Think Like an Economist When Deciding Whether to Become a Housewife
Quitting your job and becoming a stay-at-home is a highly personal decision that involves many different factors. There is, of course, a financial aspect . There is also how this change might affect your child (although this is subjective ).
And then this question arises. This is one that sometimes gets lost in the stressful process of calculating numbers, but an important variable just like any other.
Do you want to stay at home with your children?
Of course, there are people who can answer this question without hesitation. “YES, THIS IS THE PURPOSE OF MY LIFE,” you can declare. Or: “Stay at home with my kids? Oh God, 100% no. “Great! You can stop reading this right now and go.
But for many parents, the answer is less clear. Your thoughts may be all over the place because parenting is like a mosh pit. It could be really nice , you might think one day, looking at your lovely children playing sweetly in the garden. No, it will be the worst , you decide in three minutes, when one child yanks another’s toy out and now both are screaming.
You need a general perspective. To do this, you need to think like an economist. Emily Oster, professor of economics at Brown, describes in her new book Cheat Sheet: A Guide to More Relaxed Parenting, From Birth to Preschool, how she uses economics to validate her position that she will not be happy as a caregiver. homebody.
I work because I like it. I love my children! They are amazing. But I wouldn’t be happy to stay at home with them. It’s not that I like my job better – if I had to choose, the kids would win every time. But the “marginal value” of time with them quickly diminishes. (“Marginal Value” will be familiar to anyone who remembers their Econ 101. There may not be any useful data on this, but economics will still come in handy.) The first hour with my kids is great, but by the fourth, I’m ready for a while with my research. There is no marginal value in my job – the highs are not that high, but the hourly satisfaction declines much more slowly.
I can link. When my daughter was a baby, I was a housewife for about a year. The early morning with her was wonderful. I lay it down on the play mat and watch it be enchanted by the glint of the lightning. It zips up and then down and then up and then down. How magical to discover the world! But by about 10 o’clock in the morning, I was very tired (since I had not slept since 5:30 in the morning). I finished by noon. By 4:00 pm, I was furious. And at about 5:20 am, when my husband finally got home from work, I basically threw the baby over to him like a baton and whimpered in the bathroom. If I plotted my day’s schedule, it would look like a ski slope with a black diamond. Multiply that by hundreds and you have a situation that doesn’t seem stable. I ended up returning to full-time work for a number of reasons, including my mental health. I have no regrets about how things turned out, but now I know how important it is to take a broader look, especially at the precarious infant phase.
If you are having trouble making a decision, it can help to write down your feelings for a while on paper. (You may be able to do this when you are at home with your kids, but remember that this is not the same as staying at home without an end date.) Then take a step back and look at the trends. Your data may show that you are mostly happy, making you a suitable stay-at-home parent. Or it may show that the time spent with them does not live up to your expectations.