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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To choose ME for nine months over my children?

283 replies

Inconceivable · 08/08/2012 20:18

I have three children varying in age from two to seven. I have been a SAHM for the last four years. Before that I had quite a good career and although I really enjoyed my time with the children, I really started to miss working. I then got offered a really good and interesting contract for nine months.

I decided to take it and I am really enjoying the work. However, the children are really finding it difficult to adjust with me working full time and it is really starting to show in their behaviour. It is breaking my heart to see them suffering but I really, really enjoy being back at work.

Am I be unreasonable to let them suffer and choose ME for nine months and just enjoy the work and ignore the price my children are paying for this? It is only temporary after all?

OP posts:
StealthPolarBear · 08/08/2012 22:06

trixy, if you don't mind me asking (and feel free to ignore if this is getting too personal) - did you work for your own "mental health" before children?

cardibach · 08/08/2012 22:07

Viperidae, you wtote: You can work any time, you can never get this time with them back . Two things:

  1. I'm sure you are aware that is not necessarily true - you can't always get back to work if yu spend too long out of it: and
  2. 'You can never get this time back' - you , not the children>? SOunds a selfish decision to me...

I went back to work when DD was 7 months old. At the time, I probably didn't need to, but did it for all the reasosn other posters have outlined. It was a good job I did, as by the time DD was 16 months old we were on our own and my pay was essential. So - was I selfish? Or did I have good foresight? Or is it just reasonable for women who can work and who want to work to just get on with it?
DD is 16, by the way, and happy, healthy, well adjusted and successful in school.

SOmeone is going to say we are selfish because we are denying a man work in this economic climate soon, I swear. Talk about old dated attitudes.

BitterAndTwistedChairDodger · 08/08/2012 22:08

SAHM here. I would love to work full time in a job I enjoy. I love my children dearly but I didn't get a personality transplant when they were born.

If I had the choice, I would have a career, but I have been too long out of my profession now to catch up, so the jobs I can do are just that, jobs. I work part time around DH - the worst of both worlds.

StealthPolarBear · 08/08/2012 22:09

sorry, do ignore that - it does sound like I'm starting a fight, which I'm not, honestly. It's just the mental health/avoidance of PMT/own sanity along with the can't take time out of career arguments are again, specific reasons used to justify the woman returning to work, in exactly the same way as "we can't afford a roof over our heads if I don't". And that is fine, and a good reason to do so. but there should be no need for justification really. I work for the same reasons I did before DC, and probably the same sorts of reasons as my DH works. TBH I'm starting to wonder what they are!!

thekidsrule · 08/08/2012 22:09

imho both sides work hard, mind im sahm and think ive got it easier than those that work

IwishIwasinLondon · 08/08/2012 22:09

You know what op? As a mum you just can't win!

I work part time and our 2 ds's go to a cm before and after school and all day during school holidays on the 3 days that I work.

I've just managed to get a job where I'll be able to work around school hours in term time and work less during school holidays so that DH and MIL are able to look after them while I'm working.

Both ds's are cross that they won't be going to the cm's anymore from September!

Fwiw, we could manage without me working. We wouldn't be able to afford holidays or treats like meals out or going to the cinema but we could keep a roof over our heads and be warm and fed. I work because I enjoy it Shock. I trained as a professional before I met my DH, it's what I've wanted to do since I was pretty young. If I took several years out of the profession while our ds's were young the i'd be very unlikely to get a job in the same professon again.

Perhaps the people saying how irresponsible you are being have never had such a job, one that they have actively trained for and enjoy on a day to day basis. I'm pretty sure that if I had to do a job that I didn't enjoy just to pay the bills then I would see things from a different perspective.

stillorsparkling · 08/08/2012 22:10

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Dancergirl · 08/08/2012 22:10

And it's hardly a major sacrifice to take a break from your career for 4,5 or even 10 years to raise a family. Women are Woking longer and longer, in the scheme of things it's not a great deal of your working life.

Dancergirl · 08/08/2012 22:11

Working!

StealthPolarBear · 08/08/2012 22:12

"SAHMs who give WOHMs a hard time are really only trying to justify their own decisions to themselves and others "
and the reverse is very true.

StealthPolarBear · 08/08/2012 22:13

Dancer, has your DH taken a career break when his DC were young?

ClaireMarathonFeeder · 08/08/2012 22:13

Op, just to say, my 7yo always says she misses me when SHE decides to stay at her granma's, entirely her choice, but she misses me, Hmm

YANBU

LJ29 · 08/08/2012 22:13

But my job evolves so quickly that if I had taken 5 years out my career would have effectively been over! 4 or 5 years would have destroyed the career I have worked hard for and eradicated my income source.

TantrumsAndOlympicGoldBalloons · 08/08/2012 22:14

If I took a break from my career for 10 years I would be unemployable in my field right now.
But like stealth said, why are we coming up with justifications?

I go to work. That's it. I have a career I enjoy and I get up and go into the office every day which I have done for the last 17 years.

That's it.

Gatorade · 08/08/2012 22:14

I'm with LJ on that one, if I decide not to go back to work, even for just a year or 2 after maternity leave I would completely kill the career that I have built up over the last 12 years.

cardibach · 08/08/2012 22:14

REally Dancer? YOU think you could take 10 years out (or even 5 or 2) from an actual professiional career and get back in? At all, never mind at your old level. You are seriously deluded.
What did you do beofre children? Becuase I think Iwish might be right about poeple who talk like you never having had a career for which they actively trained and which they enjoyed for its own sake.

trixymalixy · 08/08/2012 22:16

Stealth, I guess I did. DH earned enough for me not to work, i was doing a phd, but becauseI could get away without going in I didn't, was in a bit of a bad place mentally and realised it was really not good for me staying in the house all day. Things came to a head and in the end I ditched the phd and got a job instead and was far far happier.

I got made redundant and got a good payout when I went on mat leave with Dc2. The idea was I would stay home until they went to school. I wasn't happy, I could feel the same slide into depression happening staying in the house all day. A job came up that was an opportunity that would never come up again and I applied and got it. I felt I was missing the kids working full time and after a year applied to work part time and feel it is the right balance for me.

cardibach · 08/08/2012 22:16

Yes, Stealth is right. We don;t need to prove we can justify out decisions to anyone. We go out to work, because we want to, for our own reasons, just as men have always done.

Velmadaphne · 08/08/2012 22:17

I'm a single parent with no financial support, so I have to work. My kids are 3 and 6. At best they tolerate me working, at worst they get very very upset about it, on a regular basis. This evening on the phone my 6 year old was in tears because he missed me. They're so much happier and better behaved when I'm on annual leave and we're together as a family all the time. I can't begin to imagine going through all this misery if I didn't have to. You must have an amazingly fun job if it's worth all that pain.

So, in the minority, I think YAB a bit U. Couldn't you at least have negotiated part time hours, or waited until a part time vacancy came up, so your children could have been eased in gradually.

Trust me, the guilt won't go away. I feel it all the time, even though I know I have no choice. And I will never know what the lasting effects on my children may be.

LJBrownie · 08/08/2012 22:17

Totally agree Tantrums, it's just a part of life to go to work...

StealthPolarBear · 08/08/2012 22:19

fair enough trixy, glad you have made it work for you - and it sounds like it was your own self awareness and attitude that made that happen.

janey68 · 08/08/2012 22:19

You see, I also find this idea that you can take 5,6, 10 years out to 'raise' a family and then jump back into a career really odd.

It presupposes that 'raising your children' is something that is done by one parent, who has to be at home, and that once the 5 (6? 10?) year span is up then the job is done.

I think raising children is actually far more complex and nuanced than that. My dh and I raise our children. We both work. Of course our kids have various other key figures in their lives- childminder , teachers, grandparents , but we are the primary carers. I don't imagine that at some fixed point in the future we'll think 'job done'; raising our children will be an ongoing thing.

In other words, it's just part of life to have children and go to work.

Dancergirl · 08/08/2012 22:20

No he hasn't. But the point is, one role is not better or worse than the other, just different and equally important.

It annoys me that women are seen as somehow 'inferior' if they choose to SAH. This is evidenced above when people say they are almost embarrassed to admit at parties etc they are SAHM. Just because you arent working, it doesn't mean you aren't a person in your own right and not using your brain.

Original poster
Inconceivable · 08/08/2012 22:20

It kind of raises an interesting point. Why do I feel guilty? My children had other periods of change that they found tricky to cope with, like starting school, moving country and their dad working away during the week and I didn't question our decision and we just dealt with it. I wonder if they struggle more with this, they are older and therefore more vocal or is my attitude different because this is mostly for my benefit?

OP posts:
StealthPolarBear · 08/08/2012 22:21

:( Velma
Not all children do feel like that. Nor do all parents. I have the odd twinge now and then but on the whole I feel no guilt. And my mother always worked afaik and I ahve no long term effects (I know I am a sample of 1)

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