If given the chance, would you be a homemaker?

Forgive me if I doubted your age. It is just so unusual that a teenager wants to follow in their grandparents' footsteps. Times have changed so much since then. I doubt very much if many young women would marry a guy who "would make it clear that he wanted her in the home raising their children". Most marriages these days are equal partnerships where the couple decides as a team when to have children and what to do about raising them. You say you are no stranger to poverty and in another response you mention you work two jobs, 65 hours a week. I can see how you are totally exhausted. You cannot keep up this gruelling schedule forever, so very true. Also think, that when you are 40 or 50 these low paying jobs will still go to young people and so they should. The ticket out of poverty and the ticket to a better life is education. I am a grandmother myself (I am 71 years old) and I am hoping that my granddaughters at age 19 will be thinking of education, graduating from university or college with a marketable skill, dreaming of travel to see the world, maybe study abroad for a semester, carving out a career for themselves, living independantly, paying their bills by themselves, and in time (much much later) meet a wonderful guy with whom to start a family as an equal partner, sharing the work at home, sharing the child care and agreeing on a wonderful suitable daycare centre with educated certified and trained staff until the children are in school, and then enough money for after school programs. See, I know you say your grandmother did not have any regrets for staying at home but what about your poor grandfather, working three jobs. What kind of a relationship can a person build with their children when they come home totally exhausted and just need to fall into bed. I know this from relatives that had three children and the husband "made it clear he wanted his wife at home". He was always so exhausted his children now recall with bitterness that he never knew what grade they were in or was able to partake in any of their extra curricular activities. The children now are grown up, ill at ease socially, because they had no opportunity as children to meet a lot of other children, join teams or summer camps, because Mom was at home and there was no money for any of these things. One day she told her husband she was taking a job. At first he balked and would not lift a hand to help her. She hung in there and did not budge. Now the guy is forever grateful to his wife. She gets a nice pension upon retirement because she worked so many years. He on the other hand just worked jobs and eventually had to stop because of ill health. No pension, just some savings. This is another side of staying at home.

Well, to be fair, we did decide as a team. I let him know that I wanted to stay home and he said that's what he wanted me to do, too, and we did discuss it. Actually, my grandfather has a very good relationship with all of his children. True, he wasn't always around when the older ones were younger and there were...certain situations...that prevented him from always taking part in activities, but the thing that his children regret the most about growing up has nothing to do with how much he worked. And I know that by staying at home the kids need to get out, obviously. By the time they head to school, I'll be picking up another part-time job and once in school of course I expect them to participate in other things. Just because I plan on staying at home doesn't mean I plan on not having money. You underestimate us and I don't blame you since you don't know us, but still. Give me a little credit. If it came down to staying at home or giving my children the things they should have then obviously I'd choose the latter and go back to work. I want my children to have everything that I had growing up and I wouldn't give that up for anything. But there are plenty of things that I can do from home to earn money and I plan, one day, to utilize those things even more (and hopefully my degree will help if I can get a telecommute job!). Besides, there are pros and cons to every situation. There's always good and bad. You can argue your viewpoint and I can argue mine, but we both know it's not going to change anything. :) I have, and always will be, a stubborn teen who is bent on doing what she wants, for better or for worse. I guess my parents spoiled me a little too much growing up because they made me believe I could do anything I wanted as long as I worked for it. xD

I am only 19 and I am in college and working two jobs currently (one of them does happen to be waiting tables, thank you, and it is a pretty decent job). But that doesn't mean that that's what I want to do with the rest of my life. I don't want to wait tables or continue my career. I want to stay home and care for my family like my grandmother did. And I don't mind still working by the time I'm 60 or 65. I've seen lots of my family do it and it's ok. A little hard work never killed anyone. We've always been able to provide for ourselves well and we will continue to do so regardless of what we decide to do. And we've always lived in poverty. Heck, we're married teenagers living on our own with our own house and ten million pets. We're not stranger to poverty. My grandparents did the same thing we're doing. When they got married, my grandfather made it clear to my grandmother that he wanted her in the home raising their children and that's where she stayed until the children were a little older and she needed to work to earn money and that was fine. She joined the work force for a while before they both retired. They've been retired for a while now and while they didn't altogether retire at 60 (they had their own lawnmowing business that they did until they were 65), they live well and comfortable and neither of them regrets having her stay home with the children, even though it meant my grandfather had to work 3 jobs at one point.

It's definitely wishful thinking for me, too. I'm still in college and we're not thinking about having one for probably another year or two. Even then, I'll most definitely be needing to work to earn extra money. We just couldn't afford it otherwise. I'm ok with working, though. I just hope that by our second or third I'll be able to stay home with them. ^_^ I do plan on cutting back to only one job opposite my hubby's job, though, when we have kids. That'll still give me lots of time to be home with them.

I think that sounds like a pretty good plan. And at that age they'll be excited to be in the same school as you. I know that once they hit high school they might not be quite as excited, though, since I went to high school with kids of faculty members and they were anything but thrilled about it (except when they needed money for something..lol). And at least your hours would be the same, so you'd still get to be there for a lot of the time and everything.

Well, of course it'd be hard to be a homemaker if you can't afford it. I think it's always nice to be able to give your kids the extra time and everything and be able to watch them grow up like that. And I'm sure your husband would be happy to come home to a nice home cooked meal. ^_^ I know that mine is looking forward to that...lol. Right now we barely have time to cook one meal a week at home and most nights we're at our separate jobs and find our own way to eat, so it'll definitely be nice to be able to sit down and have a nice meal together.

You sound very much like myself. I'm working on getting into the IT field, which I could, in theory, try to find a telecommute job or something that I could do from home with, but as much as I love that field and all the possible jobs within it, it wouldn't be hard for me to walk away from it for my family. I want my children to be happy and I want to be able to spend time with them and be there when they need me just like my family was there for me. I want them to have that same strong support system that I had. And I very much agree that it's important that both partners agree to it. My husband wants me to be able to stay at home, too, and we're working towards getting there right now. As long as it makes me happy he wants me to be able to do it and since I do the finances he knows that I'll know when it's okay for me to do it. I'd still be working online and earning probably about $200 a month from that, but that would still be quite a big pay cut from what I'm earning now.

That's the thing I'm most afraid of right there, is being absent in my children's lives. I know that sometimes it's unavoidable to work a lot to afford everything and to pay for children, but I really want to be able to be around for my children as much as possible, even if my husband can't. I know they might not always want me around, but I do have a lot that I can teach them and a lot that I can learn from them myself and I want the chance to experience that. I've also always wanted a nice, clean house where everything is painted and looks nice. Right now we just don't have time to make all of that happen. My husband and I both work two jobs (about 65 hours a week each) and by the time we get home we just don't have the energy to do what needs to get done. I can't wait for us to have three home cooked meals a day (or at least two!) and a clean, tidy house. :D

LOL. Yes, well, having to clean the house and everything isn't necessarily fun, but I like being able to look at my house and see how clean and tidy it is (which, of course, I haven't been able to do since we bought it!...lol). Not to mention that we've got 2 dogs, 3 cats, and a rabbit right now, so the floor needs to be mopped every day from mud the dogs drag in, the bathroom needs to get cleaned every day because of the kitty litter, and the floor around bunny's cage needs to get vacuumed because she kicks her bedding out sometimes. It's sometimes hard to find time to do all these things, but I think it'd be easier and things wouldn't build up so much if I could stay home and take care of things as they happened. ^_^

I share that same sentiment on the being there for my kids part. there's just too much stuff to shield them from the world today and you want to be as close or as involved with them when they form their own decisions regarding the negative stuff you see everyday. I also feel timing is very important since I'm pretty sure there is an age where you catching up on the lost time would not produce the results that you would want to have. though i'm not so much sure on how I stand with the cleaning the house and chores stuff. I feel like it will probably be my baby girls who'll be my teachers there XD