How to pick a husband if you want to have kids

How to pick a husband if you want to have kids Painting by Roy Lichtenstein. 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 ENFPsâ€"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 Macleans 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 breadwinnerâ€"someone who does not require a  second earner to  support a  householdâ€"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.