to think working parents don't 'do all the things SAHPs do plus work'?

[Sampanther]

I've heard this response an awful lot, particularly to that awful 'being a SAHM is the hardest job in the world' advert. I have worked outside the home and been a SAHM and I do not feel that working meant I did all the parenting plus work on top. For example, as a SAHM parent I'd deal with squabbling, tantrums, discipline, naps, take them to parks/soft play etc and help them to play nicely with other children, cook with them, do painting and play doh and so on.

As a working parent I had an hour of getting them ready in the morning, dropped them off at childcare, then an hour of winding them down and putting them to bed at night. I could eat and go to the toilet in peace during the day, the house was tidy and needed little cleaning as we were rarely in it and I had very little to do with discipline etc.

I'm not trying to say working parents don't parent, because obviously they do but AIBU to think parents who work fulltime don't 'work and do all the parenting as well'? I don't get why working mums respond that way and think they're right but if a working husband came home and said to his stay at home wife that he does just as much parenting as her then I'm sure mumsnet would not agree.

I dont see any benefit to staying at home over working personally or thats its better for children. I suppose it depends on your upbringing, fine if you do it but definitely not any benefits that I can see to give up your own life for.

It is actually a luxury to be able to put the DC's needs first and foremost, particularly in the current economic climate. I know that. Most people have to juggle several vital considerations. We were still renting a tiny tiny terrace in an unfashionable area then, which helped.

As I say; many many variables.

So many, in fact, it is pointless to discuss "WOHMing versus SAHMing", which was my original point.

I dont see any benefit to staying at home over working personally or thats its better for children. I suppose it depends on your upbringing, fine if you do it but definitely not any benefits that I can see to give up your own life for.

I didn't jump under a bus jasmine I merely eschewed paid employment for a few years .

But yes, everyone's views on ideal toddler care are bound to differ, not least from one child to the next. Best we all just shut up and get on with it.

My one bit of guilt is our decision for me to be a sahp wasn't initially what I thought best for the dc, after a while it was, but initially it was very selfish.
I wasn't aware of this at the time though and have talked it through with a counsellor and apparently it was a normal reaction, for a particular reason I don't want to go into here.
Needless to say some people from learning they are pg, know they are going to be a sahp for the long term. The feeling is overwhelming and at times bordering on obsessive.

I wouldnt say Im getting on with it. My little ones are playing quietly in their room whilst Im playing on my phone and listening to some music. Its a hard life

Sounds heavenly jasmine. There must be easter eggs involved somewhere .

fidelineish

We too were in a similar position with ds1 and ds2 when they were little.
I didn't see it as poverty though as we aren't materialistic people. There was nothing we needed that we did without, but wants weren't even on the horizon.
We lived like "tom and Barbara" The Good Life, and yes we had a Margot across the road
We bartered and became involved in a local organisation where you volunteered your services to receive services in exchange. It was called Scoop or Scoot or similar.

I've just editted something significant out of my account of my SAHMing too potato. We don't need to share everything or all of our reasons. We shouldn't have to.

So many people told me I was skint and head-tilted at me, I believed them in the end potato!

I remember one friend being completely appalled that I 'forced' my DC to walk places and drink water. The horror!

fid

I don't mind if its a nice thread like this and people are genuinely interested in asking questions and giving their account too.
I hate it when it gets personal and nasty as there is no need for this.

jasmine

I never felt like I had lost anything, given anything up, being a sahp became my life and still is 22 years later.
Don't get me wrong though, it's not the sum of my life, nor does it define who I am as a person, but it is how we chose to live.
I know we are lucky to be able to choose and doubt very much if we were starting out now/ had small dc now we would have the same choices and opportunities.
I suppose another variable could be, it depends on when you had dc and how old you are.

Too true. I had a career. I'd done that and got the t-shirt. I was more than willing to sah and do what I genuinely thought was best for the kids. There was also a more selfish reason though. I was sick of the stress and long hours.
Now I wouldn't even be able to get a decent job. I've been out of it too long. Had I realised that at the time, would I have made the same choices. Probably but I do realise that I have been lucky to have the choice.

I've always chosen for my children to walk everywhere and drink water because I think that's best- nothing to so with affordability!

I'd also throw into the mix of variables that its not always a case of one way being the 'right' way even within each individual family. My own children ( teenagers now) have always been very happy with me and DH working, and they have lovely memories of their cm and later their nursery, but I like to think they would have been equally happy if I'd been a SAHM or indeed if DH had been a SAHD. It would have been a different experience in certain ways- eg although I'm pretty sure I would have sent them to playgroup at age 2 or 3, we wouldn't have been able to afford the day nursery they attended without two incomes ( it cost the equivalent of my income while both were there!) But overall I don't think they would have had a lesser, or a better, experience had one of us been a SAHP. So, although for some families it might be imperative for one parent to stop work, or indeed for neither to stop work, I am sure there are many families out there who could take either route.

walk everywhere and drink water because I think that's best- nothing to so with affordability!

You'd think, wouldn't you?

not always a case of one way being the 'right' way even within each individual family.

Completely agree.

janey

Totally agree, and what works at one particular time wouldn't necessarily at another.
I'm not sure it would work for dd now, if we were still in East Anglia living "the Good life", the opportunities she has now just wouldn't be there.
I also think our older dc's life would be different if I had continued with my career and business. We would be very rich by now and life would be so different. We would have lived in London, travelled extensively and the dc would have had a nanny.

' some people's starting point is what is best for the DC.'

I agree with this. I SAH at the moment as believe it is best for DC in our circumstances at present and luckily have the choice to do so. I worked f/t with DD1 (nursery mon-fri 8-5) and this too at the time was best as we were very poor and needed two wages to keep roof over our head..Dh changed jobs meaning working away for long periods but luckily it was double what we both earned previously so SAH became an option that I embraced (after a difficult initial adjustment-I never set out to be a SAHM but once got used to it I love it!)

I think kids can appreciate what their parents did when they are older whether that be parents out at work to earn money to pay for things OR parent giving up job to have time to care for them and the home. Both can be great role models.

No fid your posts are horribly patronising.

If you said "I wouldn't have got depressed in just four or five short years" fair enough but t say it would be hard to ignores the many women who have had just that happen and suggests its a deficit on their part.

To say "it is actually a luxury to be ble to put dc neds first and foremost" implies that other parents don't or aren't able to do that when almost all parents do exactly that.

And needd I point out that it's somewhere under one per cent of the population who have a doctorate therefore your experience of being able to get back into work is not representative of the majority of women.

Great it worked for you but a little less smuggery might be nice for some of the other women reading this who don't find everything quite so idyllic and nt have the very privileged choices you have had.

5 years is nearly half my working life. I see it as a very long time.

I think I must have missed something on the thread, but if anybody really did say that it's a luxury to put the children's needs first and foremost, then that view stinks.

IME of real life, 99% of parents put their children's needs first, whether they work or don't work. The very small minority who don't have got far bigger issues than whether they're in employment or not

I think fid has been misquoted. Yes she did say that, but in other posts she has said that it depends on lots of variables. Some people do think that it is best for a parent to be at home if possible. Others don't. She has not knocked other peoples choices -indeed she has supported them, but it is fortunate to be able to have the choice - if that is what you believe.

YABU. All these WOHM v SAHM threads seem to assume that all SAHP spend their entire day fully engaged with their DC, crafting/baking etc. That is not my experience of SAHM's.
However I never really understand the point of these threads, I mean really, who actually cares how others choose to live their lives? Unless it has a direct impact on your own life, it doesn't matter.

Jelly you express very well how putting the DCs needs first can lead to more than one outcome/decision/lifestyle.

No Rhonda that is not what I was saying. I didn't know before I did it that I wouldn't get depressed, neither did I know at the outset that I would be SAHMing for the full five years. I was not suggesting that anyone who does get depressed has a defecit, I was saying that to assume depression is the inevitable consequence of 5 years SAHMing is rather pessimistic.

The 'luxury' remark was possibly badly phrased and intended to acknowledge that others do not have the choice that I did to put the DCs personal, needs front and centre and not have to balance them with, say, the DCs (and parents) hosuing needs in a situation where there is a large mortgage or what-have-you.

Many many women have said to me that they 'had' to return to work after x months 'for myself' or 'for my sanity'. Absolutely fair enough, but that is (perhaps more sensibly, who knows??) balancing one's own needs against all the other needs, so while agree that most parents have their DC's needs very hihg up their list of priorities, some have their own needs up quite high too. Who am I to say that's not a highly intelligent approach? It's certainly a perfectly valid and frequently successful approach.

I think I have clearly been at pains to emphasise (and then illustrate by pesronal example) my central thesis of 'horses for courses' and how each family has an almost unique selection of variables that they are operating within and that therefore comparing 'WOHMs' with 'SAHMs' is impossible and largely pointless. I have also made the point that, often, an individual's time as a SAHM will be a few short years in a 40 or 45 year workig life, so again the tribal competitiveness is a false construct. And unhelpful.

Neither did I remotely mean to be patronising Rhonda. I actually don't think I was.

I certainly know plenty of WOHMs who have very happy children and far more balance in their lives than I've ever managed in my SAHMing, WOHMing or WAHMing periods.

But most of all I find the idea of 'one best way' for all parents and all children patently ludicrous and get really fed up with reading mothers do each other down and condescend to each other.

I'm not sure this is what Fid was saying neither.

I think she meant that some people don't get the choice to do what they think is best for their dc whether working or not.
An example would be having to work to put roof over your head but believing your children would benefit better if you were a sahp.
Or the reverse, sahp when you really feel your kids would benefit from you being wohp.

Oh dear God, I have to agree that the 'some people do what is best for the children' comment is awful. All it was lacking was italics on the 'some'.

I just came on to say that the thing about choice, which someone else made last night or this morning, was that it does not happen in a vacuum, it has an impact on both societal expectations and what other women experience. It is not a feminist act to SAH; what is feminist is that women have fought for the recognition of the unpaid labour which women do; for recognition that this unpaid labour allows their male partners to earn and contribute to the economy; for what used to be family allowances and decent services for women and children. In other words, feminism has provided the framework which allows you to exercise that choice. For many women, as other posters have said, it is not actually a choice, they do what they have to.

My point being, really, that if you want to use the rhetoric of choice, if you want to put this in feminist terms, I think it is important to move beyond your individual circumstances and look at the broader structures you make those choices in.

FWIW, the feminists who fought for recognition of the value of childcare and women's work in the home fought for it to be paid; an outcome which genuinely would have given women a choice.