To be a traditional sahm ??

Oh and Janey I was self satisfied and smug and probably rather sneery about others when I was where the OP is. I am ashamed now, but I probably was.

Can't believe some of the attitudes towards SAHMs here. How can staying at home to care for your children possibly be setting them a BAD example? There is no right or wrong - some mums work, some don't - why is there this eternal quest on MN to prove one is better than the other?

scottishmummy, it is abundantly clear to anyone with more than a passing interest in this debate that you have issues around the whole SAHM thing. You appear on every thread I have seen on this issue with depressing regularity and trot out the same tired old nonsense about setting a good example by working/bad example by staying at home.

On the face of it you have massive contempt and disrespect for SAHMs but there's definitely more to it than that. It's pretty obvious that you are not happy in your choices because if you were you wouldn't' feel the need to constantly justify them on every thread and constantly berate women who are able to stay at home with their children.Your obsession with this debate is not healthy - think you need to face up to your issues with SAHMs and ask yourself where all this contempt and vitriol for them really comes from.

PS I'm also willing to bet that you have a far less important job than you think you have, which you have bigged up to yourself to justify not staying at home with your kids, and that you bully any staff who have the misfortune to work with you - you sound the type.

Proudmum4eva - I'm genuinely interested in how you think your life would be if you were in my shoes? Or if your DH got run over by a bus? Or had a terrible accident that meant he couldn't work?

That is a bit rude Karlos.

if my DH was able to fully support me and our children and I could dedicate my time to pottering about I would be quite self satisfied too.

It's not simply that AIBU is a strange place if you want to just ask others about their daily routine. It's more the fact that you managed to write an entire OP without actually asking that question! It was just a very self satisfied potted history of your life so far.

Are you sure you didn't just conjure up the idea of wanting to know about other peoples lives a little way into the thread, once you realised you'd been rumbled?

I tend to find if you want people to share information, the way to do that is to ask them, which you notably failed to do. Perhaps a bt of experience outside the home might teach you to articualte yourself a bit better?

Who's roseanne threetom?

My daily routine is:
5am up house work for about an hour or walk the dog then get ready for work
6:50am cycle to work to arrive at about 7am
Leave work at 6pm, home for about 6:15
With DH I will then me making tea, helping with homework , putting our youngest to bed, having family time until about 9pm. in between children having baths and going to bed we clean the bathrooms and walk the dog again
I then work for at least two hours , Somtimes three
around midnight , sometimes ,later I go to bed.

I cannot imagine that anyone would envy my daily routine, I can imagine that lots of people would envy the routine if a SAHP.

OP what would you do if your husband cheated on you or hit you? I know it's awful to imagine the worst but what if? How would you and the dc manage? Not all men pay child support a lot of them just bugger off or go self employed. I hope you have a safety net.

Weekdays:

I get up at 5am with my 13mo DS.

Between 5 and 8am I play with him, feed him, wash him, change him and read to him. And quickly get myself ready for work

At 8am I leave the house for work. 2 days a week 1 drop him at nursery, 1 with my DM and the other he stays at home with DH.

I start work at 08:30 and leave at 17:15, pick DS up and generally stop to do food shopping. (Rarely get a lunch and if I do I will be doing personal banking or admin)

Get home at 6. Play with DS till half six. Feed DS. I normally clean the kitchen and change the laundry over while he is eating

At 7pm I bath DS. Then we read and cuddle and have a bottle.

At 7:30pm I put him down.

I then tidy the house whilst he is settling.

At 8pm I log in to finish my work.

About 9pm I have dinner and wine.

Bed 11:00 and repeat (with gaps for MN)

Weekends

I get up at 5am with DS on a Saturday. Sunday I get a lie in and DH gets up with him

Play with and feed DS etc in the morning.

Work when he has his morning nap

After morning nap, take him for a walk, soft play, park, swimming, zoo etc

Housework when he has his afternoon nap

Then playing, reading, art etc from afternoon nap till his dinner

Then bath, cuddles, reading and wind down.

Work for a bit after he has gone to sleep, the dinner and wine from about 9ish depending how much work I have.

If you were genuinely just after stories of other peoples daily life, it would have been far simpler to just ask for that in your OP. Instead of the very smug and self satisfied account of your Life where you've never worked and do absolutely every chore around the home so your dh and children don't have to lift a finger

Just saying

People are not saying silly things about your children not going to grow up properly. They are, very often, giving you the benefit of their personal experience to show how parenting approaches comparable to yours have caused harm to them, or those close to them. Your total lack of interest in this betrays the reasons why you started the thread.

I couldn't help myself - I had to come and look if OP came back and what her views were. OP - if you are not aware that you come across as smug you need to get a nearest and dearest to sit down and have an honest chat with you. I am suspicious you are actually doing this as a wind up - or some weird goal to get to a number of posts - but will give you the benefit of the doubt.

If your just being nosey heres how my family set up is. (which I love)

Single parent 2 school age dc and work time and am working my way up studying so in a few years I'll be the boss not the assistant.

Get up 6AM drink tea watch the news get dressed and MN,

wake dc up about 7 potter about MN while they get dressed and brush their teeth

leave house 7:30 take them to breakfast club for 7:45 get on the bus stop for 8 and catch the 6 minutes past bus to work.

Have breakfast and a cup of tea in work before starting unless they're run off their feet, then I get stuck in.

I work up till lunchtime (half 12 apart from 2 days where it's 1) as a kitchen assistant in a nursery, not the greatest job in the world but I like it. I like talking to all the other staff I like doing things and not just being sat down watching jeremy kyle. Then when I finish I go into pre school (there are 4 diff stages) and do lunch time cover for other staff. I didn't think I'd like it but I love it.

Leave work get home, potter about maybe mop the floor or start dinner, pick dc up come home and do whatever it is we are doing that night.

I can't explain the level of my self worth shooting up just for working. I don't have the best job but it really makes me happy just to say "oh I'm on my way to work" and such. I have always been a single parent though so couldn't ever imagine relying on a man to sort it all out and look after me. You can't ever tell him to pack his bags and jog on because you depend on him so much, that would scare me and I couldn't ever let myself be that vunerable.

If you were remotely interested in different persepctive, OP, I suspect you'd have taken on board some of the very pertinent criticisms of your approach made here. But you appear not to even have read them, or possibly not understood them - either way it's perfectly clear you simply wanted to blow your own trumpet. Which is fine, but i would gently suggest that a need to do that is not something one generally sees in people genuinely content with their lot.

In that case AIBU is probably not the right forum because that is just asking to be flamed.
I will not be able to be a SAHM because even if I could afford it I would never want to rely on one breadwinner. My mother was a SAHM - she had one disabled child and that informed many of her choices- and it gave me sleepless nights as a child wondering what would happen to us if anything happened to my father.
I wouldn't put myself through that again or put my kids through that uncertainty. It coloured who I am as a person.