![]() Mothers who quit working to stay home with children aren’t just adjusting to motherhood, they’re adjusting to a completely different type of work, one with little feedback and no easy measure of success compared to their experience in the workplace. Even though I had what every mom hopes for - the ability to stay home with my baby and a husband who made it happen - I was so exhausted and had no family in town and my friends (none of whom had kids) kind of disappeared on me.” “Many days, I cried and was lonely as hell, and overwhelmed. Many dads, sometimes because they’re dealing with their own new pressures and stresses as the sole breadwinner, don’t always grasp how complicated, conflicted and unexpected women’s feelings might be about being home alone all day with a baby, which Cindy describes as “heaven and hell.” “For instance, once we were looking for a car and I suggested a Mercedes, and he went off the deep end about what the fuck was I thinking and that I was spoiled.” “There were a couple of instances where he claimed I was a spoiled stay-at-home mom trying to keep up with the other stay-at-home moms,” says Cindy, who lives in Marina del Rey, California. For one thing, there’s an undeniable change in the power dynamic when one person holds the pursestrings.Ĭindy, who asked that we not use her last name, describes her ex-husband and the father of her 13-year-old son as an incredibly involved and loving parent, but says that nonetheless, there were occasional problems related to money. My mom also was a stay-at-home mom, and I loved having her around when I was a kid.”Įven when women love the idea of staying home with their children, however, the arrangement creates strain in a marriage. A Chicago mother of one with another child on the way, Jennifer Storelli loved her first job after earning her journalism degree at Northwestern University but says, “Honestly, I always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. Statistically, married, college-educated mothers are less likely to quit working and stay home with the kids, but many educated women abandon promising careers to take care of their children. Just five years ago, 60 percent of people polled said that kids were better off if mothers stayed home rather than worked. For the most part, society generally supports this traditional arrangement. In a report published in 2018, Pew found that the number of stay-at-home moms had dropped only a bit at 27 percent by 2016. In 2014, the Pew Research Center reported that the percentage of mothers who chose to stay home and not work had increased for the first time in decades: Whereas in 1999, 23 percent of mothers stayed home with the kids, that figure had risen to 29 percent by 2012. Less than one-third (28 percent) of married moms said they consider full-time work ideal for them, according to a 2019 survey by the Institute for Family Studies. This is particularly so when research suggests that new dads earn more, according to a 2018 study, and mothers are often paid less, another found.Īlthough the arrangement is no longer a given, many women still consider ditching work to care for their children full time to be living the dream. ![]() The reason might be financial: If her salary doesn’t cover or barely covers the cost of childcare while both parents work, it often makes more economic sense for her to stay home. Getting certain sexual needs taken care of elsewhere would allow me to better focus my attention and invest in our relationship.Once the tradition and norm, today, mothers’ decisions to stay home with the kids might merely be due to personal preference or because she was raised to think that’s what mothers should do. Not unlike seeing a therapist, seeing a sex worker allows me to focus on myself for that moment and it alleviates the expectation that my girlfriend be or do things she’s simply not comfortable with or good at. ![]() I believe seeing a sex worker can make me a better partner. Our sexual chemistry isn’t terrible, but it isn’t as strong as I’d like, nor as strong as the nonsexual chemistry we have. It just doesn’t seem plausible that she’d be accepting of this part of my recent past, let alone my or our future. To most of the people in my life and our society, this comes with an incredible amount of stigma. But there’s something else that’s new for me this year that complicates things: I’ve started seeing sex workers. I’m a 35-year-old man who’s started dating a 33-year-old woman recently, and we have the most chemistry I’ve ever experienced with someone I dated. ![]()
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