to think there should be no such thing as a SAHM

[TalkinPeace2]

they might be an ex investment banker
or a part time nurse
or a part time teacher
or an active volunteer in the community
BUT
in these days where most women are educated at least to 18, very few did not work before kids
and very few will not work when their kids are older
so actually should define themselves by their personal achievements - currently undertaking a prolonged break
rather than some sort of domestic - which is what SAHM implies to me.

wordfactory and others, if you were Mylittlepuds right now, without the PND, would you find parenting hard?
Remember, you are Mylittlepuds, not you.

Word, parenting is not a 'task" any more than being a woman is a task. Whether or not it is 'hard' is for the individual to decide based on their ideals and those of the society in which they find themselves and the match between the two - it's a bit like self-esteem, so more an integral part of who we are rather than a job to do.

Parenting is a large collcection of tasks.

Being a parent is not. You could be a parent but not have any interaction with your children.

But keeping children alive, fed, clothed, educated, entertained, those are all tasks, and they can be hard.

I prefer to WOHM than SAHM. Objectively, I would still agree with Word that parenting is not hard in itself.

Wonder if our dhs would call parenting hard? I suspect not. They might very well prefer to do something else, but that does not make parenting hard to begin with. In fact, I found parenting too easy (!) and dispiriting to make it my whole life without balancing it with more interesting paid employment.

Parenting, no that may not be hard. But being a sahm can be to some people.

I find being a sahm too reductive, so yes maybe too easy, and generally add on freelance and other things because I want life to be more complex. I need to have something else going on at the same time as being a parent.

I'm talking about being a sahm not a parent.

amillionyears you guess wrong about a lot of those things, probably simply by virtue of the fact I have eight. I have no support (if you mean 'help') at all nor ever have had. Nevertheless it's not a competition. I just think working outside the home is a great deal harder that's all and that people make parenting harder than it really needs to be.

puds it's a bit silly to say that word and me can't be sensitive. We may be copers, but that's a different thing entirely. 'Snaps' is also a bit silly. I'm not boasting about WOH, I'm just saying that i believe that what I do is the softer option.

Not sure what IQ has to do with being unfazed by parenting tbh.

I'm really confused how this progressed. Just a few pages ago it was all about how working mums can't understand the fulfilment and how being a sahm 'completes, people.

Now some of the same people arguing how difficult sahm have it and that it's easier to go to work.

Could it be that everyone's individual circumstances, interactions with their kids and children themselves are.....shock......different to one another?

Which is why do many of the sweeping judgements and geralisations on here mean nothing.

If you actually read what word and yellow say, it iis that parenting of itself is not tough, but some people have tough circumstances within parenting that can make it harder.

One of those things, incidently, might be the fact you have to work to financially support your child.

To argue against that is nonsensical as they aren't diminishing the difficulties of others.

It's completely individual. Some may really dislike being a sahm, really hate it.

Others may feel the same about wohm. So yeah pretty hard to generalise.

Rowanhart,you said "parenting of itself is not tough, but some people have tough circumstances within parenting that can make it harder".

So are you saying that you, wordfactory, yellowtip and Tunip are saying that if you have tough circumstances, then parenting can be hard? I would agree with that .

So when wordfactory said "Sorry puds but motherhood is not hard"
she should have said "Sorry puds but motherhood is not hard, assuming you do not have tough circumstances".

Actually it's just slightly different angles.

I'm saying that you have to leave room for people to say, I really am not enjoying being a sahm, I'm finding it hard, going to work is easier.

And you're all talking about the phrase 'parenting, the hardest job in the world'. Which I'd say, no not really, too.

I agree with Marsha

But this whole thread is 'how long is a piece of string' anyway.

My mum had 8kids aged 10 and under.
She said it was something she never thought about because a) it was all she had ever done b) she had four sets of SIL and close family in the immediate vicinity and they all just piled in and out of each others houses and helped each other.
I had two small children at home and initially I lost my mind because a) I had gone from being a high earning city type who had coffee brought for her and a legion of staff to someone who spent the day trying to make playing Thomas the fucking tank engine bearable and b) I was entirely alone from 7am to 7pm.

So mum found it natural and easy but I found it hideous.

Of course the 'get up, make breakfast, go for a walk, clean the kitchen..' was easy. But that is not the sum of the experience.

It's like cooking. For some you just throw in a bit of this and a bit of that and it turns out fab. For some it is poring over a recipe with a knot in your stomach and still producing something that looks like the cat threw it up.

You are all agreeing if you did but realise it

yes I think we are agreeing too.

In that it's probably not necessary to make being a parent more than it has to be and it doesn't have to take every minute of our time.

And lol at Thomas the fucking Tank Engine, about sums it up. My bête noire was wind the bobbin up on a mat at music class. I think I had some existential crisis right there, and avoided like the plague for the second child.

housewife is a bit of a post war prosperous affectation and not borne out by the lives most women lived,and do live. children worked and mums worked.compulsory schooling and various factory acts were passed to limit ages of children who worked in factories etc.

this alleged halcyon days of housewife up to elbows in flour watching the kids is a bit of a misnomer.

I think the factories acts came before the end of the second world war Scottish.

1891 Factory and Workshop Act. Mothers were not to return to work within 4 weeks of giving birth. From 1893 the limit was raised to 11 weeks ! I think that may have been one the the last so called factories acts. Might be wrong though.

no.factory act 1833, limited amount of time in factory and no children under 9employed
factory act 1870 introduced elementary education from 5-13
factory act 1876 tried to compel parents to send child to school.introduced school attendance commitees to monitor attendance
1880 education act compulsory schooling 5-10yo,up to 14yo unless exempted
1918 education act school leaving age set at 14yo

Oh, I knew about the other other factory acts, didn't know about the 1918 act though, so thanks.

Childhood is getting longer

Looking after children is not hard when you take it piece by piece.

Tomorrow I'm going to be fiddling about with the Black-Scholes model. Today I cuddled my yummy daughter, went out for lunch with her, sang lots of songs and made play dough shapes.

But the relentlessness of it is hard.

Today I also had to come up with a comprehensible (by a two year old), non frightening and slightly amusing explanation for morning sickness. When all I wanted to do was lie on the floor, mutter about how ill I feel and have someone look after me. But I'm the mum so I have to do the looking after.

Tomorrow I can lock myself in the loo for as long as I like and no-one will bang on the door to be let in. Which seems a lot easier to me.

(Incidentally in case anyone wants to borrow it the explanation is that the baby in mummy's tummy is very very wriggly and wiggly which makes mummy a bit poorly. What a cheeky baby! Can you do wiggles too?)

Pagwatch - really liked your last post (at 14:28). You are so right aboutt eh cooking analogy

Great. But what if you'd been stuck for the day on a housing estate miles out of town with no shop and no transport? And had other commitments which meant that your DD couldn't be the centre of your attention all the time? This was my reality when my dtws were small and I found it bloody hard.

Well to be fair I should probably add that parenting looks easier when you're emerging the other end.

I never did dough shapes either. Or sang (I'm not tuneful). Thomas the fucking Tank Engine yes - I can relate to that. And meals that look like cat sick.

I suppose I made it easier by lowering the bar. But they're all here, all happy, so all's pretty good.

Miranda - that was kind of the point I was trying (and obviously failed) to make. It's not so much the looking after - it's the looking after for every single minute of every single day.

In my case it's hard because mornings are currently a long way from a happy place for me. You had different issues. And it's those things - and the fact that oarenting never gives you time off in lieu - that make it hard.

a recent yougov poll found that 1% of Mothers want to work fulltime after having a baby.
1%.
A tiny, minuscule minority. And you can say it's sexist, but we grow 'em ,birth 'em and breastfeed 'em so in most cases have a greater need to be there with 'em during their earlier years.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8296389.stm

I agree autumnlights.

I had return to work meticiouly planned.nursery place booked at 12weeks
maintained contact in mat leave
colleagues came saw me