AIBU to think SAHMs are lazy?

My opinion is that young babies and toddlers need to be with their mother. I can understand this isn't always possible or even wanted by some though so I don't pass comment or judgement.

A mother's place is in the wrong unfortunately. Whatever you do someone will judge you for it.

Just crack on with what suits your family.

I don’t think it’s lazy. I think once all the kids are in school it’s a bad idea.

I think that because my mum was one. Dad left her 17 years after she stopped working and you can imagine how employable she was after that. She’d stopped working the year the internet was made public and had to get work again in the 2010s.

Why does it matter if someone thinks you're lazy? Presumably because you actually value yourself based on your effort and even when that effort is purely for your family's benefit, you need validation from outside your family.

I don't care what choices other people make. I made the right choice for my family and can say that for certainty now my children are adults.

I think there are far worse traits than laziness for one thing.

I work but I’m on maternity leave with my second at the moment, I find looking after my kids all day much more tiring than my office job!

Women mostly don't think SAHMs are lazy IMO. They are resentful because they have to work and balance everything and it is bloody hard and it is annoying to see someone who seems to have it easier. Who can AFFORD not to have to work.

Men who think SAHM are lazy are usually those who have no clue what it takes to keep a household running and manage a bunch of kids.

This is also why many people don't like those who fully WFH too IMO-- "why should I have to work and commute to an office when others just work on the sofa" etc.

Might not be totally reasonable to feel that way but it is human nature.

It's this kind of ignorance that fuels women making themselves powerless. Being a SAHM has never been the norm, throughout most societies and throughout history. Working-class women have generally always worked, upper-class women have not, but have equally never looked after their own children, and middle-class women being economically inactive really only started with the post-Industrial Revolution idea that a man kept his wife and daughters in domestic seclusion, away from the world of the shop/warehouse etc.

Did Jane Austen's mother work for a salary outside the home? No. Did she have a job? Absolutely -- while her husband was a clergyman and tutored and ran a small farm, she ran the domestic side of their small boarding school, kept a herd of dairy cows and poultry, taught and supervised their servants how to launder brew, bake, cook, preserve and store food, at a time with no refrigeration or labour-saving devices and when food needed to produced for twenty people three times a day. The household could not have functioned without her.

Was she a SAHM? No. All the Austen children, as was normal for their class and time, were sent off shortly after birth to be raised at a distance by a village family and only brought back home years later. The kids weren't part of the job.

I wasn't betting my whole existence on my husband for the last 14 years, I was betting on my children. I was giving them stability and raising them myself. My youngest will be starting reception in September and I'm going back to Uni to start a new career. Best of both. I know a handful of women who have successful careers after being SAHMs until their kids were in FT school. If you have the means, there is a choice. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

Do people say SAHMs are lazy? I'm not sure I've heard that frequently.

I have heard people raise concerns like perpetuating the patriarchy, being reliant on someone else financially, modelling behaviour - but this is more about the concept itself, not the personal attributes of the individual

I don't think SAMH are lazy. I know plenty people who work and are completely lazy. And on the days I have my kids (two under 5) are more tiring than when I'm at work!

There's always judgement on both sides. I've seen PLENTY of judgement levelled at working mums. How putting kids to nursery is akin to child abuse, how they will be "institutionalised" and what's the point having kids if you don't want to spend time with them etc etc. Criticisms that dad's never get etc.

I think what is best for each family is individual. Research and real life shows there is no different in outcomes for kids who have parents and work and who don't. The big factors are things like quality of care from their main caregivers, quality of attachment and feeling safe and secure and you don't need a parent their 24/7 for kids to feel this.

That said I don't know anyone that can afford to be a stay at home mum and I am glad I work and have that financial security for myself as you never know what's round the corner.

Agree. SAHMs are definitely not lazy and there are plenty of very logical reasons why women stop work at certain times in the child-rearing journey which I completely understand.

But betting yours and your children’s entire life security on someone else’s income and goodwill is like playing Russian Roulette.

And? If someone was rude enough to pass comment on my choices, I wouldnt think twice about passing comment on theirs. What makes one ok but not the other?

I think in an ideal world, young children benefit from having a parent at home with them. However, some parents don't want that for various reasons (us), some parents can't afford to lose an income and some parents think that children benefit from been in an environment with other children/structure etc.

All are valid choices/options. In the real world, I dont know anyone who cares what other families choose to do.

What is sad is when women are financially illiterate when they have children. Sometimes through ignorance and sometimes through deciding to focus on kids and not think about it. I think there needs to be better education regarding pensions and financially looking after yourself when you have kids.

This made me feel really sad. Being a SAHM was the norm less than a century ago when women's rights were negligible. Luckily we've moved towards equality and yet this is a prevailing view. What makes me even sadder is the often touted view on MN that SAHMs bring abandonment and ill treatment from DHs upon themselves by not returning to work and using child care. Looking after your own children is seen as contributing less than working to pay someone else to do it. Surely those are equal. Tax revenue is the sole reason the government are keen for all women to work. It was never a strategy aimed at the well being of women and children.

I think people should parent as they see fit but laziness is irrelevant. I work with children which is considered hard work but some might have considered my decision to be a FT SAHM for 18 months and then work very PT until she started school when I still worked PT as lazy. The work bit was definitely the lazier option in many ways, practically speaking.

There is some logic lacking here. Is cleaning someone else's house hard work when done professionally but deciding to clean your own lazy? Would I be less lazy if I worked extra hours to employ a cleaner? Surely this is a choice of how to spend my time and money and morally neutral, not an indication of how lazy I am.

Luckily I have no interest in whether anyone thinks I am lazy or whether I have parented correctly. I love both my job and being a SAHM. I still only work 60% now the youngest is 14 and I'm good with that.

Is it equally lazy to retire before statutory retirement age? I haven't heard that view often. It seems to be seen as an admirable goal. Is part time work considered inherently lazy? MN is full of men branded lazy fathers due to working 50 hours a week and never lifting a finger at home or caring for their children. It is a minefield, isn't it?

yes and that's why I don't agree with the claim that SAHMing somehow benefits 'other people'. It benefits the working husband, for sure. Working parents without a SAHP at home, who need to compete with someone not affected by family obligations, not so much.

I’ll bite.

I’m a SAHM, as a person, I can be lazy. I hate cleaning and cooking. as a parent, I am far from lazy. I am present for my kids every day and take on the full mental load for the kids needs relating to school and extra curricular activities.
I am also ND so too much time with my kids overwhelms me, but time away from them kills me.

I have a very present husband who does about 40% of the school runs, takes the kids to swim lessons, goes to kids parties, cooks about 75% of the time, pays for a cleaner once a quarter to do a deep clean and does 50% of bath & bed times.

I know working out of the home parents who do more than me and I know SAHMs who do less than me

Easy now, pay later.

It's like the whole trad wife thing. We abandoned it because it doesn't work for women.

Betting your whole existence on another person is nuts.

Not lazy but I do recall a 36 year old gleefully tell me she had definitely retired (and had as soon as she had her first). Her second child was about to go to high school at this point. Her husband had some very strong ideas about how she should keep herself and shouldn’t be over a certain weight. Concerning on so many levels.

Context: DH is SAHP as we have small children but I do school runs and have majority of mental load whilst working too. He complains at times he has to work around everyone’s schedules, forgetting the down time he has for at least part of the time they’re at school. Parenting is rough regardless.

Starting threads like this on MN is such lazy journalism.

I’ve never thought of it like this. Really good point about the men who are benefiting from the Mother taking on the childcare including sickness which means he doesn’t have to take time off work!

Surely that would put him ahead of others career wise as he can take on extra travel, hours, doesn’t have to take much dependents leave etc…

I was a SAHM for donkey's years and I freely admit that much of the time I was lazy. Especially as the children got to all be in senior school, I had an insane amount of free time but it came at the cost of other freedoms over the years. I felt it was a fair trade off at the time, and still do. I have no guilt or regrets. Being a SAHM shouldn't be about working yourself to the bone every hour in the day just to justify to others why you are not in paid employment.

The most important thing for me was just to be readily available whenever needed, to be able to drop whatever else was going on without needing permission from an employer, to be there for my children.

Knowing that I never needed to miss a sports day, never needed to say no to an after school club or a play date they wanted. Knowing that I didn't resent my precious weekend time being taken up with running them around to birthday parties and other activities, or having my house always full of their friends.

Never not having time to get a home cooked meal on the table, or read to them at bedtime.

Never having a day where I only saw them for a couple of hours when they were very small.

Never having to worry about childcare in the holidays or on school inset days and having to butter up SAHM 'friends' I hardly knew and beg favours from them just so I didn't have to use my annual leave up to look after my own kids at short notice. (yes working mums, we see you and we know what you are doing.)

Never having to send them to school not potty trained because I didn't have enough annual leave left to spend on the three solid weeks we needed at home until we could finally crack it.

Never having to argue with my husband about which one of us should stay home if a child was sick. Never having to argue with my husband about which one of us carried the biggest load with the children or the household chores as well as holding down a job.

Never having that sinking feeling on a Sunday night.

Never having to spend my entire weekend doing laundry and hoovering and batch cooking for the freezer, just to keep the household from imploding.

Never having to spend an insane percentage of my earnings on childcare and wonder if the little that is left is actually worth the sacrifice and the stress.

Never resenting the unrelenting grind of my day to day life and feeling hard done by.

If that meant I could fanny around pleasing myself for much of the day once they were all at school, then so what?

Of course if I had stayed in work and developed my career further, I might eventually have had a high paying job that brought in a lot more extra money to the household, but I don't see that that would have given us a better quality of life. Only the ability to buy more expensive stuff, which isn't the same thing.

But these days so many working parents work from home anyway, and in reality get far more free time and flexibility than they technically should, if they are being entirely honest, that working FT is not quite the slog it used to be when mine were at school.

ExDP constantly told me I was lazy. He was an abuser. I eventually managed to LTB.

There are so many posts on MN about mums not being able to cope with working, childcare and housework. I think being a SAHM just lifts the burden a bit, looking after small children at home and doing everything in the house is a full time job in itself. When the children are all in school in the day you might say they would be lazy not to get even a part time job (if they can), but there is still plenty to do just at a less hectic rate and people are allowed a bit of free time to do things they want to do as well as things they have to do.

I have 'quite a collection' of children, as a stranger once put it to me, and i'm a SAHM. I have been since my eldest was born in 2012. I am far from lazy. My youngest starts reception in September and I start my retraining. I feel lucky to have been at home and I don't take it for granted.

If the dc are home full time then no, SAHM are not lazy. However, they’re not really busy once the dc are at school for most of the day. I work full time and still do all the things you need to do with children and the house etc.

SAHM are putting themselves at risk. There’s been several threads lately where the SAHM is screwed after their partner/husband leaves them.