to think children don't really care about 'work ethics' and would prefer to have a SAHP?

[Mingnion]

Well aware I'm probably going to get mightily flamed for this but here goes...

I have a 6.5 year old and an 18 month old. My husband that supported us sadly died last year and I plan to stay at home and on benefits until my youngest is at school. I have a degree from Cambridge and will put in what I take out a hundred times over in the future no doubt. We do not have a lavish lifestyle but my children are adequately fed, dressed and are very happy which is more important IMO. Six months ago I found a part-time job and the impact on my children was massive. They were miserable at having to go to nursery and after school clubs and I was miserable as I missed them. Now they are inexplicably happy. I know it is a common opinion that single parents must work so as to teach their children about work ethics but realistically, do you really think children will care? I'd say most children would much rather have a SAHP and in retrospect I'd have preferred my mum to have been home so her work ethics obviously didn't rub off on me. AIBU to think this way and plan to stay at home with my children until my youngest is school age?

We are so lucky that we have a degree of choice these days. Yes, of course it could all be better but still, it is a million miles from the choices that women had 100 years ago or even 50 years ago.

Widows even 40 years ago wouldn't be claiming benefits to stay at home with their kids, they would be in a blind panic trying to find any job they could to support however many children they had. My closest friend's mum found herself widowed at 32 with 5 children - she thinks mothers / parents today don't know they are born!!!!

Why can't we celebrate the choices we have, instead of having a go at others for their choice. Why couldn't the OP have been thanking her lucky stars that she has the option to stay at home, instead of suggesting that every other parent/ mother should do the same because that is what kids want!?

OP

I think you would do well to have some sort of game plan in place now and think hard about what you will have to do to work towards it.

Writing from home...well maybe you are a fantastic writer or have contacts in the media or academia and this will help. It's very hard to make any sort of living though.

With teaching..well it's competitive. I've nearly finished degree number 2 which includes a substantial amount of developmental psychology focused on SEN and children's cognitive development and acquisition of language. I am also doing Eng lit modules to fulfil the requirement. You need to look at the requirements for entry esp if you want to teach secondary. Also school experience. Teaching is now competitive - my sister worked in a school as an assistant for a year before she could get on to primary.

Agree with Ubik about the game plan. As I said many many pages ago one of the reasons I work part time now is so that I can work part time in the future.

If you can make a living from it writing is obviously a really good career to fit around school age kids. The only concerns I'd have is the sporadic income (are you the type of person who can cope with budgeting for earning £3k one month and £4:68 the next?) and at it would be a bit of a lonely life. Part of the joy of work for me is talking to my colleagues. (Not to mention the office kept at 22 degrees all year round, the free tea and coffee and the regular cake runs.)

Re: teaching - it obviously works well with school holidays but your children will have to be in ASC or go to a childminder every night (unless you can swing it so that you work in their school but you are unlikely to manage that straight away.) from friends who have qualified as teachers I think the first few years are also incredibly tough.

Youcancallmequeenbee- you are absolutely correct.

While people will always feel things could be better, it's worth thinking about how things are for women now compared to the past. In the first part of the 20th century there will professions which were barred to women. Or they had to give up their career if not on getting married, then cetrtainly when having children. And conversely, in the tragic situations where a woman with children was widowed young, she'd be scraping around doing menial work no doubt leaving the kids with a neighbour.

And more recently than that, women's maternity rights were way less than they are now, and women weren't even treated as individuals for taxation- they were seen as an appendage of their husband.

Nowadays women aren't restricted to the less interesting jobs. They can have a year off work after each baby. It's worth putting the current situation into the broader perspective.

I think you are doing the right thing, and you are fortunate (sorry feel very crass writing that to a bereaved person) in that you have sufficient funds to do this.

However I do think that for your children they are dealing with a double whammy, in that they lost their Dad. Not suprisingly this, and then after school club/nursery would havce been hard for them.

I do think that small children are far better off with a parent, but then I am biased as I have a SAHP

However, gazillions of kids thrive so its not one size fit all

But I thionk we need to stop kidding ourselves that a Nursery 8-6pm x 5 days is a great environment for a child, as more often than not, its not!!

You want to write from home???

Oh sweetbabyjeezus, sweetie, if you think that'll make you a living...

I'm NOT trying to say what's right for OP's dcs (and I just wish she would extend the same courtesy to others) but as a general point, some children who have a lost a family member would benefit from going back to eg. nursery. It may provide continuity with their pre-bereavement lives, time away from a grieving parent, a sense of normality - all that may be very healthy and desirable.

When I left my abusive ex, my dd's return to nursery was very good for her, a point of predictability when her life must have seemed suddenly less predictable.

As has been said her a thousand times over, it's not one size fits all.

motherinferior - I managed to earn a living doing it throughout university and when DH was alive, so yes.

sadly the complete collapse of print media has happened since then though.

A full-time living? Enough to support you, entirely, including your half of the bills and the rent, while doing a Cambridge degree course?

(And your opening post says your husband supported you?)

So let's get this straight OP.

You were made homeless by an abusive mother at 15. Did your A levels at 18-20 and went to cambridge, where you fully supported yourself through freelance writing, though got pregnant in the final year to a 19 year old.

You graduated at 23, became a SAHM and your then 20 year old husband earned enough to keep you both, topped up by your freelance writing.

An interesting narrative.

wordfactory hmmm...

Students at Cambridge don't generally have enough time to earn a bit of extra beer money, let alone a living.

Flowery - perhaps they just have the correct "work ethics"

It hadn't occurred to me to show dc a 'work ethic' rather than be a sahm
I think it's a very personal decision and anyone who judges can go fuck off
OP I think it's sad that you feel in any way pressured to work when you have lost your husband and your children need you, I'm glad the govt can support you now
If you do intend to go back to work I would advise you to have a plan, keep your hand in or maybe work experience
It's maybe not as easy as you think to get a graduate position

sadly the complete collapse of print media has happened since then though

Indeed

Most of the women I worked with in print media have gone into PR or followed other career paths. One now works at ITN but she bloody grafted for that job, working for agencies at £7/hour. No one I know has managed a freelance writing career without a substantial track record and a book full of contacts.

I make a not very brilliant living as a print journalist but it is a lurch from day to day...

Spme children may indeed hate childcare. Possibly because of messages they have been given. A friend of mine, when they walked past a nursery, used to tell her children it was "very sad" these poor children had to be looked after while their mums (not dads!) worked. Now she's working a bit and they hate it. No shit Sherlock!

Also, how many of our dc generation will be able to afford to give up work for more than a couple of years? We need to be careful about giving them negative messages about working, which is not the same as saying staying at home is bad.

so....just so I'm clear....it's perfectly acceptable for single parents NOT to work?

Fab. I shall give up my teaching job (that'll be a teaching job in a shortage area in secondary) and live off benefits until my children are such an age that I'm forced to go back to work by the state. And you'll all be happy to support me doing that because my children are less than keen on being in childcare?

And OP if you're thinking you'll walk onto a teaching course because you have a degree from Cambridge....? Not much hope of that.

Widows even 40 years ago wouldn't be claiming benefits to stay at home with their kids, they would be in a blind panic trying to find any job they could to support however many children they had. My closest friend's mum found herself widowed at 32 with 5 children - she thinks mothers / parents today don't know they are born!!!!

This is nonsense. Widowed Mothers Allowance was introduced in the late 1940s (over 60 years ago) and enabled widowed mothers to stay at home until their youngest child had finished school or reached the age of 19, whichever was soonest. I had a friend who stayed at school till 19 to retake her A levels and it was only after she turned 19 that her mother, who had been a widow for the past 14 years, went out and got a job.

Ceicly...I think you'll find that the expectation TODAY is that a single parent (regardless of how their single parent status came about) works once their youngest child reaches the age of 5. The days when single parents got to stay at home till their children left school are very much long gone.

No, I agree, mum, the rules have changed completely - but only fairly recently.

My grandmother was widowed with a baby in the 1920s and it was tough, very very very tough. She had to take her baby around with her and later her little girl for the bits of work she picked up. I do not know exactly what benefits there were but she had to work.