To think a degree is not wasted if you're a SAHM

[Ouluckyduck]

as stated today by Sarah Vine in the Times. I learnt many things and it made me the person I am today. It may influence how I raise my children or how I am as, eg, a school governor. When I was a uni I certainly didn't know that I would end up being a SAHM with an SN child. Girls should be encouraged, imo, to aim high, but also to make the life choices they want to make without being made to feel guilty about it.

I know two Swedish men who have chosen to be SAHDs. Both of them found after a while that the real problem was not that SAHDs were frowned upon, nor even that SAPHs of either sex were frowned upon, but simply that there was noone around for their children to play with because all the other children were at nursery- the streets were empty. So they sent their children to nursery to give them a social life.

Some would argue that free childcare would pay for itself and so save the state money.

I don't see what's so ridiculous about society providing childcare. The whole purpose of society is to benefit its members for the greater good of society as a whole - hence education, the NHS, etc. Why do children fall under this umbrella at 5 but not at 2? More than 80% of the population will become parents, and so fall into the category of having a pre-school-age child at some point in their lives, so this is hardly a minority issue - in fact it's a mainstream issue in the same way as education in terms of the number of people it affects. It's simply that because caring for young children has been considered 'women's work' and has been done in an unpaid capacity for centuries, it has become terribly undervalued. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if every mother/nanny/au-pair/CM/nursery out there abandoned the child in their care today and that might give you an indication of how society fundamentally needs childcare and why, therefore, it should have value.

Sunshine,

Why should everything of value be provided by the state? Unless you are a communist, I don't understand this perspective. Of course childcare has value. That is why it can and is sold to people.

Children need to go to school. Nurseries below a certain age are certainly not a benefit to the children themselves, and in fact many would argue they are the opposite. I believe that from 3, the state does subsidise childcare through vouchers because that is the age that is deemed a benefit to the children to attend some kind of educational establishment. Pre 3, the decision is left to the parents and done on an economic basis. I don't see how that is discrimination against women. It is discrimination against low earners vs high earners. But, that applies to most services which are not deemed essential. The example in the article is terrible as lawyers can afford childcare, easily, and the really successful ones can afford full time nannies while hardly noticing the cost.

Trills, any evidence that the cuts in the Nordic countries will do away with present childcare provision? I haven't seen this in the Swedish papers but am happy to be corrected. My own impression is that this is one piece of expensive provision that the Swedes would fight tooth and claw to retain.

As for a law degree being wasted if you do finger painting, how many years do you realistically expect would have to be set aside for finger painting? Ime a few years at the most. A woman who gave birth for the first time aged 25 and wanted to be able to devote the rest of her life to finger painting would need to give birth to about a dozen children, wouldn't she?

Most of us only have two or three, so tend to find that the finger painting dries up long before we have reached the age of retirement. Children go to school and do not require a fulltime SAHM.

You may not be able to go straight back into the law (unless you have been able to keep working from home in some way), but a degree can be used as a starting point for a new career.

Agree with Karma, women in Scandinavian countries have very little choice about what they wish to do after having Dc. It is presumed they will return to work.

In fact the state needs them to return to work inorder to help to pay for the huge costs of state subsidised childcare

Larry, you're making a mistake in assuming that pre-school-age childcare = nurseries only. There are many forms of childcare other than nurseries - nannies, childminders, au pairs to name but three.

I don't understand your communist argument. Shall we scrap the NHS then as well? What makes one state-supported organisation ok and another not?

You can't separate income from gender very easily. Women are the poorer members of society and we still have a gender pay gap that is MOSTLY due to the fact that women have caring responsibilities. Therefore you can't say it's about income rather than gender because the two are inextricably linked.

Your argument that education is different because children need to go to school and therefore this has a benefit for society as a whole could be interpreted as saying that what women want and need doesn't matter because it doesn't benefit society. Clearly many women DO want and need better quality, affordable childcare. There is a lot of demand for it. Given that women make up 52% of the population, there is an obvious benefit to society. THe only way that doesn't work is if you consider society to be made up of men, rather than women.

BTW I'm not arguing that all women should put their children into childcare. As I said earlier, I think there is something wrong about a society that would force women to work and hand over care to a paid professional when that mother would rather care for her own child. What I'm arguing is that child care needs to have a clearly defined economic VALUE (which isn't the same as being physically paid for it). So that SAHMs can receive tax breaks and rights to pensions etc to the value of for example, and working mothers can actually afford to go to work. Most people have jobs rather than careers, which means that most women cannot afford to work without significant family involvement. 4 in 5 working mothers use family/friends rather than professional childcare. This is a vast industry in its own right, but because it is carried out by women, for women, it doesn't seem to count.

Everything I have said above would apply to male primary carers as well, so it would benefit everyone.

I have a standard mon-fri, 9-5 job with a half-hour commute time each way. I have two children. By the time they no longer need childcare, I will have spent £160,000 (in today's terms) on childcare. How is that remotely feasible for the majority?

Due to the raising of retirement age and the fact that more and more people are being forced to move around the country in search of work, therefore removing themselves from their support network, fewer women than ever will be able to rely on a network of family and friends. Without state subsidy, we will see a return to more and more women being forced to stay at home and families living in great poverty.

How does having a degree make you a better SAHM? compared to a SAHM with A Levels?

My DD is in Year 7 at the mo. By the time she graduates she will have cost me about £150k in tuition fees. I'm running a 10 year old car and family holidays are going to be very modest for the foreseeble future. I've even cancelled Sky recently :(

I don't mind the sacrifices and even if she ends up doing a relatively low paid job that she enjoys but couldn't have got without the expensive education then I would still be happy. But if after one or two years she decided to become a SAHM ....

sunshine But subsidised childcare will cost the state a lot of money......which they get by putting taxes up (at basic rate), so potentially forcing women who wanted to be SAHMs back into work because the family can no longer survive on one wage (and actually, where are these jobs they're going to do?).

I dont think subsidised childcare is the answer. An end to the assumption that women are responsible for childcare is the answer.

But pushydad, what if that's what she wants out of life? I don't think the expensive education would have been wasted, as it will have enriched her and made her the person she is today.

Surely education isn't only about finding a job in the future.

My DH is from a culture where it is thought that girls don't need to go to school because they will just get married and have children. Both of his sisters are illiterate, and their lives are much poorer for it. It makes me very sad. I don't think educating them would have been a waste at all :( but that is the logical conclusion of your argument.

I am a WOHM by the way, so no personal axe to grind.

I agree that an education isn't about finding a job. I am in no way suggesting that girls should not receive an education. If my son were to drop out and become a DJ then I too would be equally pssed off at having spent £150k on his education when I could have paid off the mortgage and not still be working in my 60s

We live in an area with good state schools. Like me, DCs would have gone thru the state system and got reasonable grades, went to a reasonable university and got a reasonable job.

However, I don't want my kids to be like me. I would have liked to study Law but my grades weren't good enough. I would have liked to have joined the Foreign Office but my degree wasn't good enough. I want my kids to choose their careers as opposed to having their qualifications choose their careers for them IYSWIM?

PushyDad - it is your own choice to spend that amount amount on your dd's education. She should not feel indebted to you her whole life because of it, and you should have no control over her life because of it.
If you are happy for her to be in a low paid job which she enjoys, why would you not be happy for her to be a SAHM, if that's what she enjoys? Why is money the be all and end all?

I know very few SAHMs who have given up their career forever. The overwhelming majority do go back to paid employment at some point in their lives.

My first degree is so old, its historic, the next one is useless as it is an arts (no interest in that here), one is business (so may be useful), and one (well, part of one anyway) is psychology - so helps me mess with their minds...

I also have professional qualifications, which are not a lot of use.

Oh lord, I need a hobby...

I do agree that a good degree is never wasted whatever you do after. by which I mean a degree which stretches your mind and expands your way of thinking about the world.

I do rather fetishise education for its own sake, so much so that I'm one of those who's never quite managed to leave university. I certainly would not want to SAHM rather than do my job, I love working, but that's a personal preference.

RealLife - that's the bit that worries me too (that women will be forced back to work), so I'm not entirely sure what the answer is, but I don't honestly believe that it's possible to end the default position that the mother is the primary carer unless we radically change the way our society works and I see no sign of that happening.

Fact is, only women can get pregnant and lactate. That's always going to mean that more women than men end up becoming primary carers. The very physical act of pregnancy, birth and lactation results in a strong hormonally driven desire to want to care for your child. It's what encourages survival of the species. It's a hormonally driven desire that men simply do not experience. Now of course we are not driven by biological determinism. Certainly men can do just as good a job as caring for very young children if that's what they really want to do. I think that's a cause of celebration, something to be encouraged and we'd see more of it if we can push to get childcare more balanced between men and women. But I don't think we'll change it so that we can ever achieve a 50/50 gender balance.

How would we promote greater gender equality in terms of childcare?

No government in the UK is prepared to grant men the exact same paternity rights as women, so the playing field is different from the moment of birth. Truth is that whoever ends up having more time off when the child has first been born is nearly always the person who ends up becoming the primary carer by default, whether that's primary carer as a SAHM or a working mother whose job is very much secondary to her partner's in order to allow her to fulfil her caring responsibilities.

errrr, given that I did my degree when they were free (and therefore costing the government millions that actually they can't afford), I have to say I do think it's a waste if you're going to be a SAHM (I'm talking about permanent SAHM, obviously not applicable if you're going back into the workplace in the future).

I would add though that back then, everyone did a degree and loads of people then do nothing with it. People did degrees in Mickey Mouse subject and then did f*ck all afterwards, that's a waste too.

I think "waste" has to be looked at from a monetary point of view amongst other things. Obviously degrees are life enriching etc etc (and yes, of course this could affect your parenting style) but in this day and age, for a lot of people they are a "waste".

Also, coming back to the point that few SAHMs remain SAHMs for more than a few years, why should it be the case that a 5-year career break in many cases sabotages the rest of a woman's career. Surely it should be the case that she was just 5 years behind, but for most women the effect seems to be cumulative.

It's because many employers still believe that those with child-caring responsibilities will still be less committed to the job. The research actually shows that they are often more committed, better able to juggle, and more conscientious because they want to give something back in return for having the ability to take time off at short notice or work flexibly.

Again, it all comes back to changing the value of child care. We need to change how it is viewed. It is not a drain on taxes, it does not waste a woman's degree; it is a necessary function in society that can encourages empathy, flexibility, adaptability, reliability and often a stronger social conscience among those who carry it out (a disproportionate number of volunteers are women, quite often SAHMs with older children).

Sunshine,

"Your argument that education is different because children need to go to school and therefore this has a benefit for society as a whole could be interpreted as saying that what women want and need doesn't matter because it doesn't benefit society. Clearly many women DO want and need better quality, affordable childcare. There is a lot of demand for it. Given that women make up 52% of the population, there is an obvious benefit to society. THe only way that doesn't work is if you consider society to be made up of men, rather than women."

I have separated want and need, as they are not the same thing. No-one should get what they want, merely because they want it. That goes for women, men and children. What women need matters enormously, what they want is another matter. Like everyone else, they have to make choices and balance one desire versus another. And, some are luckier/more intelligent/work harder than others. There will always be more options for those on the right side of that equation, again be they men, women or children. A non communist society does not seek to entirely balance that out.

Why is there an obvious benefit to society of someone like a secretary having free state provided childcare? She can quite easily go out and return to secretarial life after a few years of looking after her children. And she is not on a career path per se. That goes for a lot of jobs, rather than careers or professions. And, as I have argued, those in careers or professions can normally pay for childcare. Of course there are exceptions. But catering for every exception with the blunt solution of state provided childcare is costly to everyone else. I can see the benefit of allowing one to deduct childcare from tax, as it is a real expense of continuing in the workforce. However, that is a different solution to free childcare.

I have a degree in Early Childhood Education and Development...yes got no use for that now.

It is insulting to any SAHM with a degree though.

sunshine I agree there is probably no easy solution, but even with subsidised childcare you have women paying other women to look after their children, often at a cost close to the minimum wage. Childcare is still women's work and still low paid work.

kitsmummy how do you define doing f**k all afterwards though?

I graduated almost 15 years ago and in my 'working years' (am now part time, with a view to becoming a SAHM) I never earned a decent salary and it wasn't through lack of trying. I worked long hours for crap money, hoping for a foot in the door etc, but the foot in the door never came. Most of my friends are the same, male and female. The reality is that I live in an area where there are huge numbers of graduates, very few graduate jobs, and very low salaries in general (my one 'graduate' job, where a degree was a necessity, paid the princely sum of £15k and this was only about four years ago).

So, yes, I did f**k all with my degree, in that I have never earned good money and paid high taxes, to pay back the cost of my degree if you want to look at it like that, but its sadly not by choice, its not how I thought it would be.

It's about fairness larry. All those parents who aren't encumbered by children because they have a SAH partner or a partner whose job is very much secondary ARE receiving subsidised childcare. It's just being subsidised by the primary care giver, rather than the state.

Trouble is, most primary care givers are female and that isn't going to change without some pretty radical legislation. If we don't challenge that, we're basically saying that it's ok for women to bear the brunt of the negative economic effects of having children. I don't think it is. I think men and the wider society - who by and large receive the benefits of having an unpaid army of women caring for children - should be made to recognise that contribution and make up for it in other ways. Tomorrow's worker who needs education is today's young child who needs caring for.

You might say that it's down to each individual household to sort out. That's an opinion and is neither right nor wrong. I have a different opinion to you. Because I see this a gendered issue that affects women generally - regardless of whether they actually have children or not - I want to see a state-supported solution rather than an individual one, because I don't think the latter will see any significant improvements in women's position ever. Individual families will just keep on muddling through and another generation of women will become entrenched in the idea that it's successful job/career v children in a way that men rarely have to.

Oh and the working mum doesn't exist in a vacuum. The benefit to society is that she's paying tax, spending her income and contributing to the economy, employing (whether directly or indirectly if the state pays) a child-carer who will also spend and contribute to the economy. Not to mention the incalculable costs of social cohesion that are gained when individuals have a wider social circle and are engaged within their community, and the decrease in illnesses such as depression.

Sunshine,

I think your middle paragraph is fair. We just do have different views on what society's role is.

I think your last paragraph, though, is double counting. A woman whose salary only covers the childcare is not a net economic positive. The income she is spending is merely a loss of spending for someone else who has to pay higher taxes.

By F*ck all, I mean people who did a degree in something, "Leisure studies" was a classic at my Uni and then did a really basic type job that had no need for a degree and was in no way enhanced by a degree.

I know someone else who has a degree in Archaeology and has decided this is not for him and wants a job in admin or estate agency!

I am in no way dissing SAHMs at all, but I think for a lot of people degrees are an expensive priveledge that we as a country can no longer afford. I also think that as they're no longer free anymore then again they are a bit of an expensive luxury that less people will go for now. In my day they were a lifestyle choice for many people rather than fully career motivated (obviously I appreciate there are many careers where a degree is needed) and looking back you can think that for a lot of people it was probably money mis-spent.

I am no high achiever, I work part-time and I have kids so I am not having a personal dig at graduates who haven't been hugely successful, I am only answering the Op that I think degrees can often be a bit of a waste of time/resources.