The only controversial part is when they are incredulous and derisive that the lower classes don't do the same.
I don't think it's where you live. I think that's true almost anywhere. If you don't have free daycare, it usually doesn't make financial sense for both parents to work. But most people don't see that because you really have to crunch the numbers, it's not always apparent in the cost of the daycare itself. You have to add in the meals and gas and wardrobe and shit like that too. You get to where both need to be making pretty good money to come out ahead financially.
You stated in your post that it just flatly does not make sense financially for both parents to work, which is ridiculous. Even if your wife only makes like $80k or something it's still a net positive to have her work, probably a HUGE net positive when you consider the length of her career and the cumulative raises/promotions she'd miss out on by taking however many years off.
Somehow this turns into "lol Cad is shaming the poors" which I can certainly do if you want, but what I'm saying is even for middle income people, it does not make sense for the wife to quit and stay home, for a NUMBER of reasons.
First, wife may not want to stay home. Financial reasons be damned, she may not want to be financially dependent on you.
Second, you may not want wife to stay home. Financial reasons be damned, I don't want a person being financially dependent on me that I'm supposed to be in an equal relationship with.
Third, your wife (as stated above) will make a large quantity more money than childcare costs if she stays at work, especially considering cumulative raises, promotions, and work experience.
Fourth, having professional child care frees you up to do a lot of things you might not otherwise be able to - travel (with kids/aupair), have aupair meet you at events with the kids that you otherwise might have to skip or be late to if you had to pick them up yourself, have aupair conduct additional educational activities (read, math books, go to the park... ) a lot of these are basically babysitting tasks. Frees you up to do the "big" parenting tasks.. discipline, educational talks, attending big events, etc... having a helper is never a bad thing.
Fifth, aupairs are from other cultures... we've had some from Europe and some from Asia. The kids learned a bunch of new words, got to meet siblings and friends of the aupairs and go do aupair things with a ton of other kids and girls since the aupairs all get together... parents can do this too but this is a nice benefit.
Sixth, and maybe most importantly, you don't want the resentment of you spending all day at work and coming home to your "tradwife" who now resents you because you spent all day doing intellectually interesting things and she spent all day doing dishes, changing diapers, listening to screaming ass kids, and so on. You're not sharing that burden equally, so she will resent you. Similarly, she's not earning any money so when she spends money, you will resent her. In an ideal world, this wouldn't happen... but just read through the 2000+ pages of this thread to hear the dumb shit people argue about. Why would you want to put yourself through that? Just be equal, go to work. Your 3 year old will still love you later if you're not a shitbag.
You're trying to frame this as poor shaming, when what is really going on is y'all are trying to shame us for hiring nannies or aupairs or whatever. You didn't get any traction on that so you're pivoting to poor shaming. Pretty sad.
