How to Convince Your Husband to Let You Be A Stay At Home Mom

In some situations, moms have no choice but to work, and that's okay. However, many experts agree that the healthiest choice for a child is one-on-one care. Staying home with your children is a personal choice, if you would like to do this, but are having a hard time convincing your husband, here are some good tips to try.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Patience
• Good Attitude
• Phone
• Computer

1. If you are a Christian, pray about it. Pray that your husband will have a open mind and you will have patience to discuss it with him.
2. Offer to your husband to go down to one car, move to a smaller house/apartment, do away with luxuries such as manicures, eat more inexpensive meals, and do whatever it takes financially to let you stay home. Some other ideas are to go without cable, magazines, even the internet. (You can always access it at the library.)
3. Carefully look at the budget. Add up all of the expenses that it costs for you to work - childcare, dry cleaning, gas for you to get to work, wear & tear on your car, fast food meals because you're too tired to cook, work lunches, etc. Do not forget about additional doctor bills and medicines for your child being sick more often from daycare. Subtract the costs for you to work from your actual salary. In some cases it could be just a few hundred dollars or less. Show that figure to your husband.
4. Visit the website www.daycaresdontcare.org and show the information to your husband.
5. When both you and your husband have some free time, call Dr. Laura, a radio psychologist who promotes staying home. Visit http://www.drlaura.com for information on when to call.
6. Research work at home opportunities and offer to work at home. You might be able to watch other children in your home, have a vacation pet sitting service (you could take your kiddos), design websites, do freelance writing and more. You could answer calls at home during naptime through companies such as http://www.liveops.com/ and and http://www.westathome.com/. Visit www.wahm.com for more ideas.
7. As a last resort, see if you would qualify for government assistance based on your husbands salary alone. This might be WIC (http://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/), food stamps, or state sponsored children's insurance programs. Discuss this with your husband.
8. Be very patient when approaching your husband with your plan.
9. If all else fails, seek counseling.