Erm, so what about it? We were older parents when we had our, my husband will retire around the time that our DC finish university, so he needs to work until then to subsidise their living expenses as they get the minimum loan. But as an older woman who has been home based for 20 years [I have run child care businesses, gone back to uni, been a volunteer and held senior roles in those organisations with significant responsibility attached] I cannot now get ‘back into work’. I worked FT until I was 36, earned enough to contribute substantially to the deposits on our family home and to ensure I have a full state pension, but my job was one that also required travel, long hours and commuting so could not be sustained with small children and no family support. We chose to let mine go and plough time, support and resources into ensuring DH’s career flew.
If you want to have a pissing contest I can match you easily - two SEN autistic children, one with suicidal ideation, self harming and on a social services safety plan, the other with safeguarding programme because of the impact of the other. I was unable to even get through a hot cup of coffee at a PTA meeting due to always being called by school to collect or resolve issues with the eldest. The eldest is a night walker and because of the safety, plan, I did not get more than 3 ours sleep a night for 9 years, and each morning I had to pull myself together to get the other to school by car safely and ensure their SEN needs were also met. As a result I was never able to hold down a job and it was only via flexible home based self-employment that I was able to generate a small income for a few years - until that same MH/SEN challenged child’s issues became so significant that I could no longer run that business. I also fostered two boys PT for 4 years during that period - a friend’s kids, as her life imploded and a difficult divorce left these boys sleeping on peoples floors for weeks on end while she travelled with her job. Unfunded as it I was supporting her and her lovely boys and - being a SAHM - could offer that to her. I have home schooled for the odd year, spent days driving both DC to and from assessment and psychotherapy sessions, speaking to my MP to get referrals expedited… I could go on.
Nearly broke me too, as it has many others. Your having a job doesn’t mean your familial experience and stresses trump mine, or that any of the many other SAHM, who are juggling complex home situations largely alone in order to ensure DH can function and keep his job, does it? Many of us would LIKE to have been able to have a FT/PT job, so to some of us you might be considered privileged to have been able to have one and a partner to share the load so you can maintain it? I know many others who have equally challenging lives, one who had to give up her business because of her own SEN children, and being the only UK based family member to deal with three aging relatives, including several of her DH’s because - like - he works FT and cannot take time of work to look after them himself.
Like I said. MN: that great and empathetic space where women unreservedly support other women knowing that all our different lives are complex, nuanced, often unsupported and that the majority of us are not sitting in David Lloyd necking lattes after pilates. Not.