As we know the church teaches that men are to provide for the family and the women are to stay at home and raise children. Did this role change when you left the church? If not, do you resent your wife at all for staying home? Is the pressure, stress, anxiety too much to handle to make ends meet?

Wife and I have pretty much left the church. We have 5 kids under the age of 10. At this point, having her at home taking care of the kids only makes sense. I don't begrudge her for what she does and I have no problem that she stays home.

With that said I really don't believe in strict gender roles and I believe that they can be different. My primary role isn't to "provide for my family." That is one thing I do but there are so many others that are just as important. I believe the roles of who does what will shift as time goes on and we will try and work them out as they come.

My wife is at home. She is a novermo, I married her years after I left the chruch. She is home to take care of our daughter. When our daughter is older, my wife intends to go back to her career.

I do not resent my wife for being at home - its what we both want for our daughter. We decided between us to do it this way.

Yes, there is stress and pressure, but we do it for love of our daughter, and the desire for her to be raised by us, and not by day-care.

BTW, my wife made more money then I when she worked, and is smarter and more educated then me.

I would also like to add that although we made sacrifices, we also planned our family, and waited until we paid off our house before having children. We also own our cars outright.

We planned it his way to be in a financially stable position before having children.

My sister, OTOH, had 6 kids straight out of the box that she cannot afford, and married a deadbeat.

I am a nevermo and a stay at home wife. That's right, I don't even have kids and I don't work outside the home. I didn't plan for it to be this way. Hell, when I met my husband, I was in graduate school and eventually earned two master's degrees six months before we got married.

I don't work outside the home mostly because my husband is in the military and we've had to move a lot... 4 times in the last 5 years! And when you are a military spouse, it can be hard to get a job that's worthwhile. He makes more than enough money to support us, especially since he no longer pays any child support. I figure there are people out there who need a job a lot more than I do, even if being unemployed is hard on my ego.

I have managed to earn some money as a freelance writer... In fact, I even make enough to pay taxes on my earnings. I take care of the household chores and do what I can to be a good steward of my husband's paycheck. When he retires, perhaps then I will go back to work... if anyone wants to hire me, that is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2012 06:54PM by knotheadusc.

I don't mean to argue, but wouldn't that make you a freelance author? I mean freelance writer sounds like a cool job title, and it would look good on a job application if you ever go back into the general workforce.

I appreciate the difficulty of your situation, I have known a lot of military spouses, and unless you are in the service yourself, or have a government job that allows you to move in support of your husband, then your situation is next to impossible.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2012 03:14AM by forbiddencokedrinker.

Thanks for that, forbiddencokedrinker. I guess I was just responding to the "stay at home wives" mention in this post. I do make money, but I never know how much it will be and it's not enough to live off of. What I make goes into savings or helps pay for vacations. It is a financial contribution, but a small one.

I don't mind being a stay at home wife. In some ways, it's kind of nice. Planning vacations is easy because we only have one schedule to deal with. My husband can talk to me about his problems at work and I can listen without being stressed out about my own work situation. When we first got married, we were broke, but we've since recovered nicely from that time period. Out of necessity, I've gotten smarter about money. I do use my education, I just don't get paid for it.

I guess I just feel bad for spending all that time and money on an education that my husband is now paying for. But since one of my degrees was in social work, my husband does, to some extent, benefit. ;-) However, sometimes I do feel like people judge, especially family members. The one person who does "get it" is my mom, because she was an Air Force wife!

I always wanted to be a writer, anyway.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2012 08:50AM by knotheadusc.

It's not that easy to change. My wife doesn't have much experience working outside the home and that makes her insecure about it. Not that there is any need, she's very capable, but it's not a switch you can just flick.

There is no resentment at all from my side. My wife's staying at home makes me more flexible at work. My "career" is as much her doing as it is mine.

Still, for her sake, I would like her to go out and find a job and enrich her life that way - meeting people, feeling good about accomplishments, getting paid, etc.

I've always encouraged her to do that, btw, but if you're brainwashed from the age of 12 that your sole destiny is to become a wife and a homemaker, that's hard to overcome.

Its exactly because of the church's teaching that men should be the sole provider for the family and women should stay home that I get infinite grief from my wife that she works.

Of course if she would stop spending us into a black hole of debt she could stay home and bake all the cookies she wanted.

Its a vicious cycle of her desire for the bigger house or driving a new BMW vs the church pounding into her head since birth that she should be able to be a Molly Mormon stay at home mom.

It also doesn't help that our ward contains a few families that live in big expensive homes, drive big expensive cars and the moms are Barbie trophy wives from BYU who get to stay home and breed.

It makes my life hell.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2012 11:48AM by kookoo4kokaubeam.

My wife is a stay-at-home mom, but has worked (from home) for 20 years, so I don't know if we count as the traditional mold. I don't resent her at all and given some of the health issues our kids had, I think it was inevitable that one of us be available at home. I tried to suggest that it be me who stayed home but she wasn't having it. :)

My sister and brother-in-law are a different story. They are both in the church. He married her at 19 with no education and they proceeded to have a baby a year for the next 6 years. The religious conviction of course was for her to stay home with the babies, and him to be the breadwinner. Unfortunately, with his youth and lack of education he couldn’t win much bread, and even had trouble getting and holding jobs.

However, he acted like a big man, strutted around, and lectured me on finances in his fancy church suit. All the while they couldn’t rub two dimes together. And, being the big man, he never let my sister get an inkling of the financial situation (although she must have known something was wrong), and kept up their lifestyle using credit cards. In the end my father had to hire him on at the family business so his grandchildren would be fed.

When my father sold the business, my BIL took other jobs and got fired from each for stealing from every one of them. All the while he strutted around in his fancy church suit and lectured people about morality (he was an adulterer) and finances.

He was never in a position to support even one kid, but for religious reason they had kid after kid, and kept my sister at home, even though she was well educated and could have easily supported the household.

And now my sisters kids are popping babies out at 18 and 19, into minimum wage families – for religious reasons, of course.

for 9 months and then went out and looked for a job without telling my husband. Being a SAHM is no picnic. I hated it. My husband did get me on where he worked and I worked 2 evenings a week and every other weekend so he was with the kids. My job eventually became an at-home job and I've been doing it at home (and sometimes in the office) for 22 years now. After he left, it gave me the freedom to be there 24/7 for my kids, drive them school, pick them up, volunteer at school, etc.

I love having my own paycheck and the satisfaction I get from a job well done.

I always wanted to be a SAHM with a lot of kids. I worked in the business world until I had my twins at age 28 and I really missed it.

And working at home is STILL WORK. A lot of people don't get that it is or take it for granted that somehow you find the time to work and they can ask for anything and everything.

I'm a farmer a and after our kids were grown, my Catholic wife went back to work as a special needs teaching assistant for 15 years and worked in a group with handicapped adults. We both worked very hard through some times to keep the business afloat and now we are reaping the rewards (oh, and we also raised a special needs child in the process). I suppose I could have forbid her to work and paid my tithing but then we'd have lost the farm and who knows what our circumstances would be now. I owe NOTHING to the MORG and they owe me even less.....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2012 01:02PM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

We married and we were both in school. We were also both working but when she got pregnant she quit. Being a TBM at the time I was fine with her being a stay at home mom but I certainly didn't "expect" it or think that was all she was good for.

When I lost my faith it nearly ended the marriage and as we discussed divorce one of my recommendations was for her to go back to school first and finish her degree. That way there'd be options for her as a single parent. She thought that was a good idea too and finished her degree in just a few semesters.

We're still married and she loves teaching everybit as much as she thought she would.

since we left, my husband has had a hard (putting it mildly)time. Part of him is "stuck" with the choices he made as a BIC TBM. Of course six of those things are me and the 5 kids. Like nerdherd it does not make financial sense for me to work. At the same time, the anger DH feels at being "stuck" in this situation has made me feel like I should do something. He feels trapped in going to work every day to support us when I think that if he had the full info the church hid for him, he wouldn't have made those choices. On one hand this hurts deeply, but in other wasys I understand. I have a degree and experience but would need to move to get back into my field. I've done my pre reqs and am on a waiting list to go back for my RN license. I want to make it easier for him and am trying to, but when I look at it rationally, I'm afraid that the stress of going back to school full-time will only add more stress. And really, the anger is not at me and the kids, it is so much deeper - at TSSC, at JS, at the pioneer ancestors, at his parents, at himself for not seeing the stupidity until so late, at all the things he missed in life because he gave away his desires to CTR. Since we left, my role is still the same. On the whole, he appreciates what I do, but occasionally alludes to my "life of leisure" as a SAHM - when he does, I don't hear him speaking, I hear the anger speaking. The bottom line is that my read on the subject is that as soon as being a SAHM does not make sense financially, I will need to pull my own weight.

I can tell you that my mother was NOT served by being a SAHW. She would have been far better off working and doing something she was passionate about. I didn't need her at home for 17 years. I needed her to live her life to show me how to live mine.