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Stay at Home Mother vs. Go to Work?
Ganluan
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My wife and I are hoping to start having kids very soon. One thing we have discussed a lot is whether she should go back to work (part or full time, depending) after her maternity leave is over. Personally, I think it'd be great if she could stay home, and it seems like she wants to as well. There are, of course, financial considerations, so I'm wondering if any of you out there have considered the same question.
I make significantly more than her (roughly 75% of our AGI) so I think it is possible, but would require some restructuring of our retirement plans and budgets. If she stays home, we save money on day care (which is INSANE it seems), the cost of her commuting to/from work (50 miles a day) and it put more of our income into a lower tax bracket.
However, she will lose her benefits (she can get them from my job, at least) but will not have access to her matched 401(k) anymore. I contribute to my own 401(k) already, and have been considering opening an IRA soon depending on how our budget shakes out.
Are there other considerations I'm missing? Any other advice? Obviously I want her to be happy with the decision as well, but want us to have a full idea of what it will involve.
I make significantly more than her (roughly 75% of our AGI) so I think it is possible, but would require some restructuring of our retirement plans and budgets. If she stays home, we save money on day care (which is INSANE it seems), the cost of her commuting to/from work (50 miles a day) and it put more of our income into a lower tax bracket.
However, she will lose her benefits (she can get them from my job, at least) but will not have access to her matched 401(k) anymore. I contribute to my own 401(k) already, and have been considering opening an IRA soon depending on how our budget shakes out.
Are there other considerations I'm missing? Any other advice? Obviously I want her to be happy with the decision as well, but want us to have a full idea of what it will involve.
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Ah of course, I forgot to mention that as well. She has experience as a medical assistant and has considered medical transcription. However, researching online seems to indicate a lot of jobs and opportunities related to that are a scam.
From what I've seen unemployment do to people, I say she takes the maternity leave and then goes back to work. Also, this is not really the time to go about making financial situations shakier.
As for career prospects, currently she works as a medical receptionist, but she doesn't have to do continuing education training or anything currently. If she was more involved in the medical aspect it could be risky, but as it is I think she'd be OK coming back to it later.
Similarly don't discount the benefits of child care. Your kid will get to interact with other kids every day, and will get used to you and your wife not always being there. Both are healthy things, I think.
As far as pride goes, child care is a job, it takes a huge amount of effort, and comes with its own set of challanges and victories.
It also amounts to a great deal of child-rearing being done by the child's peers, rather than by the mother.
Some people may or may not be uncomfortable with that.
Regardless of that, its like someone said before - work defines worth in Anglo society these days and if one has worked since graduation then not working for a long period may be hard, even when for a good reason. People will judge you even though being a stay at home mother is or was perfectly normal even a decade ago. On the other hand it is a status symbol in some circles to be a mother and not need to work. So go figure.
On a more general scale - looks to be a recession coming on so perhaps max out financial reserves while you can, just in case?
On another note - how the fuck do you young couples manage it? I earn a good salary, well, goodish, and I know people raising children on half what I earn and I have no idea how they do it. My brother and his wife have two children, a mortgage and one income but they somehow manage it.
While you get applause for planning, don't think for one moment than plans made pre-baby will stick.
On the other hand, that's not everyone's take. Money is a very important thing to have, and extra, even a bit extra, is not to be poo-pooed. Some people feel that having that little bit extra in their budget is important enough to warrant being away, and/or their job is an integral part of their identity.
It's cool either way, honestly, and your wife should probably pick the one that's right for her, especially if you guys can afford either option. I think the best thing to do is not make a decision right this very second, but see how things go when the time comes. Things happen, and you may not be in the same position financially that you are now. Job losses/gains, etc. Or heck, she might go stir-crazy through her maternity leave and, despite the best intention to stay home, find herself needing to return to work for her sanity. By the same token, she may go back and realize it's too soon for her to leave the baby alone, and decide she wants to stay.
Also, being that you put money into a 401K, aren't you supposed to be able to get your money back from that or cash out early or something? I'm not sure exactly how it works, but "whoops, you quit, money all gone now" doesn't really sound right.
Now, to be clear, the reason for not wanting to have kids in a daycare is not because they are treated poorly on purpose in most cases. Daycare is a low paying job, though, so it's mostly younger kids who have no intention of making a career of it and treat it just like you would a job at the local grocery store and who do not have the experience in dealing with children with just a few career daycare people to oversee them.
Plus, even with daycare, having small kids is a TON of work. If you can swing it financially, it would probably be to avoid the double-shifts problem, where mom or dad goes to work for 8 hours and then comes home for another stretch of childcare, housework, cooking, etc.. Much easier to just have one job and stick to it. If she gets stir-crazy, there are mother's morning out programs that will give her some time off.
I'm a bit biased, I suppose; my mom stayed home with my middle brother and me, but didn't with my youngest brother, and I really feel the youngest would've benefitted from not going to daycare.
If you can find child care you trust and can afford the obscene cost of good child care, go for it. We couldn't, so we had to adapt. It's doable, but there's definitely belt-tightening. Net-net we're losing a few bucks/hour by owning childcare responsibility, but we think it's worth it (1) since baby's under our supervision, we're each less worried when we're individually away from baby and (2) for the additional time we get with baby. I doubt we'll consider child care until pre-school starts.
One other thing to think about is what to do when daycare is closed or has a halfday. It seems about once a month my co-worker who has a child in daycare has to scramble to deal with a day or half-day that the daycare had (sometimes it's unscheduled, like there's no power/water at the daycare, or it might be a state/federal holiday that's not a holiday for the company). This usually comes in the form of unexpected unpaid vacation.
We did a cost:benefit and forcefield analysis about me returning to work after having had Lewie's sister. It turned out I'd be working full time for £17 per week - after taking out the cost of going to work, cost of daycare, cost of ready-meals cos I was working full time. I tried it for 3 months (in the UK, you have to go back to your job for 3 months after mat leave so as not to have to repay your mat pay), absolutely hated it - was tired all the time, hardly saw our daughter except at weekends, it was crap. I gave up work (couldn't do job share then) and stayed at home. I did some voluntary work, to keep me in touch with the world of work, and when i needed to return, was able to use that experience to help me get a job.
Since then, I've tried full time work twice - we all hate it, as we don't have the family life we like to have. We had lots of money, but very little time to spend it. We went to Orlando for 2 weeks, stayed in a house with its own pool, saw Mickey and stuff, but both sprogs said they'd rather go camping in Wales (their only experience of camping in Wales had been a weekend that rained all the time) if it meant I became job share again, cos they hated me not being there. There was no contest.
So here I am, still job share, with no plans to ever return to work full time. Its not really hurt my career, I earn £15,000 ish for 18 hours a week, I have a management job, work on strategy, train staff, and have fun. I have a life away from work, I can spend decent time with my children (eg PAX with Lewie), I support my ageing parents, see my friends, and generally have a great time. Lewie's dad works full time, and is very happy with me not doing - he likes the life we have, too.
My only regrets in all of this are that I had to go out to work when lewie was 2 1/2, his sister 4 1/2, and that I tried full-time working twice. Once should have been enough to learn we don't like it when I work full time.
You learn to prioritise your finances, your time, your efforts. Posh holidays don't matter, neither do posh cars. Designer clothes are just clothes with a label, you can make good quality, nourishing food much more cheaply than if you buy pre-prepared food. Children grow up so quickly, its a shame to miss out on spending time with them. it can be really satisfying watching your children grow and develop, knowing you're helping them mature. I wouldn't have missed it for anything at all.
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Most places that let you work at home require you to have a nanny or drop the kid off at daycare or something during the hours you are doing work. They don't want to pay you to watch your kid all day, and most employers rightly believe that you are going to be doing a half-assed job on your work if your baby is sitting in the room with you.
My wife's boss's nanny is conveniently always "on a day off" or something when she is on a conference call, and you can hear the kid screaming right into the speaker phone. I think her days may be numbered...
While I think it's good for the kids, it's also good for the kids to spend some time away from mom & dad. But also, it's good for Mom (or Dad) to spend time around other people. After I was grown, looking back I realized that my mom was, in many ways, socially stunted from being a stay-at-home mom. She went back to work after both my sister and I were in high school, and it took her some time to get back up to speed with just interacting with people in a business setting. She's a natural extrovert, which helped, but still.
My wife's mom has always been a stay-at-home mom, and my wife says that while she's a great person (and I agree), most of her day is just spent tooling around the house not really doing much of anything, since all of the kids are moved out. She doesn't have any reason to get a job of her own (kid's are "paid for" now that they're out of college, Dad makes enough to easily support them) and, because much of her life was spent focusing on the kids, she doesn't really have any hobbies of her own. So she surfs eBay, tools around, doesn't really have any friends, etc.
So don't forget that it's OK for Mom to have a life, too. Especially once the kids get a little older, many parents realize that if both parents are doing chores around the house, the home life isn't all that different with both parents working (even full time). Obviously the jobs are important here -- good jobs, or short commutes, or lenient work schedules are a huge plus. For example, there's a lady at my job who has had two kids while working there, taking 3+ months off each time, and works a 28 hour week -- 7 hours, mon-thurs, and works at home 2 of those days.
But, again, it ends up coming down to how you guys feel about it. Some people prefer simply being parents as their job (either gender), others can't stand not getting out and doing their own thing, and many fall in between.
This is true actually. My workplace recently started a working from home pilot and it was stressed that you are not to have kids at home while doing it. A home based business or something where you're self employed is more ideal for this situation.