Bored by full-time motherhood

[boredtodeath]

I was made redundant last year after 12 years in a very demanding job. I decided to view it as a positive thing (I got a decent redundancy package so was not in financial dire straits) and throw myself into finally having time to be with my children aged 6 and 2. The only trouble is that I am unspeakably bored. Has anyone else felt this way or am I just a horrible mother? I adore them both but I feel like the household maid rather than the Mary Poppins-esque woman I had hoped to be. Where am I going wrong? Is there anyone out there who feels the same?

ChristinedePizan, children need to feel that they are loved and valued. It is unbelievably hard, laborious work running a home. Often thankless. And yes, at times, boring. Any intelligent woman would find menial chores boring. But unless you're depressed (and therefore need help and support, obviously), feeling a little bored at times is a small price to pay for ensuring that your children have the optimum love and attention they deserve.

God - I would HATE it. I've been part-time/3days for 5 years and on my day off I just feel like a skivvy and I am so so so wound up by tea-time - much moreso than a day in work (a demanding secondary school!).

Why do so many posts here assume that full time with the mother is always the best thing for the children? Why are we so reluctant to accept that a professional child carer might actually be better at some things than us?

To me, having a nanny in the day, and my mum in the evenings and weekends was in many ways the best of both worlds. My mum was always wonderful at talking about feelings and helping with homework. But she was not so good at silly games and making stuff (not bad but not a natural). My nanny was great at that. So I got to play silly games during the day and have cuddles and long chats with my mum in the evening. It was great. More variety than if she'd been a SAHM.

(not to mention, of course, the financial benefits to the family of her working).

Xenia, I have to take issue with your sweeping generalisations- 'most' women prefer full time working? Do you have statistics to back this up or are you basing this on your own experience as a WOHM mixing with other WOHMs?

Xenia, I have to take issue with your sweeping generalisations- 'most' women prefer full time working? Do you have statistics to back this up or are you basing this on your own experience as a WOHM mixing with other WOHMs?

Well I think, without making huge irrational generalisations. That intelligent women are able to work out for themselves what works best for them. No one should feel that they are a bad mother for feeling a bit listless occasionally, that just makes you human. Signing off:)

I dislike the implication on some of these comments that being a SAHM is a guarantee of a child feeling loved and valued. My parents both worked fulltime but I came from a happy home and knew that I was loved and treasured by them both. My DD also feels loved and valued and she's a happy little thing.

I would agree with NormanTebbit'sresearch. It's the absolute pressure isn't it? Motherhood has transmogrified into something almost unobtainable. We are supposed to be everything, absolutly eveything - and if it doesn't work out it's all going to be our fault!

And you are right BsshBossh - it's certainly no guarantee of pure eternal happiness - mum/dad needs to be happy for everyone to be so. So many people are so happy doing it, but again, some are just not. I always say it with everything - there is never black and white, but various shades of gray.

Xenia - you are also right. Women through the ages have always focused on work and fettered childcare out to others. Look at animals - we probably are the only species on the planet who spend so long solely looking after our children. Others rely on family groups or punt them out when they hit around a year or two.

Too much societal pressure to be everything to everybody all the time.

I don't think that it is a guarantee that a child feels loved and valued or that anyone sensible person thinks it is a guarantee - but obviously the women posting on here about being a SAHM feel passionate about their role / decision to be a SAHM as do those Mums who work feel their choice is the right one for them and their family.

They also believe they are good at what they do and see the benefits of it- I think that they should be valued for it! After all they do the job that working parents pay someone else £40ish a day to do!

But back to the OP I think being a SAHM can be a bit boring and it is hard work. Stay at home children create a lot of mess and it is your job and not someone elses job to clean up after them!

I reward myself with the knowledge that I am doing a great job with my kids and if I am happy in my role and we can afford for me to not work it is so much better than putting them in childcare for us to buy pointless crap we don't need - lifes to short!

Obviously not everyone can afford to and not everyone wants to. Each to their own. If you are bored by it do something to get you out / use your brain. I volunteer in a school and I make celebration cakes for people and I am currently on a childminding course with a view to offering my services to other peoples kids - no time for boredom with a house packed full of kids!

I think the real problem is that we think about it all too much!

What a great thread.
Ive recently gone from being a full time researcher at a university to being a sahm. When you're used to getting everything done as quickly as possible it takes time to adjust to how slowly things happen at home. To ease the boredom I do cleaning when ds is asleep, that way I can listen to the radio or TED talks (google it, it'll blow your mind), or I ring someone with the portable phone in one hand while cleaning the loo with the other. I had to adjust my perspective, being a sahm gives me the opportunity to learn about things so I can teach my son. He's always asking me things i dont know the answer to. I also never say no to an invitation, so I go out a couple of times a week to see friends. Even if that means it's only for an hour or so. Even so, some days I find myself staring into space like a cat in a litter tray wondering if I can really do this long term.
Excellent post btw threelittleducks. I often wonder if the next generation of women will choose not to have children. I once read that having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face, you've got to be pretty sure you want one in the first place. It's such a taboo but clearly, deep down, some women are left wondering if they made the right decision. I know if my mum could have her time again she wouldn't have kids and she had four!!

normant - that makes sense to me.

If we look at previous generations, women who stayed at home didn't have time to parent intensely.
They often had more children.
They didn't have labour saving devices.
They had to shop daily.
There was no fast or pre prepared food.

It was bloody hard graft.

Great thread. The sort of thing Mumsnet does best.

I was a SAHM for four years and nearly went nuts but also feel very lucky to have been able to nurture my little boy during his early years myself.

Now am working four days per week and feel unbelievably lucky to have found work in this economic climate after having taken time out. It frightens me to think about being at home full-time again actually. I very much hope to be able to work to retirement now, health permitting.

I relate to so much of what's been said on this thread - thank you for sharing your experiences.

I went on a Child Development course yesterday and learnt that in the 1700 babies were bound and hung on peg - obviously their mothers were busy working somewhere - can you imagine? And in Victorian time babies were put in baby farms where they were often drugged to keep them quiet! So I don't think we have anything to feel guilty about wether we send our kids to a childcare setting or stay at home!

My granny had 9 and the older ones looked after the younger ones I often wonder how she coped. I think the children had to help out a lot more with the chores too. and whilst she was working had to entertain themselves with very little!

I think that society in general puts more emphasis on developing children to reach their potential - particularly in their early years and there are 100's of parenting books that tell you how to get the best from them. So it is only natural that educated Mum's see this and try to copy this with their own children.

The idea of your child having the best of everything or being the best at everything is not limited to SAHM's though. One of my friends who works full time is a very intense parent - Daughter has been to all the attractions you can think of, and has lots of activities planned for her to do after school. My friend once remarked 'You want your child to be the best, don't you' - I thought but didn't say - 'well actually I want mine to be happy!'
I have a more relaxed parenting style which doesn't involve spending lots of money on attractions or activities and both of our children are doing great at school.

It is a great thread!

Sorry haven't been able to log on all day. Tortoise, don't want to sound arse-licking , but you are one of my favourite posters! (I don't have a stalkery list btw, you've just really stood out to me in posts of yours I've noticed) You're right, it is worrying when you contemplate getting back into the workforce after a few years off as a SAHM. It shouldn't be that way, I mean if you go back to work in your late 30s that gives you 25 years or so to work. That's a long time! Why should 5 years or so out make such a big difference to our careers and salaries? Modern society is so unfair in this respect imo. I'm a self-employed translator when I'm working and I really hope to be able to build up clients again and will do my damnedest when the time comes again.

Fiddledee - re the head space, I guess it's maybe the ages of my dds that give me this - dd2 is 9 months old and I find myself deep in thought about all sorts of things while breastfeeding her to sleep for her naps or at night. My 3 year old dd1 plays well by herself, thank the lord! So I also daydream while doing the dishes or cooking. She also still naps, which helps! I'm VERY lucky to be able to go swimming twice a week and I mull stuff over then too. When I work I do very long hours and my head is just full of work-related language all day.

inanna I identified with your earlier post re the feeling of freedom too. Living at the edge of a wood sounds lovely! I do my yoga at 9pm too! And I have a messy house - visitors and inhabitants alike are always in danger of breaking their neck at any time on a toy! Have you read Buddhism for Mothers of Young Children? I loved it, and loved the idea of a chapter on Zen approach to housework!

Xenia I agree with a lot of your views but not others, and I respect your position on women and work. Your camping experience sounds lovely! I want to get back to work part-time as soon as my dds are at school and full-time a couple of years later, that's the plan anyway, and I do agree with what you say about women giving up their lives for their children only to find themselves with no career or life of their own to get back to when their kids grow up. I think these are extremes though, and also choices, i.e. work full-time from when your dc are still babies or become a mummy martyr and give up your life and hobbies completely. It doesn't have to be either of those scenarios! You can be a full-time SAHM for a while and go back to a career afterwards, difficult and unfair though it may be. It should be easier though in this day and age! Btw some of us like singing the wheels on the bus all day and don't feel it makes us any less of a free-thinking, intellectual, independent, strong, feminist woman!

smallpotato - glad you liked my post I don't spend loads of time studying or anything! I just sometimes put French or Spanish radio on while I cook dinner, or read the headlines in the papers in French or Spanish at nap time, watch a French film at the weekend rather than one in English, am re-reading my novels from uni while I feed the baby, that kind of thing. I need to do as much as possible as my future livelihood (and sanity!) depends on it! Do you think you'll go back to work? Is it language related?

Great thread, I identify with pretty much what everyone has said here in some way or another! And wordfactory you're so right, it was hard graft for our aunts and grannies and mothers in some cases. One of my aunties had to bring up her dcs in a draughty farmhouse with no bathroom or mod cons, etc and had to look after her elderly infirm MIL. No babysitters, career, swimming or yoga for her!

YANBU as long as you realise that there are some SAHMs who do things very differently and therefore avoid getting bored. What I dislike is people who assume that SAHMs are all happy just being a maid. Some SAHMs actually go out and do loads of things, use the days to catch up with friends and do activities they would not be able to do at work.

Sometimes I am bored when I am with my children. Sometimes often I am bored when I am at work. Luckily I do plenty of both and am therefore not overly bored by children or work! Lots of people get bored, just find something else to do unless you are at work, in which case find something to do and look busy or get fired

OP. I'm going to go against the grain a bit and say that you need to be a bit pro-active here and either make the choice to go back to work or try and think of some more enjoyable things to do with your kids. Life is what you make it and if you are bored you need to make changes.
Also going against the grain I love being a SAHM. I had periods when I just had the one when I was bored but now I've got two there never seems to be a dull moment.
I may have found your answer there - I think you might need another preschooler to keep you busy

petisa, thanks for book recommendation. haven't read it (tend to steer clear of parenting books unless they fall into my lap - am too guillable by half), but will look it up. i do plan to write a book specifically about yoga and parenting, but need to have another baby first for research purposes.
i attribute my feelings of freedom to the fact that i made a choice to be a sahm at least as much as to the sahm-hood itself; also to the fact that i really do my best to take full responsibility for that rather than project it onto others in the form of resentment etc. (not that i'm suggesting anyone on here is doing that; just that i recognise that as a constant lurking possibility for myself.) also, i refuse to be defined by any of my roles - as sahm, wife, or whatever, and i refuse to give a shit what other parents might think about our family choices. in fact, the better to explore these issues, i've worked less over the last year. it's interesting to me to see how my self-esteem is tied up with how i think people perceive me in my various roles. i'm enjoying the process of seeing how i feel when people ask me what i do and i reply that i'm a sahm by choice. - not that it's easy; i was mental with it (and other unrelated stuff) last month. (btw, in case mn'ers are reading this and thinking, as i have in this thread, well, easy for you with your clearly-much-larger-than-mine salary, it's actually only because i usually earn so little, and it therefore makes so little difference to our household income, that i can do this.)
also loving this thread.

YANBU! Instead I really admire your patience especialy since you have worked full time for such a long time and landed suddenly on full time SAHM.
Before my mostly waited DD arrived I was hoping to become a domestic godess and perfect SAHM at least for a year-and thats something rare where I live nowdays.( Unlike UK in my country most mums are working and maternity leave is only 12 weeks).Here women get appreciated for doing so many things at the same time and noone is judgemental for not being 24/7 with your children.Anw after 6 months of SAHM I desperately wanted to go back to work,talk to other adults and yes-oh-yes I confess I sometimes waited for my husband to change a nappy! I had PND allthough I adored my DD and felt I wanted to be other things AS WELL AS BEING A MOMMY.Noone expects you to stop being a woman when having children so why do people expect to stop being a proffesional or simply a social person?
One final example:my mom worked 18 hours a day when setting her own bussiness.Yes it was tough for us as a family but the admiration and respect for her was enormous.On the other hand my MIL raised 5 kids as a SAHM.No one of them really appreciates or respects her as a parent and when talking to my DH I get a lot of complains about the neglation on Quality time they had.Yes she provided hot meals instead of takeouts but I guess this gets us back to the quality vs quantity issue... I am sure many alpha-mummies will talk about that!
Good luck!

Lots of us do go out all the time, do activities with them, and do the best we can. We can still be bored - the idea of spending everyday just chatting with friends when the kids play may be fulfilling for some but not for me - what the hell do you have to chat about - world/business issues? Probably not, if you spend all day every day doing kids stuff then thats all you have to talk about. It doesn't give me the sense of achievement at the end of the day and that is what I miss.

Yoga - well I've been practising for over 10 years, know the philosophy inside out but not very good at implementing it consistently to my life. I did have 20 years of being focused on achievement very hard to break.

Why do people assume that being a SAHM means you can't do anything constructive? To me being a SAHM is not just about spending time with my children, it is also about expanding my skill set. Since I have had my children I have started to take my interest in music more seriously (I have done a few gigs), and become a volunteer at the playgroup I go to. It does mean I don't have much free time but I can see how people do feel like hh maids otherwise. Get out there and find some voluntary work / hobby that fits in with your life - I am sure it won't actually make you less employable in the long-term when you come to find a job.

mumofprincess, that last bit illustrates where i'm coming from nicely. we're lucky in that being a sahm is no longer the default position for parenting. for me it's a choice, taken for its own sake, because i genuinely believe that it's the best thing for my small children. i'm not doing it as some kind of favour to them, which is an attitude that i think is unconscioudly foisted on us by plenty of our parents' generation, for whom things were changing but who were still expected by society to sah. certainly, in my case, my sahm was very conflicted about it, and i believe this has coloured, to a certain extent, her relationship with me.
i don't think it's all right to choose sahm-dom with secret strings attached for the kids. i don't expect mine to thank me for always being there, or even really to recognise how it is for me. the fact that your partner and siblings don't seem to respect or appreciate their mum says at least as much about societal attitudes to being at home as it does their actual relationship imho (and yours with your mum too).
i make sure i hang out with good friends who've made the same choice so that i don't feel to isolated or misunderstood. i thrash the issues out with my partner (who did sah dad-dom for 2 years with his daughter so has an amount of experience, thank god). i do my utmost to make sure my kids don't have to carry the weight of my decision.

Petisa, how weird, I'm also a translator (well, at least that's what I trained as...) I ended up as an editor, and my grand plan when I gave up full time work was to do freelance, but it's a tough industry to get into and I have been pretty slack about it. I never meet translators in real life, we are a rare breed!

Anyway, my new plan is to go into teaching, I'd love to teach Spanish to primary kids.

I agree with lots of these posts - sometimes being a SAHM is boring, sometimes work is boring. I think I sometimes remember the office with rose-tinted glasses, but actually I think I probably have a more varied and interesting life as a SAHM. At least I don't have to sit opposite the same person for 8 hours a day listening to her whinge about her boyfriend and talking about Eastenders!

At least I don't have to sit opposite the same person for 8 hours a day listening to her whinge about her boyfriend and talking about Eastenders! - Yes, conversations with colleagues at the office are frequently not that stimulating even at a senior management position. I love talking about brand strategy and ad campaigns (my career field) every day and it can be very stimulating but more often than not conversations are quite mundane at work, ime.

I guess the grass is always greener...

"At least I don't have to sit opposite the same person for 8 hours a day listening to her whinge about her boyfriend and talking about Eastenders!"

wait till you have teenagers

I think working mothers and fathers liek the balance. We have many many hours with our children but we also have work. So it's the best option and children do well if parents are happy.

As I said above and the poster about the 1700s fastening children to a board parents have always delegated child care and always will. Also it suits some people very well to chain women at home by suggesting that parental influence is bigger than it actually is. A lot of how our chidlren are is what they are born like and to make mother the whipping boy for all child problems is just yet another instance of woman as eve saint or sinner, the one who led Adam astray in the garden of Eden. Ditch the guilt. Get to work. lead the board and if men want ap arent at home let them wipe bottoms and iron shirts for no pay. If it's that much fun at home let them do it.