Most of the stay at home spouses I know come from lower middle class households and they’ve made their lifestyle, living location, and other spending decisions fit their desired work arrangement. Even many of the construction contractors I’ve talked to recently (which is a decent number due to some remodel work) have stay at home wives.

What most people can’t afford is to maintain their desired lifestyle and only have one parent working. It’s similar to how people earning 3-4X the median wages for an area will think they’re barely getting by, while someone earning 1/4 of what they do is raising a family with two kids.

> No one my age can afford a stay at home wife

If you work in tech, this is possible. It's gonna suck, and you'll feel poor relative to your peers, but it's entirely possible.

How old are you? Wife has been stay at home mom since 2006. And that was when I made $40k/yr.

this is mostly the norm in Switzerland in my social circle for families with children - husband works in tech, mom stays home until all the kids are old that they don't need mom around so much and/or you don't need to spend a fortune on them.

school launch + supervision for the 11:30 - 13:30 period is ~42 USD per day per kid, kita (pre-kindergarten) is easily ~3100 USD/month or more per kid. (I've put the numbers here in USD as most of the audience is outside of Switzerland for easier comparability), so for a lot of families, if mom works, mom's salary is spent on these costs.