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@sandy: Billable hours... do NOT miss that!!
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I got laid off before we even started trying to get pregnant so I was a SAHM from the very beginning. We couldn't really afford for me to stay home but the economy was bad and I couldn't find a job. I went back to work when my first was 18 months old and even though I didn't particularly enjoy working before, I very quickly realized I was happiest when I was a WOHM. That all evolved quickly and I went back to work when my second was 7 weeks old, and now that my kids are 5 and 2, my career is now way too high of a priority to me to take a break considering the lengthy break I already had. Before I had my second, my husband got a new job that would probably have been enough for me to be able to afford to stay home, but that would have meant pulling my older one out of daycare/preschool and that just didn't make sense to me.
That all being said... we are finally approaching the end of double daycare (this fall!) and I am very much looking forward to the financial shift! Our living expenses won't change, but we'll be investing more in our home and 401ks now that childcare expenses will be cut in half!
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@sandy: I love what you wrote.
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@aprild: You sound just like me! No clue what I'll do when my boys are in school, but if you ever get a great idea let me know.
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@sandy: preach.
Family and spousal support are so important to how you feel about staying at home or working. I'm SO grateful that my husband is super supportive of whatever I want to do. He's happy I'm an attorney, even if I'm not practicing, because he's also a lawyer and he finds it enormously helpful to have a spouse that understands his work and the stressors of his jobs inherently. If I stayed at home in the long run, I'd probably take a managing role in his private practice and take care of a lot of administrative/billing stuff. If I continued to working at my job, I'd keep working in an area of law I'm good at. Either way, I don't feel like I'm "wasting" my degree. That said, I feel like as long as my degree is paid for (i.e. the student loans are gone), its not anyone's business what I choose to do with my JD. I'm the first in my family to get a professional degree so there's a lot of pride in my being an attorney, but at the same time, my parents see how happy and well-adjusted DS is at home with me and they can't deny that I'm just as good of a mommy as I am a working attorney. Furthermore, it took us 3 years to have DS, so they don't blame me for wanting to soak up the time I have with him. My mom actually told me she's super supportive of me going to work part-time, as she feels full-time would have made me unhappy at this point in my life.
As to hedging risk, DH and I both have short term and long term disability insurance and we both have life insurance, although he is WAY more insured than I am. We have a crazy amount of coverage on DH, but even then its only $1500-ish a year for both longterm disability and life insurance. I think a little over $100 a month for that kind of security is priceless.
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@BandDmommy: I really appreciate your saying that kids are proud of mom because of who she is... not whether she WOH, SAH, or whatever combination. I have been feeling guilty lately about wanting to be home more and am going to part time next year with an eye toward stopping work completely in maybe 8 years. My boss tells me that she feels guilty for missing kids school events, etc because of demanding work hours but that her 20 year old recently told her he was really proud of her and it made me feel like maybe I SHOULD work more. As I look back, my mom WOH and it never occurred to me to be proud of her for her work, nor did I wish she SAH. I just loved her, maybe I didn't think enough about the rest but I don't think it really mattered/matters to me.
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