How to pick a husband if you want to have kids
You cannot pick a husband to have kids with until you know if you want to work full-time while you are raising them. Some women will say they know for sure that they do want to work full-time. Most women will say that they don’t know for sure. But there are actually only two choices: be a breadwinner or marry a breadwinner. Then, within those two choices, there are a few strategies you can use.
Scenario 1: Be a Breadwinner
If you want to work full-time when you have kids then you had better plan on having a huge job that you love. Because nothing else will seem worth it to put yourself and your family through what they will have to go through.
If you are on the fence about this, here’s a good way to get off the fence: if you’re not an INTJ or an ENTJ you probably won’t be able to compartmentalize enough at work to choose this scenario. You will feel bad about not being with your kids. You cannot control this. It’s how women are wired. I’m sorry. INTJ is the most uncommon score for a woman. ENTJ is the second most uncommon. You can look around at all the big job, high-powered women and see that almost all of them have one of these scores. Sometimes an ENFJ slips in, but they are tortured and don’t last. The F kills them. They feel bad that they are not fulfilling their duty as parents. It’s not peer pressure, it’s internal pressure. It’s how an ENFJ is wired.
Breadwinner option 1: Marry a stay-at-home dad. Let’s say you’re sure you want a big job while you have kids. The first thing is that you will need a stay-at-home husband. The reason for this is if you leave your kids every day for a full-time job, it’s because you love work. And if you love work, you will want to keep advancing. High-powered jobs leave little time for kids. And people who advance past the age of 35 have a stay-at-home spouse supporting them. If you have kids, the top-tier jobs in the business world are two-people jobs. People who have kids and a stay-at-home spouse advance at a much, much higher rate than people who don’t.
Breadwinner option 2: Nannies. If you don’t have a stay-at-home spouse and you want to advance past age 35, you will need round-the-clock nannies. Women who have kids and a big job and no stay-at-home husband have two nannies, and a household staff, because you need to be covered every second of every day because you don’t know what work will need. (Remember: this is from day one of having kids.) And if you don’t have a spouse who is tied to home then you can’t risk having to leave when your spouse isn’t there.
OK. So your choices are would you rather work and have two nannies or work and have a husband at home? There is no right answer, but you need to decide that when you are picking a husband.
How to pick a husband who will coexist with a breadwinner and nannies. If you are picking the two-nanny route, you will need to find a husband who earns more than you. Statistically your marriage is high risk if you and your husband are both in the workforce and you earn more than him because surveys show that you will resent him. This is not logical, or social, it is primal. Statistically, you will marry a guy who does not make as much as you and then you will have kids and get a divorce. Because women hate the feeling of out-earning their husbands.
To be clear: there is no scenario where you have a big job but do not work long hours. That does not happen. There are not those jobs in this world. And that is fair: why should you get a big important job and be home all evening for your kids when everyone else has to work twelve-hour days to have big important jobs? You give something up to get something. Always.
How to pick a stay-at-home dad. If you want a stay-at-home dad type to complement your big job, pick a guy who has an F in his Myers Briggs score, which makes him most likely to be fulfilled taking care of kids.(But stay away from ENFPs—they’re too flighty.) And, bonus: these guys probably weren’t going to make a lot of money anyway, so it’s good for them to be with a breadwinner.
Scenario 2: Be Home with Your Kids
If you want to be home with your kids, you’re going to need a solid plan to make that happen. Pew Research finds that about 60% of all working women with kids want to work part-time and be home with their kids part-time. (Note that Maclean’s magazine reports that women with kids who work part-time are the happiest in the world.) Gallup reports that about 40% of women don’t want to work at all. (Note that this leaves a statistically irrelevant number of women who have kids and want to work full-time.)
Home with Kids Option 1: Work part-time. Let’s assume you want to work part-time, since this is the more complicated of the two scenarios. The problem with this scenario is that part-time jobs don’t offer advancement or a lot of money, so you need to be with a guy who will work full-time.
Don’t tell me that you want your husband to work part-time, because aiming for the impossible 50/50 split leads to divorce. First, because it’s the road to eternal poverty; part-time jobs are low pay, without advancement, and they are the first to go when it’s time to cut jobs. So you create massive financial instability by having two people work part-time. Also, parents who do this say it’s total chaos, and in a 50/50 split the women always end up doing way more.
Home with Kids Option 2: Don’t bother with earning money. If the guy is working full-time, then he is not going to do all the parenting stuff. You are. So you are working part-time and you are a full-time parent. You will have to work hard to not get resentful about this. And really, who could blame you? The best antidote for this resentment is money. If the guy makes a lot of money you can hire people to help you and then you don’t have to be upset that the guy is not helping you.
Or not. Or you can just let the guy go to his job, which, you will certainly know, is way easier than taking care of kids, because every job in the whole world is easier than taking care of kids, and you will be home doing everything else. Maybe you will have a part-time job, but that will not be the focus of your energy because the stuff at home is way harder than your part-time job. Your part-time job will be a break from the hard stuff. So pick a guy who will earn enough to ensure that you are not pissed.
Also, pick a guy who will earn enough so that you don’t have to work. Because statistically speaking, you will not want a full-time job, and you definitely won’t want a job where you have to earn six figures, because that’s way more than full-time.
How to find a husband who is a breadwinner. The first thing to be aware of is that everyone looks like a breadwinner in their twenties. Because most salaries are going up up up because there is nowhere to go but up when you start at entry level. And most people can get jobs pretty easily when their salary is not very high. But at some point, the salary gets high enough that you have to actually be good at what you do to continue getting jobs at that salary. Then some people start getting stuck and they have to rethink what they thought they could accomplish.
Other people simply cannot move up. They are as far up as they will go. This happens to most people around age 30. Definitely by 35. So the best thing to do is to assume anyone over 30 is making as much as they will make in their life. This is playing it safe, but better safe than sorry, right? (By age 40 almost no one’s salary increases.)
A capable breadwinner—someone who does not require a second earner to support a household—usually does not have an F in their Myers Briggs score. I’m sorry to burst a lot of bubbles here. Not that there aren’t exceptions, but marriage is a big deal, so statistics matter. If you are marrying an F and you want to stay home with kids, make sure the F is earning enough to support a family when you marry him. Otherwise it’s not likely he will earn that much.
If you are marrying young, which I recommend, then you’re playing the odds. And here are the types that are the most likely to be high earning: ENTJ, INTJ, ENTP, ESTP, ENFJ, ESTJ, ISTJ, ISTP.
Scenario 3: Denial (Don’t do this.)
There will be people who say you can’t choose who you fall in love with. This is a lie, of course. There are a million people you could fall in love with. If one is impractical, just go find another.
There will be people who say they don’t know what they want until they see who they marry. This means you are not an ENTJ or an INTJ so the odds are you do not want a huge job and you are in scenario two.
Most people just will not like these choices. Nothing here is good. It’s reality, and of course it’s not as good as fantasy. The only good, real thing is that you have choices, and you can figure out who you are and what you need and you can get what you need.
The only thing worse than the choices I’ve just laid out is not making a choice. You are pretending that you do not control your life by choosing who you marry, and you will end up marrying someone without having a plan for what to do with that person. If that’s your choice, then you’re leaving your life up to chance. And every life has too much potential for that.
This is a great article. As one who is an ENTJ, I can actually understand your article which is… of course, lost on those with the “F”. Your comment, “that most people don’t like choices” is instructive of the political divide, e.g., democrats and then libertarians fall prey to this this, and then of course the conservatives usually make the choice to be predictable. Reading the entire article was refreshing for me as it is rare to see a logical article full of insightfulness about the masses who make up society at large.
Um, unless he is. Like I do, and have for years, because of my wife’s health. Thanks for your faith in men. (Yes, I know, this isn’t exactly fair – statistically, which is what this is all about, you’re right. And of course, also to be fair, you basically say the same thing to the women who want to work full-time, too. From experience, I can say that working full-time and parenting full-time is REALLY REALLY HARD.)
Really? YA THINK?!? Where’s the article like this for men? Where’s even the CONCEPT that men can “have it all”? They never have, and nobody worries about it.
Our society views men as a means to female happiness – what they want is a vague afterthought, if it’s thought of AT ALL.
The rest of your post was pretty good stuff, though. Yes, OF COURSE there are exceptions… but that’s just not the way to bet.
Thanks for the very thoughtful, blunt, provocative article. It’s far too easy to make bad life decisions when we aren’t honest with ourselves about what we want out of life.
I would also like to say that choosing a stay-at-home husband can sometimes be important even if you don’t have kids. I have a PhD and I work two jobs, by choice. I work full-time at an organization and teach online for a university in the evenings. My husband works from home, and doesn’t stay on the clock longer to make up for the lack of commute – at 4:30 each day, he’s done. He never wanted a “career” like I did – just a job to pay the bills.
Even without children in the picture, it’s easy to reach a breaking point when you are overworked (and getting older and experiencing health issues), you know that your spouse has the time to do personal tasks that need to be done (paying bills, taking care of the house, running errands, taking the cats to the vet), but your spouse nonetheless expects you to do all that extra work. It took a lot of hashing out on our part, but now my husband uses his free time to run the household. It’s been such an immense relief, for both of us, that we’ll keep this arrangment going as long as we can. Once we got over outdated notions of who should be the breadwinner and who should be the “housewife”, we could actually make things work.
Maybe a third option is to readjust what you think it means to be “poor.” Move to a middle sized town. Both work 40 hours per week. Do daycare not a nanny. Drive old cars. Do it all with someone you really love. It’s sure making me happy. I walked away from a big law firm and I couldn’t be happier that I did.
math science tech. Pharmacist make 130k a year and work 40 hours. Engineers, accountants, actuaries, Typically work 40-45 and may have a couple times a year when they have to kick it up to 60+ for a couple weeks. They start at 45 and top out in the mid 100s.
The other thing to do is not have more than a 20 minute commute. Gives you plenty of time to spend with your kids while making decent money.
Wife and I both high paid professionals, married 26 years; 4 kids, – you can control who you date or develop serious relationships with and thus who you may fall in love with – someone with common goals, interests etc. i.e. the foundation of a long marriage. I think the best advice given here is “do not fool yourself”. I have seen lots of women in my profession announce they do not want kids only to get married, have kids and quit because they can’t stand to be away from them. It was very hard at various times for my wife and there were tears and guilt. Your entire life will be your job and your kids – no hobbies, no girls nights out or mothers’ breaks. From the other side, the kids seem happy, normal and earned almost all A’s in college (so far). Look at who you are dating – if they do not share your life goals, stop immediately because you are wasting your time.
PT:
Thought I should respond because I think your education is as important as ours (even though you probably won’t agree). Excuse my anecdotal evidence, but it is the antithesis of all of your arguments. Both of my parents worked as I was growing up, and still do. Both with “big jobs”. My brother and I went to after school care or played sports after school at private schools our entire lives. In fact. we both went to one of the best private schools in the nation, and it cost less than 30% of what you have quoted (did you know a magical place called Texas still exists?). Even though we weren’t homeschooled (gasp!) we are mildly successful, one of us with an MS in engineering, and one getting an MD. Which brings me to my next point…
Although many people hate to hear it, a wide variety of doctors in specialties are able to work very few hours and have very BIG jobs (or at least BIG salaries), work part time (still a huge salary), and can always have time for kids. Just gotta do your research :)
Penelope, how do you define “big job”?
What about daycare? Many companies offer on sight day care for working parents.
I think you’re putting too much emphasis on income/financial status and it’s a little off setting, to be honest.
I don’t think you can choose who you love, or even who loves you. We’re naturally drawn to like people; that’s why so many exes are similar and why people have similar issues in multiple relationships before finding their forever partner. Our personalities, energies, and appearances are like a selective forms of gravity that pulls like people towards us.
…on site…*
I’m INTJ, retired, never married. As a philosophically simple person of “high genius” IQ I ask, ‘Why is the traditional notion of “Marry for love, work for money” outdated?’
My wife left when my sons were 3 and 5. I raised them and rarely used a babysitter. They graduated from college, one Electrical Engineer, one Certified Jeweler
I read this thinking it placed too much importance on statistics and averages also, but finished it thinking, well, even if you take away all the statistics and averages, it is still good advice.
One thing I’d like to see her delve into deeper is the idea that it is better for society as a whole to have people whose “job” it is to take care of others. We as a society don’t tend to give credibility, or authority to people in those roles. But the nurturers are really important, especially to the people out in the world doing daring, bold things–they get further if there is a person in their life whose aim is to care for them and help make them the best they can be.
This used to be a gender issue and fortunately for younger people it is not anymore, but it does mean that you have to know yourself and identify which role you are better suited for.
“And people who advance past the age of 35 have a stay-at-home spouse supporting them.” Sounds right.
“This happens to most people around age 30. Definitely by 35. So the best thing to do is to assume anyone over 30 is making as much as they will make in their life.”
My God, your stupidity about technical professions is alarming. Engineers and architects and industrial types are just hitting their stride at 35. Not to mention health care types. Some of them will never be in “management” per se, but they will continue to increase their salaries very nicely through their late 50s at least. Then they will consult and increase them further. I got a 25% raise at 41 and actually got to stop managing others.
Be sure to leave these losers to the other women.
Hm, not many people love work. So Penelope, you’re saying that if the woman doesn’t love to work, she should find a breadwinner so she can sit on her ass and watch the kids watch the tv instead of doing their homework? What if the man doesn’t love to work? Most jobs aren’t what people love to do, so the majority of people aren’t going to love their jobs. And if neither party doesn’t love to work, then why is it the man’s responsibility to be the breadwinner? Why doesn’t the woman have to sack up and bend over for the system so her husband can sit on his ass and watch the kids watch the tv instead of doing their homework? Aren’t men and women equal? Oh, wait. Your kind of women just pretend to be so they can manipulate their way to a cushy, lazy lifestyle.
It is my understanding that MB is not a reliable test of workplace performance. It seems like this would be a more useful in terms of picking a mate with earnings potential if it focused on IQ and conscientiousness. My understanding is that those two attributes are the most statistically significant.
INTJ female here. I don’t give a crap about kids. If my partner wants them, we can have a surrogate have them (or adopt), then he can take care of them or have nannies.
I have found myself always naturally attracted to F guys, aka failures, so no difficulty here by your analysis, though I suspect the low INTJ female percentages you cite are simply from bad studies. I don’t feel like an anomaly in any sense and would not have said INTJ female is the rarest – I have heard multiple “rarest” cited, and usually whoever is citing it just happens to be the type that they’re saying is rarest.
Could someone please explain to me how, if it’s true that:
“women hate the feeling of out-earning their husbands”
then how could the “stay-at-home-dad” really be option?
If a women hates a husband who earns less, would she really prefer a husband who earns nothing?
This is a bunch of unproven, pseudo-science goofball hooey.
You cannot reduce the infinite variety of human nature to 4 characteristics. Joke.
Here is an article related to the discussion. http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/01/work_life_crunch_why_you_shouldn_t_spend_fewer_hours_at_work.html
Dang. I’m an ENFP married to an INTP. I hope I haven’t peaked my earning because I’ve barely made anything. I did lots of meaningful, low-paying work till I became a stay-at-home mom. I’m working on freelancing part-time now. And I already want a nanny.
Good thing I married a breadwinner! Which was sheer dumb luck. No F in her right mind could choose a husband based on this. I’m glad I got one though, seriously.
And my husband would LOVE this post but I refuse to send it to him. He’d gloat too much. :)
Great post P! I think the fact that this post is liked by so many ‘T’s is because us Ts like to understand things first before making a decision, and in general we like to understand the “why” behind everything anyway. Using the personality typing then makes a lot of sense!
I’m an INTP, but staying at home to raise my daughter (very F) has been giving my T a bit more the shape of an F haha! I liked staying home because I like the randomness of life and staying home gives you a lot of freedom to be spontaneous; it’s not always ideal once the kids are older, but generally it assures days filled with fun and learning – for me and the kid.
My husband is the exact opposite of me ESFJ and even though we drive each other crazy sometimes (he’s so ‘here and now’ – boring! – while I’m in ‘what could be land’) we make a good match. We have the same goals and he’s a great breadwinner with a steady paycheck; while I can figure out anything, improvise on the fly, and keep the kids happy and learning.
I’ve always had a part time gig though, working for myself, usually designing or creating something or consulting or working on anything internet related. In fact, I’ve had at least a couple dozen jobs in my life, I feel I can do anything, but I just can’t deal with the steadiness and schedule of a job. Another reason why being a stay home parent and doing all kinds of random gigs has been great for me.
Unbelievable. Anyone this cold shouldn’t be breathing.
I read a post of yours about a year ago in which you described The Farmer abusing you.
Funny, abuse is exactly why I determined I would NEVER EVER rely on anyone for money. I make my own and the second I encounter any sign of abuse, I am gone. I love having this option. I more than love it…I cherish it. I worked hard for it. I will outearn my husband until the day I die to have the freedom of choice. My marriage is worth something as long as I choose to be there, not because I have no other choice but to be with there.
I know what happens to kids who grow up in a home where parents should have gotten a divorce long ago. Your kids will resent you. They will be angry, messed up people. My mother had eight kids. 8/8 have not made it through unscathed. 8/8 of us have had serious emotional problems. About 5/8 of us even have a relationship with our parents.
If you’re still with that person, you’re wrong. Tell yourself all the oies you want, but you’re wrong. You can dream up a million reasons why but at the end of the day, it’s about your kids. Not you. And your kids aren’t better off. I was that kid. My brothers were those kids. My nephews are those kids. None of us are better off.
I liked the article a lot (linked from Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution). Of course, judging from the piece above, my wife made a bad choice when she agreed to marry me back in 1992, as we found out afterward that she’s ISFJ and I’m INTP, and we both work “part-time” as pediatricians (roughly 0.9 FTE each) and earn almost exactly the same income, and both have one day off a week and not much holiday/weekend duty. We had a nanny full-time when we were in medical school and residency.
We have a great marriage and have a strong family which runs smoothly for the most part, though of course we’ve had rough patches like anyone, so I think we’ve done well, but even we know that our arrangement is unusual, and I don’t advise people to do as we have done, as so much depends on the personalities of the men and women involved and what their goals and aspirations are, and particularly how they resolve disagreements.
BTW, though I like the Myers-Briggs system for getting a rough gauge on different personalities, there’s a lot of play even within each grouping, especially when the score in a particular section is close to 50/50, as was my score in the P/J section. Interestingly, when the pediatric residents and spouses with whom we took the test were grouped by results, there was a huge table (including my wife) of SJs which were mostly the doctors (with a few spouses) and there was a very small group of NPs (mostly spouses with myself and one other male the only physicians). He’s still the only other INTP I’ve known professionally.
Everybody always hates your posts on this topic but in my experience you are spot on. Doesn’t mean people have to take the optimal path, just that they need to build in tolerance and buffer so that that friction of a sub-optimal path doesn’t set too much on fire.
I’ve said this before here: many people can marry a breadwinner and have only one person stay home (wife or husband). But being a breadwinner doesn’t mean being rich or even close to it. My husband is the breadwinner (I don’t remember his Myers Brigg right now but postive he has an F in there) but we are not wealthy in the slightest. We live paycheck to paycheck but are also very frugal and have lots of savings. We’re about to have a baby and I’m staying home as long as feasible. If I have to work, I’ll work part-time as a nurse. If I ramp things up as a nurse and down the line my husband wants to stay home, he can. I don’t mind switching if we need to. We both are pretty domestic and more relationship than career-oriented and would both rather stay home so if he needs to stay home a bit for sanity’s sake, I get it.
So, you can have a breadwinner but not be rich. I don’t think people ever conceptualize it in that way bause they don’t have financial discipline. And who stays home can be fluid if you’re able to look reality in the face and not hold onto how things SHOULD be even when circumstances have clearly changed.
This is spot on and an excellent starting point for further development. There is a missing dimension: how about the person who matters most — the kid? As an ENTP who was a high earner in a big job before the melt-down who is now an exhausted (by a young ESTP or ENFP child) stay at home mom, I see that the children have their own M-B profile and this colors everything. Some kids seem to be fine being left in day care while others demand loads of attention from both parents even with one home full time. That’s yet another way you can’t win — you get the child you get. Some are needier than others; some will turn out well no matter what, some will demand loads and loads of investment on your part.
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I recently had a baby and had originally thought I would want to stay at home after giving birth. After several months now, I would definitely want to work part time. I agree that should have been something I worked on setting up before the baby comes, but since I have not done so, do you have any advice for me now?
My husband was laid off 6 weeks after we married, and for 5 years, I was the primary (or sole) breadwinner. He’s always worked in private industry and I’ve always worked in nonprofits. Not a stretch to say that his paycheck was always higher than mine. Luckily, I married him because he was my best friend, not because he fit some Myers Briggs criteria. My point is, life changes in the blink of an eye. People lose their jobs. They have a sudden health emergency. Consider this when choosing a life partner; don’t focus on the paycheck.
Ms. Trunk, given what you shared with your readers about your married life, and the fact that it isn’t your first marriage, I think you should refrain from doling out marriage advice. You’re hardly in a position to be telling women what they should do.
i really love this post. i think what you write can also work to describe your options in reverse order, since sometimes women don’t realize how they’ll feel about their jobs until after having kids. that is, if you’re already married, know you want kids, but don’t have them yet.
i got married young when my husband was in med school and now residency. i’ve always been the breadwinner, and i thought i was ok with continuing to work after kids (an important commitment since we’re paying off $200k in loans). after a baby, i realized i actually prefer to work PT (or else not work at all). if i read your advice after getting married (but before kids), i think i’d have had more clarity and maybe we’d have made financial commitments differently (e.g. planned to live off a lower salary from the beginning).
Gosh, I am so glad I was an accident or I would have never been on this planet as my intp mom probably would’nt have wanted me in the first place. I think it’s a bit to simple to suggest that intp are not interested in children.
God, this is such bullshit. My husband has a “big” job, I have a “big” job, our combined income is in the high six figures, we are in our mid-thirties, and we have two little kids. We don’t have round the clock nannies. Actually, we’ve never had a nanny. We’ve had daycare and now the kids are in extended day programs at school/nursery school, we take turns with drop off and pick off, and work our asses off at parenting and at our careers. It doesn’t have to be either/or – not for parenting vs. career or mother vs. father.
ok – I HAVE to ask. What do you do for a living that you jointly earn in the high 6-figures. At 35. With kids. ???
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It seems to me that Marriage can be every bit as selfish and immature a decision as Divorce. Very few people are self actualized and most relationships are messy. It is understandable that people would like to find clarity and simplicity amidst the chaos.
There is no simple clear solution that applies to every marriage in crisis, however there may be some guiding principles that should be a part of any spouse’s decision making process: 1. You should be able to identify what it is in the marriage that is not working; 2. You should tell the other person what your concerns are; 3. The two spouses need to determine if they are willing and able to work on what doesn’t work between them. 4. Assume your children know that there is something wrong between Mommy and Daddy. Children may not understand adult relationships, but they pick up on the bad vibes that relationship problems create. 5. Don’t confuse your role of a spouse with your role of a parent. Regardless of the decision the two you make, your children deserve to have the best parents the two of you can be, whether together or apart.
i am here to give testimony on how Dr Helen made dream come to past been a mother,i have been married for up to 14 years now with no issues of children.this has been a problem between my husband and i we have gone for so many kind of tests to different hospitals in and out of the country to different kinds of medical check up. every doctor we have ever approached in the name of child bearing are always saying positive results that there is nothing wrong with us i have even to the extent gone to see spiritualists and see pastors for the same problem because it was really unbearable to me.there was a day i called on of my friends who had the same problem for over 20 years with no issue too so then i asked her how far has she gone about it.then she told me that she was pregnant with her third kid, i was really surprised about it and so i asked her it happened so she told me that someone linked her to Dr Helen who prepared some roots and herbs medicine,i was really desperate to have my own baby and so i collected Dr Helen’s phone number and email and contacted her right away to see how lucky i was going to be, and so i called her and explained everything to her and then she prepared roots and herbs and prescribed on how my husband and i should take it and so we did hoping for the best to come out of it.for about two months or there about i noticed that my mensuration did not come as it use to i called my husband at the office and told him what i noticed so he drove down to the house and later went to our personal doctor to ask him what was going on and then i went for a test immediately the test cane out from the laboratory, the doctor gave my husband a hand shake and told us congratulations that we are going to have twin a boy and a girl so my husband was really happy that he was going to be a father at last. 9 months later just as it happened i gave birth to a bouncing baby boy and a bouncing baby girl. am really most grateful to Dr Helen for making my husband and i happy. for all you women who is having the same problem as i did never give up on it Dr Helen is the solution. please contact her on childrensolutionhospital@gmail.com.
What a great discussion.
I’m inclined to generally agree with Penelope’s position here. I work in a Fortune 500 company and have observed the women in the hotshot positions. They are all ENTJs and are all married to ENTJs with equally big jobs. They outsource most of the childcare responsibilities to nannies/au pairs/private schools etc.
I’m a 30 yr old ENTJ married to another ENTJ. We are both MBAs, work in Fortune 500 companies and have jobs in the leadership pipeline. We love it. We also want to have kids in the next couple of years.
Penelope, from your outline above, the two nanny option would seem to be the way to go, given our personality types. However, that seems in direct conflict with many of the posts on your homeschooling blog which illustrate the need for a central caretaker early on. You also build a compelling case for homeschooling which, frankly, doesn’t seem like it works that well for ENTJs.
So what’s the option? Make enough to send kids to a really expensive private school that focuses on self-directed learning, effectively outsourcing homeschooling? Or take myself out of the fast track pipeline by quitting or scaling back the effort once I have kids (which is good for the kids, but will probably drive me crazy)? Or re-think having kids at all?
Those all seem like crappy options. I’m curious what others think and/or have done.
Fascinating analysis Penelope. Have you ever heard of someone going from ENTJ to ENFP? That’s what’s happened for me over the past few years. Fortunately, I guess, I learned to earn as an ENTJ and it’s stuck w. me. :)
I love this article. It’s basic logic. My mom used to tell me the same exact thing (without the MB terms of course) and I listened! I married a breadwinner and I’ll be a stay at home mom soon. However, I do have 2 home businesses, but they are both limited part time jobs, and one is more of a passion/hobby, and my husband doesn’t expect either one to help cover major bills.
I’m a little offended with your brush off attitude toward the “flighty” ENFP. I happen to be a highly functioning one :)
If you had a thorough understanding of typological theory you would know that what you are talking about in your entry deals only with the ego personality and not what is out of one’s awareness in what Jung termed the shadow. Look up ego dystonic and syntonic for starters. In the “shadow” of one’s ego personality another set of typological variables awaits us all — often in diametric opposition to the ego personality. Your advice is not practical- nor is it ethical- if it is not based on the full scope of available theory.
I am a high-earning full-time working ENFJ with two kids. I am not tortured. Perhaps because I “F” for feel that part of my duty as a parent is to show my kids that women can have great careers.
I had a stay-at-home husband but divorced him because he was a terrible wife. He didn’t manage the household; he just babysat. Now I have one nanny and a gaggle of childless middle-aged female friends who are surrogate nannies.
My salary has not stopped going up after 40.
Also – you cannot control who you fall in EROS love with. You can choose to foster PHILA love and partner up with that person. But let’s not kid ourselves and pretend they’re the same.
Some good points, but some bullshit –
I am a high-earning full-time working ENFJ with two kids. I am not tortured. Perhaps because I “F” for feel that part of my duty as a parent is to show my kids that women can have great careers?
I had a stay-at-home husband but divorced him because he was a terrible wife. He didn’t manage the household; he just babysat. Now I have one nanny and a gaggle of childless middle-aged female friends who are surrogate nannies.
My salary has not stopped going up after 40. Also, I do not work long hours. I am extremely good at what I do and I can do it FAST. I have also built up enough trust at work that I can work from home if my kids are sick, and be truthful about it.
Also – you cannot control who you fall in EROS love with. You can choose to foster PHILA love and partner up with that person. But let’s not kid ourselves that they’re the same.
Wow. You’ve got a massive following for doling out such scientific advice. I could barely get through this article, myself. My wife and i have a scenario that’s not listed here – we share responsibilities. It’s not a normal scenario, I’ll grant you, but we do our best. We each make about the same amount, and we each work full time. We have two beautiful, well-adjusted daughters who are approaching middle school. And we didn’t have much say in ‘picking’ each other out. You can read that story here: http://obsessedwithconformity.com/1138/lightning/
Anyway, congratulations to your success as an advice giver to thousands. I’ll continue to avoid this kind of advice, and happily plow through life anyway.
I feel like there is another option which is often forgotten even though it used to be common and still occurs today. That is the family business. I’ve read so many articles, psych study results and blog comments that really seem to suggest almost NOBODY likes “going” to work. Most of us, men or women, F’s or T’s are willing and even happy to work hard for things we can feel directly connected to and which directly benefits our values and those folks we care about. It may be money, prestige or a healthier community or the smile on your child’s face. But VERY FEW people would choose to work away from all the people who love them, sit in traffic, and work for years on end to the benefit of someone else’s bottom line under someone else’s authority and supervision.
Some people may tolerate it very well and for some, as long as they are successful, may believe the pros outweigh the cons. But I don’t think this is really a natural or desirable scenario for many. Yet it’s what many do.
Meanwhile, not everyone, of course, relishes the idea of working alongside their spouse. Especially not independently minded Americans. But it’s a scenario that offers flexibility and security in ways industrial and post-industrial jobs can’t even approach. You don’t to work in constant or close proximity. Ag, craft, tech and trade businesses all have micro-niches which can be exploited and different management styles which can be applied on top of that. Jobs are strength-based according to the individual rather than prescribed to him, so workers can bring their personality strengths into play and find their own personal niche better than in a corporate structure. Children also have opportunities in a fam. biz to gain experience and self-awareness about their own strengths and interests. You won’t be fired for being sick or being in mourning and you won’t be as likely to resent working through sicknesses or working overtime.
One thing that interests me is environmental determinism, particularly since I had a professor in college who lectured against it at the same time I worked for a developer who believed in its importance. eg If a store is more than a 1/4mi away people will drive rather than walk. Modern architecture is by its nature isolating and inhibiting of cottage industries (IMO). The Info Age amends that somewhat but I wonder if in the absence of a predominately mixed-use zoning environment if we are also inhibited in our ability to conceive of and execute family run businesses.
Also, lack of access to healthcare probably inhibits average joe entrepreneurship, but now I’m not even on my own topic anymore ;) Anyway, in a family business whatever values the involved men and women have about men and women can be accommodated and success should be at least moderately correlated with effort. Children can be distracted when they live in the middle of their parent’s workplace (if organized that way) but they are also more likely to get parented. Just a thought.
Thanks for post! I think this makes a lot of sense. I think women my age worry too much about having a career without stopping to ask if that’s what they really want. Millennial women need permission to pursue motherhood, in my opinion. and I think this strategy has merit. There are a lot of things to consider before becoming a mom.
word of advice to the author : get out of 1933 and get into 2013! women have equal rights and besides not all of us want to be a housewife an live in a little thatched house with a career husband and 2.5 children you know! some of us women do have a life outside of stepford and have dreams that don’t involve staying at the kitchen and cranking out children! i know some would want to, but i find there’s more to life than being a june cleaver wannabe with squealing brats!
HOLY HELL .. I totally missed the memo about how I was supposed to know what kind of parent I’d be BEFORE I HAD CHILDREN.
What. The. Hell.
For the record … it’s the HAVING OF THE CHILDREN that taught me what kind of parent I wanted to be.
INTJ (consistently tested since 14 y.o.) married to INTJ. Two young boys. Our dual FT family works b/c:
1. Two very good six figure incomes -> everyone eats healthy, organic etc.
2. Can afford exercise/ Y
3. Babysitter comes in morning to help get ready for w preschool/ school (husband sleeps in, since he is up late, and I am usually out by 6 am)
4. Family and household run very efficiently by INTJ x 2 parents.
e.g. while one parent giving bath(dad), the other (me) has cleaned up dinner/ kitchen/ mud, vacuumed kitchen and utility/mud, started load of laundry.
5. See #1. do not know how families do it w/o disposable income. For example, I need to be able to save a lot of money every month for peace of mind. But we also need additional money to do the things one needs to do to not be consumed by guilt, mental clutter, worries, etc. (we need to visit family on the other side of US? -> okay, we do it… No time to make dinner -> go out to eat at healthy restaurant.
This was possible b/c both parents on career track and prep since elementary/middle school, careers on track, looking to marry someone similarly careful and efficient. Kids were a later thought but even then, still have turned life upside down.
Would also add that comments to the effect of “well Penelope, I am an XXXX and you are so wrong b/c look how I turned out” are extremely annoying to read. She has written a blog post, a quick discussion on trends/ averages/ medians … not a dissertation, where an exhaustive review of all possibilities would be appropriately and painfully described in detail.
It would be more useful/ interesting to write, I am an XXXX and this is HOW I got it to work for us.