Poll about marriage: Men, your wife must work / Women, you have to work--any guilt/regret for that?

I suppose much depends on what one prides oneself on. In the olden days, tyhis was highly gendered - men were supposed to pride themselves on accomplishing things in the workforce, and women on raising a family and keeping a home; today, the latter role, it seems to me, tends to be denigrated for both men and women, and the former exaulted for both.

To my mind, at least, both roles remain necessary, and I don’t see any shame in raising a child and keeping a home; indeed, to the extent that these tasks don’t fill all one’s time, there’s an opportunity to fit in some creative stuff. Ideally, the break-down of the old gendered notions ought to have allowed for the opportunity for either partner to work, and the other not; though I realize that the economics is against this - for most, it generally requires two incomes just to make do. I’d love to have the opportunity to not work myself, but sadly events have conspired otherwise - in order to keep up an upper-middle-class lifestyle, I must work, as my wife’s career was never remunerative enough to support us both whereas mine was and is.

There is a good point made about keeping one’s hand in the workforce out of self-defense against contingencies; myself, I’ve always been a bit of a risk-taker (though in this respect, admitedly I’m not the one taking the risk!). I’d hate to live my entire life defensively.

Oh yeah, I get that. Ever time I mention one of my friends is going back to work after maternity leave I get the “Honestly, I don’t know why they bother having babies if they’re going to pay someone else to raise them” speech. In my mother’s world, it is immoral and selfish to work if you have children - your place is at home where they can have access to you 24/7 if they need it.

I caanot imagine depending on another person for my financial life. People die or cheat or leave. Things change. If I haven’t worked in years I have no way of supporting myself.

One reason that my wife has been content (I think) to stay at home the past few years is that when she was working and our daughter was in daycare, she felt horrible about herself, that she ought to be at home taking care of the baby instead of entrusting that to a stranger’s hands.

Studies have shown that kids raised in a daycare situation vs at home have better social skills and are easier at making friends and such because they’ve been exposed to their peers from a young age. (Cite 1, but there are many out there). Some studies (though not all) also show that the children preform better on testing and are more advanced entering preschool because most decent daycares are structured: now you play with blocks, now you learn to share, now you learn to draw and identify colors. Staying at home it’s quite easy to not have a game plan every single day unlike a professional caregiver does. You can always throw that back in your mom’s face anytime she brings it up ;).

Uh… Middle-class woman under 30 and without kids, checking in. Been doing the homemaker thing for a year now, and have yet to have a boring day. Looking back at it, both my mother and my grandmother have been college-educated homemakers… wonder if it runs in the family.

What to do with ones’ time? Garden. Read. Hike. Make things and sell them. Write that novel you’ve always wanted to. Take classes through local museums/community centers/etc/etc. Join a few clubs. Volunteer.

Can I ask why? Are you and hubby unusually wealthy? Is it hard to find work in your field? Is it a temporary situation? If you’re not very wealthy, why wouldn’t you work (if you have a field willing to accept you) so that you could both retire earlier?

Why would anyone marry a cost center when there are so many profit centers to pick from?

This was my thinking in college back in the 70s and still is today. It certainly was the thought going through many (most?) of the ladies’ heads at the time. Equality of the sexes cuts both ways.

I’m proud of my wife’s career & her accomplishments. Over our 25 years together I think the total income split is about 55% me & 45% her, but it has certainly been skewed strongly the other way for some of those years. Not an issue.

The only thing I regret is that neither of us achieved our goals and as a result we both are working harder & longer than planned.

Underline mine: since when are those two part of the definition of “homemaker”? They’re “working at home” but not housework, and they are intended to be sources of income.

My maternal grandmother worked out of the house for over 50 years, but in all that time she never defined herself as a “housewife”: she was a seamstress. Once she stopped making dresses for strangers, she’d sometimes sigh “yeah, since I’ve become a housewife [blah blah]”; she loves making or fixing clothes because it takes her back to her professional days. She’s 96.

This is the same situation with me and my husband. It took him a while to get used to it. His brain said it was silly but his emotions hadn’t quite caught up. I do all the financial stuff in our household (because he lives away to work) and after some conversations about the money thing realised that it was very important to him to be supporting the family financially. So I put all the bills to go from his bank account, so HE pays the bills! Of course this leaves him a tiny amount of free cash, about enough for a week’s living. So then I put the other three weeks worth back into his bank account, and the rest of my money pays for all the groceries, holidays and cash stuff. He KNOWS all this, but somehow it makes him feel better, so why not? We all arrange our lives to make them feel better. We also agree that although we get paid into different accounts (no joint accounts in Japan) there is no “your” and “my” money but only family money in reality.

He would hate not to work. I would like to work slightly less than I am actually doing right now, truth be told, but I’m not daring to complain as I’m self employed and it could all disappear tomorrow and leave us in deep shit. So I will work as much as I can for as long as I can. He has to retire from his main career at 55 and we have always known he will be on a much reduced salary and at that point I would have to pick up the slack for the family income. We are both happy that this has happened before we needed it to.

He’s always been happy for me to do what I want, which is an enlightened attitude here in Japan where many women quit work the second they get married, or failing that the second the sperm hits the egg. His mother always worked full time all her life so he thinks it’s normal. I don’t get shit from the inlaws for working either which is refreshing here, in fact I’m respected for working. I was very, very grateful though that I was free to choose to stay home with our kids when they were born. That meant a lot to me and I enjoyed it but was very very glad to get back to slightly more interesting conversations than “Take your hand out of your pants and stop yanking your brother’s ears.”

My wife is extremely intelligent, very motivated and makes a ton of jing. So it never occurred to me to be bothered at all about her working.

As it turns out, I’m alot better at the kid raising thing than she is, so that has been my role for the last few years and while looking forward to getting back in the game, I’ve really enjoyed raising 3 confident, competitive, kind young women.

We’re comfortable, but not wealthy by any means; it is difficult to find work in my field. And I do work. Just inside the home.

It’s not the definition of “Homemaker”. It’s just a response to a person asking what one would do with ones’ time. Unless you’ve got a rather large (or broken down) house/yard, I don’t see how house chores could take up all of your time.

I’m actually the primary breadwinner in our family, so my not working would never be an option. We could survive solely on my income if needed, we couldn’t survive on his (well, we could but we’d be eating a lot of Ramen.) When you stay at home you’re 100% financially dependant on your spouse/partner. To me, that’s an absolutely horrifying thought. I didn’t put myself through college and law school to become someone else’s dependant.

Female, 30, weighing in for the second time in this thread.

About working: I went to grad school for something I thought I was interested in, and got a high-paying job in industry. I am bored to death by the work and hate my job with a vengeance. Without going back to school, which I really don’t want to do, there is no “career” open to me that I would enjoy more than staying home with the kids–which I enjoy enormously. I LOVE to be home, to take care of the house, to take care of people, and to pursue my own creative interests. Any job I would take that I would be “okay” with (and I’m thinking things like receptionist, bank teller) would probably just cover the cost of having a couple kids in a good preschool during the time I’d be working. Which leads me to–

My own experience with being the child of a woman who worked full-time. In my experience, I loved my preschool and I was perfectly happy when being cared for in someone else’s home, with a couple of other kids to play with. I despised every “daycare” I was ever put in, and observed that the other children in these centers were ill-tempered, ill-behaved, and generally unhappy. They were WAY less pleasant than, say, my schoolmates. Unfortunately kids age out of preschool. Paying a neighbor to watch the kid is, therefore, the only good choice for school-aged children, IMO.

There were also all the bad feelings about being a “problem” until I was old enough to stay home alone. How to manage the time in the morning before I went to school, how to manage the time after school, how to manage holidays and summer vacation and snow days… it was one ongoing gigantic stressful problem.

Also, my mother hated HER job and just worked for the money (and we were definitely upper-middle-class) and because of some misguided feminist ideals. She was stressed and angry in the evenings, stressed and angry on the weekends, stressed and angry on the holidays. I just don’t understand why she did it.

So, all that feeds into my feeling that once I have kids, from the time they’re born till the time they are old enough to legally be home alone, I would feel pretty weird choosing to work rather than be at home. I’m prepared to find that I want to do something outside the house once they’re in school, in which case I’d find an in-home care option for looking after them–but if I’m comfortable staying at home, I’ll do that.

Should we end up in a financial situation where I have to work and put the kids in a daycare center, I will feel very guilty about it.

Pfftt.
I met my wife aboard a warship. She used to guard ‘Special Weapons’ and is the Queen Mistress of in-hull shotgun close combat.

Worried or offended that she works?! What an amusing concept! Frankly, she’s much better off for having a job - she’d go insane as a stay-at-home type. Simply not her bag.

Ahh, hard to find work in your field. That’s a different story. It would strike me as odd if you were, say, a pharmacist who stayed at home (at least around here, there’s a high demand for pharmacists).

ETA: Sattua, if you knew your mother hated to work, why did you bother going to grad school and raking up loans and such? Why not just have gone and been a bankteller out of high school? How does your husband feel about you staying at home - does he wish you worked? Or worked part time? Or wish you didn’t hate your previous job? Or hope you go back when the kids are older?

Not to speak for Waxwinged, but I’m sure she is immensely relieved at your approval.

You actually are speaking for her, which is terribly cute.

Also in my previous statement I said this:

So it was option #2.

Would never occur to me. I would have zero guilt supporting a family, but I’m also going to say that I prefer to be in a double-income situation because I think it’s safer economically these days. I think I would just be a little…taken aback if my husband decided he wanted to quit and take care of the children, especially since I’ve always had the type of career that necessitated staying in godawful expensive locales. My mind would automatically start racing to saving for college, saving for retirement, saving for extended unemployment in case I lost my job.

My mom has had a successful career in sales (makes less money than my dad but still could support us independently if necessary) and my sister and I were both brought up to be economically independent, what with there only being approximately 3 or 4 career paths my parents approved of for us.

Personally, I honestly can’t see myself ever giving up my economic independence but I also say that knowing that I’m from a culture where my mom and dad fully expect to be heavily involved in the daily parenting of any kids I or my sister produce (very much a pseudo-extended family), which perhaps makes it much easier on me to say that I would never give up my job and also why I would be pissed as hell if my husband ever quit his. My parents were raised by older relatives even in a time when they both had SAHMs and I have yet to hear any resentment from either of them about it. This is mostly because at that time being a SAHM meant you worked without stop from 4 am to 9 pm, since there was no electricity and nothing was mechanized.

It’s so nice to categorize people and their situations: it must make the world that much easier to understand. Bra-voh, madame.