But that's a mind over matter thing. The financial security of a dual income family will keep me in the workplace.
For some odd reason I am struggling with this. Putting Jack in after school care is making me feel guilty. I have no idea why since he has been in daycare his whole life.
Miss, I'm exactly where you are only it's b/c my parents were never home or really all that involved. I want to do room stuff, I want them to have their friends over, I want them to have a more social life than I ever did. And I just want to spend more time with them.
My goal is to work my ass off in these early years, taking as much time with them as I can (so I have little social life outside of work/home now but it's well worth it, I don't miss it that much) so that hopefully by the time they're in school I can work part time or Jake can work part time. OR both/one of us will have much more flexibility time wise.
I don't want my kids doing recitals/plays/sports games/whatever without one of us there. That sucked, a lot.
I feel really lucky to have gotten a 1 year mat leave. It made me realize that I am just not cut out to be a SAHM. I went back part time half way through my leave. Money wasn't as big of a concern of ours, I'm sure we could have made it work, I just didn't want to stay home. As I'm getting closer to my next mat leave, I'm really worried about how I am going to handle 2 of them this time.
Post by daisyheadmaizie on Jun 24, 2013 10:46:26 GMT -5
We always planned on me staying home when we had kids. What I made working would have covered daycare and not much else, so it didn't really make sense for me to keep working. It was really tight money wise for a while,but we are in a good place now. I may look for something part time as the kids get older,but I doubt I ever go back to full time work. And, honestly, I really like staying at home.
I don't have kids but I have always planned to stay home when we do. My mom stayed at home from before I was born until my sister graduated high school. I loved having her home all the time and she was very involved in all our activities/ schools and I want to do that for my kids.
Plus I know myself and there is no way that I could be a great or even good mom, employee, and wife all at the same time. Dh works an off shift so if I was working we would never see each other. Right now I work 8 hours a week and that is fine. I am coordinating an event this summer as well as a volunteer and I am trying to figure out what I am going to do after that. I have spent the last 2 years waiting for a baby to drop into my lap so I can start my life but it is becoming rapidly apparent that I need to figure out what I want to do with my life if my dream job of SAHM doesn't happen.
Post by EmilieMadison on Jun 24, 2013 11:09:54 GMT -5
While I was really glad that I could stay home with my kids because DH and I felt like that would be what was best for our family, especially because of his non-standard work hours and being on call, a huge factor was money. Daycare, especially once we had two kids, would have been unaffordable on my salary. And I didnt have a job I loved (or even liked) enough to want to work just for the sake of working.
I liked being a SAHM when the kids were really young. I've disliked it more and more as they've gotten older. For the last 2 years I've worked part-time subbing (with a few months of full time teaching) and it's been SO much better.
Post by hopecounts on Jun 24, 2013 11:14:01 GMT -5
I always wanted to stay home. I will say being home kidless and being a SAHM are REALLY different scenarios. Personally I don't have time to be bored. Between taking care of DD, cleaning, doing activities (library, play group, park, etc.), I live for naptime when I can get an hour or so of peace and quiet to myself after doing my daily cleaning. The days she doesn't nap and just does an hour of quiet time kill me because it's nonstop since I only get maybe 15 minutes to myself after I finish cleaning. Those are the days she gets an extra episode of TV (she usually gets 2 a day one morning and one afternoon) so I can get 40 minutes of peace.
I worked full time until my youngest was a year old and my oldest was 2.5. Quitting work was a very tough decision for me to make, I never thought I would be a SAHM.
DH works really long long hours and doesn't see the kids much during the week. That left me responsible for almost all of the weekday parenting. With one kid, I got into a good routine and it wasn't too bad. With two kids, I felt like I was always running around crazy and I was really stressed.
Plus, DS had some health issues and I was at the pediatrician almost every week and was missing a ton of work. I would end up staying up pretty late to get all my work done. My employer was understanding, but I could tell they were getting annoyed with the amount of work I was missing.
Once I decided to stay home, life was much more relaxing. Now that DS is a little bit older and has grown out of his health issues, I would love to work part time.
If you are that conflicted about whether or not to stay home, it might be a good idea to try out working after you have a child. I've know people who thought they wanted to be a SAHM, but once they had kids, decided going back to work would make them a better mom.
I SAH bc DH has a demanding career and works long hours. I would be doing every bit of childcare by myself during the week and DH would most likely not see her during the week bc she would be going to bed earlier to wake up earlier.
We don't need my salary and my job is easy enough to go back to when I'm ready (teaching).
I hated being a SAHM until about 8 months but now I love it. We are never bored and it's rare that we are home all day.
Post by scribellesam on Jun 24, 2013 11:27:18 GMT -5
I hated my chosen career (attorney) and my job when I got pregnant had zero flexibility as to hours, work from home, etc. I knew I'd be spending my days sitting at my desk, filled with resentment of everything I was missing out on. So when we realized we could make it financially on just DH's salary, I quit.
I love being a SAHM. I'm open to the idea of working part time when DS and future hypothetical kids are older, but I'm not sure what I'd do. I have zero interest in going back to practicing law.
Since having my first, I've been working two days a week for my family's business. There were three main reasons: 1) I felt obligated to my dad to continue working for him; 2) my dad allowed me the flexibility to work only two days so that I could continue working while still spending time home with my kids; and 3) my mom and MIL each agreed to watch the girls one day a week. If the alternative were to continue working full-time, it wouldn't have made sense for us since my salary wouldn't even cover daycare. The part-time situation has been ideal for me as it's allowed me to be productive outside of our home and contribute to our household income, but also spend most of my time with my kids which is what I enjoy most.
After I have this baby, though, I will stop working, at least until my kids are all in school. I think it's too much to ask our moms to watch three kids especially when the older two will be in different schools. Plus, I am so over working. The fact that it's summer and work is the only thing keeping me from living at the beach doesn't help. lol.
I have been a stay at home mom for almost 10 years. I always knew it was what I wanted and for me the baby/toddler stage was the hardest. Now that they are going into 5th and 3rd grade it's great. I am missing the chip that should make me feel like I need(I know a lot of women feel this way) to provide financially for our family. We are comfortable with me staying home so I don't worry about it. I just like the flexibility of it, the time we have together(especially this summer) and I am a bit of a control freak so it all just suits me. I am going to start some non profit volunteer work that I have trained for once the school year starts again. I am looking forward to that. I think what I do has value so I try not to get caught up in feeling like I am failing at life by not having a career.
edited to add that it also works well in terms of H's schedule.
i like my job and worked hard to get here. i like the money i earn at my job (we could make it on my husband's salary or mine individually, but it would be a different lifestyle. i recognize that this is a luxury). i like having something that's MINE and not my family's (collectively or individually).
sometimes, i'm at work longing to be home. but overall, i never thought i'd be a SAHM and thus planned my life accordingly (including what i practice and where i practice it). should my feelings on this change, i'll reassess.
We had actually planned our lives so that I would be the working parent and my H would freelance. This was back when we thought getting pg was up to us, an ideally he would have made the better SAHP at the time. Since it took so long o get pg, his career blew up and I started to hate mine. Our plans started to not be feasible.
Anyway, there's def. some value in considering how much your life will change ( in the next few years, for those who aren't ttc and are concerned about this). I'm not saying 'you won't know until you have kids', just that sometimes the circumstances of life make the decision for you.
are you saying here that it's good to make plans based upon expected life trajectory, but to expect that that may change? if so, i agree with you.
Financially we both need to work, but I have Wednesdays off, which works out well for doc appointments, etc. even if we were in the position where I didn't have to work, I would anyway. I worked too hard for my education to not use it,plus I feel like I need that thinking stimulus that staying at home doesn't provide.
ETA: well, there was a bit more to it than that, actually. But that was a big part of it. We both grew up with SAHM's, so we both kind of assumed that I would sah without even discussing it. Plus, it would just be nearly impossible now that my h works oot 2 weeks at a time.