if you have 3 or more kids do you work other than raising your kids?

[AnnieW625]

DH and I were talking about this yesterday because it is rare that we are friends with someone who has 3 kids and works full time. We live in a higher COL area, but not the highest in our state. We know one mom with three kids who works part time outside the home, one mom works part or full time as a librarian at the university library, my DCP runs a daycare and has three kids, and it took me a while but I remembered a mom I know whose kids used to go to daycare and has three kids and is a co owner of a local business and works full time outside the home. Up north we have a friend who is a nurse and has 5 kids. Growing up my mom's best friend had 3 kids, and was a teacher, my neighbor had 4 and was a nurse. My mom went back to work part time when I was 17.

So just curious. poll coming!

[brittone2]

I SAH, but I have been since I was pg with DS1, and we weren't necessarily planning on 3 at that time. I wasn't sure I'd have more than one child at that point due to IF. We HS, so I have all three with me all day.

I do think our spacing would have made it a bit trickier to return to work if that's what I wanted to do, as up until this year I would have had one in elementary school, one in preschool/preK, and one in daycare or 2 yo preschool. Logistically that would have been challenging, and the childcare costs would have eaten into my salary substantially (still would have been worthwhile financially, but just less appealing!) As of right now if they weren't HSd, I would have one in all day school, a Kindy student doing half day plus before or aftercare, and then one in daycare or preschool. Obviously, that isn't why I SAH since we HS and I began SAH before we had three kids, but it is something that we would have had to consider if I did return to work.

eta: DH travels about 10-15% of the time, so that would have added more layers of complexity if I was working...drop offs, pick ups, etc.

[smilequeen]

I have 3. I worked part time until he was born and now I SAH full time. I intended to go back before he was born, but I don't now. I just don't feel like I can do it, balance all of it, anymore.

[o_mom]

Most of the families with two WOHP and 3+ kids that I know fall into these camps:

1. Kids are very spread out in age - like preschool, upper elementary and high school

2. Parents have high-income jobs - doctors, lawyers, etc.

3. Parents work opposite shifts - maybe one is a night shift nurse, etc.

It just seems that for most, three in daycare/preschool/elementary ages is very hard to swing without two high-paying jobs, so they either stop at two or SAH until they are all in school. Many times they decide that the income from a second full-time WOH parent is not worth the extra stress when the kids do reach school age and so end up part-time, WAH or still SAH.

[hillview]

3 kids would be VERY hard to have the job I have. 2 kids is hard enough!

[melrose7]

I voted work at home part time. I watch 4 kids in my home. Both sets of family are part time but if those days/times over lap I could be working from 6am-6:30pm but that would only be 1 day a week. But my hours may add up to 40+ some weeks. I got pregnant with my 3rd around the time I left my job as a nanny. I took DD1 and DD2 with me to work but it sure how it would have worked when they were in school. DD1 has ended up having intensive ABA therapy at home 25+ hours a week so I need to be home for that so it worked out better with me working at home. I always knew I would be with my kids during the day and wouldn't work a regular job away from them.

[daniele_ut]

I worked full time until DS2 was born last year. I am now a mostly full time SAHM. I do some freelance work for my old employer throughout the year and then again during the summer when dh is off from school I work on a show for about a month.

My kids are spread out a bit in age, so if I worked FT we would only have 1 in infant care and 1 in pre-K, but then we would have aftercare to worry about for DS1 as well. Financially we could make it work, but as DS has gotten older his schoolwork and activities make more demands on MY time. Even when we had 2 kids, after working at a mentally and physically demanding job (I work in broadcast and live event production) it was hard to come home and face all of the tasks I had to accomplish before bedtime to keep our family running. For me, everything suffered because I couldn't do anything well.

We are definitely not as well off financially as we were when I was working FT but the things we have sacrificed were never necessities anyway. We are very lucky that our mortgage is small enough to afford on dh's salary and that we have some flexibility for me to take on freelance work to fill in the gaps financially.

[maestramommy]

Like your OP indicates, might depend on where one lives. I knew before I got married I wanted to stay home, barring financial difficulty. It wasn't connected to how many kids I had. Most of the friends I knew with kids pretty much stuck with whatever work/non-work configuration they had no matter the number of kids. I have one friend who worked after #1, but stay home after #2.

However, it IS part of my plan to go back to work in some form after DD3 is in school full day. That's 3 years from now.

[mominma]

I work 4 days per week, but mostly out of the house. I go into one of our offices 2 - 3 times per week. Since my 3 older kids have been school-age it has been much easier (and cheaper). My youngest goes to daycare 3 days (I am home one day with him and he spends one day with a grandparent). With all the activities and work hours it is a tough juggling act - but we have fun and keep busy!

[AJP]

I SAH and knew with the first pregnancy that I'd be at home (at least in the beginning). After finding out the first pg was twins and being pretty sure we'd be thinking seriously about a third, we decided I'd be at home up to and after 3rd DC.

[klwa]

I WOH with 3. At my work, there are 3 women in my job category. Two of us have 3 children. The other has 1.

[jjjo1112]

I have 4 kids and work as a nurse about 40-50 hours per week. It's really tough but my husband is awesome and super hands-on, we have family and friends that help out, a housecleaner and a babysitter that also helps with the kids laundry :) When the kids were younger it was easier, now that they all have tons of activities, it's always a challenge to figure out activities. Nursing allows me to work off hours, so I do some daytime hours, some evening hours and some night-time hours. I also work all of my hours between thu-mon. I have a babysitter thu, fri days, my mom watches the kids thu and fri afternoons and then DH is with the kids if I'm working over the weekends. This is the most I've every worked but I kind of over-extended myself and am contracted to finish the semester for 2 teaching positions. Once the semesters end in May, I will cut way back over the summer- just 8-12 hours, and then re-evaluate for next school year. I will probably only take on teaching position instead of 2. Even though I work a lot, I still feel like I have a good amount of time with the kids- all day mon, tue, wed and different times on the weekends and since we have the housecleaner and my babysitter takes care of the kids laundry, I don't have to worry about that stuff when I'm not working.

[GaPeach_in_Ca]

I have some friends who work with 3 kids, I can easily think of 3 of the top of my head. My one friend joked that her daycare payments were more than their mortgage payment. We live in a HCOL area, so that's no small amount.

[TxCat]

Two of my good work friends WOTH FT with 3 kids. Another work-related friend (surgeon) has 3 kids and another surgical colleague has 4 kids. Average of 2-3 year spacing between kids. All of these friends are physicians but not all of them utilize full time nannies or day care. I do think it is more manageable with helpful husbands and helpful in-laws who live nearby.

[Melbel]

I never envisioned myself as a SAHM but have been for over 5 years now. I was always independent, motivated and ambitious, paying my way through undergraduate and law school. I started staying home for 2 reasons: (1) health problems, primarily with my back and fatigue (ultimately diagnosed with Lyme, surprisingly); and (2) DH began working for a big law firm, and we knew it would be hard to balance family life with two of us working at big law firms (my efforts at PT did not pan out). I am so very thankful that I was a SAHM when DS fell so sick in 2011 and 2012 in order to manage his care. With 3 kids in 3 different schools this year (often with different days off and 3 hours of driving per day), I cannot imagine how we would manage with us both working (other than hiring a driving nanny).

[AnnieW625]

.......Logistically that would have been challenging, and the childcare costs would have eaten into my salary substantially......
Childcare costs with 3 kids could have potentially eaten us alive. I don't know what I would have done, although there were many times when I was newly pregnant with DD2 that I prayed for twins to make up for the baby we had lost the prior spring, but in the end we knew if that were the case I would have had to quit my job and we most likely would have had to short sale our house, and I would have had to find some weekend or part time employment unless we moved to a more reasonable COL area.


Most of the families with two WOHP and 3+ kids that I know fall into these camps:

1. Kids are very spread out in age - like preschool, upper elementary and high school

2. Parents have high-income jobs - doctors, lawyers, etc.

3. Parents work opposite shifts - maybe one is a night shift nurse, etc.


This is our friends in Nor Cal. They have 5 kids, 3 are hers from a prior marriage (they are 19, 16, and 13), and the youngest two are exactly 2 yrs. apart (they have the same birthday) and are 2, and 3 weeks old. She is a registered nurse and works different shifts as needed. The DH is a police detective and has flexible hours as well so little daycare is needed. The eldest daughter goes to college in Texas so it is cheap to go to school there, her two sons live in Texas with their dad as well.


......Even when we had 2 kids, after working at a mentally and physically demanding job (I work in broadcast and live event production) it was hard to come home and face all of the tasks I had to accomplish before bedtime to keep our family running. For me, everything suffered because I couldn't do anything well.....

I often feel like this as well, which makes me very glad that we stopped at 2 because even now I feel like there is never enough time in the day to complete everything (hence why I posted a poll about FT working moms and keeping the house clean).


Like your OP indicates, might depend on where one lives. I knew before I got married I wanted to stay home, barring financial difficulty. It wasn't connected to how many kids I had.....

This is totally our case because DH and I have said if we lived somewhere where it was cheaper to live we'd have more kids. I am sure I thought about becoming a SAHM when I had kids sometime before DH and I got married, like had thought seriously about moving to Oregon and DH got to take his bay area salary with him, but then right before we got married DH got laid off and things changed. He was out of an engineering job paying $65K a year, with a max salary of close to 100K, which he would have been at within 5 yrs. so all of a sudden my mindset about those things changed. We were married for 18 months before DH got a good stable engineering job again (2003 hiring freezes, and mini engineering recession unless you were in computer programming) so then we moved for the job, and because we wanted to settle down we bought a house because who knew the market would collapse, there was no end in site so we thought the 1100 sq. ft. house in middle class LA would be $800K in no time flat, we thought $500K was a good deal :shake::banghead::barf::crying:. I got pregnant with DD1 about 6 weeks after we moved in. It was never even mentioned that I would SAHM because DH still wasn't at the top of his pay because he couldn't argue for more salary because the starting salary was more than $15 an hour he'd made at his temporory beer distributing job, and we knew we'd make more with my salary, but at least had I had twins the first go around we could have sold our house for a profit or broken even if sending two to daycare would have been too much for my salary, which was then about $45K, and DH's was the same.

[AnnieW625]

I have some friends who work with 3 kids, I can easily think of 3 of the top of my head. My one friend joked that her daycare payments were more than their mortgage payment. We live in a HCOL area, so that's no small amount.

If I had to pay for three kids in daycare my daycare payment would have been $2700 ($900 a month per kid) a month, which is equal to my mortgage.

[ladysoapmaker]

I always knew I'd WOH. I wasn't planning on having 4 kids. It has helped that there is a wide range in ages with the kids, and we had managed to get inexpensive daycare when they were younger. Right now DH is unemployed so we have eliminated all daycare and he does most of the house cleaning.

Jen

[roseyloxs]

My mom had 3 kids and went back to work full time when I was about 5 and my youngest brother was about 1. She works in accounting. As we got older and got involved in sports and had games on weekdays she switched to temp work. As a temp she could leave work on time without guilt. She was almost always offered a full time position when her temp work was ending. It was nice because she could decide if the company was worth her time or not. Most times she would walk and wait for the next temp job to turn up which was usually just a week or two later.

I can't really think of many other working moms I know with 3 kids or more. They seem to stop at 2, although I would say even most of the SAHMs I know stop at 2.

[mom2khj]

3 is the new 2 around here. Seems like almost everyone I know in my age group, at work, has 3 kids and both parents work.

[maestramommy]

so then we moved for the job, and because we wanted to settle down we bought a house because who knew the market would collapse, there was no end in site so we thought the 1100 sq. ft. house in middle class LA would be $800K in no time flat, we thought $500K was a good deal :shake::banghead::barf::crying:. I got pregnant with DD1 about 6 weeks after we moved in. It was never even mentioned that I would SAHM because DH still wasn't at the top of his pay because he couldn't argue for more salary because the starting salary was more than $15 an hour he'd made at his temporory beer distributing job, and we knew we'd make more with my salary, but at least had I had twins the first go around we could have sold our house for a profit or broken even if sending two to daycare would have been too much for my salary, which was then about $45K, and DH's was the same.

:hug: We got married in 2002. Refused to buy after we pretty much got priced out after a month of looking. We kept waiting for the market to collapse, but it "never did." It was all to the good because when we left we didn't have to worry about selling a house in a colder market.

One of the reasons I wanted to sah was because my salary would basically cover quality childcare for 1.5 kids. Maybe. My commute at the time was 1 hour solid without any accidents, and I had many performances throughout the year. On those days I would never come home. I'd just stay and prep or get more work done, have dinner, do the concert, then get home around 9 or later. There's no way I could do that with kids. Dh would have to pick up the kids and deal with them. Also my job was super intense. I loved it, but I know me well enough to know that I wouldn't be able to give the same amount of time and mental energy that I had been, to my job and have much left over for a second shift. I think if I really had to work, somehow we'd make it happen. But given a choice I didn't want a life that was going to be 3 times more stressful for the amount of money I was bringing in. If I was making anywhere near as much as Dh I might think twice. Unfortunately music teachers in private schools make a pittance compared to electrical engineers working for startups:p

[infocrazy]

We fall in the WOFH FT with 4 kids...but off-shift parents. The very decreased daycare costs make it work but things are definitely very very busy. DH misses all the activities...and I have to make all the activities, with my entourage. I am lucky to have a flexible job that I can adjust my hours and typically understanding bosses who allow me to make the 2 song and a cookie performances without burning a day. We REALLY hope DH can switch to an AM shift (~5am-2pm) but that is likely not going to be in the cards for awhile.

We could afford to have DH quit or go PT, however, neither of us would be happy really. He does a great job as the SAHP during the day, but DD watches too much tv and he is not as interactive as I'd like. I make considerably more, so me SAH is not an option. My DREAM is to be WAHM--which I could completely do since EVERYTHING I do is literally phone/email, but it is currently not an option for my company. Fingers crossed though!

I never thought I'd WANT to be A SAHM now, but I totally would. Short of a lottery win or some inheritance from a long lost relative, I will continue to work FT.

[bisous]

I have three kids and SAH but I always wanted to. I do work PT. I work only about 6 hours a month and make enough to pay our rent. I just fell into this opportunity which has been amazing for our family. DH makes pretty good money but we have excessive student debt. Thus, we live simply and without a lot of things that I know others on the board enjoy. But it is the life we want to lead and it works for us.

[g-mama]

I have three kids and I work FT. I just started working again last summer, though, after all three were in school full time. Summer is the most difficult time for me to juggle my schedule and arrange care.

[Globetrotter]

My friend has four kids and just started working full time (after working 3/4 time for a while). However, both she and her dh are software engineers and have a LOT of flexibility in their schedule and can WFH as needed. I honestly think that's the only way it works out for them, not that it's easy (!), plus I think it helps tremendously that she makes a good salary so it's worthwhile for them.

[BayGirl2]

We are still debating 3-4 kids, and we both work full time in professional jobs with a fairly high time commitment. We both make six figures, so technically we're high paid, but our high COL kind of cancels that out so we are really just comfortable.

For us going from 2 to 3 would be a big jump. Things are pretty nice with 2, 3 or more would require some financial changes. We'd time it so DS is starting kindy when the 3rd starts daycare, so that minimizes the bump in daycare costs. DH has considered staying home or working as an independent consultant when DS hits elementary age. That would be one path. The other is that if we both continue to work (especially if we've increased our salaries by then) and we hire additional help like an Au Pair. We've considered going down either of those paths anyway, but with a 3rd it would be a requirement.

I do know of one professional couple in my field (fairly well know in the industry) who have 4 kids. I assume the have a good amount of help to make it all work. Otherwise I'm at a loss for families with more than 2 and no SAHP.

[hellokitty]

I have 3 kids and I have been a sahm since I had DS1. HOWEVER, I live in a LCOL area, and it is not that unusual in our area to find sahms of more than 3 kids. If we lived somewhere with HCOL, I would most likely be working FT and/or we would have just stopped at two kids. My main issue right now is that yes, we live in a LCOL area, but that also means I get paid squat for my profession. If I did work, most of it would go toward childcare. DH is in a profession with very erratic hours, along with being on call 50% of the yr and basically, the ppl we know in his profession that have kids, the other parent basically has to SAH (or they get free childcare from grandparents. They don't make enough to warrant a live in nanny, but really a live in nanny is the only way that DH and I would be able to work FT w/o a lot of logistical issues, but once again, it's a cost issue, with it not being worth it for me to work in order to pay for the nanny and while both sets of grandparents are retired, neither side is willing to help out with watching the kids, either.

[ourbabygirl]

Sorry I can't answer for myself since I started SAH when our first was born, and kept staying home when our second was born. We're debating a third DC, and part of the issue is that I wanted to go back to work (at least part time) when the youngest is in 1st grade (or pay for all-day K), but that would delay me quite a bit in going back to work. Plus my salary would be a pittance, and it wouldn't make much sense for me to work instead of SAH unless I could work at a private school and get free tuition for the kids.

Anyhow, both of my SILs work FT in high-powered careers, and one has three kids and the other is pg with her third. The first SIL hired a nanny right before her third was born because they couldn't do the logistics of bringing 3 kids to daycare and getting to work, staying home if one of the kids was sick, etc. My brother travels a lot for his job and SIL travels a few times a year. So having the nanny helped them a lot, as does having both sets of grandparents 5-10 minutes away and always willing to help and baby-sit at least one day a week. However, she must want more work-life balance, because this SIL will be starting to work PT soon, with some sort of job share, so she'll work 3 days a week. They'll still have the help of the grandparents, but it'll be really tricky this summer, I imagine, when the two older kids are out of school and need to somehow be taken care of on those 3 days she works.
The other SIL has a nice set-up because both grandmas come to their house to watch the kids M-F. It'll be interesting to see if SIL stays working FT after the baby is born; I think it's generous for a grandma in her 70's to give free day care to a newborn, a 2 year old, and a 4 year old, and to do preschool drop-offs and pick-ups and everything. I imagine SIL will figure out something so she can start working PT, too.

[emily]

We have 3 (4,3 & 10 mos) and I WOTH FT. We manage because I work from home once a week and have a somewhat flex schedule. It's hard since we have no family nearby but DH and I are both able to work from home if we need to. Our hope/plan is for me to SAH or work PT once DD starts school in the fall. Daycare is our second mortgage (about 32k/yr). I honestly think its easier to manage three now vs. when they're in school with all their extra-curriculars.

[Green_Tea]

I have three and I just started working full time this fall after almost 10 years as a SAHM. We could not have afforded it if we had to cover full time daycare expenses. My youngest is now in 1st grade, and I am teaching. I'd say I work about 50 hours a week outside the home (I work a few hours at home each night, too, so probably closer to 60-65 hours a week total). It's been a huge transition for our family, but I feel very, very lucky to have landed a teaching job midyear (I was a student teacher until the middle of December, and then hired to replace a teacher in the district), and the salary and benefits are life-changing for us. No regrets.

[♥ms.pacman♥]

Most of the families with two WOHP and 3+ kids that I know fall into these camps:

1. Kids are very spread out in age - like preschool, upper elementary and high school

2. Parents have high-income jobs - doctors, lawyers, etc.

3. Parents work opposite shifts - maybe one is a night shift nurse, etc.

It just seems that for most, three in daycare/preschool/elementary ages is very hard to swing without two high-paying jobs, so they either stop at two or SAH until they are all in school. Many times they decide that the income from a second full-time WOH parent is not worth the extra stress when the kids do reach school age and so end up part-time, WAH or still SAH.

I would add a 4th category - parents have significant amount of family help.

Most of the families i know with 3+ kids, save for one or two, actually don't make a ton of $$, yet they make do bc they have tons of family help. DH's brother & SIL both work and have 3 kids, and while there is a 7 yr gap btween oldest and youngest, they definitely do not have high income jobs (neither graduated college)...both combined make much less than what DH makes alone. But it's not as stressful for them since my ILs live very close to them and MIL is basically like 3rd parent...she picks the older ones every day from school and watches the younger one while they work. She used to watch the older 2 fulltime when they were younger. They have never had to pay for daycare or for a sitter bc MIL has always watched them and/or picked kids up from school and takes them to extracurriculars too. Similar thing for DH's cousin, who had at one point a 2yo and newborn twins, and went back to work FT at 12 weeks...grandma & grandpa were fulltime daycare. So, while i'm sure its still hard, there was no dealing with sick kids from daycare, missing work bc of sick kids or running to pick them up or drop them off somewhere, which i think makes up a big factor in the difficulty of having multiple children.

I think if we had grandparents in town it would definitely be leaning much closer to to go for a 3rd while still work full time. For us it's not a question of money..we could easily afford to hire out help, but that's just so hard to do for the type of help we need.

[buddyleebaby]

I always planned to be a SAHM, even if I had "only" one child.
However, DH's swing shifts and weird hours would make it very difficult for me to work full time out of the home if I wanted to.

[goldenpig]

We both work FT out of the home in demanding careers (both MDs) and are about to have our 3rd child. We have a FT (live-out) nanny but no family help. I am planning to return to work ASAP (about 6 weeks maternity leave if I can afford to). With the super HCOL here, there is no way we could afford to live on one income--even though we are both high income earners, it doesn't seem to go very far around here! So, we both work FT, but we both are still very involved with the kids while we are home.

ETA: My parents both worked FT (electrical engineer and college professor) and had 5 kids (4 while we were growing up and one more after I went to college).

[american_mama]

I stay home and have for 10 years. I didn't really expect to stay home once I had kids, it just made sense due to a lot of moves in a short period of time, and then I liked it. However, I also voted other because no one's employment status is a permanent thing. People who are employed with three kids may end up quitting/losing their job/moving at some point. Even more likely, stay at home parents may decide at some point to go back to work. That's my situation; I began a job search last spring and will re-start it in the fall with a big move in between.

Also, you are in California, which I think is a hard state for work-family balance. There's the HCOL relative to other parts of the country and the commute/traffic times, plus (I suspect) in some areas a real comeptitive parenting mentality.

I live in an area known for a high quality of life. People move here from larger cities because of it, and I think the slightly larger families and number of dual career families reflect that. Have a family of 4+ kids, or have a dual career family with 3+ kids, and you can probably afford it here in terms of time and money. 2 or maybe 3 of the 5 pediatricians in our practice (women) have 3+ kids. I know a triplet family where the mom went back to work as a dietitian when the kids were about 4, an editor with 4 kids who works f/t. I know three professor families and one public school teacher family with three kids where both parents work, and a family whose 3rd pregnancy was twins, and that mom works p/t as a PT. I also know of two families with 3 or 4 kids were the mom works seasonally. The dads work full-time too in all these families.

I can think of more families with 3+ kids where one parent doeesn't work, in part because you meet more of what you are and I am a SAHM. In my local circle of friends and acquaintances, I can quickly think of six SAHMS with 3 kids, four with 4 kids, one with 5 kids, one with 6 kids and one with 7 kids.

[hellokitty]

I would add a 4th category - parents have significant amount of family help.

Most of the families i know with 3+ kids, save for one or two, actually don't make a ton of $$, yet they make do bc they have tons of family help. DH's brother & SIL both work and have 3 kids, and while there is a 7 yr gap btween oldest and youngest, they definitely do not have high income jobs (neither graduated college)...both combined make much less than what DH makes alone. But it's not as stressful for them since my ILs live very close to them and MIL is basically like 3rd parent...she picks the older ones every day from school and watches the younger one while they work. She used to watch the older 2 fulltime when they were younger. They have never had to pay for daycare or for a sitter bc MIL has always watched them and/or picked kids up from school and takes them to extracurriculars too. Similar thing for DH's cousin, who had at one point a 2yo and newborn twins, and went back to work FT at 12 weeks...grandma & grandpa were fulltime daycare. So, while i'm sure its still hard, there was no dealing with sick kids from daycare, missing work bc of sick kids or running to pick them up or drop them off somewhere, which i think makes up a big factor in the difficulty of having multiple children.

I think if we had grandparents in town it would definitely be leaning much closer to to go for a 3rd while still work full time. For us it's not a question of money..we could easily afford to hire out help, but that's just so hard to do for the type of help we need.

:yeahthat: I think ppl underestimate how much having grandparents who are willing to help is worth. If either set of grandparents were more willing to help out with childcare, I definitely would have gone back to work by now, at least part time. However, it's not worth my while and the logistical chaos it would cost our family to return to work if we are paying for 100% of daycare ourselves, for what I get paid. I have to admit, I'm often jealous of friends who get lots of family support and (non-financial) help. My parents and in laws are far from being helpful. I may ask my mom to come babysit for a couple hrs 2x a yr at most (and she acts like a martyr over it), I can't even ask mil to come over and help at all, since she acts like an invalid and flat out refuses to help, even the one time I asked and had already told dh I knew she wouldn't help out, he told me I was wrong, so asked her and just as I said, she said no. When my mom bugs me that I should have returned to work by now, all I do is stew over this. If she really thinks I should return to work, some more support would be helpful, both sets of grandparents are retired and while I don't think I am entitled to help, I see that my friends' parents help a lot more while living farther away than my parents do, plus the fact that neither set of grandparents are really that involved with my kids, I feel like they aren't good grandparents to begin with.

[sntm]

Gokdenpig, im aspiring to that! I'd love a third, but work Ft as an MD an DSO travels for his job. We have a ft nanny but not a ton of family support. We could afford for him to stay at home probably but not me, though I'm more suited for it temperamentally. Maybe it's not just a dream!

[ahisma]

I was in law school when we had DC2 and DC3, so yeah, I planned on working.

I consult part time out of the home now. It's not really because of the kids, it's because I got a great, non entry level opportunity right out of law school with a non-profit that I believe in. I expect it to develop further, and to hopefully coincide (or come close) to DC3 entering K. If not, it's a great resume filler;)

We have local family but they don't watch the kids much - maybe 1-2 / month. Even then, I have to have a back up lined up - I've learned the hard way. We cobbled it together with part time nannies, creative scheduling and little sleep.

[SnuggleBuggles]

90% of my friends with 3+ work outside the home. A lot of them are college professors or in careers (like own their own business) where they have work hour flexibility.