Stop assuming I’m rich because I’m a stay-at-home mum
A mother plainting her little daughter’s hair, Christian Krohg (1888)
For the last eight years, I haven’t earned very much money at all. I’m a 38-year-old freelance writer, but trust me, it’s far from lucrative and very much in the vanity project domain of reward. Last year I earnt £3,000. My husband earns £46,000 working as a history teacher and taking on additional tasks at a school in the north of England. I stay home and raise the three crotch-goblins.
It’s not what you think
I feel defensive, so I want you to know that I started working young. At 15, I spent weekends in a shop and added bar shifts to my CV in the run-up to and during my university years. At 22, I became self-employed and did whatever work I needed to make ends meet. My CV is a complete mess and includes a rather unenjoyable stint working as a cleaner in a prison. I’ve also worked as an outdoor education instructor teaching men how to light fires and gut rabbits.
I have always valued my independence and the freedom it afforded me. I’m a raging, card-carrying feminist. So, how did I end up being financially dependent on my husband?
Financial fork in the road
After having my first child at 30, I planned to take 12 months of maternity leave from my job as an English teacher, but we couldn’t afford for me to return to work. My teaching job required me to work 6-7 days a week and some evenings during term time. After weighing up the monthly childcare costs (£1,500) and my take-home salary (£1,100), I became a stay-at-home mum.
Shifting into a single-income family wasn’t just a financial adjustment, it also provoked an inferiority complex in me. You could say it dented my ego.
I was raised with a strong work ethic. My mother was an 80s trailblazer, bossing it at the office and somehow raising a family too. She had to fight to maintain her professional career alongside having a family. I wonder if she feels I should have tried harder. Then I remember that, as an infant, I was wedged behind the driver’s seat in a carrycot tied in with a ribbon (apparently a safe option).
Bills to pay
People are surprised when they hear my husband is a teacher and not a hedge fund manager or something corporate and ethically dubious. I may not work, but we keep a tight budget in our household. We don’t eat out, buy takeaways or coffees. Our only monthly subscription is Netflix (limited options for chill but you have to try). We have a £2,000 credit card limit, which we use on all the essentials including groceries and fuel. We pay it off each month to help with our credit score, which was bad from having moved house so many times. We try to save £200 each month, but sometimes have to forgo this when expenses such as the car MOT come up.
Every cloud has a silver lining, so I guess I am thankful that I don’t earn enough to pay tax (the current tax-free Personal Allowance is £12,570). Another advantage I’ve enjoyed is being debt-free. Studying at a time when you could graduate with £10,000 of student debt was hugely helpful.
No escape route
In an ideal world, my writing work would pick up, but freelancing is notoriously patchy; the bad boyfriend of career routes. I’m also aware that in picking up additional work, I wouldn’t be putting down any of my existing responsibilities; there is no space in our lives for a redistribution of (my) labour.
I wish I could be totally progressive and on-board with worthy ideas like universal living wage and motherhood being a job even if it doesn’t come with a pay cheque, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m not contributing enough.
What will the mortgage broker think?
We have recently been trying to buy our first home. Having to tell our broker that I ‘don’t count’ financially when it comes to our application is a kick in the proverbials. Being listed as your husband’s dependent when he doesn’t know how to change a tyre and needs help finding his glasses is abrasively infantilising. I don’t know if I feel worse being thought of as spoilt, lazy or an underachiever. I take solace in the fact that our broker can gauge I’m not spoilt based on the purchase price of the houses we’re looking at - about £275,000 anything north of Newcastle and ideally three bedrooms. In the last 12 years we have managed to put £45,000 aside - a good chunk of it saved when we were on DINKS (double income with no kids).
While I expected child-rearing to be a challenge, I wasn’t prepared for how the rest of society would feel about my lack of financial contribution. A woman collected something I’d sold on eBay the other day and she mentioned she was desperate to return to work for her sanity after having her firstborn. I’ve had various versions of this; thinly-veiled slights masquerading as concern, suggesting that those who are ambitious and intelligent couldn’t possibly be satisfied being at home. Checking in in case I’m being coerced into #TradWife drudgery.
Wrestling with myself
The hardest thing to deal with, though, is my own fear that I’m not setting a good example for my daughters. What lessons are they learning when they see me parking my career and financial independence to facilitate family life? There’s another big question too: what would happen if my marriage failed. I’m taking a lot of things on trust; I have made no pension contributions for the last eight years and any potential salary progression has been forfeited. I’m financially vulnerable.
But then I think that not working might actually be a revolutionary act. Perhaps, perversely, by refusing to play the game society has set up, I am setting a good example for my daughters. I am showing them that our worth isn’t tied to our pay packet, but to who we are as people - our characters.
