Pay Dirt: I Pressured My Wife To Work. Now I Regret It

[minoanmiss]

About a year ago, my wife and I had some hard discussions about her having to go to work to make ends meet financially. She had strong feelings about being a stay-at-home mom for our girls who are 8 and 12, while my position was from the financial side only. I was rather insensitive at the time in our discussions, which did not help matters.

Now, we have had a positive change in our finances, and she could leave her job and go back to being a stay-at-home mom, with our income staying where we need it to be to meet expenses and save for the future. However, she does not want to do that, as she has invested time and effort into finding a job, which I do understand. I feel that our girls need someone’s presence daily, before and after school, as well as during the summer months. Right now, I get the girls off to school in the morning, but there is no one home after school, and they will start having full days alone during the summer. Last, we are spending our family time just doing chores and catching up on things that used to be done during the week.

I want to be supportive but feel strongly that our girls need someone to be with them more than we are now. I would gladly do it, but I am unable due to being the primary earner. Is being concerned just showing how much of a caveman I am? How can we best work through this situation?

—Trying to Do the Right Thing




Dear Trying,

You’re not a caveman, but I think you fail to understand that people operate in two-income families with younger children all the time. Your girls are not being shortchanged because their mother decides to work. If anything, she is modeling something for your daughters that is important: that their mother’s agency and time matter just as much as yours.

If you feel like your daughters need someone to be with them more than you are, child care is an option. If your finances have changed for the better, you might also want to consider after-school programs that your girls might enjoy. There are plenty of summer programs your girls can participate in with other children, so they’re not spending the day alone during the summer either. In fact, they might prefer that over your wife staying home with them.

I would not pressure your wife to quit her job, though. It’s really her decision to make, and choosing to work or stay at home is not a minor thing. It’s life-altering, and your wife’s happiness matters here, too. You do not want her to resent you or your children because she feels like she has no choice in the matter.

Comments

[xenacryst]

Also I would recommend to his wife she keep a savings account of her own and throw a tithe of her take home in there

In my headcanon, this is actually one of the big reasons she doesn't want to quit - she's already doing this. I mean, she also doesn't want to be the unpaid domestic labor and actually enjoys her job and socializing with people who aren't financially (and probably emotionally) abusive dickwads, too.

Actually, in my headcanon, she eventually saves enough to take the kids and leave, leaving the cold leftovers on the counter, a pile of dirty dishes on the dining room table, and the windows open without the screens in so that he comes home to find a flock of crows picking over the remains of the pasta he said was only middling and couldn't she have made a better meal like she used to. He marries his secretary, whom he's been having an affair with anyway, but he turns out to be infertile after the episode with the crows and his unfortunate attempts to remedy the situation with his Tesla, so the secretary makes a getaway with the cute guy from the receptionist's desk and they raise a nice family, scraping together enough to let the kids go to circus summer camps. The former wife, meanwhile reconnected with her high school boyfriend, who turned out to be trans, and she and her queer polycule happily took them in, and the last we see of LW is him looking disapprovingly out his office window at the Pride parade in the streets below and not recognizing his former family as they dance in a myriad of rainbow colors at the head of the parade.

[minoanmiss]

OMG this is beautiful. Ngl, I just got a comment on another post that made me think "why do I bother" and then you gave me this and I am going to daydream of it for awhile. Bwee. BWEEEEEEEEEEEE.

[xenacryst]

Sometimes writing fixit fic is the only way I can get through reading these letters.

[cereta]

A++++