A couple of things shematwater,

You and your wife both have plans to better yourselves, so kudos for that. I will not make any judgments about why you are having children if you are both not done with school, but, that does concern me. But I am not here to judge your choices or wonder about why you made them.

And honestly, at your economic level the only reason for your wife to go to work was if she could make beaucoup bucks that wouldn't just be for paying for the daycare.

That option is not really available to the "middle-middle" class. Usually that's where both parents make about the same amount of money and the family cannot live on just the one salary. I have school loans that are about $1000 a month. I have to pay them. If I didn't work, we'd live in hovel in the ghetto, not have any cars, probably no phone or cable and with the way energy is going up, I don't know how we'd pay the electric/gas bills. My children would be going to drug and gang infested schools.

That is not an exaggeration. We could move out of state I suppose, but to where and to what end. My husband would probably make less money, even if the cost of living were lower, I don't see how that would be much of an improvement.

All for staying at home with kids who will enter school full time starting next year (the older one will; the younger one will be 1/2 days 5 days a week). Once the kids are in school, the only reason to stay at home is to clean and cook, quite frankly, and since I'm not all that domesticated, that makes no sense to me.

With that said, however, YOUR choices are YOURS and MINE are MINE. What works for you may not work for me, which is part of the point I was trying to make.

Families have to make their own decisions. I just think that the decisions are easier for the lower economic levels and the upper economic levels. The decision is not so easy for the rest of us. This society is set up to help the really poor and to benefit those that have made lots of money. It is not set up for the rest of us who don't want to get government assistance, who work hard, tried to better ourselves with graduate degrees, and still find ourselves in the hole.

At any rate, good luck to you and your wife. I wish you all the best and hope that everything works out for your family.

Cheers.