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I'm the breadwinner too. It is a tremendous amount of pressure. My dh works full time but I make 4x what he does and we wouldn't be close to even scraping by with just his income.

he actually works longer hours than me so I still do most household things but we share a lot of responsibility too. We've recently come together on our finances and are working on it, but I still allocate the majority of the money to different areas based on my comfort level. I'm a big saver.

My dh stayed at home with dd for 3 months after a move for my career. It was really hard on both of us and it's better now that he's working.

Due to some random timing my husband wound up staying at home with our son -- so obviously I'm the bread winner. I also am the house social coordinator, and leaver of notes suggesting what house work could be done during nap time! It is a lot of trial and error and pressure but we're making it work!

@shellio: I think he really enjoyed his time with , but it was never his intention to be a stay at home parent. He had a really hard time finding a job after we moved and it really hurt his self esteem. He also enjoys contributibg financially.

I will say it was a lot easier on my when she was home with him because I didn't have to worry about her at daycare under the care of others, there was no morning routine and we had a lot more time together as a family, but the stresses of his job search and being the only one making money was a lot for me and I did not enjoy it. We also had a hard time with the whole household balance thing because I felt he could have been doing more but he was just I'm survival mode. I was so exhausted, but so was he.

We actually don't really like where we live now and want to move, but the whole job search thing really freaks me out. I would prefer he find a job first, because it's really not hard for me to find work anywhere, but it may not make sense to do it that way since I can earn so much more and get us to a stable place with a move involved.

I'm also at a crossroads with my career at the moment and need to make a decision within the next 6-12 months where I want to go, so we have that on the table as well.

I'm the breadwinner of the family and it is enormously stressful! The weight of all of our debt is on my shoulders (which is just mortgage and my student loans) and it is a tremendous burden. Thank goodness we are of like minds financially and neither one of us have any credit card debt.

But DH being flexible and having the ability to stay at home with E while I worked has saved our bacon more than a few times. I don't work a typical 9 to 5, so it makes it very difficult to find childcare when DH is away for service obligations. (Hi! I need a babysitter...oh no, not for the day. Could you come to my house at 2 AM and sleep in our guest bedroom so I don't leave my son alone at night while I head in to work?) Yeaaaahhh.

Everything else we divide fairly equally, but there are some weeks where, if you were keeping "score", one person does more than the other. Completely depends on our workload and other obligations. DH almost always does the dishes. Which is worth laundry + vacuuming + straightening up + + + in my mind!

@shellio: I wouldn't say he loves it, but he has it good compared to the average stay at home mom I know.... I work a lot of random hours so two to three days a week he doesn't get out of bed until noon. I get up with our son, do the whole morning routine and put him down for a nap before going to work on those days! Other days I'm home in time to feed the baby and put him to sleep / bathe etc and he gets the whole evening off! On weekends I probably do about 80% of child care while he does whatever. When the baby is asleep I take care of house work and to be honest I got sick of it. I 100% believe being a stay at home parent is a full time job, but with our breakdown I was working 50 hours at a full time job out of the house plus another part time job at home and doing the housework. It wasn't fair.

I frame the list as stuff that *we* need to do and go over it. I chip away at it during the week as does he. I think a lot of the issue I was having is that we don't see eye to eye as to what is acceptable in terms of cleanliness so I need to spell some parts out.

Thanks for this thread! I've been the breadwinner but only now is my husband going to be a SAHD. Even though I am happy for him and our LO, I am definitely scared/overwhelmed at the idea of being the source of income for the 3 of us.
We scheduled a meeting with a financial counselor at our bank to review budget management. I have to cut back on some things I enjoyed doing for a long time (no more facials, no new clothes) and I am hoping my husband cuts down on buying soda and beer - I know those cost less than my splurges but it would make me feel better to see him cut back on things he doesn't really need like me.
My husband is handy at home and will run errands, cook a little, and clean some so I feel we do have a balance. He is looking at going back to school and will take 1 class two evenings a week starting in January. I think/hope we can manage this.

I had to totally let go of what the house looked like when he was a SAHD. He felt like just keeping the child safe and alive was enough while I felt like there were some basic household duties that went with the job like dishes and taking trash out and some laundry.

Ultimately it was our disagreement on this issue that sent him back to work. The house was so much messier than it would be if he wasn't home and the kids were in care. He makes enough to pay for school plus some, so it made some financial sense and keeps my house way cleaner!

Breadwinner and currently stressed about it and not thrilled...too lazy to type on my phone during this MOTN feed so I'll chime in tomorrow but following

@reverie: this is my biggest complaint! I'm working full time and my dh was laid off and is finishing school. But I get up at 5 with lo everday and on my days off do her bedtime etc. When I'm home dh sleeps in and stays up late. So basically I feel like I'm either at work or I'm taking care of the baby and its sooo draining while he gets down time on my days off

I'm currently the breadwinner, it's stressful now bc I'm on maternity leave and don't get paid! We do have a good amount of savings to tie us over. Our roles have always been the same from when our relationship began;

@snowjewelz: I hear you on the stressful unpaid maternity leave as the breadwinner! People always asked how long I would take and if I was going back to work afterwards - like I had a choice! I'd like a roof and food please

@MenagerieMama: @snowjewelz: Oh my goodness, I hated those questions!! Way to trigger my (just under the surface and fairly extreme) resentment! I don't even want to be a SAHM but the fact that other people get the choice and I don't really bothered me!!!

@shellio: Confession: I had 6 months off (some company pay, some savings) but the norm here is to take a full year. I cannot imagine going back at 5/6 weeks - I really admire you. I have a lot to be thankful for in this country. *hides head in shame*

It's really comforting to hear everyone else's stories!

I currently make about twice what my husband makes. I don't resent being the breadwinner per se; the rent for our apartment is covered as part of his compensation and we live in an expensive area so when you factor in what we'd spend on housing otherwise, the gap doesn't seem so large. What I do worry/harbor some resentment about is, four years ago after graduating from an MBA program, rather than going back into the corporate world, he chose to work for a low-skill business run by an elderly uncle with the goal of eventually taking it over, but as time has gone by we've come to realize that that is never going to happen nor would we want it to. Due to our housing being tied to his employment, it doesn't make sense for him to leave until after my maternity leave ends (I'm 20 weeks pregnant with our first now) and we are in a position to relocate. I just worry that when the time comes for him to begin looking for corporate jobs, it'll be impossible to get a foot in the door when he's spent the better part of five years working in the same position as high schoolers (he has managerial responsibility in practice but not on paper, and his uncle is all but guaranteed to view us leaving as a betrayal and will probably not be willing to give him a reference to that effect). I'm just concerned that despite being extremely intelligent and capable, he's consigned himself to a lifetime of underemployment and me to being the permanent breadwinner, which I'm not really on board with - I was ambitious in my twenties and got to a pretty good place but I really don't want to have to worry about climbing higher on the ladder while we have young kids.

I also have concerns about division of labor once the baby's here and I am back at work. I commute 45 miles each way, which amounts to about two and a half hours in the car every day - I'm usually gone from 7 AM to 5:15 or 5:30 PM. He works 1-8 PM, six days a week., and although the business does operate in the mornings also, his uncle has thus far shown little willingness to schedule him early a few days a week (or god forbid let him have 40 hours over five days) - the business runs better when my husband closes and if they could make him close seven days a week they would. On the one hand, we could probably get away with having a nanny in for five hours a day instead of full time day care. But on the other, it just seems overwhelmingly likely that I'm going to come home from my eleven hours out of the house, get stuck with all the evening feeding and bathing and putting to bed, then still have to deal with dinner and most of the work of running a household, while he has happy fun times with baby all morning and then hands her off to a caregiver when it's time for his 30-second walk to work.

I really don't mean to sound bratty or ungrateful because he has to put up with FAR more bullsh*t at work/with his uncle day to day than I do (the issues around his schedule are the tip of the iceberg, to be honest), but I just don't see how I'm not going to wind up bearing the brunt of it at home.

He does ALL the cleaning, so at least that's something? LOL.

I'm technically the breadwinner at this time, but I'm *hoping* that DH's "big deal" he's been working on goes through in the next month or two and he starts blowing me out of the water. Our family could use it. I make slightly more than him now, not significant but enough that we notice when I go on maternity leave and we are only living on his paycheck.

@daisyfay: aww.. I think you really can't look back, not knowing that taking over the business wouldn't work out. And you never know till he goes out looking! I think its great that you are thinking of all the possible issues and maybe you guys can talk about it now so no one gets upset once the baby is here and you go into survival mode. Would your uncle remotely be understanding of the fact that you have a child coming and he needs to make more $ to support the family?

I am the sole breadwinner, and we actually engineered it this way. I decided to go back to school so DH could SAH. DH likes it okay, certainly better than the job he had immediately before LO was born, but would like to go back to work someday. He is also unsure of what he wants to do. DH does do most of the household engineering, and he is very responsive to lists I make, especially when they are short. I am the better planner, though. I do get frustrated when he does not automatically know what I want done, but I realize this is probably not reasonable. As far as cleaning, he is much more tolerant of clutter than I am, but more likely to do deep cleaning. He does both when we are expecting guests. I do most of the childcare when I am home, although I do get to sleep in one or both weekend mornings (I have a much higher sleep needs). I usually work a few hours from home on Saturdays. I get frustrated that DH gets more leisure time than I do. However, if we both worked, we would both just have less leisure time. My 6 week unpaid leave was a little painful, but it was easier to leave LO with DH than it would be with another arrangement. I do feel a lot of pressure to make money, especially because my pay is highly variable. This was especially stressful when I was pregnant and not feeling well, and I am nervous about my next pregnancy. Sometimes I wish I had stayed at my easier job and DH also worked, but I feel like the grass is always greener, and things are probably better this way.