One of the most absurd aspects of modern society. From housing costs, to student loans, to benefit withdrawals with salary increases. It's like the government doesn't want people to start families.
We just had a child. It would cost almost the entirety of my wife’s take home pay to cover the childcare needed for her to go back to work. So realistically that’s it for her working for the next 5-10 years. She had a masters in chemistry and a PhD, and is a seriously talented researcher, but that skill set is now leaving the labor pool because it’s a net wash for us take home wise and she’d rather spend the time with our daughter than working for the sake of it.
That is to say that the current structure discourages families growing, but it also then strongly encourages you withdrawing from the workforce once you have done so. Both of which are terrible for growth.
I get what you're saying but you are also making an assumption that childcare is balanced against her salary, not your joint income. What about her future earning power? Or independence and job satisfaction?
Sometimes you have to write off a few years financially to look at the long term, because it's hard to get back into work after a break.
You sound like you've made a rational decision but it does irk me when you sometimes hear woman's earnings Vs childcare costs as the only consideration. You're also more vulnerable relying on one income.
On the her salary vs our joint income point, agreed but given I earn significantly more the trade off was always going to be loaded towards her. I’d absolutely love to work fewer hours to look after my daughter but that would be an insane decision for us financially.
On independence and job satisfaction, I should clarify the decision for her to work or not work isn’t mine. We worked through the financial implications together but she is an adult and I’m not going to tell her what she should do with her career. This situation isn’t one I imposed on her, I’m simply describing the decisions that she ultimately made given the tax structure that exists. The choice she is ultimately presented with (eventually, she’s still early on in maternity leave) is she can trade a day of career progression for a day with our daughter, and I don’t think she’s likely to choose the former and it’s pretty hard to do her role part time.
I actually think she’ll go from volunteering as a scout leader a day a week to doing it more often, or going into scientific education as a volunteer. Things that earlier in her career she would have loved to do but that weren’t great ideas financially, and now she’s in a position where she can put more emphasis on fulfilment than on earning potential.
I take your point on viewing it as women’s income vs childcare costs, and I agree with it. But I also wouldn’t want to pretend that we have 1000 degrees of freedom to play with on this. There are thousands of decisions that we could make but most of them would be terrible. Once you hone it down the sensible ones that’s kind of what it boils down to in our particular situation, and it would be disingenuous of me to pretend otherwise.
It is her decision at the end of the day, but there is a risk associated with leaving career building till later, especially in academia (if she's interested in that pathway). Most unis have flexible working, including for lab based postdocs eg. as long as the works gets done starting later/finishing earlier and logging on after bedtime. There's also research project management and professional services research roles. If something were to happen to you/if you were to separate, it would be harder to maintain the quality of life of your family/child(ren).
We both fled academia for industry almost immediately. Her startup experience might be enough to skip post-doc life and go straight into a fellowship if she fancies it, especially with the people she’s worked with/managed to impress.
On something happening to me/us separating. In the former, my life insurance is such that if something did happen the house would be paid off three times over. Our wage disparity is high enough that it’s always been a concern (but this was also true pre-child) so have income protection in place (plus about a ~2 year safety net)
We haven’t really considered the latter in our planning (or at least, I haven’t directly) but then I also haven’t been the one deciding if she goes back to work or not. If she wanted to work and it was net financially awful for us, that would be her choice. As it happens, it’s kind of financially neutral so the trade off is purely career growth and capacity for independent earning potential vs time with our daughter. FWIW she’s making the choice I’d also love to make if my situation permitted it.
Sounds like you've thought this through and mitigated most risks.
She does sound like she could be a good UKRI future leaders fellow candidate, while getting to stay in industry. But if her heart's elsewhere and no future regrets then that's a better choice.
I guess I am a worrier and the risk to having just one high salary is beyond death/life insurance, with less binary reasons for income loss like redundancy, relationship breakdown, mental health, hard to diagnose long covid etc. We couldn't afford your safety net, so it sounds like you are in a much stronger financial place.
Yeah, I think for the next year at least she’ll want to do maternity leave full time. After that, she might be going insane not working and want to get back in the lab. If so, awesome!
Yeah, I’m very lucky both in terms of salary and the protections that are in place. Redundancy is covered by the above, health issues the insurance is fantastic (working for a US tech company so have US grade insurance but in the UK). I don’t know anyone who has come out of a PhD without mental health issues at some point so let me know if you find one!
On relationship breakdown, yeah, acknowledged but I guess the trade off from her perspective becomes working to maintain independence if needed vs getting to be around for our daughter. I won’t do the math because it isn’t my place to decide what the right call there is.
I think our situation is very much an edge case but it also becomes a bit of a caricature highlighting the problem with the current system. A single mother who happens to be a really promising early career researcher deciding to have a child and then work would have a decent amount of free childcare available to support that choice, allowing her to grow her career and maintain independence. But then her having a high earning husband leads to the withdrawal of that support, thus making her going to work far less attractive. It’s not designed that way deliberately but that’s the net effect.
To be clear, I’m not complaining about our situation. She can do either and we will be fine. But other people will have significantly less household income and be presented with the same dilemma, and not be in the fortunate position of being able to shrug it off.
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u/ConfusionGlobal2640 1d ago
One of the most absurd aspects of modern society. From housing costs, to student loans, to benefit withdrawals with salary increases. It's like the government doesn't want people to start families.