Justifying long term SAHM to DDs?

impatient you might like to try to read what I said. Please don't paraphrase me incorrectly.

Also, it is just too lazy to say feminism is about women doing exactly what they want and everyone simply applauding it.

Feminism is about far more than that.

Choices to not happen in a vacuum.

But it is much easier emotionally to be self employed and earn the high amounts. You're not tied to the company missing out in the way Kerala describes. It's not the work that's the problem if you can do it at odd hours. It's the absence that's the problem.

So I'm not sure earning loads does break down a barrier. Does a woman have to be sitting at the top seat, CEO / board working long hours to really do it. Everyone says oh yes I support it (fab) but really are saying it's not for me, but hey you go for it. So the cost is high, too high for many.

I agree cap

I'm not suggesting anyone flagelate themselves. But I think it's just lazy and a cop out to not even consider the consequences of our actions as women on other women.

Everyone doing what suits them unthinkingly, in a vaccuum, is never going to help women attain a less sexist society.

Thewordfactory : feminism should be about accepting womens choices, not making women feel that their choices are limited if they don't want to be contributing to inequality. To suggest that a woman opting to be a SAHM is contributing to the unequal playing field is a backward step for feminism.
We should be respecting women's work related choices regardless of what that choice is.

'owe our gender' , 'owe society', 'owe our families', 'owe ourselves?'

I do my best. I try to balance all the conflicting needs. I tell myself not even to attempt to judge other's decisions. If everybody was called to 'justify' our actions, they would be found lacking somewhere along the way.

Accept consequences? Well they are there aren't they. We've no choice but to accept them. I don't dwell on them though, I prefer to move forwards.

fide I believe that as feminists we have to grapple with difficult issues as well as easy ones.

Sexism is still rife in society, and until that isn't the case, as women, we do have to look carefully at our actions. It's not about others foisting that on us. It's about us taking the resonsibility to at least engage with the idea.

Sweeping it away as too painful, too difficult patronises us. Excusing ourselves from even engaging with the subject, because our business is not society, but our own families, is pretty poor.

As I say, this is not to say, that women must make choices they don't want to make. But we should IMVHO try to support those women who do want to play on a level field with men and accept the consequences of our own decisions.

I think we owe our gender this much.

Children often do better not worse when mothers work full time.

Do you have some reliable non biased evidence to support that claim?

So you can find women staying at home who think it is for the good of the children who actually damage them

I don't suppose you can cite a single iota of evidence for that Jane?

is actually better for children than if you stay at home and wipe a lot of bottoms

Please can someone explain to me why the pro-WOHMs have such a scatalogical fixation?!

Jane Parker,

If I had a job I loved and earned huge amounts I might work full time too!

What do you do? (And can I apply for that job)

Am I the only person on here who thinks earning a huge amount in work you love whilst having a large family is actually better for children than if you stay at home and wipe a lot of bottoms as some kind of example of supposed saint hood? Children often do better not worse when mothers work full time.

The mistake you are making Jane is the assumption that we are the same, with the same strengths and weaknesses. I don't think we are.

Personally, I have never found a paid position of employment where I did not feel bought, somehow the pay seemed to turn me into the typical alienated worker. That is me, I like to know I am making choices without renumeration clouding my judgment. Not a particularly great position to be in, I know and a flaw within me because integrity has to win out, to be good at anything. I just don't like the internal conflict, I don't like the feeling of being pressured to not act on my own integrity. Some people are probably better at dealing with this than me. I can do it , when I have to, and I have done it. The motivation to do it, when I don't have to, however just is not there.

I don't see the work I do for free, in the same way somehow. No one is paying me to do it, I am only beholden to those that love me and I them. This, for me, is an easier relationship to have. I don't mind the menial cleaning up tasks too much. It is like liking gardening, you get rid of the rubbish, nurture things and watch them grow.

There will be a lot of women like you Jane and a good job too. We need the ones like you to balance out the ones like me in this world.

Its brilliant if you can find a job you love - that is definitely the ideal. Thats the key! And what I will be encouraging my DDs to do. Don't think SAHM are seen as saintly far from it they are seen as the lowest of the low which I think is wrong and sad. For me the smart thing to do is find a career you enjoy so when (if) you have DC you want to continue it with decent childcare or its something you can do on your own flexibly. Thats what I have ended up doing and think now would find it hard going back to conventional employment with fixed hours/holidays.

Am I the only person on here who thinks earning a huge amount in work you love whilst having a large family is actually better for children than if you stay at home and wipe a lot of bottoms as some kind of example of supposed saint hood? Children often do better not worse when mothers work full time. So you can find women staying at home who think it is for the good of the children who actually damage them never mind hurting so very much the position of women in society as well. It is lose lose and no good for anyone.

I read on here once a poster saying "I really wanted to help break down the glass ceiling but didn't want to use my own head and that of my children as battering rams".

Staying on in my job (£100k, city lawyer, brutal hours, lots of travel) would have been the right thing to do financially and from a feminist perspective. There were 51 partners in my department. 2 were women, one of those off on gardening leave with stress and was referred to by the men as "mental" . A woman in my NCT group went back to a slightly less regarded firm and is now a partner and I am thrilled that there are women like her that do it - for my DDs sake. But it would have broken me. I couldn't have coped with such little contact with my children. The thought of spending their precious childhood sitting in a glass office pouring over documents late into the night and weekends to enable one Megacorp to buy power companies from another Megacorp makes me feel physically sick.

Yes wordfactory, but saying that being a high court judge is more important and a better example to young women than just being a SAHM is loaded with assumptions I don't share.

That doesn't mean we should feel forced into continuing when it isn't right for our families, but I think it behoves to accept some of the consequences.

Don't mothers have enough guilt foisted them?

missing I see what you are saying, but I think that when we step out of the workforce, we must accept that it does have ramifcations on society as a whole.

That doesn't mean we should feel forced into continuing when it isn't right for our families, but I think it behoves to accept some of the consequences.

For example, I quit being a lawyer, just as I was about to be made a judge. I would have been one of the first working class women on the circuit. Instead the position went to a middle class man.

Now that must have conbsequences on society, especially when it happens on a macro level.

To few women in positions of responsibility and power, mean our society will always be scewed, no?

Thus our actions will effect our DDs in the longer term.

I don't know how we square this circle, but I think we need to at least accept that the circle exists, rather than always looking inward to our own lives and families...

I don't give a stuff. I feel that what I am doing now is more valuable to my family and to society as a whole than being a high rate tax payer at the moment. I cannot hide behind economic necessity. My values are exposed.

And what horrifically offensive values they are missing

I didn't mean to make you feel bad summerflower. I completely understand. Previous posters have, more eloquently than me, made the point that we are all just making the best choices we can given the situations we are in. Those of us in the position to make a choice, and choosing to stay home, are being goaded to justify our personal choices.

I don't have children with special needs, my employment could more than pay for child care. My husband is a "high earner." I am a real flash point for some people. How dare I not go back to work? Who do I think I am? I'll get what's coming to me in the end. yada yada yada.

I don't give a stuff. I feel that what I am doing now is more valuable to my family and to society as a whole than being a high rate tax payer at the moment. I cannot hide behind economic necessity. My values are exposed.

All that said, I am completely at ease with women in my position making the opposite choice. If you thrive on your career, love doing it and can afford high quality child care to make it all work, then I support you completely. You know what's best for your family and it would be presumptuous for me to assume your kids aren't getting what they need.

Where I do have an issue is the fuzzy middle. The assumption that women working is virtuous and that women staying at home is shiftless, does make a political difference. It drives the sort of policies that force the tax payer to subsidise women with young children working, when they don't all want to do so or feel it is right. What is the point of subsidising Woman A in a low paid job to go out and work, while Woman B earns low pay to look after Woman A's children? It's a bit like the old Economics 101 example of everyone taking in each other's washing. There is a lot of activity, but no productivity.

People's decisions to stay home are political with huge ramifications. It matters more than just how it affects that person and that family.

Can you please explain what is political about my decision to stay home and look after my children? I thought my decision was based on what is best for my children, not whether Dave Cameron and co would approve.

I agree that my decision affects others though as the job that I am not taking up can provide somebody else with employment.

it is just the notion that you can always control things and how they turn out, you can't.

YYY. I think some people could do with a couple of life-events happening to them - it might puncture their smugness about how controllable and plannable they think it all is

Thanks fideline, I know, it is just the notion that you can always control things and how they turn out, you can't.

I should stay away from these threads!

deep, if your ways of working at home around naptimes etc would also have covered your mortgage and living costs, all credit to you. Otherwise, we are not really on the same page.

And I agree about the value of children and caring, but I can't do it all myself and pay my bills. It has been an uphill struggle to find a nursery ds likes and is settled, but I have one now. It is worth every penny, even though it costs 40% of my salary.

You don't need to justify summer, neither do SAHMs. Unfortunately some patronising pillocks think otherwise .

Summer I am not suggesting that people don't pay bills- a dependancy on the welfare state is not desirable either.

I have no desire to get rich- unlike may of the fat cats who are driving the system, as long as I can pay my way then I am happy. Whether that means supporting a husband practically and in terms of child care so he can work, or earning myself.

I worked out ways that I could earn while being at home, fitting paid work around nap times, evenings and weekends so I didn't need to use childcare or claim any benefits.

I agree, I think everyone's happiness and well-being should be prioritised over the god of economic growth; particularly as economic growth benefits the few, not the many, in our current political system.

Unfortunately, this view does not pay my bills.

And I agree about the value of children and caring, but I can't do it all myself and pay my bills. It has been an uphill struggle to find a nursery ds likes and is settled, but I have one now. It is worth every penny, even though it costs 40% of my salary.

We are all doing our best. But surely things have got to become easier for women, because I don't want my dd to feel as exhausted as I do. And I am not sure how that is achieved if we get stuck at defending our personal 'choices'