For many men, having a SAH wife is an ego thing. They drive BMWs or Porsches, they live in a house far bigger than two people need, and their wives play tennis all day.
Translation: they’re such good providers that their wives don’t NEED to work.
Maybe they want to “get back to the good old days” because they witnessed first-hand marriages and families that really suffered when both spouses worked. Obviously, many dual-income families do just fine, but I know that a lot of the impetus I have to stay home with my children is the fact that I was put in daycare at 6 weeks old and was in the hands of caretakers or pretty much on my own after that. My mother is extremely disappointed with the fact that I stay home with my kids now, which I can understand, because I am rejecting some of the values I was brought up with. I want my family to work differently than what I had growing up and my husband and I are willing to risk some of the financial security in order to achieve that. Why is it so hard to imagine that couples that choose to have a spouse stay home are not entering into it blindly and naively, but that they’re making the best choice for their family, even if it means less financial security? It’s condescending to imply that this choice is made just to live out some Leave it to Beaver fantasy, and not because it’s what a couple thinks is the best way to operate their family (whether there are kids or not).
Yeah, this is where I have to disagree with Foxy. My MIL is going through this now–she’s been a SAHM for 25 years, and just got divorced last year. She doesn’t have the self-esteem to do what she was doing before she had kids (hair stylist) so she’s going back to school. Even with a job and alimony, things are tight, and nothing like the lifestyle she had before. She pretty much went from ‘doctor’s wife and mother of three’ to ‘middle-aged minimum wage worker’ in the space of a year.
heh, shoe fits and I’m wearing it too! 
During my 20 yr marriage I have worked and gone to school(BS), and worked again.Stayed at home with babies and kids and then went back to school, refocused career (MPA)and went to work with kids in school. Got downnsized and have been batting 0 since then to get back in the swing of a career.
I could stay at home, my spouse earns enough to take care of every expense, including retirement, college, vacation, new cars and toys. I otoh am sick of sending out resumes that are ignored & want to go back to school, (using my unemployment bennies) for a healthcare"tech" degree. Just to get a fricking job in Michigan. yes I want to work. He is not so supportive, fears he will have to pick up the slack at home which will interfere with his job and his free time (same story different decade)
I should just suck it up and resign myself to a life scheduled with pilates classes, starbucks, the mall and beauty salon.
but I can’t…and I won’t, the future is too uncertain and I want to set a good examples for my daughters too.
Have to? No. Find it much easier and more pleasant? Absolutely. 80 hour weeks week after week wear on people, and fast track jobs are all about being able to do more than all the other people you are competing with.
If I remember the book Richistan correctly (and it’s a fun read, quite recommended), the new preferred term for what used to be a “butler” is “personal lifestyle manager.” The butler used to serve as personal aide and supervisor of house staff; because the responsibilities of today’s equivalent have expanded so much, and because many of today’s wealthy are weirdly skittish about the traditional associations of their class, the term “butler” has fallen out of favor. There are even colleges where people can learn how to become “personal lifestyle managers.” Apparently there’s such a shortage of qualified people, even a halfway decent one can write his or her own ticket.
The personal lifestyle manager did it! Nah, doesn’t have the same ring.
In many places, yes, absolutely. Children are often seen as essential as well. The more mouths to feed, the more dependent you are on the firm. It is much more difficult for you to up and leave when your only dependent is yourself.
It is also critical to be perceived as a stable, family man.
Women with high social aspirations and men with high career aspirations often team up to achieve these goals. I work in this kind of environment, so I am reasonably familiar with it.
It’s a lot of work, but it’s work everybody has to do, working or not. (Well, not me, but that’s because I live in a shithole and am too lazy to get it cleaned up until company is on its way.)
Hell, one day I hope Himself will finally make it big so he can support me the way I’ve been supporting him. Granted, he’s been working 18 hour days, but he hasn’t been making much money off it and so I’ve fed and clothed and etc. him. When he gets rich, I expect bonbons. And a naked man with a palm frond to peel my grapes. Shit, would you work if you didn’t have to?
My mother, who was trained as a teacher, wanted to work. Due to a series of strategically-lousy decisions, to the state of the work market in her location and time, etc etc, she held her last paying teaching job before I was born. She held other teaching jobs, but always volunteer ones (sunday school, women’s groups).
Now let’s imagine that she’d been able to find jobs and that her medical history had remained the same as it’s been…
Well, instead of dropping all her training on Pedagomagy on the three of us, she would have been able to do it on a fresh batch of 40 unsuspecting children every year. That might have made her less uptight at home.
Instead of having to shop for groceries and do most of the cooking because “Mom is sick and needs help” or because “Mom is at Goodwill,” I’d have had to do it because “Mom is sick and needs help” or because “Mom is tired.” Basically, I don’t expect that the amount of housework us kids did would have changed much either way.
The job better be tenured, which means a school different from the one we went to. So we wouldn’t have had her as a teacher, no conflicts there. I say the job should be tenured because of the enormous amount of sick time she would have had to take, culminating in that year she spent bedridden when I was in 11th and 12th grades.
Are you really, really, really sure that a teacher who would have been off sick at least a month every year would be a better contribution to Society In General than a housewife who missed Goodwill meetings for a month every year? Cos I’m not sure it would have - even if it might have gotten her out of our hair somewhat.
So, if the stay-at-home spouse is contributing the services of a butler/housekeeper/house manager, then perhaps post-divorce he or she should not expect to live a life any more comfortable or extravagant than that of a butler/housekeeper/house manager.
I agree that finding yourself without marketable skills is not a position you want to be in. But the thing is, “the good old days” weren’t all that bad in many ways. Life is easier when you have one spouse manage the household, while the other spouse brings home the bacon. The current model of “both spouses work at least 40 hours a week outside the home” isn’t exactly a bowl of cherries. It seems like there has to be a middle path between “married women don’t work outside the home” and “six-week-old babies get put in full-time daycare as a matter of course.”
Not if the butler/lifestyle manager/housekeeper agreed to forgo a salary in order to have 50% ownership in the firm. They both invest all their time and energy into one career: the employed spouse does the actual career, and the other spouse provides the support needed to make that possible, especially in the early years when the hours are truly mind-boggling and the pay is mediocre. The support spouse forgoes pursing their own career, because the couple together decides is a higher payout strategy to pursue one career 100% than to pursue 2 careers 75% (and if one spouse has a much higher earning potential, this may be the case).
I think that’s the path that couples are trying to find now. I’m old enough to have seen both extremes now - I grew up in an era when mothers routinely stayed home with the kids and there were still men around who said things like, “No wife of mine is going to work,” I saw the pendulum swing to the other extreme where all women were expected to work, kids or no, and now we’re in a situation where people are realizing neither system was perfect.
Another point to add to this discussion which I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet; women still do the lion’s share of the housework, whether they work or not. A man’s choice is work or jail, but a woman’s choice is work and do housework (or get a housecleaner), or just do housework. And some women, surprisingly enough, are choosing just do housework. Hmmm.
There is, but like being a SAHS or a WOHS, it isn’t a choice everyone makes. Life is full of compromises, and since everyone has different values, everyone ends up making different compromises.
If you want to make partner (to use Manda JO’s example) you don’t get the option of working a 30 hour week. You work a 60 hour week - or more. You are available ALL the time. If you choose to have children, this will mean that you need a support system in place to help with the children - you can’t stay home when they are sick, it isn’t an option to do so AND make partner - because there are a dozen other people wanting that spot who don’t stay home when their kids are sick. So your wife does, or you have a nanny, or your mother does. If your desire is to make partner - and your spouse is supportive - this is an acceptable trade off to all of you.
For years, I’ve had the ‘pin money’ career - and Brainiac4 has had the ladder driven, get promoted, make lots of money career. That means I get most of the dentist appointments, most of the driving to gymnastics, most of the staying home so that the deck guy can come out and bid a deck. His career hasn’t gotten so demanding that I’ve had to stop working - but its getting close. Its hard for me to work a serious job when he needs to fly out of town on three days notice - and I’ve purposely chosen not to pursue promotions because we can’t have two people with serious jobs. (I still have job most people would consider serious).
Without kids, it might be possible for both of us to be ambitious, but it would be difficult to maintain a relationship if we both had a lot of travel, long hours, meetings at 11pm (those are mine, not his - usually). With kids, it isn’t possible unless we are willing to make the kids a lower priority for us - we aren’t.
I’m about as feminist as they come, and I say “More power to 'em!”
The whole point of the feminist movement was to allow women the freedom to make decisions about their lives. If a woman want to raise a passle of kids, work , both, or just stay-at-home, let her eat cake!
I agree with you. And there’s nothing wrong if a couple decides that one career has to take higher priority. Not everyone needs to take the middle path, I just wish it were easier/more financially viable for those of us who want it.
My wife saw the article on CNN and mentioned it to me. I told her that we could use a Stay-at-Home-Wife for us as well! Someone to handle the shopping, cooking, cleaning, & errands - while the two of us worked and took care of the kids. We were on our way to adding one to our household when the negotiations broke down.
I said that we should get a new model SAHW, since that would provide more years of energy and enthusiasm. My wife somehow misinterpeted that to mean that I wanted to add a 22 year old hottie to my harem.
Anyone have room on their couch? 
Hear, hear!
I was raised in the women-must-work era, and erroneously believed that’s what feminism meant until very recently.
I get it now, what feminism is about, and passionately, gut-wrenchingly believe that all people should have the freedom to make choices that suit their own personal finances, goals, families, and partnerships without being condemned for not aspiring to the power suit Working Girl ideal.
I regret some of the choices I made when I was trying to live up to the OP’s idea of what a woman should do with her life that now prevent me from doing what would truly make me and my family happy. It makes me sad and angry that there are people out there who still feel so passionately about forcing women into one and only one mold that they say some of the judgmental and hurtful things in the OP. I so badly want my daughter to follow her dreams, no matter what they are, without the weight of even the perception that she’s doing something wrong or shameful.
You should have made it clear that your proposed 22-year-old SAHW could be either male or female, and leave the choice up to your wife. In a marriage, one party can’t make all the decisions, so you decide on the age and she decides on the gender!