He says, "I don't want to pay for our daughter's college tuition, just to see her walk away and let a man take care of her."
Ok I already have a lot of problems with this. Those of you who know me well can probably see where I'm headed. But the thing I have the biggest problem with is the following statement:
"I do wonder a lot whether I'm a bad man for pushing her to [work] even though she says she wants to stay home with the kids."
In short, Mr.Dunbar, yes. That is a bad thing to do. It's bad to make your spouse feel like they have to work even though they want to stay home. Being married means making decisions together. It means respecting each other's personal and professional desires and dreams. You shouldn't "let" or "not let" her do anything, just as she shouldn't have that much control over you. It's about mutual respect and support. It's about deciding together what's best for you as individuals and for the family as a whole.
That said, let's move on to three of the flaws in your actual argument about staying at home.
1. You don't get to say, "I respect women who find being a stay-at-home mother to be fulfilling and satisfying," when you are also saying that you want "better" for your own wife and daughter. The former statement is disingenuous. If you truly respected those mothers, you would acknowledge that sometimes staying home is the best choice. I think what you actually mean is that you recognize it's not your place to tell other mothers how to live their lives. That's not respect; it's tolerance.
2. Staying home with your kids is not equivalent to stagnating. Yes, some employers might view it that way, but that doesn't make it true. That makes it a misconception that we should all be actively fighting to discredit. I could talk about how to stay updated on the current research in your field. I could talk about all the valuable skills I am practicing everyday. I could mention that a college education is broad, and any job I accepted would require me to brush up on certain things I learned anyway, whether I'd been out of the workforce for five weeks or five years. But I think the more important discussion is what does stagnation mean to you? Is a job the only way to combat stagnation? I don't think so. I think most people strive to grow and develop and self-actualize every day, whether they are employed or not.
3. Staying home with your kids is not setting a bad example of dependency on a man for your daughter. A SAHM does not "let men take care of her". We're a family. We all take care of each other. My husband takes care of the financial needs while I take care of the children. When our daughter was younger and we had two mortgages to worry about, we both worked. I took care of our daughter during the day, while my husband worked. Then he took care of our daughter in the evening while I worked. We also both take care of each other's emotional needs. See how that goes?
I desperately want to believe that Mr. Dunbar is misrepresenting the situation. I hope he and his wife made the decision together, and I hope that she is happy and fulfilled. I hope that if his daughter finished college and then decided to stay home with her children, he wouldn't be disappointed about all the money he had just wasted on her education. I really truly want to believe that he can learn to be proud of his daughter's decisions and supportive of his wife. But the sad fact is, he might entirely stand by every word he wrote. And the thousands of people who shared his article on Facebook probably agree with him, too.
To end on a positive note, here is an article entitled Why I Don't Regret Being A Stay-At-Home Mom about a wife, mother, and lawyer who is definitely NOT stagnating, stuck in an unhappy marriage, or setting a bad example for her kids. Enjoy!
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