We Need to Talk About Money

In 2018 I went on maternity leave. I cried my eyes out in the car park outside the office at the thoughts of not being at my desk and with my team for the next eleven months. Through my tears I could see people pass my car, worried looks flashing over their faces when they realised a heavily pregnant woman, heaving with sobs, was sitting inside. When I calmed down enough to drive home, I sat on the couch with a cup of herbal tea and wondered what I would do now. Lol at the fear of a first-time mum that she’d be bored at home with only an infant to mind. The innocence.

I had saved hard for those 11 months. I would be getting my salary for 14 weeks, and after that, there would be 12 weeks of maternity benefit and then there would be the money I had squirrelled away to dig into. I didn’t realise the panicked shopping of the new mum awake at 4 am would eat into my reserves fairly fast as I ordered every type of sleeping assistance the women on Mumsnet recommended. As time went on and we began to source childcare we soon realised that two parents working in non-9-5 media jobs would mean that a traditional creche would need to be supplemented by either grandparents or a childminder, and that on some weeks we would be leaving our long-awaited babe at 7 am, not seeing her awake until the next day.

It was not a set up we were comfortable with.

Something had to give, and after much soul-searching and discussion, that ‘something’ would be my beloved career. It wasn’t an easy decision, and reader; it took a lot of deciding. In the end, it came down to me not wanting to leave my daughter, and the fact my husband earns more than I did. Oh, that old chestnut eh? If it’s always going to come down to who earns more (and men earn, on average, 20% more than women), it’s always going to be the woman who makes the sacrifice, right? But I was doing it for my daughter, for her greater good and because, this is important; I wanted to.

I acknowledge the absolute privilege of having this option available to us. We weren’t so crucified by our mortgage that there was no choice but to have two full-time salaries coming in. But in acknowledging the privilege, I must also be aware that my privilege comes second to my partner’s, whose life has, in no material way, changed with having children.

When I handed in my notice and it all became real, what I wasn’t prepared for was how weird I would get about money.

I got defensive, angry, upset and obsessed with it. I refused to take a penny more than was needed for the shopping from my husband and wouldn’t entertain the notion of a general pooled account. My plan was to freelance and pay for all my own needs from that.
Then I had my second daughter and then the world went into lockdown and now, here I am...

My stubbornness meant that I was working during nap time and in the evenings and at weekends, effectively working two full-time jobs. A lot of my stubbornness over money has to do with my type A personality but a lot has also to do, I think, with being 40 when I finally had to confront the possibility of being financially dependent on somebody else.

I’ve worked since I was 15. I’ve been a chambermaid, a waitress, and I worked in retail through college. I’ve had a full-time job since I was 21, getting my first permanent media role a few months after graduating. A lot of my self-worth as a person was tied up in my career. I recognised myself as an editor - who would I be if I was no longer doing that?

In a relationship you talk about the important things; children, values, where you’ll live, shared expense and bills, but do you talk about what will happen if one of you leaves full-time work? How one salary will be divided, and how that will make the person at home feel?

Not many of my friends had made the leap to full-time stay at home mum, but of those that did a lot had come into real difficulty. One friend’s husband turned out to be really controlling about money and wanted to see where she spent her few euro. Another stopped the blonde highlights she’d been getting for 15 years because she couldn’t justify the spend - even though her husband was an avid sports fan who spent a fortune following his team around Europe without a second thought.

When we talked about it, some of my friends still viewed the money their partners earned as their money, some saw it as joint money but with restrictions and limitations. Without a separate income of their own, they were no longer free, they felt, to spend in a way they would have done before. Everyone, without exception, felt it was a really tough thing to talk about and that it often resulted in arguments.

Growing up in a Sex and the City world where women are independent, perhaps to their detriment, has in some way shaped me but so too has the notion that raising children at home isn’t full-time employment equal to working in an office somewhere else.

We’re living through a horror show right now but there are parts of it I’m glad of. Partners who go out to work and leave the other to stay at home with children and perhaps a part-time job are now seeing how difficult that is. How all you can take is an hour here and there to finish projects - how you never have a moment to yourself.

This is not a situation I ever wanted to be in, but if it changes attitudes to raising children, to working from home, to partnerships and to money, it will be a silver lining to this infinitely dark cloud.

And it’s given me the opportunity to realise how hard I work, how little time I give myself and how I should cop on about money and many, many other things!

Jennifer Stevens, June 2020.