“I Chose to Stay Home With the Kids. Now I’m Freaking Out.”

I totally agree. I’m in Australia, and our policies are not perfect, but for both of my children I received 4 months of full time paid maternity leave from my work and 4 months of a lower but still very reasonable payment from the government. I took 4 months off and was able to stay at home with both of them for a full year. For the second baby, my work paid into my retirement fund (as they do with every pay) even on my unpaid leave, in a policy to ensure the stay-at-home parent isn’t as disadvantaged down the line. There are better ways, and it should be only up to parents to find them. When we support families and children, we support all of society.

*shouldn’t be only up to parents! Gah, this sticky keyboard!

yes, same. my husband is the SAHP right now, but not by choice, so that’s been tough for both of us. I really struggled going back to work after maternity leave and I still struggle now with feelings of guilt and, quite frankly, jealousy. I don’t really love my job, but I very much value financial independence. I feel so much pressure being the sole financial provider (and healthcare provider) for our family, and I work from home. So I’m just here, in the house, locked in another room, stuck on a computer while my husband plays with my son, takes him to the park, reads to him. Not to say that stay-at-home-parenting doesn’t have its challenges, but from this side of the fence, the grass looks way greener over there.

Thanks for your comment. I’m loving hearing from the ‘sole earner’ perspective – it’s often missing from these kinds of discussions.

I am not the sole earner, but I am by far our highest earner in the household. It is stressful and makes me feel like I can’t take as many risks in my career as I might jeopardise our family stability. It makes me feel like I can relate somewhat to men who are dads and the sole/higher earner in a way I might not have-and to be honest, before I was in this position, I could be pretty scathing about the plight of a working dad! Because of the patriarchy and gender imbalance of higher paying roles in my field, I’m guessing this anxiety might be heightened for women/gender diverse and queer people. We share parenting time pretty evenly, but I also feel like I should be primary parent, Meredith, I know exactly what you mean. More so than how I feel, people also say and assume this to be true. I am still the parent first called for a daycare illness or school pickup, even though I commute to work and my husband works from home a short distance from both. I am still the parent communicated with for any party invites, play dates or sports sign ups. Both our families liaise with me about the children. It’s stressful and a whole lot of work, and rarely does anyone talk about my work work even though it provides the most financial value to our family, so I can feel devalued on every side. These things are so tough to balance, I’m just grateful that my husband and I have a very honest relationship in which we know what we value and what we both bring to the family, and hopefully we’ll pass that on to our children.

Amen to this, Ruth. I was a family law paralegal for more than 40 years. I was also a single parent of two wonderful kids with a non-support paying ex. It amazed me how many women clients had never anticipated the possibility of divorce. They often knew nothing about the couple or family’s finances and holdings, and had unrealistic expectations of how much support they would receive. Also, my mother was widowed at 46, with four children aged 6-15. She never wanted to be a mom, let alone a stay-at-home mom, and always had at least a part-time job when my dad was alive. She told us, “You can never depend on a man.” (Ok, she was also a strong and outspoken feminist!) But still — one never knows what might happen next and it’s wise to consider all the possibilities. And — save for your own retirement! If you’re lucky, it will get here one day and you’ll be glad you did.

Yes Ruth, I had the same thought in reading through this. AND I want to gently push against the stereotype that in divorce the woman is the one who is financially in the dark and negotiating for spousal support. My ex and I both worked full time throughout our marriage and having our child. I took care of our finances in general, though, and earned significantly more. Based on our income difference I pay him monthly spousal support even though he could live on his own income. And we divorced due to his infidelities and lack of showing up in any meaningful way in our marriage, so that required spousal support payment was hard to swallow, but I’ve made peace with it, felt my feelings and moved on. Just want to share that financial reality even when you DO earn enough to support yourself well and know about your family finances. I was not aware that would be part of my divorce agreement, want to raise awareness as more and more women earn more. (which is a GREAT thing! yay for us!)

As a reluctant SAHM, I get this, but also–my kid has special needs. When people are in vulnerable positions, they often have their reasons. Telling them they shouldn’t feels a bit condescending. While the risks are obvious, life isn’t always that simple.

Mariah – agreed 100% on the stereotype (in my case, it was my ex who was the financially dependent one).

Thank you for bringing this up. I had my kids in my early 40’s and stopped working outside of the home at 43 when my youngest was born. It was a very hard choice – I had always worked and supported myself/family, and it felt like jumping off a cliff. My husband and I decided we could make it work on his salary and we focused on building his career – he made more than I did and was passionate about his job, and I felt grateful that we were able to make it work even though it was not easy financially. I became a SAHM to 2 kids in 2014. I had a false start going back to work part-time when my son was in kindergarten (my first day of training was 3/13/2020… yes! had to pick my kids up from school early that day and they didn’t go back for a year due to the lockdown!) so the job was on hold. When I started seriously looking again in 2022, I did not have luck finding a part-time job that worked around my kids schedule (my husband worked long hours, traveled and was not home much, so I had very little help with the kids), but I did (accidentally) find out that my husband and partner of 18 years had been having a long term affair (which did help explain why he was never home). Finding this out was not only emotionally devastating because I never expected this from him, but also made my future feel very insecure. We live in a small, expensive, coastal community and it was a triumph to afford the tiny home we have. Even if we sold the house, in this market we could not afford 2 new homes, and the cost of renting here is higher than most mortgages. We’ve been living separately for over 3 years (I’m in the house with the kids, he’s subletting a small space), but we remain married- I need access to his health insurance and I continue to be the kids primary caregiver so he can work – his schedule still involves travel and evening/weekend hours. We don’t want to relocate and uproot the kids – they like their schools and this has already been hard enough on them – and my husband’s job is regional, so not easily transferable to another more affordable community. I am the CFO of the house, pay the bills, have my own accounts, etc.. but because I’m not bringing in an income, I still feel very powerless. At 56, I have been out of the workforce for 12 years and am not considered a desirable hire, and it’s a tough market. I do volunteer work at organizations I care about and hope remaining engaged in the community may lead to some paying work. In hindsight, I wish I had kept working because it would have made the current situation easier, but I also cherish the time I had at home with my kids, and at the time never imagined I’d be in this situation. As they get older, I will encourage my kids to protect their financial independence and stay in the workforce if/when they decide to have families of their own, conversations I never had with my mom. I’m not sure what the future will bring – even though things are challenging, I realize I live in extreme privilege and am so grateful every day to have shelter, food, healthy kids – I choose to focus on that and remain hopeful about the next chapter.

This feels a bit close to home. My mother recently passed and has left me and my siblings with a nice inheritance. My husband and I have been talking quite a bit about how to manage it. While I trust him implicitly – I still have reservations about co-mingling this new windfall. I don’t know why – he has always been of the mindset “what’s mine is yours” and I’ve always been a bit more hesitant with this (although we have always had joint accounts and complete access and transparency with all our funds). Perhaps it is just something protective that’s been instilled in me over the years that I need to have something all my own. And I’ve seen so many friends get completely screwed over during divorce that is so maddening. This has become a bit of a sensitive subject as I don’t know how to articulate these feelings. His family has a 2nd home out of the country and I don’t feel any claims on that property once he and his sibling take ownership – it feels like it is theirs. A friend of ours recently got an inheritance from a family member and she set aside 10% of the total amount that she could use however she wanted. The rest went into their joint investment accounts. Her husband had no problem with this. I thought that was fabulous – my husband thought it was awful. So here we are. Appreciate any thoughts.

@Anonymous: I think you should follow your gut in this case. Maybe talk it through with your husband and ask him if he would share any inheritance with you. However, it’s yours and you should decide. Maybe it’s your savings for a rainy day; and even if it’s yours, you are free to use some of it for your family. I don’t know where you live, but I’m from Germany, and as far as I know inheritances are even excluded from communities of goods when tehy occur during a marriage. So legally, they are not meant for both partners in the first place, no matter how one decides to deal with them personally.

ANONYMOUS- This is YOUR inheritance, not your husband’s. It was provided to you from your parent, regardless of marriage. Unless your husband was also in the will for this inheritance, he is not entitled to it. That may sound harsh, especially because it’s nice to share money and assets with the person you love, but he needs to realize that he is not entitled to your funds. I would question WHY he is so against setting a portion aside for you and putting the rest in a joint account. There has to be an underlying reason there. I feel protective of you – this is your money. You can do with it what you wish.

Yesssss preach, queen! Matriarchy now!

<3

It’s not that people don’t feel the weight of the system. It’s that when you’ve been handed buckets your whole life, it stops occurring to you to look up and question the roof.We’ve been so thoroughly trained to see these as personal problems: my childcare calculation, my retirement gap, my backup plan… we feel we can only ask ‘how do you manage this?’ not ‘why does this exist?’ Those are genuinely different questions, and the first one crowds out the second.These aren’t problems without solutions. They are problems without political will. Quebec has subsidized childcare at a few dollars a day. Denmark has eldercare so robust that families don’t have to choose between their parents and their jobs.Many countries gives every new parent substantial paid leave because care is seen as collective responsibility, not a private one. Co-housing communities across Canada and Europe are proving that stability and belonging don’t require a nuclear family.These aren’t utopian fantasies but policy choices that other democracies made because enough people decided that the roof was the problem. Not their access to buckets. Every person in this thread describing exhaustion, precarity, and isolation isn’t sharing simply personal finance problems. They are drafting a blueprint for what we should be demanding.

Yes, Sascha in Montana! These problems we are trying to solve have already been solved elsewhere with democratic socialism. It’s just regular and normal, not even radical, just solving basic needs! Ugh

Sarah, heartily agree. We are so underwater with our own personal issues, often made catastrophic by our system, that we can’t even see that the light exists, let alone how to get into that light. And that’s EXACTLY the way this system is meant to work.

Didn’t want to be guilty of over expanding the topic too much but yes that is one of my retirement rolls. My hubs is not tech patient leaving him sidelined but a good deal of those tasks requiring that specific skill. Our son is my backup for such things and it is only becoming more obvious as we age.

I understand this sentiment, but do feel my vision on this changed after becoming a mother. We both work and enjoy our jobs, but quite often I want to be the one who takes care of the sick kid, the one who picks them up after school, and I genuinly want to see their school concert that is inconveniently scheduled in the middle of my workday (whereas their dad would go because they expect to see him in the crowd), etc. It is not just a cultural expectation, but feels much deeper than that. An innate longing to be near them, a weird conviction that I can raise them better than anyone else (despite having a very competent husband). I am quite happy to outsource the cleaning, cooking, laundry and shopping, though :-).

@Jane, I love your comment! It feels like a breath of fresh air to me, compared to hearing the usual bickering and bellyaching between working parents around who does what, that to me sometimes sounds like they are in a competition over who can stay further away from the children! I love that you named your “weird conviction” that you can raise your kids better than anyone else. Thank you!

I feel the same sinking feeling, Sarah. I also love being home when my kids are sick, picking them up from school, etc. But I think my husband deserves to have that time as well. And, finally (the stone is large, sorry!), I’m confused by the statement in the article that “Depending on what you each earn, it’s often the most cost-effective route.” That seems to assume that child care costs should be paid for only from one spouse’s (for some reason usually the woman’s) earnings. But we wouldn’t treat other family necessities like food or rent that way. It may be cost-effective in the short-term, but probably not in the long-term when you consider retirement savings, life-time earnings, possible investment contributions, etc. In short, I’m sad that hyper-capitalism/lack of family support seems to paint many people into a corner, rather than allowing all of us to experience different joys in life.

It feels nit picky to say but I also wished for a different (more realistic) photo! Sorry CoJ, you have just established such high bars for yourself.

My reaction to this photo is to turn around and sternly tell that child “off. Now.” Hugs and cuddles and stories on laps, all day long, thank you. But my body is not a jungle gym for a four year old.

Wow, you read my mind because I came here to say the exact same thing. I first checked if it was a real person or a stock photo (stock photo it is and still not helpful). I’m a SAHP who financially contributed to our relationship for 15 years before I paused for kids, and I make fun money… but I am first and foremost a stay at home mom trying to navigate all the what ifs and that photo was not inviting. Where are the countertops with snack bowls and water bottles, and to be on the nose, with envelopes of bills or lists lying around?

I’m going to jump on this fun analyzing train and respectfully disagree with you ladies about the photo. I think the clean simple photo is fitting and makes sense here, and I think if it was super-full of mess and stress, that would have been distracting and misleading as to what the article was about. Also I think the physical closeness she has with the kids in the photo demonstrates a likely reason for the choice to stay home, to be this close to them all day. Somehow it helped to set up the story for me, to see that appealing reason. Though I do understand the argument that someone hanging on your legs isn’t universally appealing for us parents!

Molly’s paragraph is along our lines of thinking! when we were choosing a stock photo on stocksy, there were stressful ones with messy rooms or women looking upset or worried, but it felt, to us, too literal to illustrate it like that. we wanted the image to be on the lighter side for a more intense topic. hope that makes sense!

I work in the nonprofit field and organizations are often looking for PT staff for things like communications and database work. I typically see more entry level roles/entry level pay for these, but sometimes there are more advanced PT roles. Idealist is a good job board for nonprofits.

I write proposals to win work for an A/E firm. On my team, I’ve had both Part Time and Part Time Variable employees. The PT employee worked around 30 hours / week and received benefits. The PTV is a mom of young kids and take works when she wants. So, she usually won’t take a proposal during school breaks, but will while the kids are in school. The PTV is more like a contract employee and doesn’t receive benefits. It’s not just overhead at our company that can do this. Architects, engineers, technical staff, etc. can all potentially have one of these set ups.

Idealist I have utilized for decades, VolunteerMatch now under their umbrella as well. Excellent, well versed resource. https://www.idealist.org/volunteermatch

Jane, please more about how you got this job! it sounds so interesting and fulfilling compared to a lot of writing work out there.

Check out public libraries. They often at PT positions.

Mado, I was a marketing and communications major in college. I had no idea this kind of job, proposal writing, existed. When graduating, my uncle was CEO at a smallish A/E firm. I jokingly asked if he had any marketing positions open. He told me about this one and gave me a chance. Turns out, I like the work and I’m good at it. A lot of English, Journalism and Marketing majors will get into this field. A lot of industries need proposal writers – Architecture/Engineering, Finance, Construction, Healthcare, etc. Think companies like Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG and then all A/E and Construction firms. Most of my work is in the public sector, so a City, County, Govt. Agency, Airport, Transit Agency, etc. will put out a Request for Proposal (RFP) or similar for a consultant company to respond to and win work. We work with the technical team to strategize, create and submit a response. We also work with graphic designers so our response looks awesome. It’s a super collaborative environment. The job is deadline-driven, so some weeks I may work 60 hours, but I try to keep that at a minimum for myself and for my team. Look for Proposal Specialist, Bid Management or Proposal Manager jobs! Some companies call it different things. I hope this helps.

Language teacher at a university here, PT is very common in this field

There can be flexibility in health care, particularly nursing and social work and psychotherapy. The physicians I worked with generally felt that part time positions were a full time job for part time pay. If you are a therapist in private practice (I was when one of my kids was young) there is a lot of flexibility in terms of how many clients you see and how demanding those clients are. And according to and earlier comment if you are a researcher funded by soft money (grant-based) it can be very part time (this blew my mind and I wish I had known it when I was planning my childbearing).

I’m a school social worker at an elementary school and work .5 FTE, which feels perfect for me and my family. I work school hours and on a school calendar year, so I also have the same breaks as my kids. My work feels meaningful and while the school could definitely benefit from someone full time (if only the district had the funding!), I do as much as I can and set clear boundaries like leaving my work computer at work. I stayed at home for 3 years and went back two days a week as a leave replacement when my second was 10 months old. I’ve worked part time ever since (he’s now 8 and my daughter 10) and I feel lucky every day that I’ve found this balance. I definitely do still carry more of the mental load in our family, but the mental load is also an ongoing conversation.

This won’t be helpful to many, but it might be helpful for some. The dental field is FULL of part-time work. Yes, some of these are clinical roles that require skills or certifications, but anyone with any basic education, admin skills, or the ability to communicate well over the phone and email can find a job. It’ll take a minute to find the part-time that works for you AND a good “home,” but a healthy privately owned office will value a valuable employee. I’ve owned two offices – one was one 14 hour day and one 8-10 hour day (2 long days/week) and the current one is 3-4 days/week with days rarely exceeding 8-5. It has always been surprising to me how many people find this schedule appealing.

And back with the dental work. We also benefit from part-time creatives. Photographers, social media managers, light public relations, etc. I have hired many patients or moms for clinical or advertising-adjacent positions who had no prior experience. I’m more interested in someone who speaks up and presents well across several appointments than a boring resume.

Seconding this! I’m in the process of becoming a single mother by choice (which is expensive to begin with, fertility treatments & swimmers ain’t cheap!) and financial advice can be hard to find.

This is fantastic advice and one of the reasons my partner and I chose a long-term partnership over marriage. Why involve the state in our personal relationship?

CKK – for the significant tax breaks. If each of your income’s are enough to live well on alone, then maybe paying the single’s tax is worth it or are there things I don’t know??? I’ve been considering advertising for an actual business marriage just for tax purposes. It’s just a pipe dream for now but I want to research the differences thoroughly, and then – I might actually do it. Why should I pay 30% more than married couples just to be single? If the IRS is going to gouge me for that, then I feel no guilt marrying as a business decision (as long as I am lawyered up, heh). It’s a no-brainer, unless I’m wrong? Anyone have thoughts?

Melia – I love it. Why oh WHY will a business pay for your health insurance if you happen to be married to someone who works full time at their company? Why is that the dividing line between who should receive health care and who shouldn’t? And (I work at a university) if I had a spouse they would be able to take courses for free. I feel like all the single faculty should marry a student (on paper only, of course) just to expose how absurd our system is. The state really wants your relationship to be legible to the state and will reward you accordingly.

Hi Melia– Great question, and you’re not wrong that the tax code favors married couples in many situations, but it’s more nuanced than a flat 30% penalty for being single, and in some cases marriage actually costs you more. The “marriage bonus” tends to help couples where one spouse earns significantly more than the other. When both people earn well independently, you often get a marriage *penalty* instead. In our situation specifically, marriage would likely result in a modest tax consequence, not a benefit. • My partner currently files as Head of Household (because we have a child), which gives him a much better standard deduction and bracket structure than plain Single filing. Marriage eliminates that status entirely. • At our combined income, we’d hit more phaseouts together — Roth IRA eligibility, the QBI deduction for my side business, and others — than we trigger separately. On a business marriage: you’d want an iron-clad prenup and a very clear-eyed understanding of the financial and legal entanglement you’re creating. Marriage combines a lot more than tax returns — debt liability, inheritance, community property rules depending on your state, and more. Hence why we’ve chosen to avoid all that noise! Bottom line: it’s worth running your actual numbers with a CPA before assuming marriage saves you money. For some income combinations it’s a clear win; for others, not so much. You might be surprised either way!

I’m also long-term partnered for the same reasons as CKK. In our situation there was only a small tax benefit, and it wasn’t worth losing our independence over that. He’s got the slightly lower income, so he claims the kids. We are fortunate that his workplace will accept a “social” marriage for the sake of healthcare. Also, not being married means you replace all the unspoken legal commitments with ONE MILLION legal documents (wills, trusts, etc).

Yep. Like CKK said, my husband and I were significantly penalized after we got married, tax-wise. We didn’t start getting a tax break until we had a kid, 9 years later.

What a great point Donna!!!

Wowow congrats Elena what a find of a job!! Well deserve I’m sure :)

So true! Also part of the structural issues limiting moms and families: the lack of a real (universal), developmentally appropriate maternity leave- at least 12 months, ideally 18 to 24 months. It is much easier for moms to stay in their career if they want to if they know that there is high-quality infant care and in most developed countries that means infant care provided by mom or dad.

Wow yes this!

Love this so much. Yes.

“ This conversation about how to survive a system pitted against us is so incredibly important.” 🙌 preach! Yes that’s exactly what this is, and what parenting in 2026 feels like. Thank you for saying it this way, and thank you JOANNA for being willing to post this very important topic, even if/when it’s tough to have these conversations, especially on the internet.

Hi Malena. I completely agree that it’s incredibly frustrating, and unhelpful, when numbers are deliberately avoided or made fuzzy in an article. In this one, specific numbers didn’t come up simply because there are too many variables (broadly: regional costs of living and childcare, average compensation by industry, etc.), to crunch them in any meaningful way. Ariel and I wanted to offer actionable advice that spoke to this reader’s specific question, but of course, could also be of use to others in a similar position — and we chose this as our first topic, in part, because we heard from so many readers who were. I assure you, we’ll never deliberately dodge numbers, and we really don’t intend to put forth fluffy money coverage. I really do appreciate the feedback on this point!

Agree complete Malena and I also hear what you are saying Kelsey about the difficulty of nailing down numbers with regional and other differences. I think there are ways you could be more concrete however. For instance, with regards to life insurance, how much is enough? Not a dollar figure per se, but is there something we should be aiming for in relation to, say, the earning spouse’s income? How do you figure out a good amount for the non-earning spouse? Childcare costs + occasional house cleaning * certain number of months . . .??? You don’t have to give us a number but you could help us arrive at one.

Re: life insurance at a minimum we have thought about (i) ensuring any debts would be settled – including mortgage. In that way, you could assume that surviving partner + kids wouldn’t have to move (at least not immediately) and had reduced housing costs. We also think about increased costs over remaining “child rearing years” – additional child care etc. and having tuition supported for kids in college. Basically making it easier for a single salary to cover living expenses. These are the assumptions that we have made based on both of us working.

My husband and I both work and have life insurance through our jobs (1x yearly salary) and separate term-life private policies, each for $1mil (mine for 30 yrs, his for 15 just due to premiums) Our mortgage is ~$650k and we currently have no other debt. We went with $1mil to cover the mortgage, any potential car loans we may have in the future, college tuition for our son, and hopefully enough to allow the surviving spouse to not work for a period of time, or to retire depending on our age if something were to happen (relatively) young. I am still working full time, my salary is far over what we’d pay in child care, so it didn’t make sense for me to stay home. My husband also makes significantly more than I do. We decided that we’d both continue working with the goal to retire early (at 50). FWIW our combined income is around $200k/yr and we live in the DMV. I hope that is helpful!

I will chime in with some numbers from my parents’ case (I don’t have a personal case to share). My dad was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer and died within a year 10 years ago. Luckily, us three kids were already “grown” but his two life insurance policies (one of I believe $100k and the other of less, I’m not sure how much), bought decades prior, allowed my mom to pay off the mortgage on the family home so she could stay in the house and not have to make any snap decisions while in the thick of grief, which we were all incredibly glad of.

@Kelsey Miller, I completely respect and now understand the choice not to include numbers. Besides commenter SJK above, none of the other 300+ commenters mentioned any numbers. This is so sad. I’ve watched so many of my friends quit the job market. They had no idea what their husbands earned. They did not have access to their husband’s bank accounts. They did not have retirement accounts. They did not have a separate savings account. And so the husband made all the financial decisions, even when they were poorly-thought-out. I thought that since Cup of Jo is run by a very smart woman who deeply understands money, has gone through a public divorce, and has figured out how to build a team and buy a house in Brooklyn etc., it would be a safe space to share that knowledge. The more we women avoid talking about numbers, the more we make sure that we always earn less than men, and remain disempowered. Talking about PPD is scary. Yet it was done on this site. Talking about parenting styles is controversial. Yet it was done. So surely, mentioning that you can contribute up to $7000 to a spousal IRA is possible? And how to do that – monthly vs. weekly vs. annual contributions? As a loyal reader of this blog, I implore the entire team to please consider this. I work every single day with women who do not know how much money they earn. All of them earn less than their male counterparts. All of them grew up with total mystery around money. Here you have a phenomenal opportunity to empower millions of readers, rather than share more of these fluffy articles that feel good but keep us financially exactly where we were before. I will keep reading either way.

I would love to see an article on this too! Loved reading your comment, Annie. We are on spring break in our state and while I can be with my children, I noticed it was well over half of grandparents caring for their grandchildren at the playground yesterday as parents were working.

I’d be curious to hear about the involvement of grandparents too. As a mother to very young children, I now realize how much help my two working parents got from grandparents to make it all work. How do grandparents decide how much to be involved?

I”m an Aunt at 67, retired with 24 nieces/nephews/great nieces/great nephews on my husband’s side and eight on my side of the family(on two coasts) On any given week we are called to collect the youngest and help with childcare coverage. We do love it and have learned to set boundaries. Especially when you become privy to some private situations. As with most things, mutual communication is so key. Because sometimes the answer to help is no.

I would love an article on this topic as well. I have so many thoughts! On the one hand, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to assume grandparents will help out with childcare, but then, as a new-ish mom myself, I really wish my parents were closer and could help out more! Especially since they were the ones who pestered me about having kids lol. And because I fully expect to help care for them when they’re older and need that help.

I don’t believe that any grandparent is required to help care for their grandchildren, but I do think it’s important to keep in mind that decisions made by the Regan voting generation created, and have maintened, the death of our social safety net, defunded our public school system, made reliable public transportation nearly impossible, cut support for childcare, obliterated Universal childcare and driven medical costs up. While none of these policy choices is individual’s fault or responsibility, these are a cultural failings that are a result of how we have voted. It is MUCH more difficult financial now to raise children than it was in the 80s, 90s, or even the 2010s. Grandparent’s are not required to help care for grandchildren, but if you want grandchildren (or more of them) then its a great support to be invovled, and also to advocate for more governmental family support.

My mother in law is basically the third parent that enables my (and to a lesser extent my husband’s) career. We are both high earners. We could afford full time childcare. But, my mother in law watches my kids 3x/week and fills in for all the random times – watching the baby so we can take my older son to an all day hockey tournament, taking the younger two if the older is sick, etc. etc. etc. She not only watches them all day, I make dinner and then she cleans up while we put the kids to bed. She is currently filling in full time because our nanny unexpectedly quit and we can’t find another one. There is no way I could be working at the level that I am without her. Truly women helping women!! And to top it off – she acts like my career is the most important thing and has never once made me feel guilty for missing anything but instead encourages me to do everything I need to for work (and my work, while demanding and important to me, is not important/necessary to society).

100% this. As someone whose #1 value is safety/stability/security, my motto has been “assume the very best but plan for the very worst.”

You will if you are divorced or widowed, have no spousal support or retirement benefits, can’t pay the bills, and can’t get into the workforce because you’ve been out of it for too long. Things can fall apart quickly.

Fascinatingly, I do. I gave beyond my means (it felt like a normal amount by cultural standards) for years and have been in bed with an exacerbated health condition (that wasn’t loud until it started screaming) for over a month. I have a diagnostic procedure coming up that may help identify what can be done to support my return to mobility without frequent blood loss, extreme pain, and loss of function. You can absolutely regret the amount given. I can’t tell you the heartbreak I have over missing things now because I didn’t say no before. These kinds of blanket statements obscure lived realities and encourage women and primary caregivers to weigh their own independent needs less than the needs of their family members. And I would’ve made the same kind of statement just a few years back.

Hi Jenny! I also have an obscene amount of grad student loans, but the hospital I work at providers free financial planning services, with CFPs (who don’t charge fees!!) and I also worked with a student loan consultant who specializes in med school debt. Best of luck!!

We are seeing a finicial advisor through our bank, who is paid salary and gets no financial benefit from us (ie fees and percentages, etc) so his interest has just been giving us the best advice, and receiving job security by doing so. We’ve been with him for over twenty years. I would suggest going through your bank.

Here is how we found ours: https://advice.xyplanningnetwork.com/ To be listed here you have to be a CFP and fiduciary, and you also have to offer fee only plans. We reached out to several who met our criteria and had a hard time choosing because they all were great!

https://www.napfa.org/ is a good place to start. If you’re not paying a fee-for-service, then I’d be very careful about checking the expense ratios of the funds a free advisor is offering.

I suggest asking friends or relatives who may have a slightly larger investment portfolio than you do. Chances are that their financial advisor assisted them in reaching that status! My husband and I tried several before we settled on a guy who is really making a difference for us, and calls us to alert us to market changes that may affect our investments. He’s also very accessible if we have questions or concerns.

Julia K— I always worry that if the advisor turns out to be a Bernie Madoff type then we’ll be doubly screwed! Definitely a skeptic at heart! 🫣

Jenny! Go to the White Coat Investor blog. There’s a button at the top that should say “Start Here.” Read those and sign up for the newsletter. That will have the most up-to-date student loan info, basically financial literacy for various employment setups, etc. It’s a great resource for anyone making 150k+ tbh.

You are smart to be cautious. Many “financial advisors” prey on pilots and doctors—-two high paying professions filled with people who tend to think they know everything. Makes them easy targets because they don’t question advice they don’t understand. Do NOT let anyone talk you into a variable annuity (usually a good deal for only the person selling them).

Agreed!

This feels very similar to my situation!!! I am about to have my first child and will be taking at least a year off work while my husband continues to work. I would love to return as a part-time or more flexible position, but sadly in my industry that is NOT accepted (partially because of the union I’m in). I need to be in the office in-person from 9-6 five days a week (often including a weekend day). I don’t want to miss dinner time every night! I don’t want to only have one day a week to spend with my husband and kid! I’m already exhausted and have major FOMO, I can’t imagine how much worse it would be. But I’m also super nervous about finding new employment eventually. My industry does not have a ton of job openings and most of them are similar schedules to what I have now. So I’ll be looking in another field, which feels like starting from scratch at age FORTY. It all seems impossible, but I know I want to prioritize my family.

This sounds so stressful, Sarah, I’m so sorry you’re going through that.

Michelle, just wanted to say you are not alone in this! I remember feeling like full time jobs were so hard to find early in my career in (arts and museum) education so I assumed I’d be able to stay involved – but the shift has been to offering F/T positions plus I think the pandemic eliminated a lot of programs – and even preschool teaching or substitute teaching doesn’t cover the afterschool care my kids would need. It’s frustrating to want to contribute and not feel like there’s a path in – and it seems like such a massive waste of talent to lock out people who want to be involved on a part time basis.

This was a long time ago but after starting my therapist career working for others, I decided upon getting pregnant that I would go out on my own. I set up a home office (luckily our home had a detached studio), put out the word to pediatricians and parents and by the time my son was born, I was working 5 hours a week. When the second son was born two years later, I was up to 10 hours a week. I gradually accepted more clients as my children grew. I didn’t need to work full time because I was getting 100% of the fee. But by the time my sons were in school I was working about 35 hours a week and making more than my husband.

My sister started working on Task Rabbit helping people build Ikea furniture because she felt it was brainless enough but got her out of the house and less focused on home stuff. She developed a great relationship with a client and now works at his office as an executive assistant and loves her job. Staying at home was not for her.

I’ve been a full-time freelancer (graphic designer and illustrator) for almost 20 years. My daughter is almost 2, and when she was born I planned to keep working, but in a limited capacity. Turns out the client work keeps coming—when it rains it pours! We have a babysitter come two days a week, for 4 hours each morning. We also try to have the sets of grandparents come at least one day a week (one set lives 30 min away, the other 1hr 20 minutes, so this is truly a gift). Additionally, my partner also works from home, so he’s able to watch her here and there if I’m in a crunch. Between the babysitter, grandparents, naps and partner assistance, I have ~24-28hrs per week to work what is probably a 40hr/week workload. I’m exhausted! All this to say, having a village is so important and a privilege these days. We’ve been lining up the chess pieces for years (decades, even), but also we’re very lucky.

This is kind of brilliant. I use one for myself but my husband doesn’t have access to it. We recently lost a friend to a sudden heart attack at the age of 54, and his wife has been trying to track down passwords to shared accounts and more. It has made his sudden death that much more stressful for her. So even with shared finances and a secure relationship, this feels like a huge life hack!

Do people not just use Apple’s Password manager for free? Are we not supposed to use it?

I pressed send on my comment without having seen yours!

Do you not think individual choices are both informing and deeply informed by structural forces though? This is so obviously not just about personal choices and I’m troubled that you are implying it is that simple?

I am not the author, but I was married to my then-husband years ago and only had a shared checking account with him. He suddenly left me for someone else, and we were told by a lawyer to stop using the shared account. I had no other account, and it was financially difficult for a few weeks. Thankfully, I called the bank and confirmed that my credit card was indeed only in my name. But the limit was very, very low at the time since I’d moved to his country only a few years before and didn’t have a record here yet. Anyhow, after that experience I will ALWAYS have at least a separate checking account with some amount in it (high enough to not have monthly fees and enough to get me through a month or two of expenses at least, likely more) and a separate credit card to make sure I can take care of myself should a bad situation happen again, even if I were to get married again one day and do the one-pot approach again. And I always tell other women the same thing. (And I will ALWAYS keep my retirement savings separate since I’ve learned that what I think will happen in life may not actually happen.)

I wonder if banking and death works differently in Canada. My husband and I have separate bank accounts and were told specifically to make them ALL joint, so that we wouldn’t lose access if one of us died. Maybe talk to your bank?

That’s rigit and very true

This is the comment I needed to read right now. I’m about to stay home after building a solid career for the last eight years. Thank you. ❤️

Hello! HR person here. There are indeed some company-sponsored supplemental insurance plans that allow rate locks post-employment. For example, we offer Vol. Life, Accident, Critical Illness, and Hospital Indemnity Plans. All have porting options for someone to keep their plan post-employment and enjoy the same corporate group rate. Note that Vol. Life and Critical Illness are age-banded rates, whether you are actively employed or not, so those will increase as older age brackets are reached.

There are days where I look back and can’t believe I got married at the young age of 23 (no regrets, I LOVE my spouse and our 2 kiddos), and folks are always shocked when I share this. But I’m SO proud of myself for investing in a life insurance policy then. Because you are right, it gets very expensive the longer you wait!

And if you are “rejected” for life insurance because of health reasons, (medical screenings conducted by insurance) invest early in your burial preferences. Hard as it can be to think about, early decisions also save your family members stress not only financial outcomes.

So true, full time parenting is so much tougher. Going back to work has been a respite for me! EB, your kiddos will be so happy to have so many special memories with you at home!

Emily, you can have a Roth IRA in addition to your Traditional IRA, and your spouse can contribute to either. (If your income is more than around $240k it gets more complicated and you should definitely talk to a financial advisor.) The tax benefits are totally different. Traditional IRA will lower your current taxable income, and you don’t have to pay taxes on the growth until you take it out. With a Roth, you’ll pay taxes now, but never pay taxes on it or the growth ever again (which can be a great deal, especially if you are in a lower tax bracket!). I would recommend searching for an “independent” financial advisor in your area (i.e., not someone from Edward Jones or another brokerage, who may have conflicts of interest). You’re not asking them to manage your investments – you’re just want someone you can pay hourly to spend an hour or two looking at look at your situation and giving you some general unbiased advice. It should cost a couple hundred dollars and should be well worth it what it will save you in taxes!

Are you sure you have an existing IRA from a previous job and you can make contributions to it? If it’s tied to a job, you may not be able to contribute to that specific account anymore, but you can definitely open an IRA at any brokerage – I think Vanguard and Fidelity are both user friendly. If you choose to open a Roth IRA, this is done with after tax money, so the tax benefit is that all earnings on this account are tax free. If you choose to open a traditional IRA, you will deduct this from your taxable income on your 1040 tax return. You don’t need to set up automatic contributions. You can just do it in one lump sum. You have until 4-15 of this year to contribute the max allowed for 2025.

MM and Jen thank you SO much for clarifying. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your advice!

I see this narrative a lot and it really rubs me the wrong way too

As a stay at home parent it irks me when what I do all day is devalued ! Its alot of work and takes alot of sacrifice. We should all support each other in the paths our lives take, often not always by conscious “choice” but by practical considerations. It can all be hard, rewarding, important without anyone being defensive about how their own family is getting it done.

I feel you. I don’t want to dismiss anyone’s feelings, and I know that caring for a child (or two or three or more) all day every day can be totally overwhelming. However, I almost feel like this kind of phrasing (which I see a lot related to this discussion) can act as a sort of safety-net justification for being a SAHP. And I don’t mean that to sound negative. I think sometimes, parents who are not employed feel a need to justify that, either to others, themselves, or both, and this idea — I don’t have time or energy to also work a paid job — can satisfy that. But the reality is, if they HAD to work, if they somehow became a single parent, if their partner got sick or injured or passed away, they would find a way. Because they would HAVE to. I actually think it’s very empowering to say to oneself, caring for my children all of the time leaves me feeling exhausted, and it would be really hard to do all this while also working a typical paid job, but I could do it if I had to or really wanted to. So many of us do! We make it work because we have to or we want to, and that doesn’t mean another choice or another way is “bad.” Idk, I guess I’m rambling at this point, but obviously this brought up a lot of thoughts for me!

reminds me of the time someone asked me if I was a full time Mom. Really stumped them when I replied that yes I am a full time Mom and I also work outside of the house.

I hear you. This is exactly why I feel like such a loser for not being able to handle more than part time employment. People like you are out there doing everything I do AND MORE! And yet I can’t even begin to figure out how to get more of a job, let alone maintain it. When I look at my own life, it seems clear that there isn’t space to do what I do for our household and also work more. But then I “look at” people like you and it’s like… nah, there is. I just suck.

Alice, nobody is devaluing what you do. We are simply stating that moms who do paid work do what a SAHM does PLUS work a paid job. It’s just a fact. It’s just like how I don’t devalue the work my childless coworkers do simply because they don’t also raise children on the side! That would make no sense!

I realize this comment mentions “getting kids to school”, but in my experience most SAHMs have young children at home with them full time. That in itself is a full time job most people outsource to daycare. SAHMs also usually make a lot of financial/personal sacrifices to be able to stay home with their kids and care for them. Everyone has a choice on how they want to organize their family, time and money. If anything this “narrative” you all can’t stand so much just goes to show that, no matter what you do, it’s just really really hard to be a parent today. Stay-at-home parents deserve to be able to complain about it too!

As someone who doesn’t have kids – time wise – isn’t it all basically equal? The SAHM watches the kids from 9-5 – which as a former nanny- is work. The working mom works from 9-5 while someone else watches the kids. Add the mental load to both and isn’t it almost the same??

The emotional intensity at play in these comments are interesting to me. Some of the “definitions” (full time mom, stay at home parent etc) come with quite different job descriptions based on the age of the child. If they aren’t in school yet, there is obviously a big difference in the amount of a time a working parent spends with their child compared to a stay at home parent. So saying working parents do the same as stay at home parents plus also having paid employment is not correct – there is a reduction in the amount of hours you spend caring for your child. Hopefully this doesn’t come across as judgement, it’s meant more as observation – disclosure, I have a 18m old and work three days and then look after my daughter solo the other two days. I have to say, even though my daughter is a very easy child , I have so much more respect for stay at home parents having done that on my year or maternity leave due to the sheer monotony of the daily set of endless chores and thankless tasks that childrearing inevitably involves.

Let the record stand, working moms do MORE than stay-at-home moms. (eye-roll)

I’m not sure it’s fair to say that a full-time working parent does everything a stay-at-home parent does plus a full-time job. Framing it that way can unintentionally minimize the role of a stay-at-home parent who has chosen to be their child’s primary, daily caregiver. Every family’s situation is different. Some working parents have support like a nanny, involved grandparents, or other help managing day-to-day logistics, while many families don’t have that option or the income to outsource it. It’s also worth acknowledging that staying home involves trade-offs and risk. A stay-at-home parent is often stepping away from income, career advancement, and long-term financial security to be available for their family, which can leave them more vulnerable if a marriage ends or something happens to their spouse. Both paths involve real work and real sacrifices just in different ways.

It is not a fact that all working parents do what a SAHM does PLUS work a full time job – it may be the case in some instances but it is unfair to make this a blanket statement. When I was a working mom, I relied more heavily on outsourcing (more take-out or prepared foods vs now only one meal out a week as well as mostly from-scratch cooking/baking; babysitters vs zero babysitters now; house cleaner vs no house cleaner; Amazon orders every other day and grocery delivery vs having to go in person now because we can’t afford that luxury). Many working parents survive (or get creative with their time) by outsourcing. And many SAHMs don’t have that option. So don’t beat yourself up if you don’t feel you have the time to take on more.

As the mother of 3 young adults who has been both full-time with kids and working outside the house, I think both of these perspectives are valid. Parenting can be exhausting either way! As a parent staying home with kids, you’re doing all of the parenting that the working parent does, plus you’re also doing the work that could be provided by a daycare/nanny/after-school program. Most stay-home parents do that without the infrastructure, budget, facilities, experience, or colleagues to tag-team with. On the other hand, working parents have to juggle the management and communications that outsourcing some of your childcare requires, a balancing act with your employer (especially when unexpected family needs arise), as well as having to put in the extra effort required to connect with your kids during a smaller window of time each day. I hope this comment helps in some small way to encourage you to give each other some grace, and to give yourself some grace, too, if you are a working parent or a staying-home parent. They’re both hard!

I honestly and truly don’t want anybody to feel like „less“ because of their choice to work part-or full time inside or outside of the home, but saying that working parents do what stay at home parents do PLUS a paid job is obviously not true, because you just can’t. If both grown-ups in a family work full time paid jobs, some part of childcare gets outsourced – whether to grandparents, daycare, or nannies/babysitters. That doesn’t make you any less of a parents. But the parenting is different (not worse! Different!) And if a stay-at home parents got paid whatever childcare costs us if we outsource it, nobody would feel that raising your own children was not a full-time job. I don’t know why society has somehow ingrained in us that neither is a valid choice. Seems like we all feel a little defensive, no?

Sam you are not a loser and you don’t suck. I worked part time while my daughter was growing up. I did not want to work more and would have gladly been home fulltime if I could have. I now work full-time just because I needed a job to supplement my soc sec and ended up with this job. But I think every single day I could have never done this while my daughter was growing up. There’s only so “creative” one can get to fit it all in working full-time. I wouldn’t have missed my time at home for 10 career ladders. I loved it. No regrets at all.

I just have to say that I had an extremely high stress job, working around the clock until my third was born. I quit because my health had taken a beating and I wanted to try being home with the kids. Now that I am home with 3 littles, I see both sides. I can also tell you that having your only job be your kids, without daycare, a nanny, or help in any way throughout the day is exhausting. And whether we like it or not, one of the first questions asked in a greeting is “What do you do?” Given this, you have to have empathy for SAHM’s with that comment. It is often judged whether intentionally or not as either “Lucky you” or “your lacking a skill set/not well read enough”. I have been self-conscious and have felt compelled to share my background with everyone I have met. I am waiting for the day that I feel confident enough not to lean on that or pretend that I am actively looking for whats next. Also, not every job is easy to get back into after taking time off. That is what scares me. I led a design team in tech company. I could never go back to that position without burning the midnight oil again and trying to get caught up with AI and all the new tools and processes. My point is, when I worked, I did not have to justify that I was doing important things. A working parent, likewise, should not have to justify that they are a good parent. Both are hard. Lastly, I enjoyed this post. I find myself worried about being able to find another job when my kids get older. I use to contribute 50/50 to our finances and now despite contributing largely to our family, I do not bring in a salary.

I agree 100% Joanna. I stayed home for 6 years after having kids and while it was challenging going back to work AND still managing the cooking, cleaning, washing, childcare…everything else being a parent and having a home requires from you is by far the hardest thing I have ever done. When I was not working outside the home I had all day to get these things done while I looked after the kids. Now someone else looks after the kids (school) and I work 8 hours a day, but I still have to fit everything else in around that. When people say that they find going back to work easier than staying home, I am always curious what they have outsourced? Did their partner stop work and take on the other duties? Because for me this has not been the case.

Hopping back into this thread in an effort to redirect in what I hope is a productive way. For the 9-5 working parents, what do you think would be a respectful and less irksome way to frame the CoJ reader’s situation? Like I said, I absolutely hear where people like Joanna are coming from and understand being irked by the implication. At the same time, my own experience of my own life is that between what I do for my family and what I do for my “fun money” job, the bandwidth is occupied. Is there a way I can communicate/phrase that without being offensive?

So much of this depends on the age of your children. If you’re a SAHP and your children are not in school or childcare, it is an entirely different job than a parent who works outside the home and has paid care for their kids. Clearly it is a job if you have to pay someone else to do it while you do yours.

As a current SAHM that previously worked for nearly two decades in intense, 50+ hour a week jobs, I disagree with most statement in this thread. Yes you are a full-time mom when you work outside the home. But the mom-ing you do is different than a SAHM. You may have the exact same tasks and responsibilities on your plate, but you physically and mentally do them differently than a SAHM because you simply don’t have the hours in the day to. And when you are a SAHM, your capacity for your job (24-hour parenting) is maxed out too. You may have more kid-stuff on your plate (being physically there for whatever happens during the day at your home and with your kids, or maybe more time researching or mentally considering your kids because you don’t have to do corporate work during working hours), but it doesn’t mean you do any less for your work than a working parent. They’re both incredibly hard. Sometimes I don’t understand how I was able to be a primary caregiver and a corporate working mom, but when I give it thought, it’s because I parented/ran my household differently during that time. I had less time to research so I made decisions more swiftly etc. I was privileged to be able to outsource more home stuff, so I was less involved during the day. They’re both different and they’re both exhausting, but in different ways. And, frankly, I was and am still not 100% happy in either situation. I longed to be involved in my household and family in a different way when I worked outside the home, and I really miss working outside the home now that I’m a SAHM.

Apologies for the grammatical errors!

Adding to my comment above. Being a working mom is incredibly hard. Extremely. I’ve done it. My thoughts shared are simply to express that being a SAHM is often a thankless job and you’re not working on something for yourself (in the career sense). That situation creates an emotional toll equal to the flip side: mom guilt. The emotions of not earning, not building a career, being reliant on your partner for finances… that’s tough. I think this post was important for those in that situation.

I’ve done both.I was a SAHP for 7 years and I’ve been a working Mom the past 5. Being a SAHP zapped me mentally and emotionally in ways that are hard to explain unless you have also lived it. It is incredibly isolating. To say that working parents “do more” is really misguided. Working/child rearing is not simple math and everyone’s situations are complex! Working a full time job as a Mom has been easier for me than being a SAHP. My job is difficult and stressful but it fulfills me in ways that recharge my mind and spirit and make me feel alive so that I am a better Mom when I am with my kids. School and daycare help manage the emotional load of parenting, which I am eternally grateful for! I had to make mental health and financial sacrifices to be a SAHP. And I ended up sacrificing so much more than I realized at the time. Seven years of working in my prime that I’ll never get back. But do I regret it? Absolutely not. It was the right choice for my family. Although, I wish I was more clear eyed about the choice I was actually making. Everyone’s situations are complex and it’s ALL hard!

But wouldn’t the kids have to be in school, daycare or with a babysitter/nanny/family member if you’re working full time? I understand moms that work outside the home might still have a ton of “parent work” on their plate, but I also LITERALLY watch them 24 hours a day. (Plus work part-time with no outside help.)

Well yes, but…you can’t put the kids in a kennel with some water and leave them for 8 hours a day. Someone needs to look after them. There is a lot that goes on while parents are at work. I’ve done both. It’s harder to time-manage with a full time job, because women typically “do it all” (not fair), but it seems like we are forgetting the obvious here.

Elle – I respectfully disagree, you don’t do the job of a SAHM and work full time, because someone else is looking after your kids while you work full time. There is a difference.

But SAHM’s are with children all day, while working parents usually pay for someone else to do that work. Looking after children without help is the work which is unpaid work. The outside of work hours work of cooking, driving, planning, cleaning is also work but if you’re paying someone to care for your child while you work, remember this is the work you’re outsourcing which an at home parent isn’t.

Hi Elle! I agree 100% that whatever the work configuration, all moms are doing the same amount of parenting! That is an enormous mental load, and it is no joke to handle it AND the load of any career. Also, if a parent doesn’t have childcare and it home with their kiddos all day long, they just ARE doing more childcare than parents with paid care. I think of it more like, stay-at-home parents are the parent AND the childcare provider. When I was home full time we had no supplemental childcare so I was with my kids solo for 10 hour days, 5 days a week. That doesn’t mean I was doing more parenting than anyone else! But it does mean that I was providing a lot of childcare that many working parents don’t do. Not saying that should or that there’s any value judgement either way, just that it’s not necessarily true that working parents are doing literally everything SAHMs are doing… Unless that 50 hours of childcare is “nothing”

Elle – but you don’t do the childcare. It isn’t true that working parents do it both. If someone else is watching your toddler in daycare (or nanny) 40 hours a week, you aren’t doing the childcare. CHILDCARE IS VERY HARD! Especially for kids under 5. And it is consistently undervalued by those who work outside the home.

Good points! I thought about it a little bit last night, and I think another analogy might be comparing a mom of 1 child to a mom of 3 children. Nobody would argue that a mom of 1 child is “less” of a parent than a mom of 3 children. Both moms ultimately have the same responsibility to her child(ren), and nobody can replace the mom. But you also can’t argue that taking care of 3 children is MORE work than taking care of 1 child. Both moms have 24 hours in the day, and the mom of 3 is splitting her 24 hours among 3 children, and the mom of 1 child can fully devote all 24 hours to 1 child. This is how I see working moms – they have an extra children or two for whom they are responsible and have to keep an eye on. They may not physically be attending to all 3 children at once (as a couple people have alluded to, working women do outsource childcare), but it is ultimately always going to be more work juggling 3 balls than it is to juggle 1 ball.

For everyone in this thread arguing that SAHP are with the kids 24/7 while working parents outsource the childcare–the original comment was directly responding to the OP’s comment which sounds like she’s referring to school age kids which is ENTIRELY DIFFERNT than full time care for a younger child. OP writes “I’m the primary parent — responsible for getting the kids to school, taking care of them when they’re sick, handling sports practices, homework, and playdates, and carrying most of the housework and mental load. Those things don’t leave me with much bandwidth for a job…” THAT is what working moms also do. Obviously babies and toddlers at home without outsourced childcare (nanny/daycare/babysitter) is a different situation. But this comment in particular isn’t talking about that. I’m a corporate mom. I also do drop offs, pickups, take care of them when they’re sick (wfh while watching them or take PTO to do so, both of which are very stressful), go straight from work to sports practice to home to make dinner, take PTO to volunteer in my kids’ class, find time during my lunchbreak at work to schedule kids’ doctor appts, use my precious weekend and evening hours to catch up on housework, plan playdates, look for summer camps, hang out with my family, etc. I have bandwidth for a FT out of the house job AND do all the momming things that the OP described.

I think to Joanna’s point, it’s the specific things listed as “reasons” the mom in the piece doesn’t have bandwidth — taking kids to school, taking care of them when they’re sick, handling sports practices, homework, playdates, and carrying most of the housework and mental load. Working moms (usually) do all those things, too. But they have to do it between 5pm and 9am, so it’s all crunched into shorter hours. Obviously, working moms HAVE to outsource primary, day-to-day childcare, and that’s a huge job in itself. It also leads to a lot of “mom guilt,” and I think the phrasing in the article can read like, “oh I’m just so busy with all these tasks I couldn’t possibly work TOO,” even if that’s not the intention. And if the mom in the article DID get a job that was for more than “fun” money, she’d probably end up outsourcing the primary childcare as well, so the choice is there for her too.

This redirects from the other comments, but I always had a similar rub with people who call themselves “single-parents” when they are just divorced co-parents. My mom raised us by herself, my father did not pay child support or take us on a regular schedule. She was a single parent. Those that want to toss in the “single parent” when they are in fact co-parents has always bugged me. You have times in which you are parenting solo, but never really alone. AND I know it comes with its own challenges but to act like you are alone…like I said, just always kinda got to me.

One of the hardest parts of going from being a working mom in the corporate world to a SAHM mom of one rambunctious little toddler was the feeling that I couldn’t have a bad day. That my struggles and frustrations weren’t valid because I didn’t work outside the home. I felt like a failure because it was “supposed to be easier” but, in fact, was so much harder than my previous job on many days. This attitude of “working moms do more and that’s just a fact” is so untrue and unhelpful. If we want to be “good” feminists, we should be speaking up for how hard ALL women are working to do these often unpaid, unvalued, and totally necessary jobs.

I absolutely agree that the mental load and constant disruptions for moms who work outside the home is huge, and navigating having to care for sick kids with a full-time job sounds near impossible. But someone said that “it’s all basically equal” and I think this really ignores the psychological toll of being the full-time caregiver. As that for my family, I’m solely responsible for keeping my child alive during those hours, getting them down for every weekday nap, cleaning up the floor/their high chair for 4/5 meals/snacks a day… and then these tasks are split evenings and weekends, so the job just continues. The monotony is soul crushing. I have had many, many days as a FT caregiver where I got zero break because of having to hold for contact naps. I can’t even use the bathroom every time I need to! There is also the physical toll of carrying around an infant/toddler all of those additional hours. Moms who work outside the home know how hard this work is because they do it evenings and weekends. But moms who work outside the home are also legally entitled to breaks and sick leave, and that isn’t something full-time caregivers get.

I think this conversation is over now, but I’d like to say that I think some of these comments have mischaracterized what was originally said by Joanna (the original commenter), Elle, and others. The original quote listed many caregiving tasks, but did NOT include actually watching kids on a daily basis, so it’s fair to say that working moms do these things PLUS working. There’s a difference between “Working moms do many caregiving tasks PLUS full-time jobs” and “Working moms do *everything* a SAHM does PLUS full-time jobs.” I don’t think anyone was arguing for the latter.

@MeLo – I just wanted to tell you it DOES get easier. In my (limited) experience, being a SAHM was unbelievably hard for kids 4 and under. Especially if you have more than one or have a baby who doesn’t sleep and/or a neurodiverse toddler or no familial help or some other factor making your kids and situation more challenging. But then, when they hit school (my eldest is in Kindergarten now!) it gets easier and actually now I do think I could see how it might be harder to be a mother working outside the home and balancing an elementary school schedule. But, yes, I think a very hard element of being a SAHM is the psychological toll it takes in the infant and toddler days, the isolation, the loneliness, and this idea, as another commenter mentioned, that you are not allowed to experience a full range of emotions, only gratitude. The truth is our society worships the dollar, and if you aren’t making dollars, you are hard pressed to feel respected. I know all moms struggle in their own ways, but I had 2 boys 19 months apart and the eldest didn’t start preschool until 3 and parenting for me has gotten SO much easier since those first 3 years. So hang in there SAHMs. I know people tell you “it doesn’t get eaiser, it gets differnet” but often those are people who never provided full time care to babies and toddlers. Sometimes. it DOES GET EASIER. xoxo.

During the pandemic (March 2020-Sept 2021 when schools opened back up) I worked 40 hours a week and took care of 3 young kids 24 hours a day 7 days a week 🤪 it’s possible to do all of it if you have to! (At the sacrifice of a lot of sleep)

But Emily—in all seriousness, did you feel like you “had bandwidth” for that? I didn’t have kids in 2020, but every single one of my friends who was a working parent then has ptsd. So for myself, I guess when I myself say “I don’t have bandwidth for working more and all my other responsibilities” there’s like an implicit “without traumatizing my family” in there lol (Also whoever said I don’t suck—thanks! I sure would love to learn more from the moms who are doing it all, though, so I could maybe learn how to do more.)

Yes! I am very surprised this wasn’t addressed in the post.

That’s true, but there are also social security spousal benefits to consider.

🙌🏾🙌🏾Hell yes to all of this!

Yes! My husband was actually a SAHD for many years since I was the higher earner. He just re-entered the workforce a year ago and is killing it. (Incidentally, he works with a team of mostly women and he said they LOVED it when he told them in the interview that he had stayed at home with the kids to support me in establishing my career.)

This is wonderful and encouraging to hear! You sound like a unicorn employer!

Yes! Also as someone who came back from a long mat leave (we have a year off) I was much MUCH more effective with my time at work after having a kid – as if the ability to be efficient just doubled.

A few years ago, I hired someone for our team that had taken time off to be a stay at home parent. She’s one of our best and routinely gets “meatier”, high profile work because she’s SO GOOD.

If you have the capacity, serving on the board of a local non-profit board or boards in particular (especially in an officer role!) is a great way to keep marketable skills on your resume, maintain a professional network, and contribute to your community! This is true for anyone, but can be especially true for people with a background in finance/accounting, law, and marketing.

I’m so sorry, Marie. I am also very glad you commented. This is a HUGE factor. Especially now, under this administration, when autonomy is being taken from women in so many ways. Being a SAHM is a trap unless you have thoughtfully made back up plans.

I feel this too.

Yes this seems implicit but unsaid in the accountant’s (very helpful!) advice. I know many people can’t imagine their marriages ending. But the truth is, 40-50% of marriages end in divorce. And most divorces are instigated by a female partner. Including this conversation in the comments here is very helpful, thank you Marie

I did leave my husband, and don’t have a substantial income on my own and therefore couldn’t really afford to. I don’t have kids but I am disabled and therefore can’t work full time. It’s honestly been hell financially, but it would have been more hellish to stay with him, emotionally. I moved in with my parents and also negotiated a significant spousal support amount for the maximum amount of time possible, and stayed on his health insurance for a couple of years so that will tide me over for a bit. All that to say, it’s good to have a plan for it just in case. And hopefully you won’t need to use that plan!

I worked for half of my kids early childhood and then became a SAHM to support my husband’s advancing career. Four years into that divorce. I absolutely panicked for around 8 weeks. Some thoughts for you from where I am now: 1) Can you start a small job to start saving/open your own bank account? Maybe watch another child with your kids? Dog walking? 2) Is there any time late at night for online classes to start heading back into a career? OR – a short time commitment like a 10-hour online course where you will then have some fresh education to add to your resume? 3) Talk to friends about possible childcare swaps to create pockets of time for learning or starting a small side job 4) Look into what spousal support looks like in your state. I live in WA state and my husband is helping with expenses for a year while I do an apprenticeship. With the apprenticeship I am all but guaranteed a job with the company after. 5) Ask yourself, “What else is possible?” “How could this work?” I was absolutely freaking out… I have no family in the area to help me and had no childcare really going when we started the divorce process and no idea what to do next after being out of work for 4.5 years. YOU CAN DO THIS. The CoJo community believes in you.

Marie, I’m sorry you are going through this. I have not always loved or enjoyed my demanding, time-consuming career. Especially when my daughters were little and I made so many sacrifices. I dreamed of being a SAHM. But when the unimaginable happened, and I had to walk away from my marriage, my job is what gave me the freedom to do it. And even with the independence it was debilitating and suffocating. I CAN imagine what you are going through and it is awful, and I am sending strength and love and hugs. You will figure it out and get through it. You have to.

Hey Marie, I’m sorry you’re going through that. First step, get back to working and building up your emergency fund. It opens up so many options. Good luck :)

These are the sorts of issues that are analyzed in determining whether or not alimony payments are made after a marriage ends, so while they might be a little more nuanced/developed/protective of the non-incoming-earning spouse in a post-nuptial agreement, some acknowledgement of these financial realities are a part of typical divorce proceedings.

I love all of this-I have watched a few really rough divorces pan out and there are often financial surprises for the women—like surprise, the husband was paying off his student debt at a faster rate without telling her—and the labor of the women goes unacknowledged and uncompensated even though their labor at home made the husband’s whole career possible. I think post nups are a great idea and really appreciate you laying this out!

I used to work full time the became part time self employed once my kids were in school and the luxurious hours of daycare were over. My husband will always likely have higher earning potential and I’ve always felt icky about becoming so much more dependent. But then we renewed our disability and life insurance and answering all these questions literally put a dollar amount on my worth in terms of how much it would cost to find consistent care for two neurodivergent kids. It was a lot. I still think about it but feel somewhat validated.

Guilty of what? Not contributing financially? If you and your partner mutually decide for you to be home, and you want to be home, there is no guilt. I’d say it’s reasonable to be concerned if something happened to your partner, so I’d suggest taking action if not yet done- to provide security for you and your kids

Unfortunately we all experience mom guilt whether we stay home or not. I work and feel guilty for not staying home. You are contributing to your family by giving your children the gift of your time and attention.

I read this and it cured my mom guilt: Guilt is the feeling you get when your actions don’t align with your values. Like when you yell at your partner or child. The feeling moms often get when they do something for themselves isn’t guilt, it’s them taking on other people potential disappointment. Like when they go out with their friends instead of doing bedtime. You don’t feel guilty, you’re taking on your kids’ disappointment that you won’t be there, or your spouses stress of having to do bedtime on their own. Despite there potential negative feelings, you should still go out with your friends bc taking care of yourself should be part of your values.

“Mom guilt” was created so you spend more money, which usually makes you feel worse. Dads never seem to have “dad guilt” so why should we?

I appreciate the sensitivity but Ariel said: ” For many families — and for many reasons — it makes sense to have one parent stay home. Depending on what you each earn, it’s often the most cost-effective route.” Nothing said about a mom staying home specifically. A mom wrote in, yes, but the advice given was gender neutral IMO.

I used to think about it this way too – that there is much more value to working outside the home than the dollar amount that comes in. But when I was faced with the reality of being a parent who works full-time, is married to a spouse with a very demanding career with unpredictable hours, AND takes care of even PART of the household responsibilities (not even including childcare! all the food-related work, supplies-related work, cleaning/organizing, and planning/coordinating), they thought of overburdening myself day in and day out for net zero dollars turned it into a very different decision. People truly underestimate not only how difficult childcare is, but how much work comes with meeting the family’s needs. People certainly pay for childcare and/or cleaners and/or meal services, etc. to help offset that, but for me that only meant the prospect of losing money in order to spend more time each day away from my children. It wasn’t the right choice for me, and though I sometimes resent doing all that work myself, I would rather be not bringing in dollars while with my children than not bringing in dollars while not being with my children. I also was surprised by the difficulty of finding meaningful, beneficial, non-$-losing part time work – that would have been a great compromise in our situation. Of course, as a teacher the financial equation is different than it might be in higher paying jobs! And of course, every family makes their own choice. Just wanted to chime in with that perspective because it is not what I had considered before I had my own children.

I would add that the risks of financial dependency are also gender neutral.

Agreed! I was able to retire in my 50’s because of the advice from these 3 books that I’ve put into practice… plus a very good financial advisor. Worth every penny

Our son’s first job during his senior year of HS was as a teller at the local bank. I signed off on work permission immediately. Best education he ever had on saving money. Seeing how customers save/spend…eye opening as well as understanding diff programs.

Just a note, we found our financial advisor through our bank so no fees, and his help made sll the difference. We started with him years ago when we had practically nothing – an emergency fund was just a dream – but his advise was invaluable, parlaying our pittance into a decent retirement fund. No matter where you are financially, do this. It can really make a difference with your financial security.

Hi Anon! I’m currently in the middle of a similar situation. My husband and I are both professionals, but in recent years his industry has had a lot more volatility leading to job losses/changes for him. Another one hit in the fall, which led to me deciding to leave my private practice to go to a more financially stable (and benefitted) full time role. I had originally started the private practice out of a hope of having more flexibility to more easily accommodate family needs, but the financial uncertainty of all of it was just too stressful for me. On the one hand, I’m so grateful I have this option so we can breathe a little easier. Plus I think it’ll be a great job for my professional growth. But on the other hand, I’m a sad that it’s coming at the cost of me being the one to pick them up from the bus stop, hang out with them after school, etc.

Hi AnonHere, there is a very active reddit sub called r/workingmoms where this type of discussion comes up often!

I just want to say, SAME! My husband is in the TV/film industry, so he has been periodically out of work for stretches of several months to a year or so at a time. I work full-time from home at a job I don’t really like. I have all the same feelings as you — wishing I could spend more time with my two-year-old, also not wanting to NOT work at all, feeling some resentment over being the “stable” one who provides health care for us all, etc. I have no advice, but solidarity.

Hi Anon, another mom here in the same boat! My husband has worked in tech, and after being laid off three times in two years I decided to leave my freelance job (with an absolutely PERFECT part-time schedule that I had created with years of effort) for a FT job with benefits. My husband started his own business so I’m still carrying the benefits for our fam of 6 and he has more flexibility than I do now and is handling a lot of pickups, doctor appointments, school vacation childcare, etc. I do really miss my flexible schedule and don’t even get me started on summer vacation with the kids!! But this is what it is for now, and on the plus side I do love how equitable our parenting has become. I do still hope to move back to less work/more childcare at some point, we will see if that happens…

All, thank you for the reddit reference and solidarity. I really appreciate it…. helps me feel less on an island. :)

Thank you for this reminder Betsy. This is soooo important particularly as their #1 target are sahm mothers! Any job asking for an initial cash outlay to get started is the first warning sign that it’s a form of a ponzi scheme.

Preach!!! I had so many friends try to get me to join their mlms when my kids were little. I thought it was stupid. Thankfully it didn’t ruin any friendships when I said no. I know so many people who lost money. They are a bad idea.

I just had a finance meeting this week regarding this topic! Such a not fun topic but throwing out more info because it’s important: My husband and I bought Whole Life. It’s a bit complicated to explain on CoJ but we didn’t like the issue of sinking money into a policy for decades and suddenly losing it all if we encountered a financial hardship. With Whole Life or Universal, at minimum there’s a cash value that can be pulled out if there’s an emergency. Reinforcing Laura’s rec of buying with a A++ rated company. You don’t want your insurance company to go out of biz or mishandle their assets. Our meeting was primarily looking at converting our life insurance to a long term assisted care insurance. I believe this can be done tax free. The finance experts emphasized that if you’re looking into long term care insurance, do it now because it’s getting harder and harder to open a policy.

Nadege – yes to this! It definitely feels like we are left to figure this all out on our own. I’ve had trouble explaining my pure rage when I had to go back to the office 4x a week (long commute) after successfully working remote since 2020. I thought we had maybe turned a corner towards utilizing technology to better our work-life-community balance, but then the “forces that be” turned us right back into a system that benefits….i’m not even sure who, corporations? real estate? All I see are families jumping through hoops just trying to do the best they can for their kids, families, communities, schools, careers, and it just feels like an impossible situation. I am so thankful I did have 4 years remote when my kids were in early elementary – but my husband and I are struggling every day just to get it all done.

Thank you for making this distinction!

Not a parent perspective but a grown-up kid perspective who had a stay-at-home mom. Of course I don’t remember the young years but I can tell you with certainty I LOVED seeing her at home when I got home from school in middle and high school. What does this mean? I don’t know. I had a good relationship with her so seeing her/spending time with her was a great comfort. Will I be able to do the same for my future kids?? Can’t say for certain… the cookie may not crumble that way.

I had work mentors tell me that presence when kids are older can be even more important than when they are small, and that has been my experience. My career was still actively building when my children were babies. I am very thankful my career is at a point now that allows for flexibility and choice during these older elementary and tween years. Though I continue to work full time, I can fit my work hours while they are at school and a little bit during their activities/homework time. I am fortunate I can outsource some house-related work like cleaning to maximize time with the kids. The best moments to connect with the more elusive tween is often while walking or driving to/from school and activities!

Such a great question! I am not a SAHM mom, but worked for an organization (4 days/wk) during my children’s daycare and preschool years. For a variety of reasons, including professional burn-out, I re-calibrated my employment and became self-employed when my oldest was in 2nd grade, which both reduced my schedule and gave me the ability to mostly structure my workdays within the school schedule. It is far from perfect or easy — but I have often reflected that I feel that my kids benefit from my ability to pick them up from school 4 days per week as they continue to get older, and that they didn’t need that as much when they were in daycare/preschool. Would LOVE to hear what others have to say!

I’d love a whole post on this question alone. I’ve always thought of myself as a working mom and juggled a pretty high-powered career (VP global company) until an RTO mandate forced me to quit last year. I felt like this has been this amazing unexpected blessing to have this season with my 8 and 11 year old and been thinking about how few people talk about this, whereas the conversation that dominates is being home when the kids are little. I’m thinking about taking a massive step back in my career for the next few years so I can really be present during this season and would love to hear from others who did this. I appreciate the practical advice this post gives. And I just want to hug so many of the moms in these comments. The privilege and pain of choosing these different career paths is so hard. For those that need to hear it – you’re doing a great job mama!

I have been a SAHM for nearly 16 years, just keeping my foot in the door of my professional field a tiny bit (working 2ish days a month). Once my youngest (of 4) went to kindergarten I fully expected to be able to ramp up my working hours and manage everything. Big fat nope. Big kids are emotionally NEEDY and I found myself completely drained. If I could go back, I would work quite a bit more when they were toddlers and pull back now as they get into the teenage years. Obviously everyone has a lot of factors that go into their choices, but in my experience, I feel like my kids need my physical and emotional presence now so much more than I expected them to.

My experience was that I worked when they were younger since we had arranged good childcare. Once they got older (late elementary, all through high school) I was fortunate to be able to stay home so I could be readily available if needed and for all the chauffeuring from sports practices, etc.. They are now 21 and 18 and have shared with me many times how grateful they are that I was there during those sometimes emotionally challenging years.

I was a full time working mom til my oldest’s fourth grade year. Little bro had just started kinder and the end of daycare costs (wahoo!) factored in. It seemed backwards – pay through all those pricey daycare years – but I wanted to be more available for all.the.afterschool.things, not to mention end of daycare means two kids out all of summer, and all the teacher inservice days….oof! Big picture, it felt like a great time to be home and I really enjoyed it. Lasted about 2.5 years. The new administration’s job cuts really hurt our family so it had to end. I eased in with a 15-hr a week gig, and now have a 35 hr gig that mostly works for afterschool things. I really want to continue to be available afterschool for kids. To each their own, but I find elementary age so engaging and would not have done well as a SAHM for a toddler. COVID gave me enough of a taste of that!