Sure, now you tell me.

/shakes tiny fist at Amy for not emailing me this column in 1990.

Yeah, you got suckered, dude.

There are a LOT of members of my gender who do this crap. It pisses me right off, as men then think we all are this way.

You are her WALLET. She saw you coming, buddy. You were a means to her end - having a kid. DO NOT have another one with her. You'll be sorry.

He should have seen this coming when she expected him to pay for their dates and blood diamonds when they were courting.

Oh, wait...

/shakes tiny fist at Amy for not emailing my ex this column in 1980.

Well, the truth about marriage is that to make it work both sides need to make an effort. I'm a believer in therapy as well as regularly confronting the other person on the issues at hand. Do not give up, Joe, -- consistent, intelligent effort on your part to change her behvior will probably pay off.

Probably.

If she earns a mere pittance, how CAN she cover major bills?

I think they should crunch the numbers and find out if, after daycare, taxes, extra gas, etc. they still come out ahead. Are they actually LOSING money due to her working? If so, it is an expensive hobby.

Something to think about is once the kid is in school the day care expense will go down (there'll still be afterschool care), but they will still have the salary. It might be more cost-effective to have her keep working in the long run. It might not be. Figure it out.

They need to have an honest and frank talk about finances and what makes sense.

I know a lot of guys who are mad at the way the wives deal with finance but who don't talk to the wives about it, so I don't have a lot of patience for it.

Heh! My problem with the ex was just the opposite - he worked part time and expected me to cover the lion's share of everything! Which, yeah, I should've seen it before we said the "I do's", but we're all blessed with 20/20 hindsight. Going forward, though, I've always maintained that if I want it, I'll pay for it, unless I get it as a gift. And thank the gods my current BF and I are on the same page as far as the financials go. We're going on 10 years together with only a few hiccups, and those were resolvable. Communication is key.

What about bringing back the dowry? If Mrs. Schmoe had brought something besides her looks/fecundity to the union, she'd have an equity share in the outcome of the marriage. Considering how easy it would be for her to blow up her marriage and impoverish both of them with her childish entitlement, it seems like a good idea to me.

Bu bu but, what if he leaves her? Women have had decades of "Don't be dependant, you'll end up poor" and "SAHM's aren't worth much" shoved down our throats. She's doing as she's been told all her life.

Maybe he should pay half the childcare, since it's his kid too, and she should chip in on the mortgage with the money she was spending on childcare? Would that level of accounting make him feel better? Because unless she's taking vacations with her pay without him, she IS helping with expenses. Money is fungible.

From his tone, I see him as EXACTLY the man who would not want to give her a penny in a divorce if she had stayed home for a decade or so. Her unemployability would be her fault, then, just like her working is now.

Dude should be happy she works... If they were to split, it's more equitable than if she wasn't working.

In any case, they both have the problem of not looking at this as a team venture. The expectation of sacrifice is an interesting calculation when people are more concerned with their own share, than how does this help the team.

I totally agree with Momof4 and Nicole. There is more here than meets the eye. This guy seems really resentful and I have to wonder why. Is she capable of making more but refuses to? Does she spend "family" money on herself and if so, why didnt he mention that? Because people when you get married, it is no longer yours and his, but ours. Mom is right, this guy would leave her penniless in a divorce and call it her fault.

Speaking of which, I am not sure what side of the argument Amy is on in this one. I have been a long time reader of this blog and remember several comments which she made that called stay at home moms fiscal leaches who did nothing but "spend their husband's money at Target" and stupidly leave themselves vulnerable. Seems to me that this guy's wife has taken a hard look at what she married and realizes she can't trust him. Good for her. As Nicole points out, how would she contribute to the bigger household expenses if her pay covers daycare? Where is the extra money supposed to come from? Also, it is worth noting that as the kids age, the cost a daycare drops dramatically. Most public schools provide after school care for a reasonable price, so eventually more of "her" money can go towards big ticket items.

Finally, for all his bitching was he not present when the decision to procreate occurred? Was this something they failed to discuss before marriage or conception? Did she did do this without his agreement? Is that why he is so resentful? What exactly does he want her to do: quit work, find a better job, or put the kid up for adoption? I am not really sure what he wants except to whine that life isn't fair.

More to the story here. He speaks of expectations and wants yet I wonder if there's been any conversation. Do they wake up on opposite sides of the bed and avoid eye contact and any conversation? Did she just go to work one day after giving birth and not tell him where she works, how much she makes and leave the bills on the nightstand?

Sounds like zero communication and that is far worse than any expectations he claims exists. He should try something new. Its called sitting down and having a conversation with his partner and go over what they both need to have a successful family although he should have thought about that a long time ago.

The letter writer sounds very resentful. What is there to fight about? Is he mad because she only makes $20,000 per year and he wants her to make $50,000? Does she have a $50,000 job waiting in the wings? If that is the real problem, then what is the solution? It sounds like it might be difficult to get more training for a better job, but perhaps with student loans and grants, they can make that investment and take a possible risk on more education. This sounds unlikely with his attitude - like he wants everything to be fair and "equal" - right now.

Does he really want her to be an "old fashioned mom" who stays home with their child (and from his attitude is not an equal - and just accepts the edicts that he hands down to her?)

There is nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home mom if that is what works for the family. I wouldn't want to be a stay-at-home mom if that meant that I was no longer equal. I believe that it is a very individual decision that involves many intangibles, one of which was pointed out earlier, how secure is the marriage? If the marriage is secure, you can do what you think is best for the family long-term wether that is investing in education or staying home with young children. If the marriage is shaky, you do not want to invest in you spouse and you want to make sure that you have a career and money squirreled away.

Btw, it may not pay much now for a spouse to work whie a child requires full-time daycare, but working now will allow the spouse to climb the career ladder. Dividends may not be seen now, but may be seen 10 years down the line. Welfare moms who went to work and often saw a cut in income and benefits when they started working were much better off 10 years down the road. They had consistently moved up and were no longer in the ranks of minimum wage employees.

I think that you were really unfair Amy. Both people are working full-time and contributing what they can. That s what marriage is about. Our family has moved from me making more money, to him making more money, and then me making more money, then back to him making more money, which he has continued to do for the last 21 years. I do take advantage of the luxuries that he provides. Am I That kind of woman?

" As Nicole points out, how would she contribute to the bigger household expenses if her pay covers daycare? Where is the extra money supposed to come from?"

From working harder or more ambitiously at a better paying job. You seem to be assuming this is the only possible job she could have.

Much of this is the attitude of the people involved.
When anyone chooses a job, and even in a bad economy you do have some choice. On the one side you have your compensation, be it in pay, future growth/advancement and benifits. On the other side, you have how much skills/knowledge it takes, how much seat/stress it takes, how risky, and how crappy a job it is.
There are various levels of jobs out there, some are easy and low paid, some are higher paid but take a lot of work.
Which one you choose is a measure of ambition.

It sounds very much like she has no ambition, she is working a fluff job probably part time, just for the fun of it. If that was the best she could do, he wouldn't complain. But it sounds to me like she could , greatly increase her salary if she wanted to put in the work. But she doesn't.

I have met many women with this attitude, but with the additional attitude, that the man must be extremely ambitious, and must provide. And the blindspot that that level of ambition in the husband means he will rarely be home, harming the relationship.

It would be as if your hubby came home and announced he was quitting his job and taking one as an assistant at a bowling alley. He would hang out all evenig with the guts drink a few brews for half price, free games, all in all his dream job. The dowside, it pays half what his current job does and even with drinks being half priced much of his pay goes to pay for beer. Happy for him? Glad you'll have to pick up the extra slack of bills.

Wow, I love the way we're being fair to the guy. He DOES sound resentful, but if he's paying for everything except childcare, I think he has a right to be.

I married a nice guy who was sweet to me and I paid for everything. He worked a very part-time job that made roughly $700/month. I knew that I was the one with the education and the good job, and I expected to be the major breadwinner in the family. We had agreed that he would contribute a specific sum of his money to household expenses and be the primary housekeeper and cook. Didn't work out that way. I wound up working 12 hour days with a two-hour commute, coming home to no food, no work done, just him, unshowered and unshaven, in his pajamas, sitting in a dark and dirty room playing on my computer.

The biggest mistake I made was waiting so long to object to his behavior. I let my resentment pile up for way too long before I exploded. His behavior plus my long-held anger should have destroyed our marriage. If we could have afforded to break up, we probably would have. As it was, we didn't have that option, so we worked through it. In the end, I'm glad we stayed together, but I have serious sympathy for the letter-writer here.

"she sounds like she has no ambition.".... Really? You are assuming a lot here. Most people these days have a job long before they get married. This sounds like a young couple. She probably had this job when she married him. If it was good enough then, why should it be different now? Also, they have a young child, you can't be a corporate raider with a child. One partner has to have a more flexible job. My 12 year old has mono right now. The last three weeks have been hard. If I worked full time, who would care for her? This one illness would wipe out our vacation time and how happy do you think my husband would be with that? BTW, I have a masters degree, but have chosen to raise my child instead handing her to strangers, but I guess I am just lacking in ambition too.

Also, he says in his own post he supports her decision to work. So which is it? Do you want her to stay home or do you want her to find something different? He should have said what he wanted. I think his real problem is that he feels trapped by his own choices and her job has become the focus his anger. They need to sit down and have a long talk about the future.

What's most irritating is that she doesn't consider being "equal" in our relationship to subsume the realm of living expenses.

A few years ago, a relative of mine who has the same mother and father as mine... Was really pissed off that her friend from college asked her boyfriend to marry her.

"Wait, wait, wit. You're all about women are equal, rah rah, no job is different, rah, rah, so why would you think this is wrong? Seems fair to me"

"SOME things are the MAN'S RESponsiBILITY!"

"OK, then don't bitch about 93 cents on the dollar anymore."

She didn't speak to me for 3 days!

(Now, of course, the "dollar earned" isn't mentioned much, since women have now surpassed men at last I sw about $1.12 to $1 when you count "total compensation" (aka health care).)

Both my husband and I work full time, generally more as he owns his own business and I have a very small home-based business (basically making money from a hobby). My mom provides virtually free childcare for our two sons (she's retired, wants to watch them, and refuses money for it). DH pays all the household expenses while I provide the healthcare expenses and all the stuff for the kids, and my own debts I came in with. That's our arrangement as well as separate bank accounts. We also both contribute a small amount of money to savings each month and have a small "allowance" to spend on whatever we want. This has worked out well for us and we've never had fights about money. We briefly tried a joint account and pooling money for all the bills and this resulted in a lot of issues and problems for us and accusations that the other was spending money on things they shouldn't, etc. We went back to separate accounts and that took care of that problem.

It doesn't matter ax acutely how things are split, but both parties should have an equitable lifestyle. One shouldn't be living a life of leisure while the other works his or her fingers to the bone. Neither should one have lots of spending money while the other is impoverished.

I had a friend who married a man who made more money than she did, however they wanted to be fair so that split all expenses. When they bought a nicer home, things went to pot. Her ex stopped paying child support. He was struggling to pay his bills and rent - obviously, she was doing pretty well. Without the child support, my friend had trouble keeping up her end of the payments. He was "nice" enough to pick up the payments that she just couldn't make and let her stay there. Of course, it wouldn't be "fair" for him to pay for Someone Else's kids. She could no longer afford to go out to dinner or vacations with him, so he went alone while she tried to stretch her dollars with peanut butter, pasta, and potatoes. She had no objections. While it was difficult, she had agreed to it and it was "fair." the only thing that the really fussed about was the air-conditioning. Show wanted it off since she couldn't afford it. He wanted it on. He could afford it. When the bill came though, it was split evenly of course. After all they had both enjoyed the benefits.

Things are not always fair in families, but as a family, we should try to make it as fair as possible. She obviously loved her husband, but I would rather live in a box than live with a stingy an that counted his pennies rather than take care of his family.

@Sheep mommy : " If it was good enough then, why should it be different now?"
Because she has a child to support now. With that her share of the expenses increased dramatically. So no, the job she had before, and the pay she had before are not enough now, if they were he wouldn't have written.

Your dichonomy of work or not is false. She stated she felt she should work. But if her idea of work is a job that net loses money. It's not a real job.

Yep I made an assumption. You are making many.
She was working before.
At that same job.
She is the only one who provides the care for the child, when sick.
The only choices she has is corporate raider and whatever she is doing right now.

Maybe its just that I'm not firing on all cyladers cause I havent slept for the last 3 days, but it seems to alot of me people are missing the fact that they are married and living in the same house

My post may have sounded like they did not live in the same house. I know that they do. Everyone that lives in the house should have the same lifestyle whatever it takes. There should be no beasts of burden. There should be no-one that gets less because they make less. If income is important to you, marry someone who has a high income.

cabs
cads
cals
cams
cans
caps
cars
cats

Soooooo many choices

I had an agreement with my first wife. Since I had much more earning power, I would work full time or more, pay all the bills and she would be a stay at home mom, take care of the child and the home and take care of me. However it didn't quite work out that way because she was chronically unable to uphold her end of the bargain. And I was the one holding the shit end of the stick because I took care of my end. And the funny thing was that while we had talked about it many times, I had no indication that she wouldn't cut the mustard because she was essentially (and still is) a very honest and hard working person. We eventually divorced for other reasons, and are still friends to this day. I guess my point is that while you can do your homework (we were together 12 years prior to being married) you can't always tell how another peron is going to handle themselves in a marriage. You don't always get those warning signs that should tell you to run.

This sounds exactly how my brother described a situation with his first wife.

She got a job which basically made them nothing, but that money was her money that she could spend however she wanted. e.g. fun money. They talked about a couple of jobs and my brother had said no because they would lose money. She went out and got a job then without even talking to him...bought clothes etc for it.

Budget before (yes I saw it - I was trying to help) was something like
Household expenses (Mortgage, food, etc)
$50 fun money for my brother
$100 fun money for wife
$50 fun money to be send on their kids
basically nothing going into savings, 401k

After
what came out of my brother's paycheck
same household expenses
$200 more for her gas to get to work
$600 childcare
$100 because she bought breakfast at work
$100 month for replacing work clothing
$300 because my brother could not longer car pool because he had to drop the kids off at daycare
$50 fun money for my brother
$100 fun money for wife
$50 fun money to be send on their kids

Her paycheck:
her fun money (no he wasn't allowed to see the statements) she even claimed so many deductions no tax was withheld - that came out of my brothers paycheck.

She ended up with about $1500/month in money she claimed was all hers. where my brother was barely managing to pay the Bills let alone have any extra money.

Both parents working is fine out of necessity, not as an ideal.

Look any way you slice this, the cold hard truth here is that while she is out trying to feel "fulfilled", what she brings in barely pays for the day care costs of this couple's child.

Now call me backwards or batshit insane if you will...but it seems to me that the DUTY of a parent comes before that parent's personal desires. Is the notion of actually raising the child she created so abhorrent to her that she'd fob it off on daycare and work all day to avoid doing the parenting part herself?

I just do not sympathize with this spoiled, entitled woman.

I'm away from my kids a lot due to my job, despicable as I find that circumstance to be, my work pays enough that their mother can be there to actually be a mother, horror of horrors how oppressed she must be.

I'd think differently about this circumstance if his job was paying all the bills, while hers was putting money aside for their future, for the kid's college, and generally going towards improving their current and future circumstances, then at least it is not some self indulgant fantasy of how independant she is.

Bah on this woman. Bah I say.

Sure we can say the husband should have known who this woman was when he married her and how she was going to behave.

And that is TRUE.

But "should have" does nothing to fix the present, and therein lies his problem, not what he should have done then, but what must he do now?

And that is a really tough question. He might have to take a truly hard stance on this one, because as one commentor here put it, the husband may actually be wrong, her job might actually be costing them money after all. Between gas, increased food costs, etc. her job might be putting them behind.

If it is providing no measurable benefit to the family, then the toughest thing to do is to make it stop. How does he do that you might ask?

By cutting back on how much of the bills his job pays for. By way of example, if he were making 500 per week, and she were making 100 per week, and the bills are 300 per week, then she is responsible for the first 100 worth of bills each week, he pays the rest, and the remainder is set by for family emergencies, retirement, etc. Stop the dumbass unnecessary daycare bill.

Now in all fairness, relatively speaking, if her job has the potential to become a viable income source and a serious career that could help the family in the future, it might be worth the temporary income reduction...but if this is nothing more than some woman's entitled fantasy of independence that is costing the family money and has their child raised by someone other than its parents...fuck it, the guy should grow a pair and say enough's enough.

A family is supposed to be a team, a unit that elevates and improves itself and supports the whole, not some little indulgant game whereby one member pays for the other's hobbies.

It's true. I've been through similar, but not quite the same problems in my marriage which ended up in divorce.

Young, naive and optimistic, we don't see what's right in front of us. Sometimes we expect it to change as we "work out the kinks" in the relationship. Sometimes we make excuses or think it's something other than what it is.

In hindsight, we then realize, once it's well to late, that the messages were loud and clear, early in the relationship, if only we were just paying attention and being more realistic, rather than optimistic.

We should have seen it coming. It doesn't hurt to look at the persons family as well, for solid clues of what they believe, how they expect to live and what they are going to ultimately turn into.

@Joe,

I know a family where the Mom decided to be a stay at home Mom.

Once they were both in school, she took a part time job as a "para-professional" helping at the grammar school.

But the kids have grown up and are off to college now. She has an undergraduate degree from a well respected college and had the potential to earn 4-5 times as much as she's making now, but is content in her man doing the heavy lifting. Even with two kids in college.

It's not a very fair arrangement, and she isn't willing to change it whether he's happy with it or not. She likes her summers off, being home by 3.

Here is the real kicker though. She controls the budget in the family and though he makes the lion's share of the family income, she puts the kibosh on him buying toys for himself even though he's most definitely earned the money and the right to have it. Everything needs her approval.

This guy needs to put an add on craigslist: "Missing spine. About 3 feet long. Lost for about 20 years. If you find it please reply. I really wish I had it back. Will pay reward."

Mark, she may be looking at relatively few more years before a cushy retirement with the school district. It really wouldn't make sense for her to abandon that to go start a 401k somewhere else.

Not to mention a decades-old BA isn't a lot of help trying to move to a job that pays you 4 ot 5 times more than what you currently make. In fact, I'm not sure what would allow a pay leap like that. A new degree, for starters, that would come with debt.

My hubby makes 99% of our money. He would like a boat. I pay the bills and control the finances, and he won't be getting that boat. It's not because I'm unfair or a witch. It's because affording that would have the 6 of us living in a 2 bedroom apartment in a not great part of town, eating Ramen nightly instead of once a weekish. Adults deal with reality and move on.

"Her paycheck:
her fun money (no he wasn't allowed to see the statements) she even claimed so many deductions no tax was withheld - that came out of my brothers paycheck."

That basically described my first marriage, although she never made that much money because she never held a job for more than a few weeks at a time. Whatever money she made was hers to spend as she pleased, in her opinion. And yes, she declared herself exempt from withholding (back when you could still do that). I had to pay the taxes on her prior year's income after we divorced.

So why did I marry her? Young and dumb, yes, and the signs were there. But there's more to it than that. Teal deer post to follow; I don't have time right now, but I've been thinking about it for a long time and it needs to be written.

Bah. Mr. Schmoe does sound like he would bitch either way. He doesn't mention anything the wife buys with "her" money (btw, my money-your money is a shitty way to do a marriage, with or without kids) that he disapproves of but daycare, yet he resents her non-contribution. Ooookay. If she stayed home, she wouldn't be paying the mortgage, either, and it doesn't sound like the daycare is being paid out of his check, so what's his problem? If it's her "job" to see that kid gets taken care of, she's doing that whether she works and pays daycare or whether she stays home.

Now, if he thinks the daycare is subpar, and the kid would be better off at home with mom, that could well be a legit argument. Wife could also have legit arguments for daycare, depending on the age of the child (a three year old absolutely does benefit from socialization and structure of a daycare, and depending on their community and mom's own individual talents, mom may not be able to replicate that at the park and the library, but a three month old is a different story). But he doesn't say that.

He may think she should ditch her job for a better paying one, but that may or may not be possible, AND he may not be willing to pick up some of the kid-related slack to make that possible. She may be working such an "unambitious" job because she knows that she's the one who will have to call in if the kid is too sick for daycare and needs a job that will be forgiving---which is a low-responsibility and thus low-paying job. And maybe she needs to stick to a low-responsibility job because she needs to be out the door at 4:30 every single day because the daycare closes at five. One of the parents has to be willing to be the one who tells the boss "no" so that the kid's needs are met, and whoever does that is going to make less money and therefore pay less of the bills than the other parent. Deal with it.

And, finally, yeah, what Mrs. Schmoe wants to do with her time, both while the kid is little and after does matter. Maybe Mrs. Schoe wants *some* kid-free time, and working and paying for daycare is the way to get that without burdening Mr. Schmoe. A full-time SAHM still needs some off-time, too, after all. If Mrs. Schmoe did stay home, would Mr. Schmoe be willing to give up some of his down-time to stay with the kid while Mrs. Schmoe ran errands without the kid, or took a class or something? Or would he be willing to pay for a babysitter once a week or even once a month for Mrs. Schmoe to do that? Would he be willing to pay for to take classes after Schmoe Jr. is in school so that Mrs. Schmoe has some chance of getting a high-enough-paying job with a five-to-seven year gap in her resume?

Really, though, it's one marriage that the couple isn't communicating on. My husband and I have both had times where we made more than the other, but we didn't keep our own paychecks and try to haggle out splitting bills like we were roommates. Our money went into a pot and then we figured out how *we* spent it. If the Schmoes aren't doing this, it doesn't say shit about the broader relations between men and women, working moms, sahms, or anything else. It just says the Schmoes need to get their house in order.

I keep my wife on a strict budget. She used to have money, once upon a time. Didn't anymore by the time we met.

When I let her handle the budget, it was fubar. She spent left and right. Finally I'd had enough and put my foot down.

She no longer had control of the budget or access to my account. She had her own, and then I put an allotment in place with a strict limit going into it. If she needed more, she had to ask me.

Things went smoothly then.

Her character is odd. If I gave her a hundred dollars, it'd be gone in a day. If I gave her 10, there'd be money still remaining a week later. She is at her best when she has no choice but to be frugal, and she's exceedingly good in that circumstance. Abundance ruins her ability to function properly, go figure.