Foo - How did you end up as/with a stay at home spouse?

I've always wondered exactly how that happens. MRS degrees (or the male equivalent) excluded, how do people end up as the stay at home person? Everybody in my extended family shy of 60+ years old works, so I can't really relate. I've recently noticed that a lot of my co-workers (mostly engineers) have stay at home wives (only one female engineer here, her husband works). I've got them figured out here as well though: all of these guys are financially set to retire, but just can't sit still that long, whereas their wives are of calmer personalities, worked their 30-40 years, and are happily retired. Several of these guys have "failed at trying to be retired" at least once.
I'm referring more to the 20-50 year old people of either gender who are unemployed by choice, and not because they are caring for others (kids/elderly relatives).
I can't imagine that many people grow up thinking "I'm going to marry a him/her and stay at home cleaning our house and cooking food all day", but it seems to happen that way.
Thinking about it more, most of the people I know (but not well enough to ask about this) in that situation have a spouse that has a huge income (a couple doctors, a CEO, etc). On the other hand, they weren't always that way. Do you just sit down one day and say "It isn't worth the income, I'm just going to stay at home from now on"?

Discuss.

Edit: I'm going to be out for a couple hours, so to throw this in up front, I'm not trying to be insulting to anyone, I'm just curious.

If my fiancee keeps rising through the ranks at her company, I may have the opportunity to make the "It isn't worth it any more" decision.
Would I quit working and just stay at home? Nah... I can't trust myself to keep from my previous bad habits if left to that situation. Besides, I like the consumer independence that having "my own money" gives me. Even if the answer was always yes, I don't want to be the person asking if they can buy stuff at the bike shop.
Would I keep working a stressful engineering job? Nah. I'm sure I can find something less mentally taxing.

I guess I'm one of those guys whose wives COULD stay home. Instead, she works as hard if not harder then I do by running our office. We are both pretty type A, and can't imagine retirement. We will likely work till were dead!

Lost my job back in '01 I think. Company went bankrupt. Was unable to find work, then we found that my wife was pregnant. Since she was working, I stayed home. It's worked out pretty well.

I think it's lots of incremental effects. If one spouse makes a decent nut and there are kids, the tax hit on marginal income and the further hit from childcare expenses can put a pretty substantial negative incentive on a second working spouse. And that's before the added stress of having to balance the schedules of two jobs (deadlines, etc). Studies have shown that having a spouse at home increases the success rate of the working spouse.

Lost my job back in '01 I think. Company went bankrupt. Was unable to find work, then we found that my wife was pregnant. Since she was working, I stayed home. It's worked out pretty well.

I did that for our first, I was a stay at home dad for 7 years! Its was great! :thumb: BTW, when I retired due to injury my wife and I decided she should stay home with me, she left her job a few years after I retired, its been eight years for me and six for her, its pretty nice! :thumb:

The wife quit working to have the kids and never went back.

By the time we have kids my job will be more lucrative than my wife, but personality wise I would be a better at home parent than her.

A few at work gave up after the finances worked out close to negative (make 55 k a year pay 13k x 3 kids for daycare + driving to work every day + babysitters etc) not to mention the idea of your kids spending more time with others than yourself.

A friend of mine has a stay-at-home husband. They do not have any children. She is an executive at her company and works long hours during the week. They decided it was more useful if he stayed home and maintained the house, cooked, did laundry, etc., rather than having him work and them hiring a housekeeper.

A friend of mine has a stay-at-home husband. They do not have any children. She is an executive at her company and works long hours during the week. They decided it was more useful if he stayed home and maintained the house, cooked, did laundry, etc., rather than having him work and them hiring a housekeeper.That's the type of woman I need to find. Where do single women like that hang out in their free time?

We were both computer programmers making about the same amount. When she was pregnant with our first, she swore every time she scooted up to the desk to type, the baby would push her away. Baby obviously didn't want her to work. I am not going to argue with either an unborn child or a pregnant woman.

Seriously, it was a personal decision about how we wanted to raise our kids.

a friend, who's a former mod here, should chime in.

My wife was an office worker when we first met. After we got married, she quit her job, we bought some raw land and worked together like pioneers clearing the land and building our home. Now she enjoys tending the home and garden and never needs to work in an office again, while I get personal satisfaction running the small business I started 30 years ago.

We're really old fashioned Americans.

I enjoy my husbandly duty of being the breadwinner,
while my wife revels in taking care of our homelife.:)

My wife said since day one of our marriage if someone was going to stay home it would be me instead of her. She got her degree and planned on using it. 3 months after our first was born, she had to go back to teaching. She had 2 months to finish up before summer break. Everyday of the 2 months that she went back to work she cried and begged me to find a way for her to stay home. I moved jobs within the company, moved to a St. Louis with the company, got a raise and made a lot of sacraficies. But she has not worked in the last 10 years. Wait, she takes care of the house, homeschools the kids, budget and finance, and puts up with me so she works pretty hard. I would say she doesn't make much but I get about 5-10$/wk and she get the rest so I guess she has it pretty good. It hasn't been easy but always worth it. I believe the kids should be raised by the parents and not a gov. organization.

It was easy for my ex: she just refused to work.

My wife was an office worker when we first met. After we got married, she quit her job, we bought some raw land and worked together like pioneers clearing the land and building our home. Now she enjoys tending the home and garden and never needs to work in an office again, while I get personal satisfaction running the small business I started 30 years ago.

We're really old fashioned Americans.

I enjoy my husbandly duty of being the breadwinner,
while my wife revels in taking care of our homelife.:)

very cool :thumb:

I think it's lots of incremental effects. If one spouse makes a decent nut and there are kids, the tax hit on marginal income and the further hit from childcare expenses can put a pretty substantial negative incentive on a second working spouse. And that's before the added stress of having to balance the schedules of two jobs (deadlines, etc). Studies have shown that having a spouse at home increases the success rate of the working spouse.

I figured it would be lots of incremental things. I just can't picture that moment when you decide, I'm going to quit my job next week, or whatever. On the other hand, I didn't picture the "I'm graduating and am not going to have summer vacation/internship/Christmas Break any more" part very well either. It does make sense that having one stay at home spouse helps the one with the day job simply because there is less stress in scheduling and such. I noticed a change in my stress level when I had to change from 4 10's to 5 8's at work. Suddenly my open week day to see places that close before I get home from work vanished and meant I had to be home on Saturdays.


A friend of mine has a stay-at-home husband. They do not have any children. She is an executive at her company and works long hours during the week. They decided it was more useful if he stayed home and maintained the house, cooked, did laundry, etc., rather than having him work and them hiring a housekeeper.



My wife was an office worker when we first met. After we got married, she quit her job, we bought some raw land and worked together like pioneers clearing the land and building our home. Now she enjoys tending the home and garden and never needs to work in an office again, while I get personal satisfaction running the small business I started 30 years ago.

We're really old fashioned Americans.

I enjoy my husbandly duty of being the breadwinner,
while my wife revels in taking care of our homelife.:)

That's pretty cool, and one of the only examples in this thread that didn't involve raising kids. I know two people who did that in an effort to one day retire on their own land in a house they built, but they certainly haven't gone nearly as far with it as you.

My wife is a stay at home mom and when the kid(s) go to school she will become a stay-at-home homemaker. OUR choice, based upon our beliefs. And yes, she did grow up dreaming of being a mom.

For both of us it is about valuing quality of life over quantity of stuff.

Be careful here, this could easily go P&R and get hannah hooks into it. :)

I'm referring more to the 20-50 year old people of either gender who are unemployed by choice, and not because they are caring for others (kids/elderly relatives).


I think people are having a really hard time with this part of my question^^
I understand the part about raising kids. Someday if I have kids either my then wife or I will probably stay home to raise them. It's the ones not raising kids/toking care of elderly parents, etc that I'm curious about.

Be careful here, this could easily go P&R and get hannah hooks into it. :)
Posting this in Foo rather than P&R was no accident. Things are more....pleasant here.

I handcuffed her to the bed post. Now she stays at home. :innocent:

Mr Coffeecake will end up staying home with the kids, as I'll probably be making more $ than he is in a couple years. His personality is also more suited to it. Unless our province/country comes through with universal childcare, in which case we'll dump the kiddies off and get some relief at work.

Without kids, I might take some time off, but I wouldn't be at home - I'd be doing another degree. Sometimes I think it would be nice to lie around all day, and make some money off my paintings, but I hate doing housework and will procrastinate to the end. So I guess I'm not the right person to answer your question.

That's pretty cool, and one of the only examples in this thread that didn't involve raising kids. I know two people who did that in an effort to one day retire on their own land in a house they built, but they certainly haven't gone nearly as far with it as you.

That's because I was 50 and my wife was 48 when we got married... ;)

We built a very small home and paid cash for everything so as to enjoy living completely debt free.

There are two approaches to retirement, the usual one that everyone does is to accumulate money in stocks, CD's, or 401K retirement accounts and the like... while another little used out of the box alternative is to own all of your assets outright and have no debts. We chose the latter, and it works like a charm. Since I'm self employed, I've been paying into Social Security at double the employee rate for over 40 years. And yet even the minimum payout will cover all of our property taxes, utilities, and food costs. :)

That's because I was 50 and my wife was 48 when we got married... ;)

We built a very small home and paid cash for everything so as to enjoy living completely debt free.

There are two approaches to retirement, the usual one that everyone does is to accumulate money in stocks, CD's, or 401K retirement accounts and the like... while another little used out of the box alternative is to own all of your assets outright and have no debts. We chose the latter, and it works like a charm. Since I'm self employed, I've been paying into Social Security at double the employee rate for over 40 years. And yet even the minimum payout will cover all of our property taxes, utilities, and food costs. :)

That's an interesting point you make there. I guess I always assumed people did both, got rid of all of their debt and had a retirement account of sorts. I guess that will be another thread, unless people want to start adding that info here.

It depends on economics. My wife worked as an exec secretary, after we had kids once you added up the day care it did not make sense for her to work rather than stay home taking care of the kids. There was just not enough take home after expenses to justify it. Unfortunately she got used to the not working part and once the kids were in school she still preferred to stay home. Now that wife is an ex-wife.

Like a lot of others in here, it was a matter of economics. We both worked until the first was born, and put up with about 6 weeks of child care, which was expensive and just didn't fit our model of parenting. So, we had a discussion, and determined that I'd stay at work (new grad degree, on the upwardly mobile path, and all that) and she'd stay at home (no grad degree, potential for a job downgrade, and all that). That worked very, very well- sure, we weren't totally flush, but we didn't starve, for sure. She continued to stay home till the kids were in high school.

My wife basically stopped working after our first child (cut back to PRN 12hrs/wk) and remained off until our second was 2 years of age. Sept/2002- Jan/2007... She now works FT...if she didn't I probably wouldn't be married to her today.

Ms. MillCreek 2.0 decided to quit her job and stay home while she looked for a new job. After two years of not looking for a job and demonstrating increasing dependence on alcohol, I decided to stop enabling her behavior and divorced her. I figure that I need my SO to do at least two out of the three: work, ****, or keep up the house. If you are batting 0 for 3, time to go!

As for the SINKs - single income no kids - I bet a lot started out on the single income path because of kids and then the stay at home spouse built a life in the community (e.g., volunteering) such that as the kids moved on, they were already occupied doing stuff.

Then there are the kept men/women. I'd like to be a kept man, but no one wanted me.

I think it's lots of incremental effects. If one spouse makes a decent nut and there are kids, the tax hit on marginal income and the further hit from childcare expenses can put a pretty substantial negative incentive on a second working spouse. And that's before the added stress of having to balance the schedules of two jobs (deadlines, etc). Studies have shown that having a spouse at home increases the success rate of the working spouse.

That has certainly been true in our case. Wife quitting work to stay at home and take care of our children meant our income was cut in half. We prepared for it by getting completely out of debt except for our modest house payment but half is still half. Since those lean times I have been able to focus on work while knowing my children were in good hands and am at the point where I now make almost double what the both of us would have made if we had continued our jobs at the time.

I think people are having a really hard time with this part of my question^^
I understand the part about raising kids. Someday if I have kids either my then wife or I will probably stay home to raise them. It's the ones not raising kids/toking care of elderly parents, etc that I'm curious about.

If I were to get married again, I wouldn't have a problem with my husband staying home. Having all the house maintenance (which is not my favorite thing to do) and chores taken care of during the work week would leave more time for us to ride bikes on the weekend. :)

That's an interesting point you make there. I guess I always assumed people did both, got rid of all of their debt and had a retirement account of sorts. I guess that will be another thread, unless people want to start adding that info here.

That's true... but since I don't make enough money to do both, we chose good old fashioned American solvency. No mortgage, no vehicle payments, no credit card balances. It's suprizing how little money you actually need to enjoy a good life when you aren't shackled with the financial slavery of servicing debts.

As to the topic of a stay at home spouse...
Men generally do better at dealing with the outside world at large, while women excel at dealing with the inner personal world. Put them together and you can create a very formidable team, each with their division of labor which best matches their talents and abilities.

I'm perfectly happy to go to work and pay all the bills when I come home to a happy wife who tends a nice house with a beautiful vegatable garden fruit trees and grape vines. By working together as a team we have a better life... that neither of us could have ever acheived alone. :)

As to the topic of a stay at home spouse...
Extroverted people generally do better at dealing with the outside world at large, while introverted people excel at dealing with the inner personal world. Put them together and you can create an amusing sitcom plot.


fify

(oldpedalpusher actually wrote...)
"As to the topic of a stay at home spouse...
Men generally do better at dealing with the outside world at large, while women people excel at dealing with the inner personal world. Put them together and you can create a formidable team, each with their division of labor which best matches their talents and abilities."



fify

Please do not attribute quotes to me which I did not write. ;)

(oldpedalpusher actually wrote...)
"As to the topic of a stay at home spouse...
Men generally do better at dealing with the outside world at large, while women people excel at dealing with the inner personal world. Put them together and you can create a formidable team, each with their division of labor which best matches their talents and abilities."




Please do not attribute quotes to me which I did not write. ;)

Ummmm..... You might want to google "fify", and then go searching for your sense of humor. ;)

And seriously - your quote was much better after it was "fify-ied"

i chuckled at the fify joke.

My wife and I mutually agreed to allow her to stay home with the kids - we both felt it was best and we could (pretty much) afford it. 10 years later, she got bored and went looking for a friend...which she easily found. 3 years later, it happened again.

She's no longer my wife and no longer a SAHM.

Totally off topic, but Rad, we don't see/read enough of/from you. Of your marvelous stable - which one do you like riding the most? I'd say the Pinarello, but I'm vain and would show it off 24/7.

Ummmm..... You might want to google "fify", and then go searching for your sense of humor. ;)[quote]

So that's what it means? http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b90/compost_bin/lol-1.gif

[quote]And seriously - your quote was much better after it was "fify-ied"

Probably for you... but it doesn't hold true for us.
My wife is far more outgoing than I am.;)

If I were to get married again, I wouldn't have a problem with my husband staying home. Having all the house maintenance (which is not my favorite thing to do) and chores taken care of during the work week would leave more time for us to ride bikes on the weekend. :)

Hang on. I need a quick trip to Mexico and I'll meet you in Vegas. :love: