Was your wife ever a Stay at Home wife/mom?

[Pablo]

Both parents working is not that great for society, IMHO. Our kids are way better off. I skipped the whole taking loans for play toys boy-man phase. Was that some kind of heroic sacrifice? My wife went back to work when my youngest daughter was finishing HS. A really good SAH balance.

We are both nicely retired. We still saved money. Was not always easy street.

 

[Chris142]

My wife has some medical issues that prevent her from being able to work a regular job.

 

[Astro14]

My wife was a SAHM for 14 years raising our son and daughter. Then started work at Yale University. Her income and benefits allowed me to retire at 57. She will retire in January 2023. We’re looking forward to having the time to do things together.

Sam

And your kids (now well into adulthood) are awesome.

 

[BMWTurboDzl]

Early on in our marriage my wife worked from home but times/priorities changed and she ended up working in an office for about 13 yrs. We've been working from home since Q1 2020. No kids.

 

[parshisa]

My wife worked for 2 months right after she graduated (med school, pharmacist) and then we moved to US and she hasn't worked since (over 8yrs now). We have two girls now with eldest in kindergarten and taking care of them is a huge job of it's own. She's into baking now and that's sort of her hobby/side gig that keeps her busy when she's not busy with the kids. Now that the world has changed and hybrid schedule is a possibility, I'm helping more with kiddos. Looking forward to get back on the rigs but we'll see how it goes with oil prices and everything else

 

[Cujet]

My wife of 34 years has not worked in 20 years. She is a "gamer girl" and enjoys our Gigabit internet and her capable gaming rig. I find that stuff cool as can be, and build the computers for her, but I just can't competently game, despite her guidance and prodding. I'm as terrible at it as she is good. When I met her in the 80's, she was gaming then, both on early PC's without hard drives, and TV consoles.

She puts stickers of her games on her truck. The Publix bag-boy asked her if her "grandson" played those games. Her unprintable response was pretty epic and really made me laugh. I guess she thinks of herself as young....

On a serious note, I work crazy hours, especially weekends, and it really is nice to be able to go to lunch during a weekday or take off and go somewhere with her. I think it's worked out well.

 

[BMWTurboDzl]

My wife of 34 years has not worked in 20 years. She is a "gamer girl" and enjoys our Gigabit internet and her capable gaming rig. I find that stuff cool as can be, and build the computers for her, but I just can't competently game, despite her guidance and prodding. I'm as terrible at it as she is good. When I met her in the 80's, she was gaming then, both on early PC's without hard drives, and TV consoles.

She puts stickers of her games on her truck. The Publix bag-boy asked her if her "grandson" played those games. Her unprintable response was pretty epic and really made me laugh. I guess she thinks of herself as young....

On a serious note, I work crazy hours, especially weekends, and it really is nice to be able to go to lunch during a weekday or take off and go somewhere with her. I think it's worked out well.

Does she stream on Twitch?

 

[2strokeNorthstar]

Only for the first year after our son was born unfortunately. Couldn’t afford it but wish it was possible.

 

[SEMI_287]

My ex wife had it made and didn’t have to work.

 

[Srt20]

I’m a stay at home dad. Boys are 11 and 8 now, so I could probably get a job, but my attitude towards having a boss has gone to cr@p. So I built a shop to work on stuff. We both agreed daycare wasn’t an option for us, and she is in medical field and I was union construction tradesman, so she made a lot more then me. We both came from families with stay at home moms, so it was just what we wanted.

 

[nickaluch]

My wife was a SAHM once the first was born and followed through to my youngest child went to high School. She worked part time until covid hit and working from home went full time.

 

[Sonic]

I stayed at home as a dad for a long while because it made the most sense. When my wife was pregnant with our first child we had to sit down and figure out what we were going to do. She’s a professional with a great job and made the bulk of our income. Her job provided our insurance too. We have moved a ton for her job to many different states and she also travels for her job sometimes with very little notice at times. Day care options at the time she got pregnant were ridiculously expensive and we both worked long hours with no specific end times during the day. We didn’t have that support a lot of people have with grandparents or other family and friends to help babysit or pick up drop off or whatever. We were on our own out of our home state. So she told me to quit my job. This was foreign to me but it worked out great. Having myself at home to take care of everything was the best way to deal with our situation. As life went on and more kids it was perfect. Never had to deal with sitters or figuring out schedules for school stuff or Dr’s appointments. My wife travels for a week it’s no problem. We move to a new state I have time to handle all the headache of dealing with that. My wife just had to concentrate on her job.

It does make life simpler to have parent at home. Or at least that’s our opinion. Of course a family has to have the income level to make it work that way and we were fortunate enough to be in that position.

Being at home as a guy isn’t as common I know and it’s kinda weird the amount of disrespect it can earn you. The comments I’ve heard over the years from both strangers and people I know was really eye opening. Not sure if it’s some sort of jealousy or just actual disapproval for a man to not be the head of the household breadwinner. Both men and women have given me plenty of put downs when they’ve found out I stayed home or when I was staying home.

 

[tyman]

Not at this moment. She makes $100k at her job and they're extremely flexible in letting her WFH.

 

[2005jettatdi]

We did not sacrifice anything for my wife of 46.67 years to be a stay at home mom and homeschooling mother. It was all worth it.

 

[Dave Hess]

Everybody’s finances are different and some can afford it, some can not.

No doubt, the workplace has gotten worse over the last 30 years and many women wish they could stay home full time and not deal with all the politics, corporate bull crap, dysfunctional boss, terrible coworkers or bad organization.

 

[ZZman]

I am actually surprised at the number here who had a parent stay home. They must have had really good paying jobs.

 

[Skippy722]

I am actually surprised at the number here who had a parent stay home. They must have had really good paying jobs.

We’re middle class for our area, but I do work quite a bit of overtime as well. We don’t really vacation or have big boy toys like some of our friends (I really want a PVS-14 night vision set up…. Oh well), but we’re comfortable with what we have and do.

 

[2005jettatdi]

Everybody’s finances are different and some can afford it, some can not.

No doubt, the workplace has gotten worse over the last 30 years and many women wish they could stay home full time and not deal with all the politics, corporate bull crap, dysfunctional boss, terrible coworkers or bad organization.

You know, they were saying the exact same thing 47 years ago and more.