AIBU to think SAHMs are lazy?

I work full time, 2 kids, no outside paid help... parents in another country. I'm knackered.

My life would 100% be easier if I did not work... having an extra 8 hours a day is unthinkable.

Of course working parents do more....

Would you fire a gun at your head if it had a 42% chance of killing you?

42% of marriages end in divorce.

I'm sure there are some SAHM who are frenetic workaholics, some who are bone idle couch vegetables, and everything in between.

On MN, everyone is busy with full time jobs, children, life and busy busy busy
but they seem to have an awful amount of time to spend on social media 😂

In real life, more than half the mums I know are SAHM, and most of the other half works part-time. I can think of a handful of mums who work full time, and they have LOTS of family help.

No one is calling anyone "lazy", everybody seems happy that the SAHM are available to take the kids when school randomly has to close (water leak, elections days etc), and that SAHM are the volunteers at school!

It's just jealousy. If someone is happy with their own set-up, why would they even care what others are doing.

Even when mums and parents like myself are working, we are still parents. We are still "on-call 24/7" the same way stay at home mums are. If our child is sick, or there's been an emergency we need to be there. We still have to do night wakings, nursery and school drop offs, arrange appointments, play dates, admin etc. We still feed and clothe our kids. There's no switching off either. We don't come from work and it's the day over and time to switch off.

This

No, I don't think they're lazy, but as others have said, those of us who work full time, do what they do and a job, so I do think that is generally objectively harder (both in terms of physical and mental load). This varies depending on number of children, special needs, resources etc. But the huge payoff ofourse is in terms of professional advancement, economic independence, sense of self, etc. Ultimately, people make and live with the choices they make, so it isn't anyone else's business to think or pass judgment on what others do.

I find this such a weird take. What's the point of getting married at all if the whole time you have to act as if it would make no difference to you whether you were or not?

I got married to be part of a team. If I wanted to be self-sufficient, I would've just done that and not bothered getting married.

The worrying thing about SAHM/D is that they’re solely reliant on their partner, lose any skills they learnt in previous jobs / at university ext and have no chance of a half decent retirement income, so tied to their partner so god help them if the partner leaves them! Even the state pension is for those who pay in their NI for 35 years I think it is, so even that would be reduced / unobtainable potentially. I think gone are the days where there was a housewife and an earner

When children are pre-school age, I think it makes sense in many circumstances for parents to be with their children more and work less, if they can. That could range from SAHP to part time working. Once the child starts school, there’s much less argument for it, unless the child has complex needs or there’s some other specific family circumstance.

The challenge can be finding work that fits with school hours, allows pick-ups, etc, so I can understand why some might opt out of working even once their children are in school. Lots needs to change in our society to make the lives of working parents more straightforward.

That said, I don’t think the tasks of running a home usually equate to needing to be a SAHP once children are in school. It’s not like generations past, where the washing and cleaning was really hard physical work, food shopping required going to multiple different shops etc.

You’re not doing everything that a SAHP does though - if you are working full-time then you are outsourcing 40+ hours of childcare per week that a SAHP is doing.

For pre-school children who have no childcare at all in place. I work 35 hours a week and during the school term I 'outsource' about 6 hours of childcare a week (assuming that DH doesn't count as outsourcing as he's their dad!). I have three hours a week where I am neither working nor with the children. Of course life would be loads easier if I was at home with 30 hours a week childfree. I don't want to make that financial sacrifice, though, and don't resent others that do. As I said upthread, I think being a SAHM to school age children is a massive luxury, but why shouldn't people who can afford it spend money on massive luxuries?

Can I say how glad I am that you all say Stay at home mother" that Full Time Mother.
I always found that so hurtful .
I worked always. No maternity leave in South Africa when my kids were babies. I worked and relied on nanny.
52 years I have worked only to retire just before my 69th birthday.
I never stopped being a mother...its ALWAYS full time.
But I do admire women who can stay at home.
Being a proper home maker is a job I was not interested in. Childcare to me was irritating and boring .
I loved my kids but they grew up in a society and place where they were able to be a bit wild. No shoes. Open spaces. Come home at sunset.
Nowadays it's really hard work keeping them entertained .

Well, I have done both - worked FT, with a commute and employing different kinds of childcare(childminder, nanny-share, day nursery and au-pair), I’ve done part-time around school hours(ok in term time, just, nightmare in holidays) and I’ve done Sahm and managed by reducing my income and overheads.

So I can absolutely say that in my case, my life as a SAHM was miles easier, more relaxed and lazier. I had more money worries, but I learned to budget better. I did lots more work in the house, but I could (can!) do it at my own pace, rather than cramming it in before and after work (never earned enough after paying for childcare to employ any domestic help).

So my life as a Sahm was lazier, but so what? What kind of numpty really believes you can combine two jobs in the same number of hours in the week and be less busy?

Again I think this is area dependant - in poorer areas not as many mums can afford not to work. In the richer area I lived about 60% of the mums were SAHM for a year or more when kids were school age and they all got together, did day trips and courses and a lot of socialising and charity work. I don't think it always means someone is sitting at home alone all day wishing they had a friend to talk to.

I think SAHM's are lucky not lazy (but only if that is their choice obviously)!

I think this can be where the attitude comes from. It’s a consequence of a shrinking circle. Eg I know one SAHM who is aghast at the need to find one day of childcare in the summmer holidays. Like she’s been asked the most impossible and unreasonable request. When the rest of are like WTF we have 6 weeks to cover AND run the house etc. But she’s never experienced that and so just doesn’t have the bandwidth

For us, it was not worth me working (back then, we only got funding for kids aged 3 and over and we had 20 months between the 2 kids)

No family nearby (not that they are automatic childcare )
I was chief caregiver in the day (ex worked 9-6)
I then worked evenings and weekends - ships passing in the night. Family time minimal.

The money I earned helped and also I retained some identitiy. However, a career was never really established

It was lonely at times and relentless . However, in hindsight I was lucky I did it .
I am still friends with some of the ladies I met at playgroups too.

And if he'd had an affair in year 10? And the house had to be sold, not enough to buy your own place, the hell of trying to find rented (either local authority or private (even worse!) ) and you had to scrabble around and find a minimum wage job, with never enough money to live on? You certainly wouldn't have been able to afford to go back to uni and retrain.

You absolutely WERE betting both yours and your childrens lives on the goodwill of one person. And if he'd left you would have been in a hell of a mess. Very very luckily, that didn't happen to you. But it happens to thousands of women. A man isn't a solution.

Well if it is journalism, it's hackneyed and boring and outdated as well as lazy. No woman hasn't had this debate or read this article a hundred times before. We are over it. There isn't anything new to say.

The only fresh angle is that so many working mums now manage to do so from home. If there is a conversation still to be had it should be about how that has changed things and made it easier to 'have it all'.

I don’t think they are lazy, but all the posts on here about being taken for granted, being dependent, not being able to leave because they gave up work, blah blah blah. I do wonder why people do it and it’s not a choice I’d make.

My cousin's wife has always been a SAHM. She's never worked after doing her degree. Her kids are now adults, in their mid 20s- early 30s.

What strikes me about her is her world seems kind of small. Like she doesn't really have a lot of practical life experience. She's really lovely but I feel a lot of the family relegate her in the hierarchy. Basically she's one grade above me and I'm the black sheep at the bottom.

This seems kind of unfair. I do often feel a bit sorry for her. Like her son was entitled to claim benefits but the mum said some weird shit about how he wasn't allowed to unless he was over 25 as he lives at home?! I had to put her straight about that.

It feels like she spends all her time doing what she likes but I just wouldn't want to be so reliant on a man. She also doesn't seem like she's got many friends.

Like her CV is a blank sheet of paper. At 50. And I'm not sure how she'd cope without him.

That applies if the couple earns equally, but the mortgage is based on both salaries, or the man'shigher salary. Very often on here the working wife is stuck because she couldn't afford to house herself in the area and then risks not getting residency for school aged children. Women's whole circumstances make them vulnerable, not just being out of work.
It's SAHP, or part time parents who are propping up PTAs, community groups along with healthy grandparents. They all go the extra mile to make school events extra special.

I’m a sahm, I have 3 Dcs and now my youngest is in school I’ve taken the opportunity to go to uni to retrain.(we are trying for a 4th but this doesn’t seem to be happening 😔) I love that I have had the chance to do drop offs and pick ups and be at every school event etc.
the main issue for me though is I feel I don’t really know who I am anymore, my life for 16 years has been children. I don’t really have any hobbies other than reading and cooking. The older I have got I’ve just accepted that my identity is the kids atm and once they have flown the nest it’s perhaps my turn to rediscover myself.
i think lazy isn’t quite the correct term, but I definitely get more time to rest than my husband does. However illnesses etc fall to me so if they are up through the night I deal with it- rightly so.

Anyone who is spiteful towards SAHMs is 100% full of envy. Why else be so nasty?

I work part time so have the best of both worlds. Would still much rather be at home because it’s easier than juggling work with kids and I think children benefit from having a parent around as much as possible. My own mum didn’t work and it was lovely, even at secondary school, coming home to a parent in the house.

I’ve been a SAHM and I’ve been a full time working mum and at no point have I ever had time to be lazy!