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

YANBU. Not an acceptable or accurate turn of phrase.

Somebody needs to look after pre-school children all day, and the obvious person to do that in the absence of a willing retired relative is one or other parent. Why a parent doing their parental duty needs to be labelled as choosing not to do paid work is beyond me!

When we started a family I stopped working and we lived on DHs wages about 16k (no benefits other then family allowance)

I did not see the point in having children then paying someone else to raise them.

As they got older I went to work part time, fitting it round school.

I am very lucky, and I am thankful for this.

I have to say though that being a SAHM is as exhausting as going out to work, also just because someone has a paid job does not mean at 5.30 thier working day is done, I still have washing, housework, lunches to make, dinners to cook.

I think all the bitching about SAHM/WOHM is from people who feel guilty about their choices or envy the choices of others

I made the choice to be a SAHM because I love being with my children and couldn't bear to leave them in a nursery or with a childminder. We did all the usual calculations, and yes, for me it was worth going back to work, albeit 3 days for the extra £1k it would have brought in, but we decided to make some sacrifices in order for me to stay home. My husband picks up the tab - not sure what Cupcake's issues are!?

I'm just feeling that the fact we have put our families first is not valued.

To return to the OPs original post, I don't have an issue with the wording.

Surely "mothers who do not earn" would be more accurate.

When every workplace gives parents access to a good quality creche, on site or nearby, for a nominal charge THEN and only then could a parent that stays at home be said to be making a legitimate choice.

If all parents wanted to work and claimed unemployment benefit, I wonder what the bill would be? Afterall there are not enough jobs as it is.

Or alternatively there were state-funded nursery places in small local nurseries for 100% of children...

Precisely. I'm not sure where all these paid jobs are that SAHPs are supposedly choosing not to do! (I'm a WOHM btw and currently on maternity leave - my DH is a SAHD).

I suppose in that case Bonsoir, it comes down to a decision that we have to make as a society. Are our babies/young children to be looked after as a matter of course by their families or by the state?

I agree.

And I just think that the "economics of the second earner" in a couple with children are just not the same as the economics of the higher earner.

If a second earner deducts all the costs associated with his/her job (transport, lunches out, childcare, holiday playschemes, cleaner etc) and is barely making a profit from working, and then you factor in the additional stress of both parents working outside the home and the fact that your DC spend much less time with a parent, the economics are ghastly for loads of families...

I shudder whenever I read or hear anyone suggesting that their ought to be FT state-funded nursery places for all babies/toddlers - a suggestion you often hear in France.

Kibbutzim that raised children apart from their parents were not a success.

I think the right phrase would have been 'stay at home parents' perhaps?

Cupcake I'm putting your totally uncalled for outburst down to pregnancy hormones How are you picking up the tab for all us SAHMs exactly?

I don't think full time raising of children apart from their parents is envisaged by people advocating free FT nursery care; it's not a case of making people hand over their babies.

At the moment there are plenty of nurseries that you have to pay for even though you might be barely able to afford them; in the US there are nurseries that are open 24 hours (again, you have to pay). People who need them use them if they can afford them, but it's clear that more would use them if the prices were more affordable, and nothing is as affordable as free.

YADNBU. It's a statement from someone who has no idea what the reality can be like. A day at ours would probably leave them a quivering wreck.

No, I agree. But when it is mooted in conjunction with comments about parents that choose not to work it starts to sound very different. There should be no compulsion, real or implied, for parents to put their children in nursery purely in order to undertake paid work for the good of society. Yet some people, including the government, appear to advocate this.

'If I am brutally honest, I don't think that families in which both parents work FT always manage to maintain great domestic standards'

What utter nonsense. My house is sparkling. If you look at the Flylady threads, it actually does seem full of sahps. Which is ironic, actually.

It's much easier to keep a clean house when no one's at home all day.

Not in my own experience . And by "domestic standards" I don't just mean cleanliness - it's really easy to find a cleaner!

Domestic standards are all down to priorities, well except for me I have domestic dyslexia and am lazy cannot tidy, my two friends with the tidiest houses are not both SAHMs, one is though! I put off housework so not to ignore mumsnet the dcs!

Runawaywife I'm sure this has been used elsewhere but I'm picking on you because your post stands out, I find the phrase "paying someone else to raise my children" profoundly insulting. In fact I think it is much more offensive than pointing out that SAHP's don't "work". I hate the way that even inadvertantly implying that SAH parenting isn't "work" will get you ripped apart, yet it is apparently fine to take the moral high ground over WOH parents.

I'm not expressing this very well because I'm so cross.

It's not just about being clean (really easy to subcontract) and tidy (a bit harder but manageable). It's about keeping on top of routine maintenance, refreshing your decorations regularly, entertaining and having people to stay often and all the things that make a home a living, breathing, hive of life and pleasure rather than a dormitory.

Bonsoir i think I love you

Just for the record i think the news reader said 'chose' npt 'choose' I was incensed so repeated the line in my head whilst silently boiling!

I'm sorry but my earlier outburst of course related to those stay at home mothers who are able to choose not to work as they are on benefits - a choice I'm afraid many of us don't have. I believe that what the news piece the op related to? Benefit cuts and who will be hardest hit? It was also slightly to do with pregnancy hormones...

I still think it's not ok to classify the payments these mothers receive as 'benefits'. How come everyone else except a mother can make money out of taking care of her children?