That's an interesting reaction. My read of the post was that he wants to help his wife do what she wants to do. Your read appears to be that he is forcing her to do something when she really wants to stay at home.

Do you naturally assume that all mothers want to stay at home with their children full time?

Because we both have career ambitions. Also, we have financial goals that we’d like to make regarding our home and future schooling for our children.

So your ambitious about your careers but not your family?

There’s a significant middle ground here that you’re ignoring. This doesn’t feel like a comment in good faith, but I’ll reply one more time:

She would like to be able to see our kids off to school and relax with them after school without having to think about work. Weekends without crushing amounts of grading would be nice. That’s the lifestyle my job allows me to have and I’d love for my wife to be able to have the same.

That sounds like a part-time job to me. I happened to run across this possibly relevant job opening because the company had a SWE role on the Hacker News homepage today: https://jobs.lever.co/goalbookapp-2/63b983f5-00c6-45d0-a9b2-...

(But I'm not affiliated and have no other info!) I guess a downside is that it's not an ongoing position, but on a project-by-project basis.

Unfortunately in most industries I think you're right on it being a part-time job. Software engineers (myself included) are a pretty spoiled bunch!

Thanks for sending that link along! Contract work is definitely something to consider.

Those are problems your wife has inflicted on herself. If she wants less grading stop assigning so many complicated assignments. If she doesn’t want to think about work, then she should try to care less.

From my experience with friends who are teachers, especially at high school level, there’s no teaching job with built in work-life balance. You must create it through your curriculum and teaching style.

Or like I said, she could just quit and be a stay at home mom. There’s other ways to meet your financial goals.

I think you underestimate how heavy the hand of regulation and administration is in certain districts and schools. She gives out a little as she can without having admin intervene in her classroom. There's just no way around the amount of time it takes to build a curriculum and grade 90-150 students worth of assignments and tests.

Regarding your second point, I'd argue that there's no high school level teaching job with work/life balance in our area due to state regulations.

Thanks for your input, but she does not want to be a SAHM and we've both worked together to put together the financial goals for our family. Our goals assume we both have careers, because we both want careers.