"Are you *still* working full time?"

[ToffeePenny]

Why don't our families feel the need to ask DH this?
What do they think I should give up/cut back on work to do?
And why is it so important that they feel the need to remind me by asking each and every time they see me?

Background: It's a male-dominated industry I work in so I may be a little unusual but surely knowing the effort it would have taken for me to put up with years of sexist crap get here (depite - shock - having a uterus) why would they then assume I'd be chomping at the bit to give it up as soon as TP junior arrived?

Why don't they feel the need to badger my SIL in the same way? Is it because she has a traditionally 'female' job and I don't so am therefore in danger of melting my pretty little brain with all this manly thinking?
Or is it simply because I look more like I could afford to go part time (unsurprisingly and depressingly my traditionally 'male' job pays better than her's)?
And why is it almost always the women in the family who ask this? FCOL they all worked when they had children (though again in more traditionally 'female' roles). I can't give them short shrift or start questioning them back without looking like a nob. Traitors!

[sportsfanatic]

I think I would simply put on a astonished aka "why on earth are you asking this" face and simply say "Of course" and change the subject.

[sportsfanatic]

I'm a lot older than you but not having young children doesn't mean you won't get similar questions either later on. My last job took me abroad for three or four weeks at a time and I used to get asked what my husband did for food while I was away! I used to say "Well he eats of course". I also used to get "doesn't he mind you being away?" to which I replied "probably glad to get rid of me and have some peace"

So don't think you will escape when the little ones have fled the nest. The dinosaurs will simply find something else to mumble in their beards about.

[ToffeePenny]

I have occasionally had the 'aren't you feeding him?'

I'm doomed aren't I?

[somewherewest]

Whatever choice you make someone will have a pain in their arse about it. I'm planning on doing the SAHM thing for a few years and am already steeling myself for the assumption (from people who know me) that I'm wasting my PhD and (from people who don't know me that) that I'm some dimwitted mumsy type.

[Livinginoz]

DH is a SAHD. I met someone recently who I met when we first moved here at a Playgroup. When I explained why I hadn't been back (because I work FT) she said "oh, what interesting family dynamics it must be in your family", in a really sarcastic tone.