to think that many SAHMs/part-time workers would have chosen differently with the benefit of hindsight?

[working9while5]

Just a thought, have come across this on another forum and wondering how it applies to me.

I have just the one dc. Originally, I was desperate to be a SAHM but grudgingly decided to go back p/t but cut it back to the bare, bare minimum (2 days a week).

A few months down the line, if I am honest I am wondering how much my decision was framed by having a small, non-mobile baby and enjoying lunches with friends and Summer walks. As the hormones/baby shock wears off, I do wonder why I am not going back to work 3 or even 4 days.. and if my thinking was very short-term.

Unfortunately, I effectively "gave away" the bulk of my permanent, public sector job and there is a job freeze in my area. So, my (hormonally-driven? rose-tinted?) decision, while not final, is not so easy to go back on. I am studying for a postgrad too, so it's not the end of the world.. but it has made me think.

I wondered what mothers who are much further down the line think with the benefit of hindsight? Was that initial decision the right one for you, or was it influenced by newbabyitis?

I too am grateful for that in the school where I work, as well as in my children's!

It is utopian because it ignores economic realities that employers face in a competitive and increasingly global marketplace. It would involve dismantling the current structure which is one which has developed over centuries and works, for better or worse.

Give me concrete ideas, because frankly I lack imagination. Attacking words achieves nothing, just hot air.

moral, psst, you don't want to move to France ... take my word.

I know nothing of any education system! Even our own... apart from my own childs school of course.

Crikey . How did you choose where to send your DC to school?!

Choose...? are you mad?

I read the ofsted reports of the nearest schools, applied for the best one.. and then got given the nearest one.. as did every other parent i know.

Well then you should come to live in Paris where you can either do nothing and get allocated your local school, or apply to state-funded private schools (attended by over 1/3 of the population) and choose! For a few hundred euros a year...

Maybe I will!

"It would involve dismantling the current structure which is one which has developed over centuries and works..."

Yep, it would. That's the general idea.

But as to saying it works - do you really think that squandering the talents, training and skills of nearly half the workforce, and having a situation where most women are poorer than most men, is a system which works?

I think we see the term "works" rather differently, blueshoes. I don't think it works - this thread is testament to that. If it worked, being a SAHP for a few years would be no big deal.

HerB, you are preaching to the converted. I don't disagree with the principle (it is to my benefit after all). I just disagree that it is a viable alternative.

I want like to know what you consider a workable alternative ie take it to beyond the talking and rhetoric to actual thumbtacks.

I think you start with education. Too many girls grow up thinking their job is to service men and too many boys grow up with a sense of entitlement that they should be serviced. It's all too easy to fall into the stereotype trap years down the line where it just makes sense for a woman to give up her career, because she's already earnign less than the man.

Women ahve got to feel more of a sense of entitlement IMO - whoever it was further down the thread who said women ought to insist on their DH's paying them a proper wage for being SAHMs was right, and they should also insist that they have the same amount of leisure time, so taht paid work isn't the easy option with the opt out of cleaning it up your own shit at home, that it for far too many men at the moment.

Also in a world where both men and women are properly educated that women's lives are as important as those of men, it would be unthinkable that giving up your financial security and social status, was a no-brainer - so women's work would be considered as important as that of men, whether it was lower paid or not, because women are as important as men. And if paid paternity leave was the norm, women of child-bearing age would be no less attractive an employment proposition than all men, so it would be far less likely that that pay gap existed in the first place.

That's a start off the top of my head.

HerBeatitude - but why assume that women derive social status from their job, and that by giving up work to SAHM (or go part time) they lose social status? I don't think that is necessarily true at all.

Status symbols are not the same for everyone.

Oh and I also think that on divorce, a working partner should have to pay a percentage of their income and earnings to the party who stayed at home (if there is one), in recognition that their service enabled the career of the WOH partner to soar at the expense of that of the party at home. It would focus an awful lot of men's minds on the value of child-rearing, if they had to genuinely pay for it either at the time or afterwards. And it would also make them more willing to take paid paternity leave, because then the compensation payments would equal out.

Bonsoir if the work was properly recognised, it would have more status.

In a capitalist economy, the way we show someone's status, is generally with money.

There is much, much more to social status than money, HerBeatitude. Achievements do not all have a monetary component but enhance social status very greatly indeed.

I derive my social status from being a SAHM. I am proud to be a SAHM and personally I think it is the most valuable and important job there could possibly be. There is no job or salary that I could be offered that would make me reconsider this, neither would I go back to work unless it was absolutely neccessary and unavoidable.

I derive my social status from being me . I find job titles rather undermining of my own self!

I think my social status increased when I was a SAHM actually. But then stayed up when I went back to work. It's a complex thing, status.

No you don't Bonsoir. Otherwise it wouldn't be social. You are, of course, a contributor.

I absolutely do, TheFallenMadonna .

Hmm. I disagree. But I suspect we would be arguing in circles.

I'm not sure on what basis you could possibly disagree with the way I feel about myself aged 44, given that you don't know me at all .

Some people derive social status from things that are external to themselves (and that may therefore be removed at some point - so fairly fragile). And others derive social status from things that are internal to themselves - which are a lot harder to undo, bar illness/age-related decline.

Much of the argument is to do with semantics anyway. Being a parent is where many people derive fulfilment, happiness and status from. It is certainly the most important thing in my life, but I would never ever consider it a 'job', not when I was at home all day, or when i've been in paid employment. And of course many people also derive fulfilment and status from many other things, friendship circles, hobbies, career

But isn't that the point? Social status isn't just about how you feel about yourself. It's about how others feel about, or rather perceive you. I'm not talking about social identity.

HerB, I agree we should educate our sons and daughters to value the role that women and mothers play and for women to demand better treatment for themselves.

I just wonder why if women felt a sense of entitlement, they did not just go out and earn the means of independence themselves instead of relying on the goodwill of the man in their life to be kind and fair to them. To opt out of the working world is to deny young women coming up through the pipeline a role model of combining work and family life. It will never be as good as doing it yourself.

But changing attitudes is a must, I agree.

I would be interested to know the workable alternative to the modern capitalist economy, that would easily absorbs women who have taken time out.