To ask what made you want to be a stay at home parent?

Well, I do really worry for people who will find themselves entirely redundant in the next decade or so after extolling the great value that work brings to their lives in giving them a solid platform to operate as a functioning human and the detrimental effect they believe it has to spend too much time around your children. 😬😬

Are you for real? Who has said it's detrimental to spend too much time around your children? That would nobody!!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying work, having pride in your career and feeling that your career is a big part of your identity.
That doesn't mean parents who feel like this don't spend time with their children and don't enjoy spending time with their children. It's not an either or situation!

Yes AI is changing the labour market, but that means we adapt to these changes as a society.

I was a SAHM and their father was always working very long hours when they were young particularly so I had, and still have, a very strong bond with all 4 children. I'm far better at communicating with them than their father who brings other 'qualities' to the table - stubbornness, irritability and a somewhat blinkered traditional approach - whereas I'm more understanding and patient and will always listen. Their dad did take them camping and out on our boat when we had it and the eldest to rugby but he's never been good at expressing his emotions (he was born in 1952 and went to boarding school which he hated so he learnt not to show emotion) so none of them ever felt they could talk to him about how they felt in the same way they could talk to me.

@Thepeopleversuswork
Spot on.

I’ve worked since I was 14. We have three DC. I took one year of mat leave each time. Mixture of FT and PT working alongside studying with young DC. Did school runs and WFH. I’ve got financial security. I’ll have a decent pension. I can make my own financial decisions. No regrets.

Well, I do really worry for people who will find themselves entirely redundant in the next decade or so after extolling the great value that work brings to their lives in giving them a solid platform to operate as a functioning human and the detrimental effect they believe it has to spend too much time around your children. 😬😬

Maybe try working just a day or 2 a week OP? I worked 2 days a week when mine were small and it felt like the best of both worlds. I was still their main caregiver as spent far more waking time with them than they would have at a nursery but it was nice to spend more time in adult company. Somehow it made my time with the DC more special too after having time to ‘miss’ them.

I think it's a bit sad that some people need to work to build confidence, friendships and feelings of value, let alone know how to spend their time, when we are on the cusp of an ai revolution.

How patronising.

Some people enjoy their jobs......surely that's not hard to understand?

You do know, right, that some people actually enjoy their jobs? Not all work is repetitive and dull.

@Char65

One of the reasons for the current issues in society I believe is that too many children are left to their own devices and they get influenced by 'friends' and social media and drawn into gangs, drugs and antisocial behaviour because parents are working all hours or just don't care about them. As I said in my last post our two boys needed me more when they were teenagers than when they'd been younger.

I agree that teenagers need more parental support in some ways than very young children and I certainly think they need a lot more guidance. I have a nearly 13 year old who needs me much more now than she did when she was seven.

But I'm not sure that having their mother (and let's be honest it is almost always their mother) around on hand full time is necessarily a panacea for this. For many reasons: it doesn't support the development of healthy independence for one thing. Teenagers do need (in a safe and supervised way) to be able to start to try things on their own. And perhaps most importantly because if their mother (and again, it is usually the mother) does everything for them well into the second decade of their life it teaches them a damaging lesson about what the role of women is in their lives. A loving, engaged mother who also has her own interests outside of the home as well as being a rock to her children is usually a better rounded role model to both boys and girls than one who exists only to serve her children and husband.

Like anything in life it's a balance. Having an engaged, involved parent who has their eye on the ball and has your back is critical when you're a teenager and having your parents both working all hours isn't ideal. But I'm not convinced that a mother who hasn't worked for 15 years and has little other focus in her life other than her children is a better solution.

You're going to find this absolutely wild but they let women get up to anything these days! Surgeons, nuclear engineers, investment bankers, playwrights. There are dames everywhere you look!

Council workers, midwives, teachers, and admin staff too -- some women even like their jobs and find them satisfying. I know, news to me too!

Why did your two boys need you more than their father?

Different people want different things. I returned to work very soon after all of my DC were born, primarily because I'm self employed and a single parent, but 5 years in I know that I am not cut out for SAHM status even if it were an option. I love my kids but I need my own time, my own space, my own purpose. And they need more than I can offer them

Mainly DS had SEN and no one could handle him but me. He screamed all day long, refused to eat, needed to be rushed to hospital all the time. I worried that if anyone who loved him less cared for him, he might end up being mistreated or neglected because he was such hard work.

Like you I felt that Groundhog Day boredom. It was excruciating. But over time, I loved being with both DC, hanging out with them, teaching them things. I went back to work PT as soon as they started school and that kept me sane, kept my adult brain alive, but I never had the stress of having to sort out childcare.

The narrative that working FT while being a parent is simply too stressful/ expensive/ only possible with significant grandparental childcare that is too often peddled like a gospel truth on here simply isn’t true.

Working FT with young children is possible but it has to be accepted that the stress, the expense and doing it without any wider family support is certainly not easy. It might mean that you are mostly working just to pay for childcare. Also many employers are understanding about the endless rounds of illness that kids can go through at nursery, not everyone can WFH while caring for a sick child and it is very difficult to be a good parent and a good employee.

I think you can argue it the other way and say that children need their parents and a parent being there for them 24/7 whilst they grow up is very, very important be it the father or the mother. One of the reasons for the current issues in society I believe is that too many children are left to their own devices and they get influenced by 'friends' and social media and drawn into gangs, drugs and antisocial behaviour because parents are working all hours or just don't care about them. As I said in my last post our two boys needed me more when they were teenagers than when they'd been younger.

I think there's a fair bit of observation bias in deciding who is doing what and how it was that they became that way. That's up to you. I think it's a bit sad that some people need to work to build confidence, friendships and feelings of value, let alone know how to spend their time, when we are on the cusp of an ai revolution.

What a shame you're not enjoying your precious baby. These are the best of times! You are the in a very privileged position. One year olds are so entertaining. What did you do at work that is so exhilarating? Most jobs are repetitive too.

I couldn't agree more.

I also grew up with a SAHM and it's a reason why I would never make the choice to be one.

@HappyBusman

It worries me that Mners, who include an unusually high proportion of isolated, socially anxious or withdrawn people, who have few or no relationships outside their immediate household, are imbibing the patriarchal norm that women’s work becomes weirdly optional once they have a child, or that it’s terrible that mothers ‘have to work’, particularly because they’re not in contact with people for whom working mothers are just ordinary.

I totally agree with this.

I don't care whether people work or not, each to their own. But (and I may get shot for this but here goes) I do think there's a correlation between the epidemic of people with social anxiety/chronic introversion and women who have chosen to give up work when their kids were young and then drifted into a life which, beyond a certain point, becomes fairly aimless.

I can totally understand why people would stay at home when their kids are very small: that makes a lot of sense. But turning yourself into a career housewife/carer narrows your world and horizons and breeds anxiety and fear about venturing out beyond the bounds of the immediate family. I saw it happen to my mum, who never went back to work and spiralled into a smaller and smaller world and never regained any real purpose to her life. She became bizarrely fixated with what other people thought about her and said about her.

All these posts about hating being around other people, the bizarre dread of the "school gate mum", the militant introvertism ("it's too peopley out there" etc) the loathing of work and all these other neuroses which so many people on these boards seem to have worry me a lot. I think it's really unhealthy. I can't help thinking that, leaving neurodiversity and mental illness aside, a lot of this is curable by just getting people into circulation with other ordinary people. Stewing and obsessing over what other people think etc is a luxury which people who work can't really afford to have because they just have to crack on with things.

Work is not the be all and end all and it should never take over people's lives to the exclusion of their families but working grounds you in a world outside that of your children and husband, keeps your social skills and your awareness of the wider world up to date and gives you a frame of reference. Lose that at your peril.

@BingoWings85 I would agree with this, we had 2 daughters and 2 sons, all private school educated and our 2 sons definitely needed me more when they were teenagers (and that's still the case for the youngest whose 22 and still at home having given up on Uni) whereas our two daughters were far more independent and resourceful and it probably wouldn't have bothered them if I'd worked or not! Our oldest son is 32 now, married, first GC and has a landscaping business and is very much like his dad (though they clashed when he was a teenager) but those values of being good citizens, of hard work, honesty and perseverance have come through and I'm sure they will do with the youngest too once he finds his feet!!

As I see it, until food, shelter, clothing etc are magically free, everyone who is physically and psychologically able to work should work

It's the word should, like it's a moral imperative to work for the greater good. In fact, specifically you say - until everything is free - everybody is obligated to work - like the abridged version of the communist manifesto. You don't see this shit rolled out in any other circumstances on MN, except where women have divided to stay at home. Unless you are dolling out this declaration under many names - it seems to be coming up more and more on these threads.

Well that’s quite the Fairy Story you’ve conjured up there!

Why should everyone work if they don’t have to? I fully support the right of anyone to choose to work when they have DC, but surely that works both ways?

As stated upthread, I haven’t worked since having my first, and am now pregnant with my fourth. I consider my work (and it is work) being a SAHP to be of significant value. I would say the same of any nursery worker. I have a wonderful DH, a passive income of my own, and plenty of friends and relationships to maintain.

It really is staggering how some people really can’t understand that others have different needs/likes/lifestyles that make them happy.

That's not something I've noticed.
I think people do express concern about women making themselves financially vulnerable by giving up work.

In what way are those instances comparable?

It's amazing how many posters I've seen on MN who think that women owe society their labour when they are sahm's. I wonder if they are as exercised about people retiring early, those who emigrate, lottery winners, etc?