I’m a housewife now…and I do remember the 50s & 60s. Unless you were upper income, most women had some kind of job outside the home, and were homemakers as well. This describes most of my life…I will say my second husband (of 24 years) has been far and away a near saint in helping with the housework!

As to the financial aspects: When you’ve got kids at home, in the economy we have now, the additional cash from working is a near-necessity. Once the kids are grown, the amount we save from me doing all the money management is arguably a significant offset of the lack of my salary, as is the lack of eating out, driving expenses, clothing expenses, and so on. The biggest financial downside is that as far as Social Security is concerned, I do no “work”, and therefore I earn no retirement or disability credits.

This is something we should all be campaigning for.

Best of Luck

deb

I ended up getting in some trouble while noone was looking and eventually, my parents divorced (I have been married now for 3 years longer than my parents were). I decided that would give up the career (temporarily) for the sake of making sure my kids always had me to guide them.

Even though I sometimes wish I could be making $60000/yr. like my sis, I know that I have made the right choice. I feel fortunate that I was able to spend this time w/my children. My husband says, “I’ll work the first 20, you can work the next 20.” Fine w/me, ’cause he’ll have to deal w/the teenagers! LOL