Choosing your career over your kids

[Aitch]

My wife works full-time at home taking care of baby. Although I would support her if she decided to pursue a career, I believe she is far more valuable to our family in her current role. I would trade places with her in a heartbeat, but unfortunately I simply had the luck to choose a career with far greater earning potential. This also means I can provide for my family’s future needs without requiring a second income producing parent.

Now all that being said, you can’t forget or understate the boredom of being a homemaker once the kids start going to school. Even before then it’s easy for a stay-at-home parent to feel like they are not contributing as much to the family. That’s why it’s critical to the stay-at-home parent’s happiness and mental well-being for their partner to routinely acknowledge and be thankful for all the work they do at home. Otherwise, being a homemaker turns into a thankless, unpaid, endless grind.

[Deleted]

Nonsense. All through history, your kids would literally starve if you werent able to provide.

Nothing has changed in that regard. If you still have to work 12 dollar an hour jobs when you are mature, you should not get children (yet).

Yeah and thats the reason why the native Dutch population is getting replaced by immigrants. Most Dutch people don't have money for childeren while immigrants get money for free and have all the time in the world to raise a dozen of childeren.

[Shadee]

$11.40 an hour Canadian? Lolololol what is that like $8 American?

[Grokresh]

Is it that much different than when working parents take their kids to daycare? I don't see a problem here. Most parents work these days.

I think they expect that the women should stay home with the kid instead based on what they've said basically.

[Aitch]

Yeah and thats the reason why the native Dutch population is getting replaced by immigrants. Most Dutch people don't have money for childeren while immigrants get money for free and have all the time in the world to raise a dozen of childeren.

Do you have any data that shows average Dutch recent-immigrant families have anywhere near as high cash input as not-as-recent-immigrant families (such as yours)? Cause I doubt it.

Could it be that the recent-immigrant families simply have a more frugal standard of living, taught by decades of poverty?

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I think they expect that the women should stay home with the kid instead based on what they've said basically.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting that. I’d gladly stay at home with my son while my wife earned income, if she could earn as much income as I do.

When you pay someone to do a task that you are equally qualified to accomplish, you’re inherently saying that your time is more valuable than theirs. So essentially, when you pay someone to raise your kids, you’re saying: “the time I spend not raising my kids is more valuable than the time I spend raising my kids”. Doesn’t that sound at least a little off, or non-ideal to you?

[Grokresh]

Do you have any data that shows average Dutch recent-immigrant families have anywhere near as high cash input as not-as-recent-immigrant families (such as yours)? Cause I doubt it.

Could it be that the recent-immigrant families simply have a more frugal standard of living, taught by decades of poverty?

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I don’t think anyone is suggesting that. I’d gladly stay at home with my son while my wife earned income, if she could earn as much income as I do.

When you pay someone to do a task that you are equally qualified to accomplish, you’re inherently saying that your time is more valuable than theirs. So essentially, when you pay someone to raise your kids, you’re saying: “the time I spend not raising my kids is more valuable than the time I spend raising my kids”. Doesn’t that sound at least a little off, or non-ideal to you.

Well it's quite possibly true that your time is more valueable in a capitalistic sense if you can afford to pay someone else to raise your kids just using part of your wage. Obviously not ideal but again not everyone is you, some would expect if one person had to stay home it'd be the women who knows what the OP intended. Also if it was about who earned the most being the one to work and the one to stay home being the one who had the least earning potentinal statistically (not all cases) women would still be staying home as in general women are paid less, be it the gender gap if that exists or just the fact that they do safer jobs or work less hours or whatever I don't know you'd still end up with a lot more women not being able to have careers. If someone chooses to hire a nanny and a nanny chooses to work for them then that's the free market, free will, etc none of our business.

[Deleted]

Do you have any data that shows average Dutch recent-immigrant families have anywhere near as high cash input as not-as-recent-immigrant families (such as yours)? Cause I doubt it.

Could it be that the recent-immigrant families simply have a more frugal standard of living, taught by decades of poverty?

Yes I do. Immigrants get priority on houses over Dutch people, they do have to pay rent but it's about 50% less than Dutch citizens. They get 10k euro for free to decorate their house. They can use the Dutch social health system but don't have to contribute to it. There are a lot of different subsidies you can get, if you do it right you can get a total sum of 2200 euro a month which is more than most Dutch citizens earn with a 40 hour job. About 70% of the immigrants without western roots don't work and live on subsidies. The immigrants without western roots that do work are mostly asians, they have a good work ethic.

[Lochton]

The problem is when they want the SUV and the 4 bedroom house and the Sandals vacation and they end up thinking to themselves "we both gotta work. Let's hire a complete stranger to raise our kids"

Unsure with over there, but can't be a 100% avoided to be a complete stranger - but still, don't you need a license to work with kids? You do here, at least. It is quite common to have your child taken care of by professionals.

[Trassk]

Career always, because kids suck!


Stop crying you little bastard! You were never wanted!!

But seriously, if someone wants to have a career over being a parent thats fine, just as long as your someone who doesn't first have kids and THEN decides they want a career, and that kids are a distraction now. If you have a kid, take responsibility for that choice, don't just abandon the little spawn now their born, they deserve a decent upbringing. The number of times I watch mothers or fathers walking around with kids in push chairs ignoring them as they scream while texting or chatting on their phone makes me so fucking angry I want to snatch their phone, throw it under a bus and yell at them for having a kid in the first place if they now ignore it.

[Halyon]

Seems more like they want to hire an actual parent for shite pay... As such, I'm not adverse to finding a caretaker for your kids while you're not home, but for fucks sake, if you need this much, maybe don't have kids, or just have 1 and flex some hours to take care of it properly, like parents. They sound like the sort of people who had kids out of 'responsibility' rather than actually wanting them and having time/resources for them.

That pay really is shite though, dayum...

[Deleted]

I'm not a fan of them saying "the children." It really sounds like they don't even care about them. I would have at least said their names and then used "them", or not even use pronouns and said like bathing or something.

Not too far from "Nourish our genetical offspring state id #39458 which we [affectionate verb] very much".

[Shadee]

Do you have any data that shows average Dutch recent-immigrant families have anywhere near as high cash input as not-as-recent-immigrant families (such as yours)? Cause I doubt it.

Could it be that the recent-immigrant families simply have a more frugal standard of living, taught by decades of poverty?

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I don’t think anyone is suggesting that. I’d gladly stay at home with my son while my wife earned income, if she could earn as much income as I do.

When you pay someone to do a task that you are equally qualified to accomplish, you’re inherently saying that your time is more valuable than theirs. So essentially, when you pay someone to raise your kids, you’re saying: “the time I spend not raising my kids is more valuable than the time I spend raising my kids”. Doesn’t that sound at least a little off, or non-ideal to you?

Of course being from a socialist country you would rather stay at home.

[rda]

The job in the first post is not choosing your career over your kids.

It's bog standard "mom and pop are working". A week is 168 hours. Even with 10 hours of sleep entirely on parents watch, this is 112 hours. Nanny is there for 40 hours = one third of that. This is nothing.

[NoRest4Wicked]

A couple of engineers I work with use a child care service based in New York that provides full time in home nannys. They get these women from poor asian countries, bring them into the US, and send them to homes to work at. They pay around $20,000 a year for her to be a full time nanny for their 6 kids. And man, one of them is pretty harsh. His newest nanny is home sick, crying about missing her family, and he's threatening to send to back to New York to get removed from the service because he doesn't have time for her shit and she needs to suck it up.

Anyways, they do this so they can both work more. She is an executive for some big company based out of Cincinnati and he's a senior systems engineer working on defense contracts - neither have a lot of time for their kids.

[bmjclark]

The thing that gets me is actually that that's in Ontario and not even minimum wage for raising 3 kids (min wage in ontario is $14). Not worth, at all.

[Ragnarohk]

i dont know how things work up there in the netherlands, but in the US 12 dollar an hour jobs are pretty common. ya take what ya can get.

You can't really compare both situations, purchasing power varies by currency exchange rate. I work as a general physician for $2 USD an hour, It's way above the minimum wage in my country.

[Ghostpanther]

The problem is when they want the SUV and the 4 bedroom house and the Sandals vacation and they end up thinking to themselves "we both gotta work. Let's hire a complete stranger to raise our kids"

I agree with you. Once my wife became pregnant, we both decided one had to stay home and take care of the kids. Sure we lost a lot of money by doing that. And we had to make sacrifices to make it work. But I would do it all over again. Raising kids is one of the biggest responsibilities a parent has. Should be a no question which is more important. But I also understand that it is not always a easy decision with some households. So I am not quick to judge those who do decide for both parents to work. It is their decision to make.

[I Push Buttons]

That works out to roughly $360 a week, 440 in Canadian dollarydoos I suppose, Aside from having to work less hours you'd get roughly the same pay at McDonalds, and more at Wal-mart.

I'd rather hang out in some rich couple's nice house and watch their kids than do either of those things, tbh fam.

[Tennis]

Not everyone has a flexible schedule with their career. How are they any busier than anyone else with a typical hours job?

Another useless thread from you though. Bitching about people hiring a fucking nanny.

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They're watching them before and after school. That's not "raising their kids".

Wrong. Being a mother isn't supposed to be easy. It's about sacrificing for your kids. To offload these duties to a stranger is terrible.

[Gorgodeus]

Poor OP just does not seem to understand that using a Nanny for 40 hrs/week is in some ways better than sticking the child in a daycare for 40 hrs/wk.