Financial Guidance for Stay-at-Home Parents and the Spouses Who Love Them

It would be easy if there were one view and one set of values around stay-at-home parents, but there’s not. 

Having worked with countless couples and individuals, I have come to appreciate that the views, values, and experiences of stay-at-home parents are varied and nuanced. 

My vast experiences working with many different families broke my own internal narrative that a stay-at-home parent really means a stay-at-home mom in a middle-class family where the husband makes enough money to support the family as the norm. 

Not only has my client work as a couples therapist and financial planner shaped my views of this dynamic, but it is also my own lived experience. I was the stay-at-home father for our firstborn child. This experience alone was more than enough to break my internal narrative of what it means to be a stay-at-home parent.

What it means to be a parent is based on our lived experiences. If you grew up in a community where many moms stayed at home and loved volunteering at the elementary school and your mom encouraged you to find your own path in life, then your views of being a stay-at-home parent would likely be positive. 

If you grew up with a stay-at-home father tasked with caring for the kids because he could not find full-time work and he resented being in this position, your experiences of stay-at-home parenthood wouldn’t be as positive or you may decide that you want to do it differently than what you experienced. 

In short take a moment to reflect on your own experiences with stay-at-home parenting. Was it mostly positive and you felt like your parent enjoyed what they were doing? Or was it more negative, and you felt like that parent did not enjoy what they were doing?

We also need to take a minute to acknowledge that perhaps you longed to have a stay-at-home parent, but did not have one in your childhood. You may imagine that having a stay-at-home parent would have been so much better. 

If you grew up in an environment of single parents and caregiving was left to other adults including grandparents, uncles, aunts, and other adults, that too can impact your views on childhood caregiving. 

If you’ve already experienced this as a parent in the family, what are your thoughts?IWhat has it been like for your intimate partner?

Now let’s step out from our families and look at our community and cultural expectations around stay-at-home parenting. 

What does your religious community say about parenting and roles either explicitly or implicitly? You may be influenced by both a religious community you’re currently a part of, as well as the one you were raised in.

As an example, some branches of Christianity teach that a woman's primary role is caregiving for the children and that is the way to be most pleasing to her husband and God, independent of how she feels about it. 

What do the philosophical outlooks you’re acquainted with say about parenting and work? As one example, some forms of feminism have argued that women should be in the workplace no matter what. 

Both these cultural examples highlight rigid views about parenting roles and belonging. If you hold these views and go against them, you may risk belonging to or acceptance in that group. 

How does having one parent at home affect the emotional and financial dynamics of the relationship? 

It depends on the couple. If both partners feel unconflicted emotionally, morally, and relationally about the roles of parenting and work, the dynamics between emotional and financial responsibilities probably flow pretty naturally. 

On the other hand, if either one or both partners feel degrees of emotional, moral, or relational distress about the roles of parenting and work, then the couple will have more intentional work to do to negotiate these differences both within themselves and between each other. 

Most couples I work with break up the financial and emotional caregiving roles of managing their families. The stay-at-home parent is often responsible for the emotional needs of the children and the day-to-day spending decisions for the family. The parent in the working position becomes responsible for earning the money and overseeing the long-term finances of the family while playing a secondary role in emotional caregiving. The boundaries of responsibility vary for each couple.

As the years of the relationship pass and the family grows, the roles can become more deeply entrenched especially in families where the working spouse is gaining valuable professional experience that leads them to be able to earn greater amounts of money. The stay-at-home parent is losing this valuable experience and exposure, and it can make it harder for them to re-enter the workforce many years later. And if they do, the value of their labor likely is not what their partner’s is. 

For some, this can lead to a major identity crisis for the person who has stayed at home as the kids grow and are no longer as emotionally dependent on their parents to meet their needs. At the same time, the parent who has been working for years to financially support the family may feel just as stuck in their job to maintain the family's standard of living that they have grown accustomed to. Neither fully understands or appreciates the sacrifices the other has made to grow their family. 

How can spouses communicate better around money? 

What’s your starting point? Do you have a history of being able to talk openly and honestly about money? Acknowledge that financial desires and aspirations can grow and change over life. Then let your partner know that you would like to talk to them about some financial changes that you want to make in the family. 

If you have fallen into the pattern of either avoiding or blowing up over the topics of work, caregiving, and money, there is likely some healing and foundational work that needs to be done to effectively talk about money. 

Many of the couples I work with are surprised to learn that I don’t start with money communication when they are stuck. Rather, I start with money healing and acknowledgment. 

Effectively communicating about money takes a healthy sense of self—one that can balance a positive view of self and partner. What the research shows is that couples struggling to communicate are often either using patterns of anxious or avoidant attachment to engage in their intimate relationships. 

These ways of being in a relationship are reflective of past relational experiences both from early childhood and adult experiences with relationships. Until couples work on their patterns of being in a relationship with each other they will continue to struggle with talking about money with each other. 

What are the most common reasons this is so hard?

The unresolved trauma of our childhoods is a major reason why this is so hard. When we grow up in an environment where one or both parents are emotionally, physically, sexually, or spiritually abusive, this information becomes embedded in our neuropathways and our autonomic nervous systems, which are wired to guide us to what feels safe and not safe before all else.  These adverse experiences profoundly affect our experiences of work and parenting. 

In addition, our cultural context and, depending on where we live, the expectations and realities of providing for our families bear a significant impact on how we will navigate the dance of work and parenting. 

Our relationship with being a parent and all that means is deeply wired into our brains. There are countless neuropathways that are wired together that guide our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and sense of self and community around being a parent. 

Within these neuropathways, our expectations interact with our partners' neuropathways—leaving many of us perplexed, angry, and resentful about how our partners could see the world so differently than we expected. 

How can stay-at-home parents deal with guilt surrounding not contributing to the family financially?

We want to be particularly sensitive to differentiating between guilt and shame as we reflect on what contributing to the family financially means to us. 

Many of my clients label feelings as guilt when what they are actually feeling is shame. Guilt over our finances means that we are doing something that is hurting our family, and we have some control over changing that reality. Guilt is about what we are doing and the desire to restore what is happening. Shame is far more pernicious and is about who we are. It is a place of psychological worthlessness—that we do not belong and are not worthy of acceptance. It’s a belief that our self-worth is not inherent but based on what we contribute to the family financially. 

Starting with self-compassion for any shame or guilt we feel about our current financial contributions can help to regulate the autonomic nervous system (fight, flight, or freeze) responses that will block us from both self-reflection and love, as well as acceptance by our partners. 

Self-compassion can be as simple as acknowledging yourself for having these feelings—normalizing and validating what you are feeling instead of trying to get the feelings to go away. There are likely very understandable reasons why you are feeling this way. 

Next is to address any patterns with your partner if they are intentionally or unintentionally making you feel guilty for not contributing to the family financially. If your partner has healthy emotional maturity, they may not like hearing this feedback but they will acknowledge what you are experiencing and begin to look for more collaborative ways to work through your differences. 

On the more extreme ends of the continuum, you may be experiencing financial abuse and you will want to get professional help to break this cycle. This has many layers to it that deserve professional support. 

We can challenge cultural narratives about what it means to be financially responsible and contribute to our family. 

The cultural values of financial independence, financial responsibility, work, success, wealth, gender norms, and money can leave many of us feeling like if we choose to be stay-at-home parents, we are breaking with culturally sanctioned ideas of what it means to be good with money. This can be compounded and made even more challenging if we have not chosen to stay at home, but are staying home because we feel like we have to due to reasons such as limited earning potential, mental health, physical health, religious/philosophical teachings, etc. 

How can we navigate the vulnerabilities of death/divorce/disability? 

When one spouse does not work, they can become financially vulnerable in the case of death/divorce/disability—even if the non-working spouse controls the finances. How can couples work together to protect the vulnerabilities of the non-working spouse without splitting finances or being divisive?

Depending on our own personal comfort with the topics of death/divorce/disability will determine how well we navigate this with our partners. 

The research is very clear that there is increased financial vulnerability for the non-working spouse. This is why insurance becomes an essential part of a couple's financial plan. The short answer is that getting proper life and disability insurance in place may not be the most fun topic to work through, but they can add a layer of financial security knowing that if death or disability happened, the non-working spouse would be cared for financially. 

Believe it or not, there is also divorce insurance, which can help cover the costs of divorce. If you are in an intimate relationship already, there are post-nuptials that can clarify the value of how assets will be transferred. Some people think about a post-nuptial agreement based on what both partners feel is fair, not what their particular state laws deem as appropriate. That being said, you want to consult with an attorney about the enforceability of post-nuptial agreements. Moreover, if you or your partner are not particularly collaborative, adherence to any agreement is likely to be impaired. 

This all sounds great in an ideal world, but I know we live in the real world. The realities of death/divorce/disability can still weigh on us even when we have the proper insurance and legal documents in place. 

This then becomes about who we are psychologically and who our partners are psychologically. If you or your partner have low self-worth, find it hard to manage emotions, have difficulty maintaining relationships, or are not employable, then discussions of death/divorce/disability can become more threatening. The way through this is to work on our mental and relational health. 

The way we move through the grief and loss of death/divorce/disability can be predicted by our overall level of mental health. These life experiences are significant and can represent a period of great loss, but what matters more is our starting point and willingness to work through these life experiences—both as they occur and in the years after. 

We are fortunate to live in a time when there are many invisible support structures to help when the need arises. You may not currently be aware of them because you don’t have a need for them. But should you get to a place where you need help, there is a wide range of support and recovery systems available.

How can each spouse support the other in working and non-working roles?

Start with remembering there are layers of meaning and experience. If it is an issue for one of you, then it is an issue for both of you. Neither partner should make the other feel that they have to shoulder these concerns on their own. 

When we see our differences or movements toward change as an opportunity for our relational growth and development, we can grow more intimate with each other and ourselves. Intimacy does not come in a fixed amount of experience. Intimacy can continually be deepened between two partners. 

Who we are when we meet and how we think things will work will need to evolve over the course of our lives and relationships—sometimes on predictable timelines, and sometimes in unexpected ways. 

Predictable timelines for parent and work role changes to occur are:

• At the birth of each child
• Changes in children’s ages (baby, young school age, middle school, high school, launch to college) 

Less predictable timelines for parent and work role changes to occur are:

• Changes in personal/professional interests
• Health changes
• Extended family changes
• Changes in the work environment
• Outcome of healing trauma/being in therapy
• Changes in community belonging
• Changes in family income/wealth both increases or decreases

For most couples, adopting an open and flexible approach to the responsibilities of work and child caregiving serves them well. This is between a closed and rigid approach and a completely open and chaotic approach to parenting and work. 

Supporting each other over the long arch of your relationship will require you both to grow and mature as people. You will discover blind spots in your understanding of what needs to happen and not happen. It is what you do when you encounter those blind spots that will make all the difference in the world. 

Having a supportive environment to have these meaningful conversations is what Therapy-Informed Financial Planning is all about. Schedule here for a free 30-minute consultation.

Wishing You Healthy Love and Money,

Ed Coambs - MBA, MA, MS, CFP®, CFT-I™, LMFT