My sister is a stay-at-home mom. Her day starts at 6 a.m., when my nephews get up, and isn't over until the last of the two monkeys heads off to bed around 8 p.m. Every single second of her day is dedicated to my two nephews, ages two and three, and I can say without a single doubt in my mind that my sister is the hardest worker I know.
Money conflicts result in some of the most intense and destructive arguments in any relationship. Money is a topic very few people are comfortable talking about, and issues concerning spending and saving are deeply personal. The additional variable that's been silently added to the mix is the turning of the tides in many relationships for who is the primary breadwinner. Here are five tips for keeping a breadwinner relationship tension-free.
At home with two children, I’d learned a home could make you lonely and therefore unhappy. But could a home make you happy, and thereby improve your marriage? Or are you who you are, regardless of the space you inhabit?
At the behest of his wife, my husband has been pursuing a different employer as his current position, while solid and benefit laden, offers no room for advancement and little job satisfaction. It is one of those jobs that his father's generation would have envied. In fact, his father is pretty incensed that he would like to leave. Problem is, my hubby hates it and he'll be there a million years before he ever gets a promotion because no one leaves. It's a graveyard and he knows it.
As I watched them work, I felt a thousand miles away from my staff job, and a million miles away from business as I knew it. It wasn't just a gender thing; I was seeing physical evidence of that tectonic shift we've all been reading about for years. The corporate office as safe haven from domestic reality is finally dying. Here are my pregnant wife and her friend, a newly single mom, venturing forth together into the wide world on the deck of a new business model. No doubt about it: this is Oz territory.
When you picture a military couple, one going off to fight a war, and the other taking upon the role of the stay at home parent, society typically envisions the man going off into battle and the woman staying home to raise the children. But with nearly 20 percent of the Air Force consisting of women, men are quickly learning the challenges of being a stay at home parent. And with the military, dads aren't forced to take care of their children on their own from 9 to 5 but rather for months at a time while their wives are away on leave.
