Question for the Men -- and Anyone Who Knows Men. :) How Many Men Could Support a Family?

Hey Everyone,

It seems like we've had several opinions expressed by a few different users that women are better off not holding jobs and staying at home.

And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I myself am from a family of women who were stay-at-home moms, though most went back to work when the kids were older and more independent.

The real question I'm after in this particular thread is this: Men -- how many of you feel that you make enough money, or will someday make enough money, to support a wife and (for example) two kids just on your salary alone, without any extra income?

This thread is NOT about money, gold-digging, or keeping a woman chained at home.

Rather, it's an exploration of the dream that some have of a family with a wife who stays at home and never works. I'm not criticizing or putting this down at all (as I said, it's what most of my family did while raising young children,) but rather, I am asking, HOW CLOSE ARE PEOPLE TO ACTUALLY BEING ABLE TO CARRY THIS OUT.

One of the hallmarks of my train of thought is that I am always curious about what seems like the huge discrepancy between dreams and ideas vs. the ugly dragon of reality.

I have known so many people who had dreams or ideals of what life was supposed to be, but the reality was far different from anything they had ever pictured.

* If you are a man, do you believe you can support a wife and two kids on your pay alone?

* For everyone else, how many (let's say, what percentage) of the men around you would be able to support a family by themselves?

* Do you think the idea of a stay-at-home wife is practical (realistic) and achievable for most couples/families? Why or why not?

For people who might want to answer anonymously, I'm going to include a poll, but please don't let that stop you from posting your own thoughts, observations, and opinions. If I'm able to set it up correctly, the poll should be anonymous and multiple choice.

Again, this thread is NOT about how much money a man makes or whether or not a woman is after it.

Rather, this thread is about those who think the ideal family is one in which the woman stays at home, and how realistic it is to achieve this in today's world.

Thanks for taking the time to read and participate -- I'm hoping this will spark a very interesting discussion.

It's harder to make a living now than it used to be. That said, I think it's a prayer that God would honor. When I chose a wife, one of the first requirements was that she would stay home and not go after a career.

We started off pretty poor. I remember taking my wife on fancy dates to Burger King back when a whopper was $1. We's always get a whopper each, with water. I joked that some day, we'd strike it rich and I'd get her a whopper with cheese!

If you want a family, then learn to be happy with less. Kids can be a great inoculation against nihilism.

intersting topic seoul
I work in a school which is low decile so I dont know that many men who can do this. They can have children for sure but the mums who stay at home (be ause they have young children to raise) are all living from week to week often pay check to paycheck, in rental accomdation, which is only fine as long as the rent doesnt go up. Many of the children go to school hungry, many get sick (its costs to heat a house) they dont have shoes, stationery, and certainly cant afford some of the necessities its very much about making ends meet. Maybe they dont have many new clothes.

If the rent does go up and they have to move house this may disrupt their schooling if they have to move out of area. and because you cant afford quality things can break down faster and one needs to fix things more or make do. The miracle is many of these families stay together but if the husband gets sick or made redundant it spells disaster for their situation..many will get fostered out with relatives.

my boss had three children and from talking to him he was doing very well to support this family (working long hours) but his wife left him when their youngest was four. apparently she was tired of being a stay at home mum and wanted her independence. Maybe he wasnt around since he was working so hard to support them all...I dont know all the details, but if men work a lot and have to be away at work and want to make a lot of money (to support their families) they cant be at home can they unless the have a home and income like their own business or farm or something. Then the men get tired and burned out from working so hard..and if the mortgage and hosuing costs are very high, they are working to pay off that debt pretty much, which makes you a slave.

Unless you own your home outright, you will be a slave.
Not many men own their homes outright or have an inheritance where they are just given a home. Certainly not when they start out with a young family..the most people can scrounge for is a deposit, or a bond. Nobody I know has owned a house and paid for everything by the time they have a family, and even if they have, if they ask someone to be their wife, then the wife has to decide they like where they live and the house she cant just change her mind and go I dont want to live here. Because the man has worked hard to own it he cant just give it up and sell it and he has to keep working at his job, (even if he hates it) maybe never having. a holiday. and homes especially older homes can be notorious money pits.

now if you home is old and drafty and falling apart this may not help your marriage, since wife has to clean and look after every detail of the house and if its a cramped apartment and you want to have more children its even more of a struggle.

Matthew 6:33 (KJV) But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Hebrews 13:5 (KJV) Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

From dereliction and drugs to a family, a kid though university and a house.
Set your heart towards Jesus, and quit listening to the high priests of sociology and psychology.

there seems catch-22 for men

if you have not much education and work you will get minium wage so be prepared to work as many hours as you can or even two jobs to make ends meet...to detriment of your time spent with your family.

If you are qualified and have a higher paying job thats great you can afford more but you will also be paying a lot more tax and your job may be more demanding also may be detrimental to time with your family but you can bribe them with gifts etc

if you own your own business that will probably consume your every waking hour, and if you have children you might rope them into the family business to carry on your legacy. You'll be disappointed if they dont take up the reins, They better like what you do!

for all if you start comparing yourselves with others (or your wife isnt happy because she hasnt got the latest vaccum. cleaner...or shoes) and see you arent doing as well as everyone else you might get the green eyed monster and start gambling or hustling to get more income. Gambling could be in the form of playing lotto or it could be investing in stock market. There is a very real risk you could gamble your life savings away or become addicted.

A better question is, how many woman will support a man, if he works his life away, to support a wife and kids?

Will he come home and to find a wife happy to see and listen to all his problems at work?

I hear horror stories of husbands coming home and finding a man in bed with his wife, wife wants to leave and files for divorce, or wife says, I'm having fun now, it's your turn to look after the kids.

Bottom line, it's really difficult to support a family, if it's two incomes or one. Massive financial, emotional, and relationship strains in the modern family. I don't want that American Dream life with a white picket fence, and Facebook photos. Going solo seems like a less risky option in a world with about a 50% divorce rate.

Good luck in finding your dream life with a family, it's a load of hard work, despite the happy Facebook pictures that you see on the net.

I think it depends on the quality of living a family is willing to accept. In theory, if a family has all of their basic needs met then they have enough. So maybe being rich is having everything you need rather than having everything you want.

So supporting a family should be pretty easy, I would imagine, at least financially. However, usually a man cannot be a provider and ever-present at home. If he's home he isn't making money. If he's making money then he's missing his family.

Women should work if they want to, but realistically someone needs to take care of children. It isn't enough to trust daycares and public schools anymore. Too much is at stake to lose the heart, mind, and possibly the soul of your child to secular indoctrination.

So either the man or woman needs to stay at home. Both man and women need to respect, cherish, and value each other intensely. There's so much hardwork involved in marriage and parenting, I imagine, so don't let petty squabbling ruin that good thing.

It really depends on location, the man's wages, lifestyle choice (ranging from basic necessities to more extravagant), etc. It is possible to support a family on one income if the wages are on the higher end (e.g., engineering, accounting, etc.) in a low cost area. However, once a family starts adding other things, like pets/vet care, music lessons, sports equipment, unexpected bills like new roof or plumbing issues, etc., one income may not be enough. Such financial burden can be stressful on the entire family. A job isn't guaranteed either, so the wage earner could be unemployed.

All these calculations and formulas, tsk, tsk...

Psalm 127:1 (NASB) Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the LORD guards the city, The watchman keeps awake in vain.

I chose the last option... but if nobody cares that Jimmy cracked corn, why did they bother writing a song about it?

I certainly couldn't support a whole family on my McDonald's weekly wage. But I probably could if I got a factory job.

But... if I got a factory job, that would conflict greatly with taking care of Grandma right now. (That was not a deciding factor until just recently though, I should point out. I've been at McD's since 2009 and Grandma has only needed someone here all the time since last March or so.)

Depends on the living conditions you insist on to a great degree. Do children each need their own room? Will they all share while small? Will there be a shared boys room and a shared girls room? How many children will there be? What limits on activities will there be? Public school, home school, private school? Eat out a lot or grow your own food in the garden? What about vacations? What is the actual numerical income of the household (a doctor or lawyer would has a lot more to work with than a fast food manager)? etc.

I think there would be significant "sacrifices" a family would have to make to intentionally be a single income family, but I also think there are some hybrid options (like mom goes back to work part time once kids are in school which greatly shortens the amount of time the household is strictly limited to just one income).

And since I'm unlikely to ever have children of my own, that's about all the more I think about it.

My answer is I've been there and done that. Working lots of hours with a wife and five kids at home. It has its good and bad times. There has to be some agreement on the part of both mom and dad for this to work. It's not easy at all.

what about grandparents. are they in the picture as carers or not. I think a lot of families would collapse without grandparents, or aunties and uncles as support.

You often hear the phrase it takes a village to raise a child...but if you live in the wealthy latchkey-kid baby booming suburbs where its miles away from the nearest workplaces its more like it takes the TV to raise a child cos the stay at home mum is so exhausted isolated and alone she cant be expectedd to watch her children ALL the time so decides to get the tv to watch them instead.

Definitive answer right here.

Covers all the bases.
No need to repeat.

Often? The only one I heard that saying from was Hillary Clinton who would (if she had her way) have every family out in the village rice fields slaving away for the liberal elites.

One of the goals of Communism is the destruction of the family. Although there are a number of ways to do this, one is making it difficult for a man to support a family by lower wages, discrimination against native (i.e. non-foreign), heterosexual males in schools, universities and the job market, including taxation disadvantanges for this class and/or welfare advantages for other classes etc. It was more difficult to achieve this 50 or so years ago, when most younger women stayed at home to raise families, or only remained in the workforce until starting a family.

The times are evil, and as a result, I think many families need both husband and wife to work just to make ends meet (this is achieved by lower wages and higher taxation, in addition to greater welfare for the Communist-preferred classes such as unwed mothers, homosexuals, barren career women etc.) This tactic in turn gives over the children of functional families to increased control of the state (day care or public education). Subsequent generations will be even worse off, not understanding this is not how life is supposed to be.

I think for the most part, men can support a wife and three children (three is the minimum to maintain a healthy population), but more and more, this means increasing sacrifice on the part of the wife and children (in addition to the husband) - greater focus on needs, and less on wants. This is a price I believe many people are not willing to make.

shift work can be the answer (for those who are prepared for this kind of work)
you can see each other on weekends. You have to really coordinate it or it wont work. I think ideally there should be at least one grandparent close by.

I do think it has its downsides though. If the couple dont see each other enough and dont spend time together it can break up but at least the children arent left alone to raise themselves.

THe book I read Teachers Pet...about the drama teacher hitting on the 12 year old...I suppose would not have happened had she been homeschooled. It was in England and the school wasnt named, in fact, the girl didnt even mention anything was wrong with the school she was in. It was seemed as normal for her and many of her classmates had crushes on the same teacher.

in fact at in the beginning of the infatuation she really looked forward to going to school as the teacher made her feel special, because other kids would tease her and bully her about her looks etc, she had no confidence. Then I thought well that girl has been lost, the parents are culpable as they were totally clueless to what goes on in schools. But you see if the parents hadnt completed theirown education pst primary school how can they teach their children. You cant teach above the level of your own learning. Plus are many mums or dads prepared to homeschool until each child reaches the age 21?

There is no "one size fits all" definition of happiness.

As a guy who truly enjoys providing for his family I can say that a wife that doesn't want a career is not a wife that I will be happy with. And that's solely based on my personal tastes in the women that I'm attracted to. (I like the smart girls)

Look, I don't need pampering or for dinner to be ready when I come home... besides my son has always preferred my cooking over his mother's anyway. I am a recovering Chef.

But the average household is usually maintained by two incomes instead of one.
Now this pandemic has created new insight for many households...and that's the true cost of going to work.

Daycare, transportation, and clothing expenses directly related to going to work on a daily basis are almost if not more than the income of one person of the marriage provided.

So while one person during this pandemic was laid off with no hope for getting a job the household expenses went through the floor. No clothes needed to be purchased, daycare was out... commuting and parking expenses were nothing. In fact if a car lease came up, it was returned and another not sought out.

And many families are seeing a much more united family than ever before. (Some to the benefit and some to the detriment)

In my household with my son grown but not married he epitomizes an often overlooked problem with career choices. Where he enjoys his career...it doesn't pay that well anymore like it used to. So I keep advising him to shift careers...but he's a bit stubborn.

Now that I'm just shy of retirement...I'm on the couch with knee, ankle, and other issues but my much younger wife is really getting some legs going on her career. Hers is taking off. Mine? Dunno if I can or really want to go farther or if I should just change careers for my retirement career and be done with it. (I will never stop)

We are good on one income...but I really don't want to be. I like going into other countries and infecting someone with true Christianity...

We have never, not been successful in doing this but it's expensive. So I'll work to provide missions funding.

A happy, healthy and whole family is one that puts serving God first...it has no other formula other than that.

Besides...in the USA more women are getting post secondary educations than men and are becoming more substantial to the household income than men are. And the "house husband" is going to happen more often than not soon enough.

According to this website, the estimated average cost of living for a family of 4 in the US in 2021 is $4,547 a month. That comes to $54,564 a year.

Source: https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/country/united-states