Qualities You Should Look for in A Husband (If You Want to Stay Home)
If I could sum up this post in a few words, it’d be with, “Choose a man whose values align with yours. In other words, choose wisely.”
Just as a heads-up, the two things that in my super unscientific research, short experience (I’m only in my 30s), and observations have led me to think greatly benefit both boyfriend and girlfriend looking to get married are:
- For her to want to be a stay-at-home mom (and for him to want that for her and do everything in his power to get her to do so) and
- For them to NOT live together before marriage.
- A bonus, implied item of having her stay home and for them to forego premarital cohabitation is for them to be willing to share their finances via joint accounts.
(Feel free to scroll to the full list below, followed by more on each item.)
Don’t lose sight of what you hold dear and know to be true or think will help you the most. Don’t compromise on these values when you think you found the right man because the mere IDEA of the “right” man can make you forget, change, or downright degrade said values.
It is, unfortunately, a deal-breaker that you and your boyfriend have realized you’re not on the same page when it comes to your values, priorities, and what kind of lifestyle you want. –Suzanne Venker
On this post, I’ll share some examples for things and values you could look for in your husband-to-be. Feel free to use them for your own reference or as your starting point.
Having said that, I honestly think these are highly underrated. You’re welcome to agree or respectfully disagree (with the caveat that if you lived together and are now celebrating your 20th anniversary of wedded bliss, then you’re the exception, and the world doesn’t run on exceptions), but I think they’re pretty reasonable.
Again, are these scientific and am I an expert? No. But I’ve known of, seen, and been surrounded by many happy marriages who were founded on similar values, so I’d like to say I’m aware of at least a few things that make a particular kind of marriage successful:
Choose and be with a man who:
- Prefers you staying home and being that full-time mom the kids NEED
- -OR- prefers you in a profession that gives you the flexibility to still raise a family if you don’t want to be a full-time (i.e., stay-at-home) mom.
- Values staying physically with his new family (you!) close to 100% of the time.
- Also values living near the best, most edifying relatives for his new family: He wants a village for you because you’ll NEED it.
- Respects his family’s privacy and online safety.
- Related: Doesn’t seek fame and notoriety and is therefore frugal (NOT cheap) because he’s not looking to keep up with the Joneses.
- Doesn’t consider you to be a car that needs to be test-driven. That’s gross and demeaning. Don’t play house and don’t be his shack-up honey (read: unpaid wh0re) unless you want a messy start to what should be a happy, hurdle-free beginning if you got married instead.
Many wives can identify with such a list because they, too, found a man who supports a simple life offline and away from worthless pursuits and influences. As I meet more wives and moms with similar lifestyles and families, I can’t help but be grateful to God for helping us all find our perfect men and family leaders.
Let’s expand on these, shall we?
Staying home
I wrote about the importance of finding a man who wants you to stay home and respects what you do at home recently, so I’ll just touch on that briefly here while inviting you to check out the longer discussion at “Why Should Mom Stay Home with The Kids?” (Find more posts on daycare and SAHMs by following my Anti-Daycare tag.)
Let’s say you wanted to stay home with your future children. This seems to be a rarity in today’s world, with only ~25% of moms choosing to not have a typical job, but it’s NOT impossible.
If that’s what you want, you’ll find that many men want a woman “who works.” Either they were raised by working moms so they don’t know otherwise, or they were raised by lazy and selfish stay-at-home moms.
For both situations, I’ll humbly propose that he’s doing what he’s supposed to do: Look out for his (future) family’s wellbeing, which is something that seems, ironically, also rare these days. He wants to be with a woman who’ll both be a good role model to those kids and who’ll work for a living to ensure the family can afford some nice extras.
But here’s what most don’t seem to see: Homemaking and raising a family ARE themselves 24/7 “jobs” that save the family thousands of dollars each year.
Furthermore, no working mom can actually or physically be a full-time mom (or even a good homemaker because she’s tired and stressed all the time) at the same time, but I digress.
Anyways, with due respect to that man, YOU know better.
You’ve seen the research, you’ve read Dr. Erica Komisar’s books on the harms of daycare, and you’ve listened to Dr. Laura nag on working moms while praising stay-at-home moms, and you’ve come to the conclusion that kids raised by a parent at home are better off. Plus, you can’t fathom letting a stranger raise, get attached, and do who-knows-what to your kids while you’re not watching. (And God forbid the only way you have of keeping tabs on your child’s to-dos are via cameras and Daycare Report Cards, yuck.)
[There] is a way to make a one-income family work with frugality and advanced planning. A couple who’s dating and who knows the girlfriend is going to stay home down the line will handle their respective finances differently from a couple who assumes the opposite.
So please do everything in your power to stick to your guns on that one. You don’t want to marry a gigolo (for lack of a better word) who just cares for your money and what you do in bed. Marry someone who wants YOU to care for, watch, and love on for his future kids.
Ambitious liberal women insist that daycare is harmless and complain that America isn’t doing enough to find a space for their children so they can pursue their careers interrupted. Conservative women view it as their job to find a solution that works.
This distinction doesn’t always mean that conservative women meet the needs of their children better than liberal women do, but women on the right are more apt to acknowledge those needs and to try something different—enough so to be willing, apparently, to flip the script on what they’ve been groomed to do: focus on career and marry later (if at all).
-Suzanne Venker, Putting Your Children First Isn’t Political
I won’t play the Ramsey card here by telling you that you must work regardless, no matter if it comes at your kids’ expense. (I’m name-dropping because I’ve been noticing in the past few years that all the Ramsey personalities tend to recommend that Mom works to help pay off that pesky debt despite the fact that some were either raised by stay-at-home mom or are married to one.)
I don’t think that debt > kids, so if you’re not financially ready for kids, then don’t look to get married yet!
Don’t become your family’s financial burden and don’t marry someone with $0 in debt only to sink him $200K in debt when YOU should’ve been working to pay it off yourself.
Fortunately, there are many such professions you can dedicate your life to should your calling somehow be outside of your home. Some things to look for include positions where you can take a few years off while the kiddos are very little and can then return with little to no disturbance to your trajectory. Positions where you can work part-time while Dad or a trusted, loving relative stays available as the kids sleep or are in school; jobs that let you end your work day in the early afternoon so you’re home when the kids get home from school -OR- perhaps online jobs that you can do at night while the kids sleep.
Still, having children first and a career later is only one option. There are others: part-time work, self-employment, or leaning out from a career that’s already in motion and moving back into the workforce as the needs of one’s children change. Ambitious liberal women will tell you this is impossible, but thousands of women have done exactly that.
-Suzanne Venker, Putting Your Children First Isn’t Political
I’ll close this section with the following thought:
In previous generations, it was unheard of for a husband to encourage his wife to return to work after having a baby…. If anything, husbands didn’t want their wives to work because they felt it reflected poorly on them and their ability to provide. -Suzanne Venker
Whatever happened to gallantry and doing the honorable thing? Why do so many men nowadays lack the spine to provide for their families?
Not traveling for work
I see this a lot more than I’d like: Mom is posting in a Forum exasperated that her husband is away, either deployed serving our country or on his annual golfing/hunting/fishing trip with his buddies.. while she’s home with her many, many little kids and a fort to hold down household to run.
It’s never the mom of one or two kids that shares her despair and requests for “tips” to not feel so stressed out and anxious: It’s always the mom of three, four, six+ kids who does.
And I always want to ask (but don’t): Why did you keep having kids if you didn’t choose wisely.. or simply didn’t like your living arrangements?
Kids ARE blessings! Have them! But it’s OK if you don’t want to monitor naps, choking hazards, and diapers for the next 10-20 years. No need to chase “always more” when what you have right now is more than enough. Be content with your Now. And if you must have all the kids, then make sure you have your village and can give each child the undivided attention he/she deserves.
But back to the husband being home: I don’t mean a man who’ll be home 24/7 like he can’t commute to his job, do outside home maintenance, get the groceries, get gas for the car, take the kids to appointments, etc., but rather a man who won’t choose to go golfing or spend days away traveling with his buddies or constantly for his job at his family’s expense.
It’s OK (even admirable) if your ideal man chooses to spend his leisure time WITH YOU; if he chooses to prioritize YOU and the kids you both make.
Or maybe I’m biased and those families are built differently in that the moms thrive and genuinely love it when their husbands are gone. (I remember hearing Eva Longoria say her relationship w/her now-ex-husband basketball player Tony Something worked so well because he was gone so much, lol)..
OTOH I know of and have heard of women who seem to genuinely struggle when their husbands are away yet they chose to put themselves in those situations by marrying a dude who travelled so much solo for work/pleasure (and continuing to make more kids with him). They didn’t choose wisely. I’m sure their husbands are fantastic 90% of the time, but darn that 10% when he’s not home and she’s by herself.
Living near family
Choosing wisely means you also didn’t marry the Mama’s Boy. Those “men” are insufferable and the women who marry them are perhaps not the brightest.
By “living near family” I’m referring to the husband who knows that his wife needs a “village” of loved ones and supports her living near said village. Your village doesn’t have to live with you or live next door, but it should live within driving distance so they can stop by conveniently and lend a helping hand regardless of whether you ask, and you can go see or meet with them at least once a week.
Moms of littles NEED to be around other moms (whether it’s their own moms, aunts, grandmas, nice mothers-in-law, girlfriends for playdates, etc.), and if they live nearby, that’s HUGE. This “village” may not be for the kids, if we’re being honest; it can be mostly for mom.
Having other moms nearby to help can give that first mom at least the tiniest of breaks to go run errands, wrap secret presents, or move heavy furniture around the house without littles to chase or potentially get hurt.
A side note on errands: Take your kids on errands! Unless you can justify Junior staying home because taking him will turn a literal five-minute errand into a 30-minute errand and you don’t have that time TODAY only, do take your kids on errands. This teaches them how to behave around adults, how to treat and be cordial with other adults, and essentially how to function in an adult world. Plus, they can help you carry things, ring things themselves at the Self-Checkout or hand things to the cashier, and even get your card from that back pocket or purse and pay if your hands are tied or free! Kids are so helpful if you let them! Why get them a toy “store” when they can experience the real thing with Mom and Dad? Don’t deprive your kids of these wonderful opportunities!
He also respects his family’s privacy and online safety
Every time I see a dad on a family vlogging channel (you know the ones, where Mom talks non-stop about her children and Dad is just there in the background like a non-playable character), I want to jump across the screen and ask him why he’s allowing his wife to exploit her family, their privacy, and their online safety.
These channels almost always do well, leading me to conclude the dude’s just there for the money. He could care less about the kids, and it shows. Many times he’s off to the side, and other times he’s actually engaging with her “online besties” on camera like anything he has to say that doesn’t explain why he’s exploiting his family is worthwhile.
He also likely appreciates that his wife’s hobby is probably paying the mortgage or the phone bill or their insurance, so he’s not going to step in and nip it in the bud, because why would he? She’s doing all the work (at the kids’ expense because without kids she wouldn’t have anything to share), so why would he decline the free money?
That’s what I’d call a lazy SOB and you don’t want to date a spineless dud like that.
A MAN should want to emulate the chill, non-exploitative childhood he had. Why men who grew up with complete privacy would ever want or allow the opposite for their children, whom they ought to protect above all costs, is beyond me.
If you ask your boyfriend or husband whether you should make a YouTube channel for your (future) kids and he says, “YES, sure!” Run… Or explain to him that you’d rather (have him) eat ten live cockroaches than violate your children like that and/or that he better not encourage them ever being on social media or YouTube.
Related: He doesn’t seek fame and notoriety either
I don’t know about you, but a man who depends on how others view him and on the effect his online activity has on strangers is kind of a loser.
I know, I know: I can be very judgmental. But think about it: A man who’s serious about providing real value online acts very differently from a man who simply wants to entertain. A man like that doesn’t do what he does for the passion of it, but because an algorithm tells him what sells and he’s instead producing for the sake of that algorithm. He’s not content with the Now and is chasing the next Goalpost, the next new and shiny thing. A man like that is always competing with others, always striving for engagement, and is therefore someone who’d be very tedious to keep up with and be with.
I can’t imagine living like that, but I can only think that living with someone like that (husband or wife) must be exhausting!
Last but NOT least: He doesn’t suggest that you live with him before getting married
I wrote about living together before marriage before (also here and here >> although those are more about the harms of Feminism), but in case the opinion of this Nobody isn’t good enough (and, to be honest, it shouldn’t be considering I’m a stranger to you), here are some more experienced and knowledgeable personalities who’ve discussed the perils, yuckiness, and overall financial, psychological, and overall stupidity of cohabitating before getting married.
If you’re not entirely convinced, that’s fine, but don’t ever claim someone didn’t warn you:
- Suzanne Venker, “The Secular Case Against Shacking Up“
- Dr. Laura Schlesinger, “Why Shacking Up Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be,” “The Downsides of Shacking Up,” and almost daily on her satellite radio show (SiriusXM Channel 123-You can subscribe to SXM for $1 total for three months)
- Dr. John Deloney (Video below)
- Other Ramsey personalities:
Do yourself a favor and take yourself more seriously. When you do, when you have your limits set and your values strong, you can begin to notice that other men out there will respect them and the right one will want to be with you and provide for you. That’s a blessing: don’t squander it.
To summarize, and once you’ve decided that Home is where you’re better off, then choose someone who:
- Prefers you staying home and being that full-time mom the kids NEED.
- Values staying physically with you close to 100% of the time.
- Wants you near your village.
- Respects the kids’ privacy and online safety.
- Doesn’t consider you to be a car that needs to be test-driven.
What other characteristics would you add matter in a man who wants a SAHM for his future children?
