To wonder why anyone with school-aged children would want to be a SAHM?

[Badtasteflump]

And what they do all day?

I have my flame-proof hard-hat ready

In the spirit of the general shit-stirring on here today I though I would ask this - as I do really wonder. Fair enough when you have pre-school aged children, I can understand wanting to be a SAHM. But once your children are at school full-time, what is there to do all day?

I work PT (school hours, basically). I manage (jointly with DH) to get all the housework, cooking, diy, etc) done in the evenings & weekends, no problem. If I were at home all day I really think I would go a bit mad - either that or I fear I would gradually become relegated to the role of house-slave, doing all the housework and childcare myself because I wouldn't have the excuse of a 'proper' job. . .

I call running the home and taking/collecting ds from school a 'proper' job. Or is it only a 'proper' job if someone else is paid to do it?

I don't want to put my child into after school club, I want to be there for the holidays/in service days, I want to create a warm and inviting home for ds and dh to come home to, like dh and I had growing up.

I dare say I could work full time (if health permited) and we would manage, but it would be managing in that rather frazzled ' I don't know how she does it' way which we can afford to avoid. We are not part of the client state that seems to have evolved after years of Labour, where decisions on work are weighed against losing/gaining tax credits and so on. They certainly knew how to tie up votes and money.

I work freelance, from home, when heath permits. I do all the usual things, decorate, source, clean, care for elderly family, volunteer and loads more. I do consider that contributing to society. And best of all, we do it all on our own dollar, bringing up our family the way we see fit, not the government.

I do housey shit.
I garden.
I look after my chickens.
I write a blog.
I write articles for magazines.
I write books.
I fuck about on mumsnet.
I attend various groups.
I think up ever more dastardly ways of spending DH's money.

HTH.

I'm a SAHM or is that a housewife?, I don't know MNers keep changing their minds. Anyway, what do I do all day? I sit around scratching my arse!

Why do you care? My youngest starts school full time next week. Until now I have been working 2 days a week as that is all I could get childcare for. From next week I will do 3 school days instead and in the hols do my old 2 full days. The other 2 days are all mine . I will probably spend one doing housework/chores etc. The other for the rest of this term I am going to use to have a bloody good rest! I will chill at home, see friends for lunch. After Xmas I will most likely use this time to voluneteer.

JillySnooper please calm down dear

But thanks anyway for entertaining me during my lunch break. Better get back to the real world now - ta ta!

Go to the gym, play tennis, go for a walk or a drive in the country and stop for lunch, shop, catch up with friends, peruse the internet, catch up with things that need to be done without dragging moaning kids around with me. Do minimal housework but means the weekends and evenings are free or freer from doing much of the stuff that working parents have to squeeze in.

Sometimes I feel I should be doing more and might one day think about getting a job but it would be headache arranging holidays and activities with the kids and when they are ill etc. Might do some courses or charity work bit overall I'm quite happy and not too stressed out.

I'd love to if we could afford it. My house would be clean, I'd have time to do things without the children around and I'd get to drop them off and pick them up every day. Illness wouldn't be a problem. I could do some volunteer work, maybe even do a masters.
Now if I could just find someone who would like to pay me to be a SAHM whilst the children are at school.................................
No?
Oh well, back to work then!

What a strange OP.

I rather like my job, but I can think of HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of things I could do to fill my time were I fortunate enough to be a SAHP like Jilly, Pag, or Bonsoir and could afford to outsource the boring bits (which I have to do anyway, so being a WOHP doesn't make me immune to those!).

I work because I enjoy what I do, and it is, to put it wankily, a non-alienated job , but I also work because I have to: we need the money. If my partner could and was happy to support me comfortably at home, or if I was independently wealthy, I would spend my days in museums, reading, learning new languages, etc. All the kinds of things which I try to cram in at weekends and on holiday.

I think that the worship of work as in itself fulfilling is a modern illusion (unless you have a non-alienated job like, say, wordfactory, who is a novelist, I believe). We are programmed, nay indoctrinated, to think that it gives our lives some kind of purpose and - more insidiously - value, but I think this is, for the overwhelming majority of the working population, not true.

Would love to be able to get a part-time job during school hours, you are very lucky!!

I have no family for support for half-terms, childrens sickness etc.

Also found it difficult to find work with lots of others competing for the jobs. After all I have had numerous health problems including breast cancer (have two children at primary school).

I think you should mind your own business really. Also if I wanted to I could call you lazy, as my sister has to work 50 hour shifts and also has two children.

Bonsoir I don't doubt at all that you have projects.

I think for me though, my projects have to involve assessment and acknowledgement from outside my home and family. This says far more about me than is perhaps flattering, I know. But if I'm honest, it is true .

I just had a shower and got dressed. Quite an acheivement considering yesterday I stayed in my pjs all day.

Kladdkaka

Hmmm, not sure about once they are at uni

Wordfactory.

That is interesting really because when I first became as sahm it felt like an absence of something iyswim. I felt defined by what I wasn't doing rather than seeing that this was my new life so how did I want to live it.

Once I chose it and saw it as my life rather than as a state of not working, it felt fine.

What about SAHMs with university-aged children?

Oh that would be me as well ... though in fairness there are 20 years between DS1 +2 and did work full time between the two. It just happens I am mother to a child in Yr1 and one just doing his Masters did I preen about him getting a first?

Can you imagine the furore if someone started a thread saying,
"How on earth can mothers of preschool children justify WOHM full time?"
OP you sound like a bit of a twat, I'd be surprised if you work at all. Lunch hour my arse. If other people's choices don't impact on you fuck off an leave them to it.
Oh and I'm a part time WOHM, part time SAHM to dc's of school age.
HTH

I gave up my job to follow dh abroad, so am a SAHM. I worked from when ds was 6 months to when he started Year 6, so I have had the 'Mum time' from Year 6-Year 11 as opposed to when he was younger. He needs me more now than he did when younger.

I read, go to bookgroup, volunteer at his school, teach a bit of English, help run a club for teenagers, sew, cook, contemplate my navel, cuddle the cat, bake cakes.

I am according to dh much less stressed (was a secondary school teacher), more likely to see 50 and he says he has his wife back as opposed to the stress head I was whilst teaching.

I'm having a bit of a lost decade (have at least another two years here), but that's no bad thing in your 40s. It's certainly helped my family.

Jilly Snooper....Laying it on the line for us.

Oh, and I do have a cleaner and am planning to do my MA when ds is back in UK at sixth form.

I used to think this. I was completely driven by my career and thought women with school-age children who worked were, frankly, lazy arses.

However ...I recently gave up my full time job to pursue a freelance career. At the moment I am lucky enough to be earning well from just two long days a week, and am 'free' the rest of the time. I bloody love it! Years of being a 'career woman' and I never had as much fun as I do now .

I must say, I do desperately need that two days work for money and to use my brain, but I love my other leisurely days at home or out and about. I am exercising every day for the first time since having my kids. I read the whole paper every day. I have learned to cook new dishes. My house is tidy and clean for the first time possibly ever . I meet friends for coffee in town when I feel like it. I'll be starting a half day a week volunteering for a womens charity next week. God, it's good. Its like being on holiday. Whats not to love?

Well said,Penthesileia I agree totally that the idea of work that earns money being valued above work that doesn't earn money is a modern illusion, as you put it. As if the work of picking a kid up from school and walking them home is more worthy if you are being paid for it as a childminder than if you are a SAHM doing the same thing. Or cleaning a home is more worthy if you are a cleaner, cleaning someone else's home for money, than if you're cleaning your own. I'm a novelist as well - unpublished and I don't earn anything from it. And it does annoy me that people therefore assume my writing is a failure in need of redemption - 'oh well, look at JK Rowling she was rejected lots of times' they say comfortingly - as if you'd only ever write a book in the hope of becoming JK Rowling. I don't think even JK Rowling set out to be JK Rowling. And I don't think a book is a more successful book because of the amount of money it earns, or that work is more important if it earns money than if it doesn't.

I totally agree with Penthesileia's post.

Mind you, I find sahparenting a bit alienating too at times... I wish I could share Bonsoir's 100% enthusiasm for family management, but I do get frustrated at times.

thanks OP for letting us talk about what we SAHM with school age children do, cos we can't start our own threads about it or it might come across as boastful , smug and happy.

scaryteacher that's the same for me. Actually worked full time until we moved abroad and I became a lady of leisure.

That's the point, OP. You say you get everything done in the evenings and weekends - I would rather get it done while the kids are at school, and be available to them, if they want to do something with me, in the eve/w'end.

I gave up work because I wanted to and because I could afford to I know I have become a more relaxed and happy person. My job was super stressful and long hours. If my kids want to go on a bike ride/swimming/walk/beach - I'm all theirs. They don't have to come second place to 'housework/diy/cooking'

Oh, and I get loads of time on MN - just like you do, presuming you're running a business as you post....

kessaya So, it's all off the backs of your hard working husbands in reality and you call yourself feminists? fucking hypocrites more like.

It's nothing to do with being a feminist. No one MADE me be a SAHM :DH and I discussed this before children - we both agreed and now we have a pretty fair deal - I'm hardworking at home and he earns the money by working out of the home - each to their own strengths. It would drive him nuts and my salary wouldn't be enough to make it worthwhile. If you added up the cost of outsourcing everything I do at home I more than earn my keep :o

What do I do?
all the stuff you need to do to run a house/pets/children! I would rather do this during the day and have after school time clear to chat with dc and dh. Also have done voluntary work, help my parents out (and they help me) and have time to return to painting / printmaking and had successful shows. This is still a hobby rather than work because it is not my priority, but it's great to have the time (usually one day a week) to do it.

ALso thinking of re-training but that can wait a few years. Kids only small once and have another 30+ years to go back to work, if I want to!