To be WILD at the news at 10 wording 'mothers who chose not to work'

[NotanOtter]

who are hardest hit by benefit cut

How bloody condescending...

Nip round here any day and 'choose not to WORK' looking after my kids

But my question to Nomde is why does it happen to be the amn, your husband who earned 15x what you do? What led to that inequality and sexim and why didn't you marry someone who earned a fifteenth of what you did? Did you pick a "female" career" or did your family condition yo uinto picking work wghich would mean when you came to marry and have chilren you doule earn a lot less than am an so not surprisingly you stayed home and not him and how can you avoid that happening with your daughters so that we don't perpetuate that?

Why the hell should you be subsidised to stay at home? It wasn't the governments decision for you to have children. Let's get one thing straight about the benefit system, IT ISN'T A RIGHT OR AN ENTITLEMENT.

It is not a "trap" not to be the family breadwinner.

In previous generations women (often single women) managed to work with children whether it was taking in ironing or doing cleaning when their children are at school. This was out of necessity. Therefore I am going to be shouted down here but everybody has a choice so I see no issue with it. Hard hat now on.

Work is a fact of life for most adults.

You don't get something for nothing (unless you really are born into exceptional wealth, which in itself doesn't bring happiness, and often brings problems!)

Neither working nor being at home is a trap per se; but lack of choice is a trap.

There is a great deal of evidence to show that lack of choice is what makes people unhappy. When we have control over our lives, we tend to be happier.

I think one of the most important things we can show our children is that seeing as they are very likely to have to earn a living as an adult, it's important to try to do that in an interesting and fulfilling way, which uses your skills and talents. There may be times in one's life that one doesn't work, or works part time, or does a mundane job simply as a means to a specific end (eg a young person doing boring factory work for a year to fund travel - which will be a fulfilling experience)

I would feel I had failed as a parent if I raised my children to think that working is something to be afraid of, or to try to avoid, or to think that it's something someone else should do in order to fund their lifestyle for them.

Xenia, please explain your understanding of the word "housewife".

I find it staggering that you can speak in such absolutes regarding education and pay and ignore women who post to say they are graduates and professionals who have chosen this path (apparently because of lack of education and "conditioning" which you rose above ).

As for a "female job", well.. that's it in a nutshell isn't it. A less valuable job. Teaching is considered to be one of those female jobs these days, isn't it? Though once "the master" was well regarded as a pillar of community? I suppose my job (currently divided between research and clinical practice in a profession allied to medicine) is also a "female job" as traditionally (and perpetually) there is very little prestige attached to understanding or ammeliorating disability. I suppose it would have been better, though, from society's point of view if I had used my first class honours degree and post-grad with distinction to do something really worthwhile, like banking or flying a plane. It would have been so much more interesting, too! I feel my brain has shrivelled somewhat since undertaking such a female topic of study.. this is, of course, why I choose to do it for half the week. My ickle brain couldn't cope with much more stimulation, don't you know..

The word choice suggests that you can sit down and make your decision based solely on what you want. This is the case only for a fairly small number of families ime. That is the issue. Few people have a meaningful choice. Being a good parent means weighing everything up, both short and long term and, doing what is best for your children. Sometimes that is being a SAHM and sometimes not. Few people are going to make decision based on the long term effects for women rather than the effects on their own children.

But arses chose low paid work and NomdeP married someone who earns 12x what she does. Fully howi t's always that way round or more often than not - women marry up, older men who earn more and pick badly paid work - the nurse rather than the surgeon and they say it's free choice but is it really? Why do 4 in 5 women earn less than the man they choose? Because they think they want to be kept by a man I suppose and the director is more attractive to them than the man who sweeps the shop floor and thus they perpetuate stereotypes.

Sorry Xenia, but you are incorrect in your assumption about my choices. Again.

My salary is 40K which is higher than my husband's. He is a professional civil engineer, senior in his company. These days, that's not as valued as banking, despite the fact that without the work he and his colleagues do, no one south of Birmingham would have clean water .

Perhaps in your rarefied existence, 40K is "low paid" work, however, even still you have no argument. You perpetuate stereotypes, tiringly so. I can't understand how or why you would be well paid if you apply such false reductive reasoning in your day-to-day work.

I chose intellectually stimulating work with a practical application and am busily progressing towards an academic career in my field. I will be studying towards that this year, not spending my life wiping bottoms or ironing shirts or fancying the director because I prefer him to the man that sweeps the floor. I will also spend a significant portion of my time with my son because I believe that being a mother is an important facet of who I am as a woman. My husband will do the same, as he feels that being a father is an important facet of who he is as a man. Does that sound like what you assumed about my choices? My quibble with the status quo is that my husband was denied flexible working, so we have had to work out our domestic arrangements based on me reducing my clinical hours more than I had hoped to, inevitable in that was what was feasible financially. The world still believes a woman's place is in the home and the kitchen, yes, but the way to battle that is not to deny the importance of home and family to both sexes because that's what capitalism says must be so. At least not for someone who is not a "happy capitalist".

Your assumption that working flexibly spells a death knell to self-realisation for women everywhere is lazy and inaccurate. Yet don't let that stop you repeating the same argument with made-up facts and figures, Xenia.

'Is that a serious question ? Paying (more) people (out of the public purse) to opt out of work to to stay at home to look after their children because they WANT to and feel it is best for their kids is a ridiculous idea that is highly unlikely to fly with the tax paying electorate, imo.'

Banging my head on the desk here, NomDePlume, because you still don't seem to get it that staying home to look after children IS WORK. And everyone else chooses work that they want to do too, for work, everyone. Nobody objects to the fact that they do work that they chose or tries to use that as an excuse not to pay them, which is what your argument is.

When mothers choose to stay home and do the huge amount of work that taking care of children entails, is it not work that they choose? And how is it somehow a choice while no other work is done by choice? They are somehow the only people who have made some sort of choice as to the sort of work they do?

And their work is not work that should be paid -- why? When anyone else, childminder, nanny, cleaner, personal chef, Tesco delivery staff does the work that mothers do in the home they get paid.

'How can they possibly prefer housework cleaning and child care to a fulfilling career plus family? Why have only half of the good deal when many, indeed most, women have both?'

Xenia I feel truly sorry for you. Your patronising words are incredibly offensive to millions and millions of women. Really, it is not ok to denigrate the choices and intelligence of your fellow women like that. 'Morally pernicious' indeed -- what an idiotic assertion. Most women are run ragged, and most men too, trying to please employers, please a spouse, and take even halfway adequate care of their children because of the way the system is set up to favour employers and to actively discriminate against anyone in the workplace, men and women alike who don't have a support person at home keeping things ticking over. If anyone has been conditioned Xenia, it is you, and I truly feel sorry for you.

But math, I don't think you are defining what paid work is at all. To work at a job is to do a job that someone else wants you to carry out.

You want to look after your children and you are the one doing it. So the only person who'd be willing to pay you for that, is you.

I will only get paid if someone is willing to pay me for doing the job. It's nothign to do with whether I deserve to be paid.

'To work at a job is to do a job that someone else wants you to carry out.'

No, every job is different. People choose exactly what it is that they want to do. Not everyone can be or would want to be a brain surgeon; some choose it. Not everyone can be or would want to be a hairdresser; some choose it. And there are millions of self-employed people and independent contractors.

Everyone effectively chooses what kind of work they want to do when it comes to employment or the area they are employed in.

'Why do 4 in 5 women earn less than the man they choose?' No, Xenia, women deserve the same money most of the time for the work they do, but they are paid less (is it 80% of what a man is paid?) Automatically, most women fall into the lower earning slot, even in professional employment, than the men they work with and often end up marrying.
'What led to that inequality and sexism and why didn't you marry someone who earned a fifteenth of what you did?' Again; if most women chose men who earned so much less than what they did, they would be looking at someone getting paid very, very little indeed.

The work of women in every walk of life is grossly undervalued, and that is why there is inequality of income. And it is undervalued by people who think like you and talk like you, and denigrate other women, just as you do. This is morally pernicious, Xenia.

I don;'t know what you mean. Surgeons and hairdressers only get paid because they are doing a job that someone wants them to do.

And most people do not choose exactly what they want to work as. That's just untrue.

I agree with Unwind actually. I see SAHM as being a job and harder than any other job I've done so far. You just never get much of a break from it. If I diddn't have to worry about the cost of childcare I'd happily go back to my career but hey ho, life doesn't always work out the way you want it to..

'To work at a job is to do a job that someone else wants you to carry out.' What you say is true only insofar as there might be a manager assigning your tasks or setting the parameters of your job in general terms. And not everyone by any means works under those conditions. Each individual chooses the area they will work in. Nobody is forced at gunpoint to become a surgeon or a barrister or a cashier or a barman or a teacher. People choose. SAHMs choose and ambulance drivers choose and nurses and gardeners and refrigerator repairmen choose. Why should one choice result in no remuneration while every other choice results in a paycheque?

The answer is that the work of SAHPs is not valued or treated as work. It's a circular argument -- 'it's not work because you don't get paid' is pretzel logic.

Does society as a whole not want someone taking care of children?

If a mother (or father) having full time or even part time care and responsibility for their children, did not take care of the children in their care, what would happen? They would be removed from them by social services, because society does in fact demand and expect that minimum standards of care and attention be accorded to children by their parents.

That's Xenia getting people's backs up again it seems...

Some of us just aren't interested in earning pots of cash, we just need enough to live off and live a comfortable life with our children. Family time to me means more than a career. i can have a career until I'm 75 but I won't be able to get all the early years back with my children - it only happens once! This is from one SAHM's POV btw.

What I meant was, someone is willing to pay you money to do that job.

The state is not going to pay people to clean their houses, keep their gardens tidy, look after their children and help out elderly relatives. And no one else is willing to pay people for doing that either.

Would wohm parents be entitled to some form of government payment for caring for their children from 6pm-8am?

Why not? If they left the premises without arranging for someone else to take care of the children, and more often than not paying the babysitter, and the children were home alone, they would be considered neglectful, maybe even recklessly endangering their children's safety.

Why not? Really?

And housewives who don't realyl pull their weight at all - baby left in gym creche or in front of TV and husband gets home to loads of domestic chores shoudl the wage go to the full time earner because the housewife is a slacker? It will not happen - pay for housewives. The only time the state does pay a carer at home is I think attendance allowance so I suppose the precedent is there for that but we are tightening belts not doling out free money to people who choose to stay at home (presumably we're talking about children aged 1 - 3, not paying hosuewives to be a home during school hours)

If you would have to pay someone else to do the work that you do in your absence, then what you do should also be paid.

Xenia-- your scenario is truly silly.

Just as an aside, can you read?

So I should be paid for the clothes I iron. And the dishes I wash. And for the hoovering. And for washing my car.

No. People have to take responsibility for managing their own lives. For caring for their own children, pets, parents, houses, cars.