Justifying long term SAHM to DDs?

I agree with the others- no-one could look after my children as well as I could.

Not as far as I'm concerned, retro. I have no emotional linkage between my periods and my children.

Think sooooo carrying your dc for 9 months and having monthly hormones connected to having babies aren't going to have an impact re wanting to be with your dc in comparison to men.

Thinkaboutit, I agree but perhaps it's because of the patriarchy we live in that undervalues caring in general.

We live in a greedy thrusting male dominated society where wealth is elevated above all else. It's this construction that devalues the status of women at home looking after children.

Mine were well over 2 capsium - I didn't say that WOHP automatically stop when they go back to work.

YY to Impatient's last post- with bells on.

...and when I had my DC the maternity leave was not a full year then....

My feeling is that we as women have a greater biological imperative than men do to be primary carers

I'd be interested to see any research on this as it sounds right intuitively but I'm not sure how much this impression is actually shaped by the gender bias in society.

The trouble is that it sounds horribly close to 'a woman's place is in the home'

Handcream as far as I'm concerned nobody could look after my dc as well as I could(aside from dp and my mum).

MrsCripps I do not consider nearly 2 EBF. Just speaking from personal experiences. My child breast fed well, weaning took a while...

So few women EBF in the Uk so Im not sure why its being used as a reason to SAH.
A years maternity leave plus annual leave on top means that very few women return to work with tiny babies BF anymore ( unless some posters are in US)

Why would care outside the home be sub-standard?

I always thought being a SAHP was a valid role.

It is a very valid role. Children will only be children once so you only get one chance to raise them successfully. Some people choose to work whilst raising their children whilst others choose to have a SAHP and either is fine as long as the children are happy and thriving. But for me, I can provide better care than anybody else so why would I choose to mess up this one chance by working outside of the home and accepting substandard care for my children?
I dont know why some people don't see SAHP as a valid role because I personally don't think there is a more valid role.

Thanks for suggesting the Fawcett Society.i looked at the response to the chancellor's 2013 budget. The stats are pretty shocking for women.

On one hand the government does not provide jobs nor childcare, on the other it reduces welfare entitlements.

*“Ahead of this budget, Fawcett was clear we urgently needed to see much greater action on the 25 year high in women’s unemployment – 1.08 million women can’t find work. This can be attributed in large part to dramatic public spending cuts that are also seeing women bear 74 per cent of the cost to reductions in welfare support.

• See more at: www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/the-fawcett-societys-immediate-response-to-the-chancellors-2013-budget-statement/#sthash.tx2io2Cq.dpuf*

I think you are right Capsium. Staying at home was a very instinctive choice. I could have gone bacK to work,( told my boss I would be off just 6 weeks), my OH could have been a SAHD, but when my baby came I had a deep burning desire to nurture myself.
Nothing else would have felt right. It didn't in the end come down to practicalities, although we had to make changes to allow that to happen.

Capsicum - perhaps that is right as I have a vocational degree and could easily switch roles with my husband and earn just as much as him but I am happy in the SAHM role and don't think that anybody else could provide the full time care role as well as I do. I would constantly be questioning the ability of anybody else to fill my current role. I am motivated to provide the main care for my children so: off to work my husband must go.

Impatient I think sometimes when you feel strongly motivated in a particular direction the choice element seems so obvious it does not seem like a real choice, IYSWIM. Like would you choose to rescue your child from a burning building? Choice can be there but we act almost instinctively sometimes...(i say almost because I believe a lot goes into instinct...)

My feeling is that we as women have a greater biological imperative than men do to be primary carers.
we repeatedly in all types of families, all over the world, tribal families, extended familes, nuclear families. Even all higher primates will have a female as the primary caregiver.
I'm not saying that men can't or shouldn't but I think the ideas are even bigger than just society or culture.

I'm a SAHM and I made the choice for my husband to go to work so that I could be the one who stays home. He would happily stay home and be a SAHD whilst I went out to work but I'm not having any of that. I'm a better cook and a better educator for a start......
I don't know why people think that women have no choice in the matter of being a SAHM or not.

Think but men don't carry babies,put their bodies through shit,bf etc.We have different hormones. Yes I wanted my dc to have a parent at home but I desperately wanted to be the one doing it.Dp didn't have the same urge although he would have done it- he offered.

I do know some sahm who used childcare(nursery)- loaded ones.

Is pre-school childcare as all sahp round here use that thanks to the free hours?A few hours of pre- school in the run up to school is important.

In which Scandinavian country are men more likely than women to have primary caring responsibilities?

As far as I was aware from UN reporting, women do most of the primary caring in every country in the world.

DaVinci, but that is exactly the same problem that parents with young children have! Yes, some of them can combine caring responsibilities with working in IT, business, technology etc, and some can't or don't want to.

So more people would be able to have a career and financial security if we attempted to increase equality by breaking down unnecessary barriers for both working mothers of young children and for former SAHMs re-entering the work force. There will still be some individuals who can't progress in work either while young with kids, or while older without but by tackling both barriers for women we'd increase women's financial security.

I don't see the point in trying to push everyone into working when they have young kids. It just doesn't work for a lot of people and not everyone wants to do it.

Also, realistically, a woman who has kids in her twenties and is then a SAHM will re-enter the work force in her thirties or early forties, not her fifties. I was just using 50-70 to respond to a previous poster who mentioned those ages.

^I also breast fed until my DC was nearly 2, couldn't express very well and my DC would only really take milk form an (expensive) Haberman feeding bottle if I did. So this part was also easier to manage, not feeling pressured to returning to work.

I have a friend whose DP isn't working and hasn't been for nearly 2 years. They still have childcare because he can't even conceive of the idea that he would look after his child all day. And no one (but me) thinks this is odd.

If it had been a woman the segue into being a SAHM would have been inevitable.

DaVinci The choice was partly economical, my DH has always earnt more than me. His profession is more lucrative than mine.

Although this was partly my choice. I chose to study what I did, accept the posts I did, including to be a SAHM. What can I say? I wanted to be the primary carer for my child. I could have perhaps pushed for different things but I didn't feel motivated to, I always thought being a SAHP was a valid role.