Wife Refuses To Quit Her Job After Her Husband Demands She Become A Stay-At-Home Mom — 'If You Trusted Me It Wouldn't Be A Problem'
She feels it's ridiculous that she should have to become a stay-at-home mother while her husband can still go to work.
PorporLing / Shutterstock / SeventyFour from Getty Images via Canva Pro A woman shared that her husband has a rather outdated idea of how they should care for their future children.
Posting to the subreddit "r/relationship_advice" — an online forum where people can share struggles happening in their friendships, family relationships, or romantic partnerships — a 30-year-old woman revealed that she and her husband are beginning to talk about expanding their family. However, her husband has an outlandish demand that she just can't get behind.
She refuses to quit her job after her husband demanded she become a stay-at-home mother.
In her Reddit post, she explained that she and her husband were getting ready to celebrate their seven-year anniversary. When the two got married, they each decided they wanted to wait until they were financially stable with a home before having children.
Photo: fizkes / Shutterstock
"Thankfully, we got our house a few months ago and we were both able to quit our second jobs and for the first time only work regular 9-5s," she wrote. Since then, the two have been discussing the possibility of adding to their family.
She acknowledged that she's ready to become a mother, and while it's scary, she knows it will be an amazing new chapter in both her and her husband's lives. However, while speaking with her husband about children, he told her that it would be sad once she leaves her job since she worked so hard to get it.
"I told him I had zero plans to quit, I would only take maternity leave. Plus my company allows maternal and paternal remote options for 1 year after birth, so I can just work from home if needed," she continued. " I know it's a lot to do with a newborn but giving up the security of my paycheck is simply not an option."
Her husband didn't agree, arguing that the reason they waited so long to have children was because they wanted to create the perfect family dynamic that they each didn't have from their own parents. He felt that she was now "blindsiding" him by refusing to become a stay-at-home mother.
She rebutted that she could have the career she worked so hard to get while also being the best mother she can be. "He doesn't have to quit his job to be a dad so why should I?" she inquired.
Photo: fizkes / Shutterstock
Since their disagreement, she says her husband has been extremely angry at her and her decision. "Not only do I not understand it, but it makes me trust him a lot less than I did yesterday. I have a bad habit of running for the hills when problems come up and not gonna lie, this is making me really nervous," she admitted.
The expectation of women having to quit their jobs to be mothers is a double standard.
While there is nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home mother — in fact, it's probably one of the hardest jobs that a woman can do — the expectation that a woman has to drop everything to become a stay-at-home mother is an example of a societal double standard that places unequal expectations on women compared to men.
It assumes that a woman's primary role is that of a caregiver and that her value lies solely in her ability to raise children. This diminishes the importance of her individual ambitions, talents, and potential contributions to the workforce and society as a whole.
Women are diverse individuals with a range of interests and goals. Forcing a woman to have to choose between her career and motherhood can create unnecessary conflict and limit her opportunities for achieving personal fulfillment.
In the comments section, people encouraged her not to give in to her husband's demands if they weren't something she wanted for herself.
"Looking after the kids is not YOUR job alone, it is both of your jobs' as the parents. How you split that up between you is up to you two," one Reddit user pointed out. "It's not on you alone. And kids can be perfectly fine with two working parents."
Another user added, "He's definitely wrong, I think you would benefit from couple's counseling. This is solvable, you just need to come to an agreement about how you'll manage having kids."
It's important to recognize that both women and men should have the freedom to make choices about their careers and family lives based on their individual circumstances, preferences, and aspirations.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.