Why your wife should work at a real job

TL;DR your wife should work a real job rather than being a stay at home mom. It's basic division of labor. It's better for her, it's better for you, it's better for your kids.

As much as I love red pill theory, both as it applies to dating and marriage, I can't help but feel there is a sizable group of adherents who have deluded themselves into thinking that it somehow aligns perfectly with christian traditions and doctrine. I see many hold up traditional christian practices as being red pill, not because they actually have a good argument for why it is, with evidence to back up that claim as to how it strengthens marriages or gives men more control over their own sex lives (red pill is, above all, sexual strategy), but rather, because there are so many christians on red pill sites that those ideas simply go largely unopposed.

Well, there is one particularly insidious christian ideal (not so much biblical, but christian nonetheless) that I think absolutely needs debunking, and that is that a woman's place is in the home.

No, it is not.

Let us consider the opportunity cost of a woman opting to work at home rather than at a real job.

First, how much does it cost to pay a professional daycare to babysit your young child/children during the day? (not a neighbor lady with 10 cats and 50 kids running around her basement, but a government regulated, secure facility with meals and snacks, diaper changes, naps, play time, and a structured daily curriculum). Where I live, we pay about $4/hour (we only have one kid though, and the cost per child goes down with additional children in daycare). That amounts to roughly $160/week, and $8,320 per year.

For a maid service to come by once per week and make it look as fresh and clean as a hotel, we pay $80/week. Which is $4,000/year.

I don't really ask my wife to cook, although she does cook dinner from time to time just because she likes to. I have a very strict diet that I prefer not to bother her with ("wait, so what AREN'T you eating this week, honey?"), and we generally fend for ourselves during the day with fast food, etc. I would say that overall this about doubles our cost of food over the course of a year. The average cost for food in a year for a household is roughly $6,000 (assuming 2.5 people, which we have), so I would guess we're closer to $12,000, so +$6,000.

So if my wife chose to stay home and work rather than get a real job, she would be worth to me about $18,000 per year ($8,000 + $4,000 + $6,000).

My wife has never made less than $18,000 per year, even when we were dating, and in the nearly 6 years we've been married, her income has swollen to just over $60,000/year. That's roughly 2/3 of my salary (I get commission too).

Benefits of my wife working:

1. We have a lot more money than we would otherwise.

2. She's a lot more interesting to talk to (as I pass the gaggle of mindless stay at home moms congregating at the swing set and pool in front of my house, all of whom are paying more attention to their Instagram accounts on their phones than they are to each other or their kids, I thank my lucky stars both that my son is getting constant professional attention with real oversight at his daycare, and that my wife is busy doing something I'll actually like to talk to her about when we both get home).

3. She's in a better mood when I get home and isn't tired of my son yet, but rather, is super excited to hang out with both of us (a common dynamic in stay at home households is a man comes home to a house that may or may not be messy but has already been cleaned several times--supposely, to dinner that may or may not be ready but has been in the works all day long, to kids who are sick of each other and sick of their mom and just want to play with their friends and have already watched way too much television, and to a wife/mom who is sick of it all. Often that means when dad gets home, it's HIS turn to entertain the kids. If she IS in a good mood, it's because she's hopped up on wine or xanax or both. Not exactly a paradise).

4. The sting of divorce rape, if things do turn sour, is massively reduced. She can't claim she put a career on hold "to raise his children", so if she's awarded any alimony, the amount is drastically reduced, and it puts us on more equal footing in the minds of judges when determining custody arrangements. Not to mention, with that incentive gone, she's simpy less likely to split.

Common concerns:

1. Rather than being at home, she's in the presence of other men during the day. While this might sound like a recipe for cheating, I actually think it's just the opposite. If a woman wants to cheat she will find a way, whether she's working or at home (she's hypergamous so it's up to you to be her largest deterrent to infidelity--as is taught here). But I actually think it's much easier to set up an affair with a SAHM--the logistics are pretty simple. She's already got an empty house all ready at the children's nap time. For any man here who's had an affair you can attest that getting a location like that is often the single biggest hurdle. But if the wife is at a real job, trying to further her career, she's so busy and focused trying to prove to her male counterparts that she belongs, that she actually has less time and opportunity to stray. As they say, "an idle mind is the devil's workshop." Well it's hard to find a more idle a mind than a stay at home mom's.

2. Kids should be with their mom rather than with a sitter. I disagree with this. I know there are studies that show that kids from stay at home mom families have fewer behavioral problems when entering school than their counterparts who went to daycare, but I think a lot of that can be easily chocked up to demographics. In American society, the kinds of families that usually end up taking their kids to daycare are usually poor and/or single parent homes. Because of this pervasive christian ideal that I spoke of, if two parents are together and the man makes pretty good money, the kids usually stay at home. Well, of course those kids are better off than the ones that come home to a comatose cracked out mom with a revolving door of boyfriends or any other number of household situations that can cause distress for children in those developing years. But if kids come home to an environment that most here can probably provide, why wouldn't they benefit? My son still sees his mom and I for 5-8 hours per day, as well as all day Saturday and Sunday, but in addition, he has like 50 friends at his "school" and his "teachers" all love him and frequently babysit for us on weekend nights when we want to go out drinking with friends.

3. Developmentally children benefit more from fresh breast milk than refrigerated breast milk. They do, but that benefit is minimal. Really, the only difference is refrigerated breast milk has slightly fewer antioxidants, but there's no solid evidence that makes much of a difference, as refrigerated breast milk is still shown to be vastly superior to formula. It's basically negligible.

In closing, your wife should have a job.

*edit - I forgot one more major benefit that I have noticed to my wife working: it motivates me at work to earn more money. Specifically, a lot more than her. As a man, I instinctively recognize the need to be the main breadwinner, and seeing my wife's income creep up is like a fire under my ass. I want to keep the gap between our earnings significant. But rather than be upset or feel threatened when she gets a raise, I rejoice, because I know how it motivates me. Her income not only helps us because it's simply more income, it helps me create more income as well.