To Stay at Home or Not

One of the issues that many couples face as they have children in a medical marriage is whether the wife should quit the workforce and stay at home with their children.  Every situation is different and every woman feels differently.  I had both stayed home and worked a fulltime job while raising 2 kids.  In my experience, it has been wonderful for our family for me to stay home.  There are less stressors in my marriage, more time for my sons and less headache and personal guilt for myself with respect to my family, job and friends.  Although I don’t usually express opinions in matters that are of a more personal nature, I will officially say that I think everyone should consider this situation if it is possible in your marriage while you husband/wife is in medical training.  I suspect, though I am not sure, that after training I will feel the same way about staying home even when my husband is a practicing physician.  We shall see when we get there.
I have two children with my husband and  I began staying home with my oldest son when he was born.  I finished out my year as a high school math teacher and thoroughly enjoyed the ability to see Bert everyday and never miss anything new that he did.  Everything went to plan until he turned 1.  Once he became mobile and started throwing temper tantrums, things became harder and soon I was aching to go back to work.  There are a couple reasons why I think this happened:  I was not involved in other things and I didn’t use parent’s day out—Basically, I didn’t have anything to keep me busy.  Everything was about Bert—that wasn’t working.  I also suspect that at 25, I was not mentally ready to stay home and be just Mom.  I loved my son, but I still craved that outside “attention” that being at home just didn’t provide me.  I sought out other employment and soon became a Realtor.  Bert began going to daycare fulltime and I went to work.  This plan lasted for a while.  I continued working and we bought a house (I had to go back to teaching if we wanted a house because I was not established as a Realtor and I was not making enough money—staying home was not something that we even thought about at the time).  Soon, the ache of wanting another child began and I got pregnant with Ernie.  I had Ernie at the end of my school year, had the summer off with the boys, and then went back to school for a second year of teaching.  Ernie started daycare at 4 months of age, and although I was okay with going back to work and sending him to daycare, I realized that there was not a moment all summer long where I wanted to work.  I was not excited at all about starting the new school year, but I was okay with it.  Staying home still did not cross my mind.  Several things happened in the next few months that changed my outlook. 
I realize that some of you cannot stay home.  Either you must work or you need to work.  It isn’t for every family.  I do believe it deserves major consideration for every family—and I do believe that every family should try to leave that an option if things are not working out during medical training.  There are things you can do to enable you to stay home.  I have found that even with the cut in pay because I was not able to work that tutoring job at my old school, our finances have not suffered in any way.  We still have cable, we still have spending money, we go out to eat, I have a gym membership and we eat very well.  We are frugal in some ways and not in others.  If I lost both of my part time jobs, we would have to cut back, but we would be able to work it out and keep me at home—and most importantly, we would make it work.