Is it okay to want a housewife?

Technically it's OK to want a woman who wants this (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with women who want this) but you'd have to be prepared to compensate her for it and for her putting herself in an extremely vulnerable position (a minority of women who put themselves in this position will have their husband turn abusive towards their sons, daughters or themselves (which is also abusive to the children), to have to leave and be a single mother in that situation is difficult, or she and your children could also end up in that highly difficult situation through you getting a disease or dying).

If a woman becomes your housewife and raises your children, she is giving up not only earnings during the time she spends to raise children but it's also even more so her earning potential that she is sacrificing. For instance let's say her earnings at age 25 when she had the children was 40 000 per year and if she worked in the same career twenty years later her earnings (as she worked her way up the corporate ladder) would have become 100 000 per year. Then if she has your children and stays home to raise them, she's not just giving up 40 000 per year, she's giving up 40 000 a year at the beginning and then it gets more and more what she's giving up as the years go by, at the end she's giving up 100 000 per year. And then let's say she returns to work after raising your kids for twenty years, now she can't just go to work and "pick up where she left off", as if she just lost twenty years of money, because now we're talking about damage to her earning potential. She won't get 100 000 on going back to work after twenty years and also even if she does work her way up to that salary level after a few years it's not going to be that way. She'll then be making 100 000 when she would have been making 150 000 had she not stayed home.

I think it's very difficult to properly think of compensating a woman who does this, unless you are very rich and if you divorce later she's getting 5 million dollars. Basically you would have to have something like a pre nuptial agreement that gives her half of your earnings, and not just through the length of the marriage but ever after even if you should divorce she would get half of your earnings. Because what you're asking her to do is going to be forever damaging to her financially not just for the length of the time she stays home with your kids.

Also on top of this a woman staying home to take care of your kids, is like having a day AND a night nanny. That's technically two jobs not just one if you don't intent to share equally in taking care of your kids during the evening and night.

/r/TooAfraidToAsk Thread