[...] The survey estimates a working parent’s salary for their “mom duties” is around $71,860. You’d have to tack on their actual wages to come up with the real figure – but of course, then you’d have to subtract child care. [...]

I don’t get this story. So, women who go to work, and whose husbands work, see the new childcare expense as coming out of their paycheck? Of course they do. The childcare is a result of a change in family finances related to their employment.

I’m a stay-at-home dad, and when my wife and I consider me going back to work, we always calculate the childcare cost as coming out of what would be my pay. It’s only natural to calculate cost-benefit that way. The reason this falls on women, I suppose, is because traditionally they’re the ones that stay home and must be the ones who return to work.

I think if you’re considered having a parent stay home, you take the money “out” of that parent’s pay. Since I make more, the money “comes out of” my husband’s pay.

When I go back to work (hopefully next year), we will calculate whether my salary can cover tuition costs for both kids, b/c it is my going back to work that makes child care necessary. It just makes sense to think of it that way, since my husbands salary is eaten up every month by ALL of our other expenses. It all comes out of the same account, so it’s not a question of who is paying for it.

I don’t understand how married people are even able to determine whose money it is. In our family all the money goes into one account and then the bills are paid out of OUR money. I understand not everyone does this but isn’t it what most people do? If so doesn’t this “study” really just reflect who they were talking to?

“Or did you just not ASK the guy to pick up the kids?”

Jeanne – You’re blaming the mothers for being controlling, yet in the very same sentence you’re assuming the father has to be told that the kids need to be picked up! This is a real issue for many families, and your dismissal of the topic — as hilariously tone deaf as it is — isn’t helping anyone.

Back in the 70s, remarried and with the second child ready for preschool, HE had the great job. He was older and had been in the workforce continuously since he was 18. I’d been in the workforce continuously from 18-20, 23-25, and now wanted to be working 27-onward, having dropped out twice to give birth and stay home with infant/toddlers.

When I was going stir-crazy from wishing I were doing what I had worked hard to do my whole life, his argument was that it “didn’t make sense” for me to get a job because all my income would go toward childcare, increased expenses for eating out & convenience food, and business clothes. When I pointed out that they were his children too, and after the first flurry of clothing purchases I didn’t think I’d have to update my wardrobe often, only then could we talk about how we would manage ‘when’ I went back to work.

Maybe here in the 21st century the issues are different and husbands are more supportive … but I can’t help but wonder if ‘taking it out of her paycheck’ isn’t a way of punishing her for wanting a career. Certainly in that marriage (which ended before 1980) it sure was.