What's wrong with being a SAHM?

But you have a CONTRACT at work...there is HR/unions, legal recourse and the option to CHANGE employer

Not so at home, with your husband

I get that you want to be a different Mam than yours was, but perhaps it wasn't the working that made your relationship with her suffer.

Jen, equally I don't think the working full time did much to liberate her, either. She worked a full day at work and then came home to do all the hard work in the evenings too!

What was wrong here was that she was in an unequal relationship. Perhaps unintentionally, as her husband might have been socialised to be a bit clueless regarding what needed to be done. Or perhaps he just ignored signs she was getting frustrated and exhausted. Tackling oppression in the home can be just as important as in the workplace.

This is the thing. Family can be oppressive or liberating. Work can be oppressive or liberating.

Fantastic post, Jen. 💜

My mother was never at home. She worked all the time! And when she wasn't working she was nagging and cleaning. We have never had a good relationship and I'm terrified of that happening with me and my children.

This paragraph jumped out at me. I'm really not hot good with words so if I sound like I'm being a twat let me know because it really isn't my intention. I've also only read the first 250 posts so it might be irrelevant anyway.

That post has made me think of my two nieces and I'm worried they will feel the same about my sister, they could say the same, that their dad stays at home, that he's the best, that Mam is always at work, and then spends all her time nagging and cleaning.

Bil spends all his time being a child himself, which is great, but his wife and children need more than that from him, he needs to do more than just play with them, he needs to the caring, the cleaning, the learning, the hard parts. My sister comes from working very long hours in a physical mini am wage job and would love nothing more than to sit with the children and play like their Dad has done all day. She can't though as she starts nagging asking for help to clean the kitchen so that she can cook dinner for them, kitchen still has breakfast dishes from when she got the children dressed and fed before taking them to school and going to work. The children want to play with her and sister looks like the cunt for genuinely tting them to pitch in.

I can see how my nieces could end up seeing my sister the same way as you do your Mum, and she does feel like shit for working the hours she does, but she's stuck and is often annoyed at how easy bil claims being sahp is and makes out my sister just shouldn't have struggled when it was other way round, when she did everything in the day despite having two small dc at home, he decides he'd like to switch roles once youngest is in school and he does none if the hard boring stuff. Of course he's finding it easy, be is in house in his own while dds are at school and is he meal planning, shopping, laundry, cleaning and all the other shit that she had to do? Nope. The saddest part is that much of her community think she shouldn't expect him fit housework in, but when roles were reversed she would be called a shit Mum and a shit wife if he had to come home and badger people to help him clean the mess that they had no part in making.. he takes his kids to the park once in a blue moon and he is star for letting his wife work and looking after the dc for her.

I get that you want to be a different Mam than yours was, but perhaps it wasn't the working that made your relationship with her suffer.

'A woman can be oppressed in the workplace, just as she can at home. Tackling that oppression is the feminist choice.'

That sums up the issue for me.

Also, some women don't really want kids or a career. They just want a job that pays enough for them to live an average standard of living and enjoy themselves. That seems like a great choice to me, and a feminist one - being a role model that is totally okay for women to just please themselves and not have to justify their existence by working their arse off for anyone or anything else.

We should be teaching our children to be whoever they want to be, doing what they enjoy best whether male or female.
Surely distinguishing between the two just upholds the theory that somehow women should be different.

My own dd at 13 has decided she isn't having dc, she said her career is too important to her.
She may change her mind, she might not, I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't though.
Sometimes girls know what they want from a very early age, the problem is getting society to encourage them not tell them what they should want.

Should we teach girls to aspire to be mothers who stay at home then, not to careers? This may not go down too well seeing as I don't know any girls who aren't already keenly planning future careers, myself included. You enjoy your situation, don't suggest the opportunity to have a great career and being free to pursue one is "detrimental to women's rights".

What do you think I did for the preceding decade after University and before children?

I am suggesting that telling women they MUST have a career AND raise their children at the same time, is actually forcing them to compromise. Raising children is bloody hard work, it's as hard as forging a good career. I've chosen to do one at a time. Being encourage to be great at both, at the same time, would probably break me. I'm suggesting that 'having it all' is actually down playing a woman's role, because it makes it sound as if raising children or having a career alone are not enough.

It's interesting that it's so difficult even to find the right language to talk about this. Yes, I prioritise looking after my children instead of going to work. This was because at the time I made the decision it made more practical and financial sense to do. Had I prioritised going out to work I would have been worse off financially and emotionally (because due to various circumstances I would've ended up being responsible for everything at home anyway).

I suppose that was not a feminist decision, but I'm not sure, given where I was at that point, what a feminist decision would've been. Had Emmeline Pankhurst's ghost been sitting on my shoulder telling me what the feminist decision was at every decision point in my life I may have found myself in a different position at that point - one where it didn't make more practical sense to give up work.

My view is that it's better for someone to be around full-time for the kids at some point in their childhood, that this should be valued by society, and ideally that it can happen without that parent's career trajectory being affected.

That does not mean I'm slagging off parents who have always worked full time. I acknowledge I am not perfect just as others are not. What we need is to work towards a solution that works for people's real-life practical situations and that doesn't put women at a marked disadvantage in their career and financial situations. That's just a hangover from when it was only women's jobs to serve men.

Thank you LastGirl - I love reading your posts which are always excellent! I have a long way to go and have other women to thank for anything I'm able to do in future!

Nolove

Of course they are, I didn't say any different.
I work pt myself now
You just seemed to jump on my answer to a question and made your own mind up.
We all have different priorities to raising children and meeting their needs.
I really believe my dc would have missed out on so much had I been employed, when they needed me. I'm not suggesting that others would be like this or feel like this. Situations vary, obviously.
I'm sure there are parents who if they didn't work couldn't feed their dc, obviously they are putting their kids first.

NoLove, I just want you to know that I love your passion for women!!! I wish I was as dedicated!! Thank you!!❤️❤️

You are obsessed with attempting to pick holes in everything I post, it's quite odd.

Really, I'm not NoLove. However implying feminism is what has allowed women the opportunity to work is inaccurate. It minimises the paid and unpaid work women have done before the feminist movement. It suggests employment is the place that is the pinnacle of feminism - when there is still so much to be done in the workplace and outside of it.

Not that you necessarily meant the above when you posted, but what you said comes loaded with implicit meaning.

Women have never not worked! Feminism hasn't given us work. It has allowed us more control over it and the profits from it, NoLove.

You are obsessed with attempting to pick holes in everything I post, it's quite odd.

Ok, I'll write slowly so you might both understand.

You can be as patronising as you like but you stated "it's the decision we made" about putting your children first. If this isn't meant to suggest parents who work don't put their children first, presumably you agree parents who work are putting their children first as well.

Other than any woman who works having that opportunity thanks to feminism I don't 

Women have never not worked! Feminism hasn't given us work. It has allowed us more control over it and the profits from it, NoLove.

This does rather imply that working mothers aren't putting their children's needs first.

FFs there's two of them now. It's like a Doris Stoke reunion.

Ok, I'll write slowly so you might both understand.
I have prioritised my dc by not working.
It enabled me to offer them far more choices than had I been employed as they needed a grown up to be with them for them to pursue their activities.
I don't think any employer would be happy me saying I can't come in tomorrow or indeed next tuesday etc as I need to be in x place with one of the dc.
Never have I implied, thought etc that I was a better parent because of it, except of course to my own dc.
We all have different priorities when it comes to our families and when asked about prioritising children and not working, up thread, I answered as obviously I have experience of this.
I hope this clears up any misunderstanding of implications.

How do you think whether your parents put your needs first, or not, relates to feminism, NoLove?

Other than any woman who works having that opportunity thanks to feminism I don't

How do you think whether your parents put your needs first, or not, relates to feminism, NoLove?

Personally I've nothing, ideologically, against working mothers or fathers, for that matter. I just don't think choosing to work, implicitly, is a more feminist choice than not working.

A woman can be oppressed in the workplace, just as she can at home. Tackling that oppression is the feminist choice. Tackling oppression can take a variety of guises. I don't think simply advising a woman not to be a SAHM, in ominous tones, is necessarily the best way to do this. It is not a foregone conclusion that she will be more exploited and oppressed in the home than in the workplace.

Just because I am a SAHM does not mean I do nothing to tackle the oppression patriarchy causes.

As both my parents work full time, are neither of them putting my needs first or only one of them and, if the latter, which one? Just so I know which one to harangue for being so selfish.

This was the question you asked? Harangue either of them, both of them, or neither one. As you think fit. You are, after all, uniquely placed to judge.

I also expect if I'd been posting about how great my mother was because she didn't work you'd be posting about how excellent this was.

I meant putting their needs first, something I couldn't have done if working.

This does rather imply that working mothers aren't putting their children's needs first.

And actually, I'm not sure that putting the children first is necessarily the best thing. We endeavour to balance out the needs of our family unit. I'd be a deeply unhappy SAHM. I have no idea if my children would be happier but I'd be miserable.

I think someone who doesn't care if someone's parents have been awful just because they don't know them is clearly quite an unpleasant person, though.

No. Just honest. Entirely neutral. Don't know you, don't know your parents. Not my place to judge and nor should it be. If you're happy that's great. If you're not, then take it up with whomsoever you view to be at fault.

What a bizarre post. The final sentence is so odd it made me laugh.

Well, that's clearly pretty unpleasant, but ah well

No. Just honest. Entirely neutral. Don't know you, don't know your parents. Not my place to judge and nor should it be. If you're happy that's great. If you're not, then take it up with whomsoever you view to be at fault.