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

I couldn't care less what other people do. However, if women feel they have a strong biological urge towards something, who is anyone on here to tell them otherwise. You might not feel like that. That's fine. Many women are very different to you and, obviously, they will have husbands who are very different to your husbands. This should be patently obvious.

Whu do you need to insist that biological factors don't exist? Does this make you feel better? Why? Can you speak for billions of women across the planet? Do you need them all to feel the same as you?

Let individuals be the judge of how they feel and what they feel compelled to do in life. Stop trying to make your priorities a fact of life for everyone. You can't tell people how they feel. They know!

And there are some women who thought k it's acceptable to write insulting posts like this one.
Shame that.

Families should make decisions that suit them as individual family units. Some women will want to stay at home and be the primary caregiver and others will want to continue working. Others will have little choice due to their individual circumstances.

All options are valid and neither makes you a better or worse parent.

Yet the ones who do feel that way, tend to believe that at least one parent should be a SAHP (usually the mother) which is exactly expecting other people to feel like them and of course, if they don't they get digs thrown at them such as they don't have a maternal bone in their body or they simply couldn't cope with their children all day or it makes them selfish or other such nonsense which are judgements that are never aimed towards men for daring to want to have their careers.

Which leads back to how incredibly sexist it is but no, it's just ''biology''. No double standards at all.

I wouldn’t have had a family with a partner who I didn’t think would be equally involved and supportive of my ongoing career. With twins it was also essential! We shared night feeds - saw the worst of each other when sleep deprived. Thankfully we sleep trained at five months in time for me going back to work.
DT’s education was very important to us - I want them both to have choices. DS or DD may in years to come want to be a SAHP (and I will be 100% supportive of their decisions) but I don’t want DD in particular to be the default SAMP. Thankfully both have started post grad careers with many opportunities so will be financially independent.

I think there are some women who dominate these threads because, quite honestly, they don't really have a maternal bone in their body and, even if they did, they would suppress it at all costs because it's more important to them to prove they are exactly the same as their husbands; nothing can possibly be biological - it's 100% sociological and look how very enlightened we are with our kids in nurseries all day etc.

There is nothing wrong with admitting you're not cut out to be with your kids full time. Nothing wrong with that at all. But it all starts to sound a bit desperate when you try to deny the lived experience of other women who do feel a strong maternal instinct to be around for their DC (as opposed to someone else). Just because YOU didn't feel differently to your DH, so what? That's just you. Why do you need everyone to feel like you? Don't tell other women how they should feel. You have no idea (clearly). Just live your life and let others do what feels right and natural to them.

@Char65

I can't say I agree, there maybe elements of learnt behaviour but there is biology too. I know I hit the stereotype, I had a job and not a career as a PP said and became a SAHM at 25 with a husband with a very high powered, high income job but as I said i loved it and looking after out 4 children and wouldn't have swapped it for the world - my only regret is that that they grow up too fast!!!

That's great and fine but surely you can understand that your one personal experience does not establish an infallible biological rule?

For every person who has stayed at home and loved it there is a person who stayed at home and didn't love it (as on this thread). Your enjoyment or otherwise of your role as a SAHM is not hard-wired, it's a complex combination of circumstances which brings to bear factors including your relationship with your spouse, your personality, your level of education, your financial circumstances, your personality, etc etc. It's multifactorial.

Meanwhile, as @ElaineMBenes points out, if its evidence you are looking for, there is some that men are not at a biological disadvantage in looking after children.

That doesn't mean everyone should feel that they have to do a perfectly progressive 50/50 swap approach. Some men will always prefer working in an office and some women will prefer to be at home (and vice versa). And that's all good and well. But please stop saying its biology, it's not. It's a combination of learned behaviour and disposition.

I can't say I agree, there maybe elements of learnt behaviour but there is biology too.

In relation to this particular topic it is learnt behaviour, stereotypes and societal expectations not biology.

I'm an academic and this particular topic is on of my specialisms.

In fact, biology makes the opposite case you are making. There is evidence that if men are actively involved in parenting from day one then their level of oxytocin increases too, potentially to levels that are similar to those experienced by new mothers.
So the bond can be equally as strong with both parents providing they both are active patents from the start.

Does your DH feel he missed out/wasn’t around/has a lesser bond?
Was there a reason you had a job and not a career and therefore were the default to be a SAMP?

But they don't live at nursery which is how you are acting. As working parents, we both spend quality time with our DS because working hours aren't the only hours in the day, not to mention weekends and annual leave.

It's also equal which is important to both of us. Neither of us would want to leave the other one to do the majority of parenting, we believe it is best for our son for him to be parented equally by both of us when he isn't at nursery. This means he also has a strong bond with both of us, not just one of us.

You're confusing biological difference with learned behaviour: for millennia men have not been expected to be the primary caregivers so skills supportive of this have neither been taught to them nor expected of them in general.

I can't say I agree, there maybe elements of learnt behaviour but there is biology too. I know I hit the stereotype, I had a job and not a career as a PP said and became a SAHM at 25 with a husband with a very high powered, high income job but as I said i loved it and looking after out 4 children and wouldn't have swapped it for the world - my only regret is that that they grow up too fast!!! It suited me just fine but completely get its not for all women. However as I've said in a previous post I do think it important that one parent (yes the father if that suits) is the carer particularly in the early stages, you can miss so much by not being around your children when they are young and as I've said before the bond is very string, yes that may have been the case if I'd worked but that was never an option.

@Char65

Why is sexist to day their are differences between the sexes as @youngones1has said? In my experience mothers are better care providers for children especially when the are young (and maybe young adult too!). I bet at the nurseries you love so much 99% of staff are female and don't say its to do with pay as I bet the managers are too. Of course not all men are the same and there are exceptions but general that is the case

Of course there are biological differences between the sexes. But those differences don't extend to the capability of a man or woman to love and care for a small infant. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that men are less evolved to care for children than women (outside of very specific things like breastfeeding). If they don't do it as well its because they don't want to and they've never had to.

You're confusing biological difference with learned behaviour: for millennia men have not been expected to be the primary caregivers so skills supportive of this have neither been taught to them nor expected of them in general. Men who do want to be primary caregivers are more than up to this task and those who choose to do this do it well.

But a large swathe of the male population uses "biological differences" as a get-out-of-jail-free card to excuse themselves from the frankly exhausting, boring and relentless business of caring for small children because its frankly pretty shit and they have been allowed to get out of it so if it ain't broke why fix it?

Then chuck in the "important man job" which of course they can't leave for a second because they might offroad their careers and you have the perfect recipe for this rhetoric about "biological differences".

Plenty of people choose to organise their families in this way and that's fine if people want to do it like this (as long as both partners are happy and the woman isn't left up shit creek financially by not working) but please don't pretend it has anything to do with biology.

Why is sexist to day their are differences between the sexes as @youngones1 has said? In my experience mothers are better care providers for children especially when the are young (and maybe young adult too!). I bet at the nurseries you love so much 99% of staff are female and don't say its to do with pay as I bet the managers are too. Of course not all men are the same and there are exceptions but general that is the case.

Because these differences are due to sexist stereotypes and societal expectations around gender roles.
There is no evidence that women are genetically better care providers ( once you remove breastfeeding).

As for childcare being female dominated. I hate to break it to you that that has absolutely nothing to do with biology. Career choices are not driven by biology. However, they are heavily influenced by society, stereotypes and expectations around gender roles in society.
Also, have you ever read the threads on male nursery nurses??! They're vile and it's those attitudes that contribute to men not choosing it as a career.

And you dismiss pay as contributing factor but society expects men to be the provider so they do tend to be influenced by pay when making career choices. Whereas women are more likely to look for flexibility.... even if they don't have children!

I didn't want to, I just sort of fell into it as logistically it made sense since my husband was a workaholic, and like you it felt somewhat "bad" to go back to work when I didn't have to, considering most families can't afford to have a SAHM.

I hated most of the early years but I held on in there and I must say in the long run I'm glad I did. Children really do benefit there's no question (though of course I would never say this IRL as it's a sensitive minefield). I would say make sure to keep a foot in the door career/skills wise. I did post graduate study throughout and a small bit of freelance work to keep my brain ticking over.

My DC are thriving socially and are both top of their class academically, and while of course this is possible when parents work (especially with two hands-on parents and a good balance/family support) I know in our case it would have been much less likely had they been in full time childcare. I would have borne the brunt of the children and domestic chores in b top of work which would have made me a frazzled mess and things would have slipped. They are both at school and I'm back at work part time and despite my initial resistance to SAH parenting, it's probably been the best investment I've ever made if I'm honest.

Analyse your scenario/finances/relationship/coping mechanisms and think long term for you and them.

How isn't it sexist?

Most nursery staff are female not because men aren't capable of doing it (My son's nursery manager is male, as is his keyworker) but because men are taught from a very young age that they are providers, not carers and women are taught the opposite. It's part of the sexist society we live in.

In my experience, when fathers are equally involved with their child, they are just as capable as mothers. Of course if a mother becomes a SAHM and does 99% of the childcare, she will be better at it. It's a reason why I'd never be a SAHM, it encourages inequality in parenting.

Why is sexist to day their are differences between the sexes as @youngones1 has said? In my experience mothers are better care providers for children especially when the are young (and maybe young adult too!). I bet at the nurseries you love so much 99% of staff are female and don't say its to do with pay as I bet the managers are too. Of course not all men are the same and there are exceptions but general that is the case.

Exactly.

Well said.

I'll say it again... if that genuinely is true (as opposed to that dads have never been asked to "care"), then you have a problem with the men in your life.

If the father of your child can't bestir himself to do any caring for his children there ain't nothing biological about that. It's entitlement, sexism and learned helplessness (fuelled by generations of people telling him its OK because its biological).

It's the same few people on these threads every time with the same depressing insecurity. Come on, you've been at it for years. It's 2024.

That’s just sexist. Just because your husband was like that, it doesn’t mean all men are.

My husband has just as much empathy and understanding as I do but then we both parent equally too.

Not if they parent equally. DH fed bottles with as much care as I did, changed millions of disgusting nappies, sat up through the night with them when they were sick, cuddled them when they were upset, put them to bed as many times as I did. He put as much energy into choosing their nursery and school, collected DD in the middle of the night when her taxi hadn’t come after a night out. DH would be the first to say he’s nothing special - just someone trying to be a good parent.

What a lazy stereotype 🙄

I think mums generally have a more caring nature than dads, although there are exceptions.

yes I agree, mother's have a far greater empathy and understanding of children than fathers especially when children are under 5. Not so bad as they get older but young children need their mothers.

What a load of rubbish.

If dad's are equal parents from day one then there is no difference in the amount of empathy they feel towards their children or their ability to parent.

Other than breastfeeding there is nothing a dad can't do.

If that’s the case then they have a husband problem.

@youngones1 yes I agree, mother's have a far greater empathy and understanding of children than fathers especially when children are under 5. Not so bad as they get older but young children need their mothers.