to be totally fucked off with the antisahm comments on here?

[slackers]

Wtaf are you only a good role model to your DC if you are in paid employment?
Why does someone only be valid in society if they earn?
Why should I work only to pay someone else do a job to look after my DC? wtaf is the logic in that?
ffs

I personally think childminders are better for overnight care, in the child's own home. The 24 hr nurseries that i know of struggled to get off the ground as the demand wasn't there and increased costs involved had to be passed on to parents. They still run (rather than 24 hr care you may need to search overnight care nursery) but usually in a nursery nurses home. Yes this may be essential for shift workers but it can be used for any reason, having a break etc. Like I said each to their own. A close relative of mine used it for a break and that was her choice, she could afford it and wanted/needed a break. Not everone uses childcare for work reasons.

I know several professionals who scaled their hours back to carry on with their careers to enable them to be home a good chunk of the time with their pre schoolers, they then increased to full time. Not everyone in health care is full time. Many, if they are well paid, prefer to use nannies.

Most women with under 5s work and always have. It is better for families for lots of reasons. The argument that there is some pinnacle of parenting which is a mother alone with a bay from 7.30am to 7.30pm as an ideal is just wrong. The suggestion working parents hand their child to strangers is weird.

Our children's nanny stayed 10 years longer than many men stick around. She was hired before child 1 was born. She looked aft er her from 2 weeks old. Our oldest who is 27 now was lucky enough to build up a relationship with her as well as with us. Everyone benefited. If you looked at my 5 children now (and not just looked but probed into their psyche) I don't think anyone would be able to say they suffered because their mother worked. Quite the converse. In their 20s the girls are set to earn £60k, they know work is huge fun and enhances a woman's life, they know you can have a great career and have babies too, they all have or will graduate without student debt etc etc. All those things come from having a working mother. If I had been a housewife then like some of their friends they may beon the look out for rich husbands now who will keep them in leisure along the lines their mothers had. Mine will have richer lives as a result.

Looking at the emotional side and looking back they weren't unloved from age 1 - 3 (at 3 they went to morning nursery school). Instead they had security and certainty and routine and their parents and nanny in their lives.

It is very important that the myth that women cannot work and have a career is scotched and that there is an adverse impact on their children.

Xenia, how would you feel if your daughters decided to be SAHMs? (as has been shown on here people often do the opposite of what their parents did).

Also, would you have used a regualr daycare nursery (if you weren't able to afford your nanny)?

Taking the long view, what I think has happened is this:

We've solved one set of problems in that we treat our DC much, much better than we used to. We no longer make them work from the age when they can carry a bucket or a couple of logs. We're much more careful about their safety and well-being. We ensure they have access to as much education as they can stomach and we allow them to have a full 'childhood' - a very loooong, very protected childhood. We invest in them massively more than we used to and it pays off in terms of that young person's prospects in life.

All of this is obviously great and wonderful but the knock-on effects - for example, the huge demand for quality childcare and all the extra jobs of parenting that used to simply never exist - have never been properly addressed, they've just been dumped on women to sort out as best we can. So we all fret and worry and take digs at each other and feel guilty and/or defensive about our 'choices' as if it's all our responsibility while the men just carry on as they were. I don't think many men expend much thought on the whole SAH/WOH debate (I should say that there are always exceptions, before you all jump in to tell me about your own marvellously egalitarian relationships).

What really needs to happen IMO is for the whole work culture to be radically re-thunk. It's stupid that so many of us are working 50 hrs + while so many others of us are unemployed. It needs sharing out more which would give all of us more energy for the parenting lark. It also needs to be far more acceptable in the world of work to take time off for DC's illness, childcare emergencies, appointments etc. (actually, not just for DC but for aged parents, other relatives who need some care too) Men need to lead these changes. They should be demanding this as they are the ones with power at the moment (a good start would be for more of them to actually take their paternity leave). They should also be doing far more of their share of the domestic work when they are at home so that WOHM don't get such a shit deal.

But ... why should they when we'll all just muddle along somehow, pretending that all this extra work is trivial or somehow not real and blaming each other for all the difficult feelings our 'choices' bring up for us.

Good post POPG

Of course that's possible and I talk to them all the time. They've been interviewed about working mothers in the past when they were younger. I think it would not accord with their principles but I don't want clones for children. I love that all 5 are very different. I also encourage them to have children before they are too old. Whne I was 14 I wanted babies and it was more important for me to have a large family than my career. At 35 fertility plummets. You can have both but you need to do things at the right time.

If could not afford a daily nanny I would have preferred a mother's help or child minder. I would have also used a nursery. Anyway before we married their father said if the nanny thing did not work out he would stay at home (as we always knew I'd earn a lot more) so I suppose I had that option too which never came to pass.

You do tend to find sexism down the generations and I think my family has been one of strong women who largely worked. My grandmother worked in the 1920s. She had to. She was widowed with her first baby. Another female relative in the 20s had a shop. Another moved to London and was a senior nurse. My mother was one of the first in her city to claim the married man's tax allowance whilst she kept her student husband for about 8 years through medical school or something like that. In other words although some people do rebel against their parents' lives many many more are influenced by the pattern at home which may be women stop work when babies are born and never work again. Men don't lift a finger around the home. Men don't change nappies. Most senisble girls avoid men from those homes as it's a massive task to undo all that conditioning of boys from sexist homes.

The reason these threads get so vitriolic is because this is such an emotive subject.
WOHM often feel guilt because they work. Sometimes its for financial reasons; to pay basic bills or sometimes just wanting a desire to maintain a lifestyle - extras such as holidays etc.
Sometimes its because they genuinely enjoy what they do and feel that they would go nuts at home and this leads to guilt because you are seen to be a 'bad' mother.

SAHM's often feel guilty becuase they are not putting their education to this use it was intended and also not contributing financially to the home.
In addition, society often views women who stay home once the youngest is in second level or lazy and that must sting a bit.

I am a working mum and its not my business whether my ds and dd become WOHP or SAHP. I have my own life and would never try to live mine through making their decisions for them.

However I do feel a reaponsibility as a parent to raise them with a healthy dose of reality. They would need to be able to afford to SAH for a start. And even if they take career breaks, the likelihood for the generation of children we are raising is that they will have long working lives. It will be the norm to work to late sixties or 70 for them. So that's a lot of working years even If they take a few years out. For that reason, ive always encouraged them to aspire to something interesting which will fulfil them as well as paying the bills. Other than that- their life their choice

I am a (PT) WOHM. I work closely with about 10 WOHM, and in the 10-12 years we have worked together and all had children at different times, I can honestly say that NONE of us has put our babies into ft childcare (and I am one of the only pt workers). And I also know other school-mums and baby-group friends who work ft, and none of those ever put their babies in ft childcare either.

I also can't remember the nursery both DD and DS have attended ever having a small baby there ft. In fact the age of the babies in the baby room has raised considerably (undoubtably due to ML regs), with a baby under 9m being the exception, and a baby under 6m being incredibly unusual.

That's interesting Xenia, thanks for answering. It is good that you had the choice to do those things and other options if it didn't work. Also good that you will support your daughters no matter what.

Interesting point RHP. I agree that there seem to be less tiny babies in nurseries now. When DD1 (14) was a baby and we were looking round, there were lots of very young babies (6-12 weeks up). Mat leave back then was something around 16-18 weeks so if you took leave at 36 weeks, you only had a matter of weeks left. I think it is much better now that there is more time off.

Xenia. I absolutely agree that the children of women who work will not be harmed in any way by the absence of their mother during working hours but what evidence do you have that being a sahm is not as good for some families as being a working mum?

YANBU, no one would dare call an unpaid carer a waste of space or uninteresting or despised by their families because of how boring they have become due to their unemployed status.

all shit Ive heard his week

Sexual- no doubt xenia will reply for herself soon, but I guess she was referring to stats that show overall 'better' outcomes in terms of certain indicators such as wealth, qualifications etc

But obviously with any stats there are individual cases which will go against the grain.

So, working mothers, do you genuinely think, when you are introduced to a woman who initially appears to be quite articulate and decent company, but she replies to the inevitable "And what do you do?" with "Er, at the moment I'm staying at home looking after the children..." that this woman is brain-dead, boring and not worth conversing with?

Just wondered.

gramercy I wouldn't judge someones intelligence or worth from their child care decisions.

Why do you wonder that gramercy? Other peoples childcare arrangements are their business. Just as I wouldn't expect anyone to judge my parenting or make assumptions about my childrens well being just because I work.

All the stats I've seen have shown better outcomes when under 3's have one on one care which could be from a parent/nanny/childminder/relative or whoever.
Most sahm's who have more than one child won't be providing one on one care though and most kids cared for in nurseries/childminders have a higher ratio too so not particularly relevant to the wohm/sahm debate.

Yes, the stats about care ratios are a different issue to the one you asked Xenia.

The only time I think/feel anything negative towards the SAHMs at DD's school is when they are overcome with martyrdom and complain loudly that 'they are really tired that so few mums are prepared to help out in the day on the Friday before a school fair/ accompany pupils on school trips on a schoolday/ hep with lunchtime netball/ after school matches...and how it always falls at the feet of the same few'.
WTH do they want people to do if they are at WORK?!!! Take a days holiday?

That was to gramercy

Kitty.....why not take a days holiday?

Are you serious? For every fair, netball match, school trip, assembly iliketherain :o?!! I'm sure the head at the school I help to manage would errr...refuse leave if I asked for the afternoon off!
Even if leave was granted not in a zillion years I would then need to put DD in the day orphanage nursery/holiday club in their school holiday in order to make up the time.

I actually can't believe I replied to that