Stay at Home mums

[marilynmonroe]

There is something that has been bothering me for a while about being a stay at home mum.

I decided to stay at home with my kids after my second was born. I enjoyed my job but wanted to be at home with my children. I have (and sometimes still) struggled with this. In the way that people who I meet will find me boring as all I do is look after the kids, clean, cook etc etc.I am an interesting person who reads, keeps up to date with what is going on in the world and I don't just talk about my kids!

Anyway, I'm getting to my point now, my eldest is about to start school in September and all I get asked at the moment is "have you thought what you are going to do next?" "Are you going to go back to work" now this may be due to small talk etc but...

It makes me feel that I should be thinking about doing something else.
But I feel that the kids need me now more than ever when they are at school and what about school holidays etc.

This isn't a thread about what's best, being a stay at home mum or a working mum.

I would like to hear from other mums that didn't go back to work when their kids started school and what they did with their time when they were at school?

I do worry about how i will fill my time when that happens and if I will get bored. Is there anything wrong with not wanting to go back to work and look after your family? Why do women feel that they have to go back to work when they don't need to? I'm in a very lucky situation where I don't need to work for financial reasons although this could change at anytime as my partner is self employed. I don't want to start a discussion about how some women have to work etc etc.

I'm not sure if I am being clear, I have been thinking a lot about this recently. Would like to hear other people's opinions just to make me feel better about my choice I guess. Maybe I'm trying to justify my choice.

Thanks for reading!

Alvin of course there isn't an ideal.

People who think there is a just a bit unintelligent. Or unimaginative. The later is a worse insult in my book ...

But the reality is most women have to work. And most of our daughters and daughters in law will have to work. No getting away from that. So do we want to saddle them with the notion that they shouldn't be able to have a family? Or that if they do, they will be a second rate parent?

Blimey. I look at my DD and all her delicious friends and wouldn't want to saddle them with that old pile of shit for all the tea in China.

morethan I cant imagine living the way your WOHP does either because my working life is nothing like that !
There are lots of variables and people usually figure out what suits them.

The women who work want to get on stance,the zero lack of support to enable parents to take time of work,the asking away of CB from one income families,the stigmatising,the only trying to help wp....

Olgaga

I also think that people are tetchy due to accusations they experience on these threads time and time again. I think the wohm ask about what sahm do during the day because they object to comments (maybe here or past threads) that suggest that sahm is hard work, rushed off feet and should be entitled to pay. So they ask for justification of what a sahm does to deserve this pay.
There are probably zillions more examples, but thats the one that springs to mind.

The government is taking away choice? How?

I'm assuming you mean your benefits, no?

You want the government to keep paying you benefits?

Word how about facilitating parents to take time off and have a career?

I've had time off and couldn't go back if I wanted to.I need to retrain but courses are too expensive unless you get benefits,you get no help with childcare(unaffordable on one salary),you're looked down on if there is a gap in your cv.....

Alvin.

I thought it pretty much summed up the life of a wohp employed by somebody to do a job.
I would want to say, can't come in this week dh is away, he only got notice yesterday.
I'm leaving today at 4pm and won't be back till tuesday and then I can only do 2 hours coz I have other stuff to do, or I need to take dd somewhere.

No however I don't think families on one income should be stigmatised re CB,sahp should get help to retrain and with childcare when training the same as wp,there should be ways to help families(tax allowance) when 1 parent has a career break,longer maternity/paternity leave...... and any other whizzy ideas a gov could actually care enough to think of otherwise pretty soon only the very rich are going to be able to have a sahp and parents are going to be too ashamed to even try it.

The gov are taking away choices by scrapping the NONE BENEFIT tax credit system and replacing it with UC, making it impossible for sahm to receive payment without opting to be a job seeker.
As there aren't any jobs that meet the criteria set out for the new UC sahps are really in effect having their time/part of it managed in order to receive their payment. They will have to attend meetings etc, just to placate some of society who object to sahps receiving tax credit. It is going to change diddly squit, and is just another way of putting sahps down.
Turn up to a couple of interviews, keep a record of jobs applied for, which will be zero as there are few school hour jobs available and voila, receive payment every week.

I think that's what I was trying to get at- some of these 'choices' are not so much 'choices' at all, and the current situation, whether a 'choice' or not leaves many women in poverty in older age, because of their careers going down the tubes after having several years out (or longer) with their children. This is clearly not the case if you are financially well-off.

My own 'choice' to WOH is not quite a choice either, I would love to work one day less a week, but fear that by doing so, I would be placed on the 'mommy track' as they call it in the US, and effectively scupper my career. Although this is partly for selfish reasons, I enjoy it and would like to be promoted, I also want the higher pay and better lifestyle that goes along with managerial roles which many male breadwinners enjoy, I don't want poorly paid part-time 'women's work' that leaves me with less pension but with the stress of trying to juggle everything. In some societies (e.g. Dutch, Nordic countries, some countries like NZ) there is much more emphasis on limiting full-time hours and a work/life balance that we have not achieved in the UK, so it is possible to be successful but not work crazy hours- I'd like to see policies brought into place to encourage this.

I don't stigmatize SAHP, as I have been one, as has my husband for 2/3 years for each of our children (both taking the 'hit' to our careers equally). But I think there is an unwillingness of women to see they are being shafted in the main by the current way that society is structured- many women are forced back into traditional roles often not because they prefer them or they suit their personalities, but because their husband 'earn more/my job has less travel/he's higher up than me'- after supposedly years of equality, even before any childrearing. This worries me for the same reasons it worries Wordfactory- I don't believe these are genuine choices for everyone making them because men are not making them in their droves. Those who genuinely choose it are really lucky- most of us are making imperfect choices in a really bizarre world in which the majority work longer hours than the last generation.

While I do have sympathy with the CB issue, I'm less inclined to take issue with tax credits.

These are benefits.

And it's pretty difficult to justfy giving people benefits who have chosen not to work. Particularly when people then admit that much of the school day is spent decorating, walking the dog etc. These are lovely things to do. But you can't get paid to do them, surely?

I think it's also a hard sell to people who have put their DC in childcare to work. They should work and pay taxes so you don't have to .

No mummy I wanted it and fought for it.Dp offered to be a sahd(not unusual round) but I wanted to do it more,couldn't bare to be apart from them.I'm not dim and knew it would have an impact.

Somebody is going to have to take the pain.We have friends where both have reduced hours and it has had an impact on both careers- not on.

There should be more in place to value time at home and support it.

mumsy that's my big issue really; the next gneration fo women.

I can't understand why anyone would want to saddle them with all this guilt! Particularly when they'll have little choice!

morethan
Im sure some WOHP have that type of job but I dont and neither do many of my friends/colleagues.I love the flexibility/balance it gives me.

I shouldnt worry you sound pretty unemployable

iggi - i would get no support from my husband regarding housework and kids when he is often away for weeks on end. if i was working it would all be down to me for probably not much money and restictions on our family life. i don't relish that kind of stress and workload if i don't have to. if our situation was different i might have been a wohm. maybe i will in the future, who knows.

Reduced hours will have an impact, but a lesser one than bowing out of the workplace entirely. In some lines of work, the impact would be fairly negligible longer term.

Re 10 hour days, a lot of children (most?) might spend one or two days at after school club. Or five, but be collected well before 6. It's not all or nothing; not all jobs (even office-based ones) are strictly 9-5.

Blueskies it sounds as if being a SAHP is more about you than your children.

I'm sure there have been benefits for them, but there have (and continue to be as he approaches adulthood) benefits for my son in having two WOHPs.

It would be disingenuous for either you or I to overstate them, imo.

Jenai thats very true .
Some of my friends have office type jobs and can start early/leave early /work from home etc.
With both parents and possibly grandparents chipping in a bit as well their DC dont spend lots of time in childcare/after school care.
Obviously those whose DH/DW works away a lot dont have those options.

Alvin.

I am soon to be employed by myself but not self employed iyswim and on my terms. Very lucky to have this option after 20+ years as a sahm. I have just become a director of a Ltd company and am in the process of becoming a landlord as well. Its amazing how much you can do as a "lazy" sahm and a skint one on TC too.
I am so glad I am unemployable though because I think it would be so boring if any of the wohm threads on here are anything to go by.
I don't mean to be smug, but proving a point that you don't judge a book by its cover. Neither I nor anybody else knows what any poster on here is actually capable of, or what their life is really like.

Err no when they were tiny sorry re benefits were for them,I didn't want to leave them because I knew childcare wouldn't suit them,I also felt I was the better option as a parent having an early years degree and knowing how miserable/stressed I would be being apart from them(would have an impact).

Obviously as a mum I kind of wanted to be with them too,toddlers and mums do actually like and benefit from being together.

Now I still think they'd be better off with one of us at home but feel it would be more manageable although not ideal if I worked,they're also at school all day however I'm pretty much stuffed career wise and we need the money dp makes.

However I've never been materialistic and need very little to be happy.I would do exactly the same in a heartbeat.

Ow more how did you manage that?

Erm that was a joke !

director of a Ltd company are you taking a wage from your DH's company to reduce your family's tax bill?

More I'm looking at my options.

Can't afford to retrain so maybe working from home,working for myself etc.Don't know where to start but will get there.I may be a lazy,pointless sahm but I still have a brain and determination.

Are there any careers advice sites aimed at getting back into work in your 40 s with a very old degree?

Sorry that was to morethan it was a joke based on your wanting to leave work to do your own thing. Maybe I should have instead ?