But here was the most unexpected benefit:
Since DH was coming home to a fairly clean house, dinner ready, and a lower-stressed wife and kids, he was able to get more sleep and become more productive at work. So far it has resulted in two promotions and a nearly 80% replacement of the "money left after bills" we lost when I stopped working.
Absolutely agree, and it was an unexpected pleasant surprise to us too! We were both earning approx the same back 15 years ago when I quit work to stay home with our son. For the first year, money was super tight - we all dressed from thrift stores, hardly ever used the heating, ate a lot of beans, etc. Our first break came 15 months in, when hubby got approached by a headhunter about a new job some hundreds of miles from where we were living at the time. If I'd been working too, we would never have considered it - we couldn't drop the extra salary by moving, what about MY career, etc etc? But in the circumstances, hey, sounded interesting and they'll pay our expenses for the visit, why not check it out? We piled in the car, us and the toddler, and all took a little trip to the new area where hubby had a job interview, and Son and I explored the town (a different part of England; we're an English family).
They offered him the job. An amazing job, with great prospects and a 50% uptick in salary. And it was a much nicer area than the one we were living in. Off we went!
For the next few years or so, he had terrific career success, and promotion followed pay rise followed promotion followed pay rise, etc etc. Because he had no other responsibilities than working - the house was all taken care of, shopping was done, meals were ready and waiting, bills were paid - it was easy for him to focus solely on being utterly stellar at work. He likes his profession, and reads around and self-educates a lot in his (extensive) spare time. He became the go-to, reliable guy who never needed to take a day's leave or 'work at home' because his kids were sick or had a dentist appointment, or leave a meeting because it was his turn to do the daycare pick up. He got offered the best opportunities to look shiny and progress: dinners out with clients; training courses that involved being away from home for a week or so; overseas business trips that sometimes spanned a weekend. He went all over Europe, to the US, even Asia.
(This makes it sound like his work-life balance was out of whack, but it truly wasn't. Most of the time, he had vast acres of free time compared to a dual working family: every evening was for leisure and playing with the kids, not catching up with the laundry or stepping through the door with a couple of tired, emotional kids at 6.30pm whilst frantically trying to work out what dinner might be, because the shopping didn't get done again. Weekends the same - no Saturday morning supermarket shopping, or errands like new shoes and school supplies, or hours of DIY or yard work.)
It got noticed. He was invited to apply for a job in Switzerland, and got it. Off we went again - one earner families are so mobile, with no other job to consider, or a complicated web of child care and support to unravel and replace. Several years on a Swiss salary was a fantastic boost to our family pot. Then again with the mobility: 'There's an opening in the US, and we know that you're very mobile and internationally-focused...'
So here we are, 15 years later, now in the US. I haven't worked since 1999, yet we'll still be able to quit work 15 years before the normal working world.
If you're in an industry where progress is unlimited, providing you can put in the hours/ training/ mental effort, it's well worth considering the one-worker family lifestyle once you have small kids.