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I’m a stay at home dad and have been for the last 5 years. My wife works for herself, spending anywhere from 10-14 hours a day working pretty much 6-7 days a we

I’m a stay at home dad and have been for the last 5 years. My wife works for herself, spending anywhere from 10-14 hours a day working pretty much 6-7 days a week (she loves her job and gets paid well to do it). Personally I don’t see it as an unfair bargain. I work hard at home, it can be stressful and tiring sometimes, but my wife takes on all the stress of providing income. I get ‘compensated’ pretty well - we have a good income and I live a great life. I personally think that home-makers who complain that they aren’t ‘compensated’ for their work are being churlish. That’s great when it’s working well. I suspect there’s a couple of problems - (1) often the home-maker goes back to work, but the home-duties don’t get redistributed accordingly. The home maker is forever saddled with that burden, limiting their career options. (2) In a divorce, the man is often left with a good income, through a valid, ongoing career, while the stay-at-home mom is left with an empty CV, the ongoing burden of the kids, and an allowance decided by the courts. Sure, men might have the burden of a new alimony/child payments ‘tax’, but otherwise they’re now free to do whatever they want. The woman isn’t. (vast generalization of course)

door5 8y ago
Those are two great examples -- one thing I'd like to add is that the audience of Hackernews is pretty upper-middle class (as are the anecdotes in this thread), these issues are compounded greatly when it comes to poor or working class women, who may feel completely trapped in a bad marriage economically, or may be struggling as single working mothers.
- westiseast 8y ago
  Absolutely - it’s probably a common feature of stay-at-home dads in the 21st century that it’s a good deal. There’s going to be a much larger percentage of stay-at-home mums who have awful ‘deals’.

door5 8y ago

Those are two great examples -- one thing I'd like to add is that the audience of Hackernews is pretty upper-middle class (as are the anecdotes in this thread), these issues are compounded greatly when it comes to poor or working class women, who may feel completely trapped in a bad marriage economically, or may be struggling as single working mothers.

westiseast 8y ago
Absolutely - it’s probably a common feature of stay-at-home dads in the 21st century that it’s a good deal. There’s going to be a much larger percentage of stay-at-home mums who have awful ‘deals’.