Should I quit my job to stay home with my child?
With childcare costs rising, many parents find themselves earning barely more than they’re paying someone else to be with their child. This leads a lot of parents to try to do the math: should I quit my job to stay home with my child? But looking closer, it’s not as clear-cut as you may hope…
Money in, Money out
It seems to make sense. If you’re taking home a few hundred dollars more than you’re paying for childcare, what’s the point? You’re spending all day away from your child, but the money in the bank doesn’t quite seem to make up for it.
And the fact is that a lot of double-income households do make the decision for one partner to stay home, at least while the kids are young. For them, it might be the best option, or their preferred option, but a lot of people miss key factors in making the decision that may come back to bite them down the line. Let’s look at them now!
1. The potential for future earnings
When you leave your job, you’re not just cutting off your current salary each month. You change your whole career trajectory.
That includes:
Raises and promotions
Skill development/experience
Professional network growth
The credibility of being active in your field
Studies show that just a 2-3 year break can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime, depending on your field and position. Disproportionately this affects women, who tend to be the one to stay home in a heterosexual relationship.
2. Retirement
It’s easy to forget when your take-home pay lands in your account, but a big part of your paycheck doesn’t sit in your piggy bank. Leaving paid work also means potentially missing out on:
Employer 401(k) and pension contributions
Social Security
Disability insurance
Health insurance
Paid leave
Job protections
If you’re the one leaving your job, you may want to agree with your partner that they pay into a private retirement fund for you personally. Also make sure that you’ll have health insurance coverage through your spouse, or factor in the cost for a marketplace insurance.
3. Financial dependence
Everyone goes into a partnership or marriage hoping it’ll last forever – as they should! In an ideal world, you and your partner are equals in all things, and you’ll never have to worry about what to do if it ends or about power struggles. So this part is a bit uncomfortable to talk about.
Because the truth is, when one person earns the money, the risk of an unequal relationship increases. This may look like the person making the money gaining more leverage over big decisions (even if it’s unintentional). It also means that the non-employed partner becomes more financially dependent on the other person. If something goes awry in the relationship, the person without a job has fewer exit options.
Ideally, it never comes to that, but it can be important to factor it in before quitting a job, especially if and when the relationship is solid, healthy, and positive. Get your ducks in a row and your paperwork in order now, so that both parties can feel safe and comfortable no matter what happens down the line. It sounds like pessimism, but actually it’s storm-proofing.
4. Identity
Here’s a thing we rarely talk about when it comes to being home with your kids: not everyone wants to.
You may love your kids to the ends of the Earth and still not want to spend 24 hours a day with them. Maybe it’s not about the kids at all, but simply that you love your job, your career, your colleagues. Maybe your job is an important part of your identity, and one that you don’t want to lose.
On the other hand, you may want nothing more than to step of the corporate treadmill. Maybe what you want more than anything is to spend your days cooking, hanging with your kids, building relationships with people in the neighborhood, not stressing over deadlines or who will take care of your sick kid while your boss is yelling at you.
The point is, everyone is different, and that’s okay. Don’t let some mom-fluencer tell you you’re a bad parent for liking your job – or that you’re a bad parent for not wanting to spend your days singing Wheels on the Bus with a six-month-old who can’t carry a conversation. Try to think about what would be best for you, and then see if the numbers add up to make it possible.
5. The assumption of “it’s only a few years”
For a lot of people, the plan is to stay home and out of the work force “only until kindergarten”, and that’s certainly not impossible. However, it’s important to remember:
Depending on how many kids you have and when, that may still equal a decade or more out of the work force
As we’ve seen above, even a few years unemployed leads to big losses in the long run
Re-entry may take longer than expected,and you may need retraining or start at a lower wage before you get back on track
The upside to staying home
We know it can sound like a lot of scary or negative stuff, working against you in your decision. But of course there’s another side to this choice, and that is that you may get a lot of lovely things out of it that don't fit in a bank account.
You’ll get time with your child that you can’t make up for later. You’ll have less stress about logistics and sick days. You may feel a sense of control over what’s going on at home and how your kid is growing up. If your current job is draining, it may keep you from burning out and being unhappy.
It can be hard to calculate these wins against the financial losses of not working, and maybe that’s part of the point. Why look at apples and oranges instead of trying to listen to your gut and then calculating possibilities based on that?
The point isn’t “My money doesn’t matter”
If you have one takeaway from all this, let it be: it isn’t true that the money you earn doesn’t matter. It matters in loads of ways, beyond the takehome amount each month.
This reframing may help you look at it differently and find that actually it is worth staying at your job, even though most of your income goes to childcare. Or it may help you and your partner sit down, look at your mutual finances, and see how they can compensate for your loss of income, earning potential, retirement funds, etc., to build a family life that works for all of you – today and in the future.
You may also want to consider:
What does my career trajectory look like
How easy is it to re-enter my profession/field
Could I reduce hours or switch to a more flexible role?
At the end of the day, what works for you and your family is the right choice. But it helps to be informed about all the ways this choice impacts you: your finances, your mental health, your relationships. That’ll have you all confidently taking the next step.
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