to be a sham even though I can't afford it?

[Picoo]

I would really like to stay at home with my DS I don't really enjoy my job and I would like to be a full time mummy. The thing is we could only just about afford it. We would have to pay interest only on our mortgage, give up insurance such as health and maybe house insuranc my husband would have to work longer hours, etc. We would be pretty poor, and we have zero savings, but at least I would be with DS.

Is it crazy to live a poor existence but be there for DS, or should I go back to work and be more financially secure?

Yes, to answer that question I believe I would still have continued to work while my children were young, amazingg

All your arguments are based on the premise that a child up to a specific age should ideally always be cared for by a parent. Which is fine if that's the view you hold for yourself. It's not a view which everyone shares, and hence people don't all do the same as you.

The problem is essentially that while WOHM seem (in the main) to be able to get their heads round the fact that SAHP are making a valid choice if its something agreed on by both partners, you seem unable to accept that parents who work and use childcare are making a less valid choice, and that they are being selfish.

Have to just add in - I agree you have also made lots f calm and sensible posts, particularly in the last few pages. So not whinging about everything you have said! And I didn't mean to single you out. Your name just stuck in my head along with some of the earlier comments, despite reading so many different arguments on this.

I am in the position of being able to work from home. Most people aren't.

I have a lovely relative who hated every second at home. She went back as soon as she possibly could. Her DC have a nanny. No one's ever asked her DH why he didn't stay at home with them even though she earns more than 3x his salary.

Argh! That should read 'you seem unable to accept that parents who work are making an equally valid choice

I was itching to go back to work when my year's maternity leave was up. Only part time, because I was lucky enough to have that as an option, but I was certainly keen to be doing other things than full time childcare and housekeeping.
I'm currently on maternity leave again for another year, and have continued to send DC1 to his childminder part time because he enjoys it.

Actually- what monicalewinski says. Spot on.

Haha Janeyi was going to agree with you there but thought it would be a bit snarky

Wickedwitch I'm sorry. Tbh now is a good time to develop a very thick skin about what other people think about your parenting choices, as everyone has opinions on it! Luckily it's only on MN that people spout opinions so freely though. Please try not to take my view to heart - I'm clearly in the minority. Read lots of threads on the subject for a more balanced view is my advice.

wickedwitch,you need to toughen up pronto.to prepare for the face,the precious moments crew
whilst mn doesn't represent all life,it does give window on a certain type you'll meet
and you need to be able to deflect that,and do your thing.guilt free

Look at all the options available to you wickedwitch, really take your time over choosing the right childcare for your child (which won't necessarily be the most expensive or ofsted 'outstanding' ones.)
Then toughen up and ignore the doom and gloom merchants who want to believe that your child will somehow have less favourable outcomes because you've worked. Take if from the many many working mums and dads on here who have teenage / adult children who are absolutely fine.

I know, and I can appreciate my post is self-centred(?) and doesn't add much to the discussion. Just a little surprised at how the discussion ended up when most posters essentially agreed on the OP's circumstances.

But I can't get beyond the arguments made in favour of WOH because they are all about the parents and what they want. Look at your second paragraph. All about being a fulfilled parent. Not what's best for the child.

But that's the point really - what is best for the parent often is what is best for the child. Some parents take time off to be at home with the children, and then find that they can't get back in to the workplace when their children are older. It isn't always that easy - their skills may be out of date, there are gaps in their CVs, or they may simply have lost confidence. For some, this may not be a big deal and they are content to stay at home. For others, it may be devastating.

My mother was happy enough at home when we were small, but she suffered on and off with major depressive episodes all through my teens and early twenties. She was isolated and unfulfilled at home, particularly as DSis and I were getting older and becoming more independent. She deeply regretted having lost her career, hated not having an independent source of income or pension, and believed that she had wasted her potential. She tried to hide all of this from us but failed miserably, and I spent a good part of my teenage years feeling intensely guilty for the choices that she had made, supposedly for our benefit. I often felt more like a parent than a child, and it was incredibly difficult to leave home when I finally did, as I felt awful for abandoning her to her empty nest. I wish for her sake and mine that she had kept her career. SAH just wasn't right for her, and in the long term, it did her children no favours either.

I really would not want any other young person to feel so responsible for the happiness of his/her parents like I did. I think parents must take responsibility for their own happiness and fulfillment themselves, and if that means that both parents WOH, then I think it's a small price to pay.

FWIW, I think it's probably just as damaging for someone to WOH if they desperately want to SAH instead, but I have no personal experience of this. Either way, I'm firmly of the view that happy parents will produce happy kids, while unhappy parents will struggle not to share at least a little of that unhappiness.

I have finally read all the thread - where did the op go???

I can't believe anyone would think them being a working parent is better for their children. Of course it is better for your children if you can be a stay at home mum. They will be more secure and they will be happier.
however they will also be happier if you can take them to Disneyland and buy them a pony, doesn't mean you need to sacrifice everything so they can have it.

Having worked full time, part time and not at all, my dc have definitely preferred me being a sahm. It's not possible in the long term and I will be going back to work full time. But I hope I won't get defensive about it; it is the best decision for our family as a whole, even if it is not what my dc would choose.

I don't really understand why there is always a bunfight about sahm vs wohm. Of course, everyone secretly judges everyone else on some level but so what? If you are happy with your decision why is there always this squabbling about it? And I never understand why people try to justify their decision to go back to work by saying they want their daughter to see a working mother. As if women in the 21st century are not able to understand the idea of a woman with a career. If you want to go ack to work then go, don't use some lame excuse to justify yourself, it's really not necessary.

If you're new to MN you may not realise that this is a thread which goes round and round periodically.
Most people are really balanced and sensible in their views, and accept that being a good, loving parent is not something which comes with a script of how you should precisely live life.
There are a small minority who can't get their heads around that...and think there is only ONE way. Xenia, who believes all women should return to work full Time immediately after pushing out the placenta, and the couple of posters on this thread who believe childcare is the work of the devil and the mother should give up work and be there 24/7.
As a pregnant woman or a new mum, you can often feel rather vulnerable and it's not helpful to have people judging you and your family like this.

That was to wicked witch

If you could have taken time out with your children and been guaranteed not to have lost pace career wise on return say 5/6 years later, would you have done it? Or would you still have worked and used childcare when they were toddlers because you wanted to work right at that point int time iyswim, not just as time invented into future career prospects?

Depends. We needed my income anyway, but if money had been no object, I probably would have taken a longer break - but that would have been for my benefit more than for dd's!! :) I genuinely feel that dd gained so many positive benefits from our childcare arrangements that I wouldn't have wanted to SAH for her benefit. However, I would have found it much easier to be at home for a bit longer when she was very small as I continued to bf and found it tough getting up in the night and then having to go into work like a fully functioning human being!

If I had not had access to brilliant childcare, again, I might have stayed at home for a bit longer if that had been an option.

But I can't get beyond the arguments made in favour of WOH because they are all about the parents and what they want. Look at your second paragraph. All about being a fulfilled parent. Not what's best for the child.

Then you haven't read one of my earlier posts! My main reason for working is that this means we have two income streams. So if something goes wrong with one of them the consequences for the children are actually pretty small. (We could live on either one if we needed to.)

Being able to provide security for our children IMO is probably the most important thing I do as a parent.

Plus I do think you are a bit hypocritical here - you are the SAHM and your dh has the career because that is what you two wanted - the other way round would provide more security / resources for your child without compromising the "at home" parent.

If you could have taken time out with your children and been guaranteed not to have lost pace career wise on return say 5/6 years later, would you have done it? Or would you still have worked and used childcare when they were toddlers because you wanted to work right at that point int time iyswim, not just as time invented into future career prospects?

If what you are saying is if I could have had longer as maternity leave with a job guaranteed at the end then I would have taken a bit longer. (I took the full year allowed.) Not least because when I went back dd still wasn't sleeping and I have to get up earlier on work days!

How long I would have dragged my "maternity leave" out I'm not sure. Dh was made redundant soon after I went back so I suspect I would have rushed back in a panic then.

It's hard to know though as I know things I didn't know then. (Including how well dd bonded to her key carer at nursery.)

But you make calm and sensible points which give me food for thought.

Thank you btw. But I must make the point that we WOHMs also put our children's needs first in many ways, even if we might choose to work for ourown wellbeing.

A few people have commented on my childcare arrangements when dd was small. They were ideal in many ways, as they allowed DH and I to share most of the care between us while having a fantastic nanny to cover a few extra hours. However, there was a downside - I would work in the mornings while the nanny was at home, return at lunchtime and spend the afternoon/early evening with dd and then go back to work when she was asleep and DH was at home. It was a very long day and I was exhausted, but I valued having the time with dd in the afternoons while keeping up my career.

There are always compromises to be made. Just depends which ones work best for your own family.

It's impossible to go from "in general children are better off being cared for by a parent" to "this individual child is better off..." because it depends on the parent and it depends on the childcare. I've seen lovely nurseries and I've seen nurseries I wouldnt trust with my dog, never mind my child. If you're a high earning family with a mother who has little interest in toddlers and wants to work FT, and can afford a Norland nanny or a lovely nursery then that's completely different set of options to a low earning family with a very engaged mother who loves toddlers but would only be able to afford a pretty basic nursery that bumps up against the max ratios.

It's very easy for affluent women who can afford genuinely good childcare to say everyone should do it, but I can completely understand the the other view if you can't afford childcare you'd be happy with. I do agree that the more women that remain in the workplace, the better for all women in the workplace BUT more women in the boardroom means more women all the way down the chain, including shitty jobs with no prospects. Those women, and critically, their children, might well be better off in a SAHM set up.

So basically my point is that it's not a one size fits all solution.

Richmanpoorman - your final sentence sums it up.
What a pity that a tiny minority can't accept that and feel that those of us who don't do it their way, are wrong.

It's still unclear exactly what is wrong though, because every time one of us asks for an explanation of how we are letting our children down, there is no clear answer. The closest we've got is the hilarious 'young children just should be with a parent all the time!!

Those of us who've been in this game a long while and have teenagers or grown up children who are happy and well adjusted are also conveniently ignored. Interestingly we're the ones who often had much shorter maternity leaves too. How inconvenient that our children haven't suffered in some way,,. I suspect the real issue here as I said earlier is that the extremists resent the fact that women can combine work with parenting without any negative impact. Speaks volumes, it really does.

Well I've always worked for my own pleasure and wishes. DH earns silly money so I don't have to.

I've always been able to work around my DC so why shouldn't I? I tried being a SAHM, didn't like it. At all.

Now just because I'm lucky enough to be able to work as I do, should I insist that others not work just because they need to use childcare?

Can I really know enough about their arrangements and familes to make general pronouncements? Nah. I'm not that arrogant.

Also, I do wonder why it's okay for the men to go to work? Why is it okay for them not to put their career on hold just for a few years ? Why are they capable of working and being good parentrs/

I often wonder if SAHPs that assert "Kids are better off with mum" have ever asked an older child/adult how they feel or what they remember about childhood.

I was with my mum until I was 2, then I went to a childminder. I don't have a single memory of that period. I vaguely remember my CM picking me up from infant school, because it was a different walk home. But I have no memory at all of being with mum or CM.

DSD was with a CM from 3 months, and then at a nursery until she went to school. I don't see that she has had a better or worse relationship with her mum.

DH is a SAHP (still) aside from the period of about a year age 2-3 when she went to a nursery. She's only 8 now. She remembers the names of 2 girls she was in nursery with, but nothing else it seems. She doesn't remember crying to go to nursery when she had chicken pox, or crying when we left UK because she was going to miss Sarah (her key worker). In fact she doesn't remember things that DH did with her either, like the trips to town just to chase pigeons, or me coming out of work to take her swimming.

If you assert that being a SAHM is BEST for child, what do you base that on?

I have made this point before, on another thread which evolved into this same old/same old argument, but it bears repeating.......
The reason women today are able to work after marriage (or at all ) is because of the fight and determination of previous generations - the struggle had gone on for years.

The fight was to give women freedom of choice!! to open the door for those who wanted to have careers to be able to do so, to divorce and be allowed to keep their children, to not be beaten by husbands and have it seen as acceptable behaviour by the police, to break through 'glass ceilings' ....and hundreds of other smaller ways in which women were second class citizens in law. My generation, and those before us, fought for the right to live life as equals.

The battles were not fought so that women could then criticise the choices that other women make!! It demeans everything about the very real struggle to have those choices. It brings shame on all women, IMHO, when there are vicious attacks by those who choose one way on those who choose another and, personally, I will never understand the motivations of either camp. Perhaps it is that women have forgotten how it was to live without the right to choose freely. I am very aware that for some women, there is genuinely no choice because of finances - but that is not the discussion, here

It took so long to achieve the rights that we have today, and fight off the denigration of women, by men ....only for us to apparently turn on each other

Lteevdallas- not sure I agree with the detail of your post, because children are shaped by experiences which aren't in their conscious memory too... But the general point you make is absolutely right- the people who bang on about children needing to have a SAHP are not actually basing it on anything other than their own gut feeling that its what they want for their family.

Those of us who are WOHP aren't trying to claim some moral high ground and say we're doing something better. We're simply pointing out that we have combined working with parenting without any detrimental impact. We're not saying everyone else has to do it just because we have.

No, absolutely not Janey, and I get your point.

Personally I don't actually care what anyone does with their child, aside of abuse obviously, but to assert that one way or any other is better is strange to me, as how do you quantify that? How do you prove it?