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?

No I don't think so. If there is a discrepancy between the perception others have of your status and the status you accord yourself, you will feel very uncomfortable.

Fair enough. Obviously I don't know you, and as you rightly said, I can't really know what is going on in your head. I know what you put on here though. And from that I would say you are being a bit disingenuous separating your self from your material trappings. I would absolutely agree that you derive an enormous part of your identity from your family role. And the fact that you no longer have the same career as you did before you had your DD.

FWIW, I would agree with TFM that social status by definition is how you are perceived by society, the world at large. Each person would of course have their own perception of what social status they occupy but that does not change the fact that social status is an externally conferred value.

In other words, you cannot accord yourself social status. It is very possible for one's perception of their social status to be out of sync with the external reality.

The good news is that social status is relative, kingdom of the blind and all that.

Hmm, I agree with thefallenmadonna, social status is how other people see you. And SAHMs aren't generally accorded social status unless their husbands are v. rich and their status is derived from the fact that as a couple, they have so much money they don't need to work. (And as Sakura pointed out on a thread recently, having a SAHM wife gives men a massive amount of social status).

For most SAHMs though, it's not that they don't need to work, it's that either it doesn't really make economic sense for the family when you factor in the stress of working with young children, or that they really don't want to go back to work because they believe that the best thing for their family is for one of the parents to stay home with the kids. People pay lip service to the validity of that idea, they pretend that they believe that bringing up children is the most important thing in the world, but they don't really believe it; they actually think tht working out how to make yoghurt taste of strawberries is more important, or manufacturing new rivets for cars or something. If everyone agreed that bringing up childern were important, we would pay a proper rate of child benefit whcih compensated child-rearers for their loss of earnings in the cash economy.

HerB: "If everyone agreed that bringing up childern were important, we would pay a proper rate of child benefit whcih compensated child-rearers for their loss of earnings in the cash economy."

I totally disagree with your comment if you mean for child benefit to be a living wage. There is a separate thread on this in active convos on this very issue.

Me too. Have posted on that thread in fact.

Oh god don't direct me to another thread, Downton Abbey is on.

"Social status" - that's where you think you are in a pecking order presumably. Some people who aren't on the dole but are very low social status and working class might think they're quite elevated. Police might think so (they are usually though fairly working class). you get headmasters with very strong acccents who have come from nothing to run a school and good luck to them who think their social status is high but it isn't.

Then you get some people who think they are dreadful and those who think they are more elevated than they are. It's all just a game.

In some cultures even in the UK having a non working wife, particularly one who earned huge amounts, got a first from Oxbridge etc and gave it all up to iron your socks is a greater status symbol than the thick pretty ex model wife. In others having a high earning successful wife is a status symbol and ditto of husbands presumably.

In Muslim cultures the ability to pay and keep 4 wives and 4 families and perhaps 40 chidlren for life is a status symbol and many men can only afford 1 wife. Wife as currency, woman as chattel, woman who comes with dowry (illegal in India but hugely prevalent) is not uncommon. Indeed earning power of both woman and man in some Indian match making - do they have an MBA, is she a dentist etc is part of the currency of negotiation of who ends up with whom.

Indeed, Xenia - there was a family at my DD's school a few years ago where the DH was on his third wife, who had produced his 25th, 26th and 27th DCs. The family paraded around a lot, laden down with designer clothing and accessories, chauffeurs, bodyguards, nannies etc. But no-one paid much attention and the family moved the DCs to another school where I suspect that the status that the family accorded itself was very much more in tune with the status the school population accorded it!