to sometimes think that SAHMs are "living the dream" and really envy them

[Fizzler99]

Ok so I don't have kids yet.

I work ridiculously long hours (as in out the house 6.30am-8pm minimum and often work late nights and weekends too). I have a long commute each way (can't afford to live where I work as property so expensive) and the job is very, very high stress. I earn a decent wage, but I am quite junior so I'm not on mega-money despite what my friends and family seem to think

I don't intend to keep this job forever, but I need to establish myself in my choosen career then I can hopefully 'down-grade' to something less stressful.

One of my colleagues has just given up work to become a SAHM. It just sounds like living the dream. No more waiting on cold station platforms for delayed trains at 6.30am, no more hideous commute, no more stressful job and nagging boss and office politics, no more late night working and surviving on takeaway or the contents of the office vending machine for weeks at a time. I am so jealous!

Please give me a much-needed reality check. Please tell me the reality of being a SAHM. For those of you that have gone from having a quite high-flying career to SAHM, please tell me how the two compare. I think I really need a reality check!

YANBU. As long as you acknowledge that IANBU to think that getting up, getting myself ready in peace, going on a train on my own, doing a satisfying, challenging, varied, rewarded job for which you are properly appreciated, then being able to go out in the evening at the drop of a hat, etc, is also living a dream.

Are you ever coming back op? I'm dying to know whether the 175 responses to your post have influenced your view at all. X

bonsoir she is not over-demanding, but it is an interesting theory. There were times when she had to be fed, because she couldn't do it herself, learn to sleep, she still doesn't brush her teeth on her own, wash her clothes or cook...just a few examples....yelled at top voice used to be literally, now it is more figuratively, she's now old enough to 'argument' with you. Lol

I think it depends on financial situation,or it does for me.
Have always worked very part time whilst having 4 DCs over 20plus years.
Now work one day per week,youngest DC at school,so have a lot of free time.
Am fortunate in being able to meet friends for coffee couple of times a week,do lunch,buy new c lothes,have hair done etc etc.
No financial need for me to work more hours,indeed DH prob wouldn't want me too as would make his life more difficult!
Also I like my job for the few hours that I do it,but no way could do more as involves long hours and alot of stress,am paediatric nurse on busy ward.

Dilidali - it's a theory based on a lot of observation and practice! When parents work FT (or almost FT) outside the home, they are mistaken when they think that their children would behave in the same way towards them 7/7 as they do 2/7 (or 3/7). They don't. We have both sorts of DC in our family (blended) as well as lots of examples around us. DC who are with a parent all the time are a lot more chilled.

"Ok so I don't have kids yet"
No sh*t.

If nothing else, we've probably managed to put the Op and other people off ever having kids

I love being a SAHM, I feel as if I am living my dream.
It's not easy at all and I treat it like a job in that if I'm sitting reading a magazine or book or sticking Peppa Pig on I feel as if I'm skiving.
The things I love most about it are -

Freedom to decide where we go and what we do every day

Not having to ask permission from someone else to be off ill or to stay home and look after my children when they are ill

Not having to sit and wonder what my children are doing right now and feeling sad that someone else is reading them a story or comforting them when they cry

Being there for older DCs when they get home from school rather than them letting themselves into an empty house/ going to after school club and watching all their friends be picked up and go home.

It's very hard work, I look a state half the time and our house is a often a bit of a bombsite. We're also a lot more skint than we were, obviously - no more sauntering along to Marks and spencers or Waitrose and casually tossing things in the trolley or buying some nice new clothes on pay day. But I get to spend every day with my favourite people - what could be better than that.

Stripyguys

I couldn't have said it better.

Thanks morethan.

I also wonder at people who seem to think that SAHMdom is boring and unfulfilling and that you are not using your brain, when in fact you are very much doing a job - you are parenting your child. Protecting, teaching, nurturing, and socialising them - how is that not a job, and a very important one? It is so sad that because it's not something you get paid to do, and there are messy, dirty, exhausting parts, it's sneered at and seen as low status.

Many professions involve getting dirty, messy, and tired, but those people are awarded kudos and respect by the rest of society. Staying at home with your children? Mindless and boring work,as far as many people are concerned, even though if you were doing the same job for £60K your status in life would sky rocket.

I hate it. 5am starts (when lucky), harassment until 8pm (when lucky), cleaning until 11pm.

No respect. No peace. No rest. No time. No money.

Commutes are replaced by nightmarish trips with uncooprative, exhausting individuals who make everything 100x harder.

Although not everyone feels this way. But if this is 'living the dream', I want reality back.

I think they have it very very easy.

Actually thinking back, the two weeks before I returned to work when we had a settling in period for our nanny were definitely living the dream. Basically I could just go for clothes shopping, get coffee, hair, nails while our nanny got to know the DCs. How the other half live eh?

I thought I would share this amusing story.

A friend of mine was a SAHM in Qatar with a housemaid who lived in the house and did all the cleaning and all the babysitting.

The housemaid complained to the DH one day: "Sir, all madam does is smoke cigarettes, drink wine and look at Mumsnet all day, she really needs a hobby!"

True story. My friend was horrified. So was her DH!

I have lived both lives and I can tell you that being a housewife with all the money I wanted was boring and unfulfilling. I am now divorced, started a new life and have started my own company - I would never pay for the luxuries I once had. I do miss them but I love the fact that I'm working again and creating my own future. I miss having lots of money and booking holidays without a thought - of course I do - but I'd rather be the way I am now and I think my DD respects me more. More to the point, I respect myself more.

If I had one message to teach my DD it would be: never rely on someone else to provide for you. I thought being a SAHM would be fine and we'd be ok - I never thought I'd be divorced and facing financial uncertainty.
Good luck to everyone.

It isn't "easy" to be any type of mum - whether sahm or wohm - whether you spend the bit in between teaching and looking after you baby/toddler or at work you still have to do it all in the morning and evening and sometimes all night. 7 days a week.

Once they go to school tk be a sahm then is definitely luxury

I get up at 6am, and work till 9pm. I then have to be "on call" all night. Last night I was up at 1-3am. I'm out the house 8.30-4pm every single day.

I'm a SAHM. It is harder than any job I've done, including working on a yard in charge of 40 horses and walking 5 miles to and from uni including looking after two horses at the same time. With no car.

Screw.You.

Stripeyguys

They say the proof is in the pudding. My 2 older dss 21 and 18 really appreciate the fact I was a sahm for them and all the family show me immense respect. I have found that most of the disrespect if there has been any has come from other mums. . It is a shame that as women we fought to be able to have choices but we continue to put other womens choices down. I have never had a bad response from a male.

I agree, there seems to be a determination amongst other mothers to totally disrespect and devalue the job a SAHM does - just on MN I've seen it sneered at, dismissed as mindless, and on this thread as 'the frontal lobotomy that is SAHMdom'. No other role seems to engender such total contempt.

I think sometimes one partner has to be a sahm otherwise family life would be unmanagable.

I like being home, we have great fun, we have a relaxed pace of life that sadly many children don't enjoy.

It takes time to adjust to this pace of life. It also takes time to build up a friendship network. You need a network.

The thing i miss...dressing up for work. It's not neccessary to wear a lovely suit and i loved wearing a suit for work.

Being a SAHM broke my mental health. OK, I have a back story there but the days at home and the financial dependence on DH's salary made me very anxious and depressed. However, that I wasn't working made it possible for me to go to all my therapy, and I'm much better today for working hard at that.

My new, flexible job means I don't have to rely on child care - I take the DCs to school and pick them up. I'm at work all day while they're at school and for now, it suits us fine.

Horses for courses, naturally. I didn't check to see if this thread went bad but I expect it may have done.

I think threads like this are fine as long as everybody respects other peoples opinions and views, to which we are all entitled. I have brought up/ bringing up 3 dc and I still learn from these threads.

An addition to my last post about women putting other womens choices down. I did mean from both sides. I hear just as many sahms calling wohm's.

I agree, there seems to be a determination amongst other mothers to totally disrespect and devalue the job a SAHM does - just on MN I've seen it sneered at, dismissed as mindless, and on this thread as 'the frontal lobotomy that is SAHMdom'. No other role seems to engender such total contempt.

But stripy that is just how being a SAHM makes those people feel. That is their experience of being a SAHM. They found it boring, you dont, so what?

morethan are you deliberately misreading this thread?

The women saying being a SAHM is hard/unpleasant are ...SAHMs. No one is putting them down. They're just not enjoying it!

I have been a SAHM for differing amounts of time for each of my my four children and each time it has felt like living the dream. I can get up later, go to bed earlier, better sleep in between, the house is calm, the children were happier and DH and I had a stronger relationship.

I would like at least one more child and this time I am determined to take as long as I can being a SAHM.

"DC who are with a parent all the time are a lot more chilled. "
I'm looking forward to evidence being advanced in support of this proposition. In both of my childrens' classes, the most highly-strung, difficult and badly behaved children are both the products of full-time mothering. My poor neglected DD, on the other hand, walked off with the form prize last term for good behaviour, cleverness and all-round wonderfulness