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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Original poster

to think that the further you are from the world of work, the crazier being a working mum sounds?

999 replies

StripeyBear · 09/02/2013 15:06

I did it for 3 years - motherhood and a (part-time, but) demanding job... when you were always running from pillar to post, and buying take-away pizza, and feeling guilty because your child was crying when you left, and always being tired and hassled and answering your blackberry on your days "off" and being f**ked off because your job wasn't half as interesting as the work you used to get when you were childless and in the office full-time-plus....

Almost 2 years of being a SAHM later, my working-mother-friends come round for coffee on their day off and moan about all of the above.. It sounds familiar, but now even their moaning exhausts me. I'm more in a swapping recipes for lemon-drizzle-cake and making my own pizza dough sort of head space. These days I just potter around - my whole life has slowed down.....

Don't get me wrong - I realise I'm fortunate that we can manage without the wage (and not everyone can), but I find I am barely worse off (once the childcare is taken into account, and it is so much easier to spend money wisely, now that I don't have to buy crappy pizza because I am too exhausted to cook or book my holiday at the last minute because I wasn't organised earlier). And life feels so much better now that I'm not always exhausted... and I actually have time to do interesting stuff like read (grown-up) books... and there is no stress around childcare and the like....

So when my friends come round and moan about their blackberries ringing and being side-lined for promotions and feeling stressed about organising a child's birthday party when they have no time to really do it and so on.... instead of feeling oodles of sympathy... all I can think is... WHY? WHY? Why are you doing it then?

AIBU? I sort of suspect I might be Sad

OP posts:
earlierintheweek · 10/02/2013 22:16

Thought you were going to bed idshag?

idshagphilspencer · 10/02/2013 22:17

:)

ChestyLeRoux · 10/02/2013 22:17

Why on earh would more children than they expect turn up Confused

ChestyLeRoux · 10/02/2013 22:18

I will also repeat it is a brilliant job.

WorriedMummy73 · 10/02/2013 22:18

Also meant to say - how do you know working with children in a nursery isn't someone else's dream job? Because for some people it is! As you've pointed out, money isn't everything. Therefore, some people genuinely work for the love of the job, be it in a nursery or elsewhere.

janey68 · 10/02/2013 22:19

Earning the minimum wage in a nursery is a shit job?

But you said its not about the money stripey.....!!

Original poster
StripeyBear · 10/02/2013 22:20

ChestyLeRoux Sun 10-Feb-13 22:08:04
Stripeybear - you had a nanny do you think they didnt have the same relationship with your child? Why did you leave your child with her then?

I was wrong. I thought it would be good another care, and that I needed to maintain my position in my career. I thought I could juggle it all, and have it all. I discovered it was ok care, but not the best care for my child. I realised I couldn't have everything.

OP posts:
Original poster
StripeyBear · 10/02/2013 22:20

*good enough care

OP posts:
ChestyLeRoux · 10/02/2013 22:21

I dont mind too much about the wage.I would happily keep working for minimum wage if the status of the profession is raised.

Sulawesi · 10/02/2013 22:21

I totally agree that the OP is giving SAHM's a bad name.

As I mentioned a minute ago I stayed at home and put my twins in nursery where they seemed perfectly happy. I cried buckets when they left to start school and years later still see some of the staff who always ask after the little buggers darlings.

ChestyLeRoux · 10/02/2013 22:23

Sounds like you have had a bad experience and think thats what all childcare is like its not believe me.I have never known a nursery to breach ratios.If anything in our care behaviour of the children improves considerably very quickly.

Even as a qualified staff member I dont think i could provide all the opportunities of nursery at home.

HandbagCrab · 10/02/2013 22:23

I'm sure they'd pay stripey to look after her marvellous progeny rather than expect a wage.

I read that guardian article. The research doesn't really show anything one way or another from what it says.

hamdangle · 10/02/2013 22:23

I don't buy that attachment crap either or that it's 'worse for boys'. My DS went to nursery full time from about six months until he went to school and it wasn't even a great nursery and he certainly didn't get one to one attention but staff were all lovely and friendly and that was what I could afford as a single mum at the time. He's now a happy well adjusted 16 year old and is currently studying a levels. He is loving, kind, popular and outgoing. I can't say that me working has had any negative effect on his upbringing. He can't even remember much about the nursery other than the friends that he made there. These were the same friends he then went to school with which was actually really important for him settling in as his birthday is the end of August so he was youngest in the year when he started school.

scottishmummy · 10/02/2013 22:24

you're so v v funny,bet you say you wouldn't miss precious moments and mean it
bet you've thought to self don't know why they had kids if they leave them with strangers
I do love a good cake bakin housewife cliche.so old school and deliciously obnoxious

StripeyBear · 10/02/2013 22:26

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by Mumsnet for breaking our Talk Guidelines. Replies may also be deleted.

FantasticMax · 10/02/2013 22:26

MY nursery is situated beside a motorway and high speed railway line, the garden is a concrete jungle with gaps in the electrocuted fences and a pack of hungry wolves hang around for tidbits outside.

Inside is draughty, with used syringes peppered around (finders keepers, losers weepers!) and the odd hungry polar bear. The staff are toothless, incoherent wenches who chuck children into roach fested ball pits and chuck in the odd morsel of Fingus lasagne and Tesco burgers.

It cost me £4.50 a day. I loves it. DD is learning to hunt rats with her bare hands and she isn't even walking yet!

janey68 · 10/02/2013 22:27

I don't want to 'have it all' (meaningless phrase).
I want the best for my family, which is me and dh both being loving involved parents and having jobs.
It's your lack of imagination which is the problem here stripey- you just can't accept that other parents love their children just as much as you love yours, and raise them just as well, but do it differently

Sulawesi · 10/02/2013 22:27

Hamdangle, that's so nice to read Smile.

My children are into double figures age wise and they still have wonderful friends that they met at nursery. I wouldn't have missed sending them there for the world.

Dereksmalls · 10/02/2013 22:29

Oh dear, my DH misses the kids dreadfully when he has to travel and they miss him. I'd be competely devastated if this wasn't the case and I think it's very positive for them.

It's over six years since DD1 started at the nursery DD2 now attends and over that period the staffing has barely changed. Even when people have left, they often come back and several have degrees in primary education, nursing, some work part time splitting their time working with adults for SN. It's a great place and a wonderful environment for the kids - but then I know so many people who are delighted with the nurseries their children attend, I feel very sad for you that the ones in your locality were just so poor.

slatternlymother · 10/02/2013 22:29

I'm sorry - I'm afraid I know too much about nurseries - that's why I'm not keen on them. Any nursery worker will tell you that ratios are often not met. To keep costs down, they won't be fully staffed at the beginning or end of the day - hoping that parents will drop late and collect early... so if more people than they expect turn up - the ratio is breached. It will also be breached at lunchtime etc - just naive to think they are not, I'm afraid

No. Just your nursery, I'm afraid, which is obviously total shit. None of the nurseries I've seen do this. With my DS' nursery, because I work in the same place; I randomly drop in to check he's happy. Too many Panorama episodes I guess. They are ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS at the correct ratios. Anything else would result in immediate withdrawal and reporting to Ofsted, as any responsible parent would do.

Face it; if your DP leaves you; you are fucked. Utterly fucked. Because he's supporting this way of life. If he has an affair, or just decides that you're really boring now that you have nothing to talk about other than cake and leaves, you are bolloxed aren't you? What if something even more unthinkable happens? Are you going to be able to get out there and support your family?

What makes me despair about women like you; is that women like me fight for equality. The choice. Because, in the words of Caitlin Moran; for me; feminism is about CHOICE. The choice to work, the choice to stay at home. When you work hard, day in, day out BY CHOICE (because I can't see a queue of men giving up their careers to look after the kids Hmm), to give your family a happy and balanced way of life; when some ill educated 50's throwback harpy, gives you 'The Lowdown' on how you should be staying at home, well that really takes the fucking biscuit.

Original poster
StripeyBear · 10/02/2013 22:30

nevergoogle Sun 10-Feb-13 22:03:14
you want government support to get you back to work stripey?

surely you could cash in one of those trust funds coming your way to help yourself?

I did put some money aside to pay for retraining - but I think it is probably more than just individual cash - possibly even some legislative chane that is needed.

Look, 15 years ago, the bog standard maternity that most women took was 6 weeks. If there had been MN then, I bet if I had posted that a baby really needs its mum (or Dad for first 6 months) I would have a simlar response to the reactions we have seen here. All I am saying is that small chidren deserve to grow up at home with their parents... hardly a big deal is it?

OP posts:
morethanpotatoprints · 10/02/2013 22:30

YANBU.

I too don't understand either. I have friends who work, but don't moan about their lot. In fact they seem to thrive on it.
Then there are others I know who constantly moan about it to the extreme of making them self unwell. What I don't understand is when these people moaning aren't actually making any money from working. Confused
However, OP no matter how much you, I or anybody else don't understand them, its their life choices. You and I have made ours. Wink

WorriedMummy73 · 10/02/2013 22:31

Applauds Slatternly for saying what I wanted to say...

freddiemercuryismine · 10/02/2013 22:31

15 years ago it was 18 weeks. Just saying.

Sulawesi · 10/02/2013 22:31

Yy just to add, some of the staff at my DT's nursery have been there for over 20 years and watched lots of their charges grow up. One of the younger members of staff had given up a good career (and salary) in the city to work in the nursery and she loves it.