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

[conuly]

LW, if you feel so strongly that the kids need a stay-at-home parent, there's nothing stopping *you* from quitting your job.

[oursin]

This is probably my g-g-generation, but good heavens, they're 8 and 12! - I don't think I was ever literally a latch-key kid, because my mother (when my little brother was old enough to go to school himself) got a job in a school with school-friendly hours, but it was certainly A Thing in those days then. But at that age, do they need Mommy hanging over them all the time? They might reasonably manage not to fall into the fire or put beans up their noses if left to their own devices.

[minoanmiss]

thank goodness Lincoln freed the slaves.

I really want to know what " rather insensitive at the time" refers to. I have guesses, each more dire than the last.

It may be because this LW pisses me off from the getgo but I can't believe a grown man needs to be told "childcare options exist in the afternoon especially for people with some money to apply to the problem". His only acceptable modes seem to be "wife works full time" and "wife is a full time SAHM with no outside employment." I'm not sure I'd recommend this in this particular case, but the wife could change her hours to be home when the girls get home, as just one of many many examples of other possibilities. Plus, you know, the different kinds of paid childcare. I'm not sure if it's possible to really be this unimaginative or if he has already discarded every other idea as unworthy. I hope not.

(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, since she's married t someone who's so willing to jerk her around like this. There's only one mention of what the wife wants and absolutely none of any suggestions she's made.)

(Also, I was a latchkey kid with an obsession with fire when I was 8, and I never burned the house down. But different kids have different needs.)

[melannen]

LW, the correct thing to do in this situation is go to your wife and admit to her that a year ago, you were wrong. That you were deeply undervaluing the work she had done as a stay-at-home parent, that you had to see to understand, and that was your fault, and you're deeply thankful both for all the things she did when she was staying home, and that she forgave you for being such an ass about getting her a job.

Then you need to work together, listening to her and understanding she has expertise in this that you don't, to figure out what you can do with that extra money to make things better for you and your daughters as a two-working-parent family.

[ambyr]

“Last, we are spending our family time just doing chores and catching up on things that used to be done during the week.”

“Things that used to be done” is quite a use of passive voice, there. Things your wife used to do, LW. I wonder if at least some of her resistance to SAH motherhood is her awareness that her husband’s expectation is that if she stays at home, 100% of domestic chores happen invisibly, without his contributions.

[resonant]

LW is playing a board game in which he (I'm assuming 'he' is accurate) distributes resources that belong to him, such as money, living space, and his wife's time. What's his is his and what's hers is his too.

[petrea_mitchell]

Another latchkey kid here. 8 and 12 seems plenty old enough to be left alone and find ways to amuse themselves in the afternoons.

I'm puzzled by how there's no mention of the kids' social life-- do they not have the ability to see their friends outside of structured activities?

Doing chores together seems like not too bad a use of family time. I guess LW used to think of it as their fun time, and now it's not?

[lassarina]

I was a latchkey kid at 13 and responsible for neighborhood children younger than myself on a regular basis (I turned 13 in the mid-90s), so this seems entirely fine as a situation to me. LW needs to "remove head from sphincter, then" be a partner/parent!

[shanaqui]

Possibly this is my "child of a financially abusive parent" pinging too sensitively, but... LW, how do you feel about your wife's likely increased independence? Her desire to decide how her own money is spent? I find it interesting that your financial position has so quickly mended that she just just go back to being a stay-at-home mom all of a sudden, now she has a job she values...

And wouldn't it be sooo much nicer if she would just do all those icky chores for you?

[green_grrl]

Funny, the kids survived just fine alone when they were 7 and 11, but now it’s SO CRITICAL that wife leave paid work and return to her rightful house elf SAHM position.

[mirlacca]

Puppetmaster much? He bullies his wife into going to work, and now that HE thinks it's inconvenient (where was all this concern when they were both working?), she's supposed to stop because HE wants her to?

Pffft.

[ethelmay]

Dissenting slightly on the childcare issue only: I had kids four years apart in age, and at twelve and eight I would never have left them home alone for that long at all, let alone routinely. A twelve-year-old on her own, yes, occasionally. Not every day for three hours, and not being expected to mind a younger sibling for fifteen or so hours a week (and full time in summer, no way). It's not that they couldn't manage most of the tasks involved individually and occasionally, but to do so consistently, week in and week out, well, that's a job, and not one a twelve-year-old should have to do if it isn't an emergency. (And a lot of kids just wouldn't be mature enough for even one occasion. I don't believe my parents would have trusted my four-years-older brother to babysit me for an afternoon when he was twelve. He would have just said pffft, she'll be fine, and taken off to do something else.)

In addition, in some states it wouldn't even be legal. In mine (just checked), there's no specific age limit, but there are DSHS guidelines that say children between nine and twelve can be left alone for less than two hours, and children who are 13 or older can be left alone and babysit.