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

Well, hey I wasn't actually drawing that divide, either here or in real life. It's been more about different phases for us. Just trying to question one of the underlying props in some of the discussion here about childcare professionals being better than parents, that's all. Hoped it might be a bit more interesting than just making assertions or judgements but maybe not!

Itsatiggerday -I was proposing that the typical profile of these professionals suggests they may not necessarily be so superior to the mothers of the children
In some ways no, in other ways yes.
Not all SAHMs are that wonderful at doing children orientated stuff 100% of the time like nursery workers do day in day out. I would say judging by the number of mums and screaming toddlers I've seen in town shopping on a week day that sometimes nursery does top trump some things.

I thought it was a place where mums stuck together
who on earth told you that?
good grief if you wants lol,huns and hugs there are other forums. what works here is it is permissible and encouraged to disagree.makes it more lively

less of a suckass kinda place

If you have no area competence except looking after your under 5s, no pay and no job you have to big up the housewife thing and pretend only you on the planet can look after the child and clean those floors. However if you loko at it objectively many fathers are as good as mothers and allowing others to care for our children can benefit them.

Also it's not just a working mother and non working mother thing. There are perfectionist working mothers too who just won't let their husband make the school costume or cook the dinner. They have to do everything and do it their way. They are a bit silly. People do things in different ways and sometimes worse sometimes better and if you want a relaxed life and to work you haev to enjoy delegating and sharing.

I don't think its a case of childcare professionals being better than parents! The two are totally different. No one else can ever be a parent to my children; but various people can interact with them and care for them to greater and lesser degrees at various stages of their life.

Agree with you there Xenia

True KittyFane. I happen to believe that doing children orientated stuff 100% of the time is positively bad for my children. They accompany me to a number of things where the priority is something other than them, so while they will have space / activity / something I bring for them to do, they also have to accept that not everything revolves around them. But I appreciate not everyone agrees so I fully expect to get slammed for my parenting now!

Agree with that point Xenia. It's really important for children to learn that people don't always do things exactly the same way. It helps them become resilient and confident. I shudder when I hear occasionally of women who pride themself on being the only person who can feed/entertain/ put little johnny to bed. Do they think this actually helps their child ?

itsatiggerday absolutely agree with you there.
The only difference being that when DD was younger she was at nursery doing 'her' thing whilst I worked.

donthateme- DC need a LOT of different infuences, I agree.. There may be a few co-dependent mums out there unfortunately.

I suppose I come at it from the point of view that my role is to raise a confident, independant person. Not someone who is dependant on Mum for everything.

Sorry but :o :o :o @ moomit.. And I haven't even read your post!

The stats don't seem to know what they think

www.guardian.co.uk/money/2003/nov/14/workandcareers

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1299390/Working-mothers-dont-harm-baby-But-afford-good-childcare-claims-study.html

There do seem to be plus sides to being raised at home, but there are also plus sides to having an extra income. There is no right or wrong answer. I still maintain that people who insist that there's is the only right way (their way) are trying to convince themselves more than anyone else.

Buggering links!

www.guardian.co.uk/money/2003/nov/14/workandcareers

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1299390/Working-mothers-dont-harm-baby-But-afford-good-childcare-claims-study.html

That should say 'there is only one right way'

Interesting. I work full time and always have done. I have, in the past, given up afternoons (taken annual leave) to help listen to children read (the teacher said "It's always the working Mums who give up time to help, we don't seem to be able to entice the SAHMs in", I have suffered sports day, avoided harvest festival and other dreary stuff in the church ("Of course I was there! I was next to X, behind the pillar near the front of the church at the right, that's why you didn't see me!").

I bake cakes for school cake sales - my muffins are legendary.

I help out every year, all day, on a variety of stalls, at the school fete.

I have been asked - as ilikerain has - why I had children.

Why doesn't anyone ask the fathers these questions? Why is it always the mothers who get asked, and it is assumed that the fathers won't be doing any of these things.

My children come home to a parent after school. But it's not me. What is the matter with that?

The two threads on this subject seem to have been dominated/created by a numpty using the idea that MN is anti SAHM (which exists entirely in their own minds) purely in order to have a go at working mums.

Would I know if I was thick? Or would I live in a happy bubble of dumb?

I think we can agree that some adults of either gender are useless with chidlren whether they are staying at home or in a job and plenty out of work at the moment cannot get jobs anyway. It is very very difficult to get work at present.

Your ability to interact well with a child depends on lots of factors. If you are in a survival situation, hardly enough food, sleep etc or on heroin etc seriously depressed it is a huge victory if you get the child through to adulthood alive. Once basics are taken care of then I think small children need consistent people in their lives who care for them, routine and structure and knowing that people will not let them down. you can as well arrange that if both parents work as if you don't. They also want contented parents who are not always shouting at them.

I value almost more than anything at home the peace and calm that we have which of course is much easier now my youngest will soon be leaving prep school as when we had 3 teenagers and twin babies when calm was very hard to come by with all those hormones and then toddler tantrums around the place.

Serenity, peace, stability and not passing your problems on to your children.

(Morloth I think you'd say "if I were" if you weren't thick - subjunctive etc.)

I don't work. I don't want to work. I'm not going to work. I still managed to single handedly raise the DDs fairly sucessfully. They both want to go to Uni, unlike me, and as they are both in the top 5 of their years at the best Grammar school in the county, I suspect they probably will.

What suits one person doesn't suit another. My life would probably bore some to tears, but I love it.

So that's a No then?

We should lunch Sarah, I shall summon the jet. How is tomorrow for you?

Xenia, your last post sounded astonishingly reasonable (for you) until the last line. I was struggling to understand this paragraph from one of your earlier posts though ...

On the other issues of stats that children do better if mothers work... as someone said for me above income of famly has a massive impact on child outcomes. If the family can survive on father's income of say £25k but instead the mother works so they can fund 2 sets of school fees or so they move themselves into the £125k bracket I think on average the family does benefit an awful lot and if they have good childcare (just as if you are at home it will only be any good if you're a good mother and housewives if in general they have lower IQs etc are bound to have less knowledge of child psychology and be worse at dealing with children's issues0 - even their vocabulary, spelling, ideas and swear words in thread titles bears testatment to that) then on the whole you're better off mother working.

If, as you seem to be asserting (hard to tell, TBH), being a good carer to your DC requires a high standard of written English, I think you did the right think in outsourcing the job

Someone was suggesting housewives were best at bringing up children. I was saying the ones who are housewives are on average the ones who failed at work and were not perhaps in the top earners so were probably less bright and may be not quite so good at child psychology and bringing up children. I stand by that. Obviously there are exceptions in all cases and clearly I am one of the low IQ ones who still just about manages to hang on to a profession.