for being a SAHM

Ah, R sounds like my UK situation then - you get abused by your husband so you divorce him and then he gets what feels like all the money because you were stupide enough to work and earn more than him.

Perhaps there's an argument that if we continue to make divorce law world wide really unfair more marriages stay intact.

Roskva - my partner doesn't pay his ex-wife alimony, even though he ended the relationship. He has to pay fairly limited child support. None of my divorced French girlfriends get alimony, though quite a few got damages ie a small lump sum.

Anna8888 - in France, fathers pay alimony if they are the party that ends the relationship. If the wife leaves, she gets nothing. My db pays his ex-wife a huge amount 'cos he left her, but his new dp gets nothing from her ex-h, even though she walked out after he nearly killed her with a wheel wrench . Both have 2 dcs.

I don't think in the UK the Government does really skew things one way or the other. We have very little free childcare provision and many mothers are at home because they don't earn enough to pay for child care so if anything the British model encourages women or men to stay at home but is reasonably neutral. The Government is interested in ensuring people don't claim benefits when they could work so that's the only political issue on this and they have had problems with single mothers whose chidlren are teenagers choosing to claim benefits and claiming they have to be home to see to the children which is fine if you have a husband to support you in that but not find if people like me and other working mothers are paying your tax to do that.

Yes, if both people in a couple want to avoid domestic stuff which I suspect is very common then it's difficult. My ex and I were fairly similiar, both reasonably good at getting on with housework, cleaning toilets and babies but neither of us would have wanted that full time although he always said as I earned more if necessary he'd give up work if the nanny thing didn't work out.

I suppose if you know you want to work and are like me not wanting say to spend more than an hour or two with babies a day then either you need to hire a good nanny or marry a partner who does want to spend that time with the children. What I don't think is that babies are damaged because both parents work if they have someone who loves chatting to them and cuddling them there every day. i do thikn real damage is done by mothers at home who absolutely hate it and sadly many do, who get to the end of their tether with the boredom, frustration and repetitious nature of it, shout, lose their temper, hate their life.

I expect many don't feel comfortable writing about that or saying they are in that position but they definitely exist and I would have been one had I stayed at home.

Justaboutmanaging - I thought German women had babies later because they had spent much longer at university studying.

Xenia - some couples fight because one of them is lazy and doesn't want to do any work, paid or unpaid. And some couples both want to do paid work. And some perhaps want both to do unpaid work. And some happy couples manage to agree on the division of labour and share everything.

My partner and his ex-wife used to disagree because neither of them wanted to do enough of the unpaid work. They had a full-time nounou, and masses of free childcare from grandparents, and they still couldn't manage to devote enough time to bringing up the children and doing the household stuff - each of them thought the other wasn't pulling his/her weight. So both of them working outside the home wasn't a good solution in their case, since it ended in divorce.

It's very hard to work out who should contribute what to a family, and that's why I don't believe that WOHM is in any way the one-size-fits-all solution to women's (or men's) woes. In fact, I think that the fact that two career couples is often presented (by governments - or people like you) as that one-size-fits-all solution lowers the debate and creates MORE difficulties, as people can't then understand why they aren't happy with that lifestyle.

gg, that's the interesting thing, isn't it? Do women want to work or have to work? (Obviously their up bringing and conditioning by their culture and society determines it - none of us are really choosing anything very much)

So if tomorrow child care of good quality for under 5s was free would more women return to work? Also if house prices halved and male earnings doubled would women stay home?

Same with men I suppose. Loads of them would prefer not to work if they didn't have to. Interesting how couples fight over who gets to be home sometimes and that is rarely written about.

I really admire SHAMS. I am one at the moment but not really enjoying it. Domesticy has not been created for me. We have a housekeeper but i take care of my babies. I miss my career as it is part of who I am. Don't get my wrong I have had ups and downs being at home but perhaps it took me a while to the fact i was never going to be same as before. I love my children but I am counting the days until i get back into the swing of work.

My mother did dip in and out of full time jobs during my chldhood and it hasn't scared me or damaged my upbringing.

Again I truly admire adn respect the women that decide by choice or not being a Sham.
I salute you!

actually the going-back-to-work thing is a topic of huge debate in Germany (honestly - our heated discussions on here are like gentle afternoon tea chatter in comparison ) - the papers are always full of it and it has become very polarised.
I really don't think it has anything to do with Hitler, Xenia, and find that v. offensive. Germans are very acutely aware of their past, many are ashamed of it even if they were born decades later, and to think that something endured because it was Hitler's idea is really very offensive and misguided.
I'd say part of the reason why the number of women going back to work in west Germany is so low is because the economic necessity isn't there. House prices are much, much lower, and cars and groceries are cheaper. Add to that a high rate of unemployment (and thus competiton), many women probably just don't really feel the need to put themselves out.

Of course, the situation in east Germany is very different - there's plenty of childcare and a huge amount of poverty.

Xenia - it's a pity you write posts like the one below. Most of the time you are insightful. And then you write thoughtless, grossly oversimplified posts like the one below and make yourself seem far less intelligent than you really are.

It's a jolly good thing France and Beligium want to get women working. Some women don't know what's good for them, their daughters or their nation and need to be force out there into work and once they're doing it the scales are lifted and they realise it's what they ought to have been doing all along. We need more of that here.

belgo - my sister had a Belgian friend in Spain who was a SAHM with three children, all of whom she put in crèche from a few weeks old as she believed it was the "right" thing to do - even though she was bored and miserable and her children were miserable about it. Just goes to show how the brainwashing of women by governments removes any notion of free choice... Sometimes I want to shake these silly French women who have bought the argument that they are in some way more evolved and liberated by being WOHMs when all they are really doing is feeding the French economy (and politicians' egos) at no benefit the themselves or their families... sheep...

belgo - I totally agree about the stress of the two full-time working parents model.

Plus, of course, when one is an expat, one has no family at hand to help out with childcare. As you so rightly pointed out in your earlier post, grandparents seem to do a hell of a lot of free childcare in France and Belgium.

Anna - yes - creches are really seen as the best place for a child and I know many children who have been full time in the creche system since the age of 15 weeks, and in one case, 7 weeks. Since my dd1 was three months old, people have asked when am I going back to work. I didn't go back to work because my full time contract had ended when I was pregnant and I couldn't find a part time contract.

I have also seen the huge amount of stress that parents can experience when both working full time with stressful jobs and having children.

belgo - we were on holiday with another French family at Easter, who live in Brussels, and talked about how Belgian parents put their children in crèche with such ease. From what I understand there seems to be even more pressure in Belgium to put small children into daycare than in France.

My sister recently moved to Amsterdam. My understanding from her and other Dutch girlfriends is that in Holland women mostly work part time, fitting as much as possible around school hours. Lots of services seem to be provided at school (vaccinations, dentist etc) to ensure that parents are free and available for proper family time outside work and school hours. I would like to know more about this model, and whether it works in practice. My sister is in any case much happier (she was in Spain before, a nightmare of badly paid WOHMs and crap childcare).

2shoes - I quite agree that the notion of "free choice", as if women made a decision whether to work or not when they had children entirely independently of the circumstances of their family (partner's income, partner's working pattern, children's needs, own earning power, own working pattern, family capital etc), is ridiculous.

Most women make the decision as to whether to be a SAHM or WOHM based on the needs of the family as a whole (rarely on their own selfish needs), which is the only responsible course of action for adults.

Good luck, it must be very hard having a child with SN.

Anna - the system is similar in Belgium - not much maternity leave (15 weeks if you bf, 8 weeks if you bottle feed), cheap child care, few parent and baby groups (except the ones run by the expat community), all to keep women working. The irony is that grandparents very often help out with childcare, and are not working themselves.

Being a SAHM in this country is unfortunately very poorly valued, and are not seen as contributing to society.

Xenia - I think the reasons women in any particular culture "want" to be SAHMs or WOHMs go way beyond tradition/culture/conditioning.

In France, the political will to get/keep women in the workplace in order for them to contribute to the economy is huge. The whole system is biased, making it extremely difficult for women if they decide not to work when they have children - no NHS antenatal groups, no NCT, no mother-and-toddler facilities, no alimony on divorce, lots of cheap childcare. And the political agenda is always for increasing help to WOHMs whereas nothing is done for SAHMs.

Yet, DESPITE the huge bias against SAHMs, I heard yesterday a statistic that is very telling: of parents with two children of whom at least one is under three, 96% of fathers work and only 59% of mothers.

The powers that be see this as a failure, and want to do everything to get that percentage for mothers up, despite the horrendous costs to society of childcare for under threes. But the figure of 59% also demonstrates just how women, in the face of huge pressure to do the opposite, choose to stay at home with their children in the early years.

I was a bit misquoted there. On that bit we were talking about Germany. Mothers are encouraged to be home there but not in France and I was trying to find out why French women usually want to work when their children are under 1 and German Haus Fraus stay at home. Assuming it's not genetic it must be tradition and conditioning and it was certainly know throughout the work that a woman's place was there in the house when the more left wing countries were espousing women's rights in a way Nazi Germany did not. In fact since then Germany has had some pretty good and even too good, i.e. violent, feminists but it doesn't look like they've gone a good enough job.

It will be interesting to see what Cameron does. The Conservatives traditionally have really wanted women at home and Labour in the workplace. Blair has done a lot of working parents or tried to. Cameron's wife like Blair's works but I think not full time. I expect he will know that it's a political minefield to treat this line between women at home family values etc when 4 in 5 women with under 5s works and many many want to work so it's not much of a vote catching thing to come up with policies designed to keep women at home but we'll see.

TwirlyN ~ I meant that negotiation is pointless with kids. At least with my kids. At least at work I can assume that people have a logical, senisble position that they will accept: this is not the case with DDs.

They want their own way, and that is it.

mpo you must have very good children if there is no negotiating in you home. I can always negotiating with my two.

i dont say this very often but.....
i only ever wanted to be a sahm.....
how positively pants of me.....

plus, we couldnt afford the childcare even if i wanted to work.

I think it's very sad that being a SAHM is viewed by so many as demeaning. It's the most important job in the world. I know I'm now going to get the p!ss taken out of me for making that statement, but the hand that rocks the cradle...

And it's the most difficult. There's no working time directive, no negotiation, no defined lunch breaks, no holiday pay...

No, I'm not a SAHM, nor do I wish to be. I've found what I consider to be a very happy compromise (I work 3 days, DD1&2 each have 1 day with grandparent, 2 days at nursery,). This balances my need for my job, which I enjoy, and my need for my children's primary caregiver to be one of their parents.

I was probably of the career first mindset until I had children. I worked 4 days to start with, and hated it, hated what I was missing out on. But, oddly, 3 days and I'm happy. Now I think that SAHM is more 'normal' than 'working' mum