To ask your views :- Is being a mum a job.

[ICanSeeTheSun]

I can not decide if being a mum is a job.

I do see this a lot on Facebook, under employment is full time mummy.

Aibu to think if a mum is a job I want my employment rights, such as 21 day holiday.

The reason this debate comes up is that childcare is horrendously undervalued in our society, regardless of who does it. I expect at least partly this is because the domestic sphere is associated with women historically and women's work has always been devalue

True.
But it's not helped by expressions like full time mum.

I'd rather say that my daytime job was to care for my children. (instead of giving that job to a nanny or minded or a nursery)

No

Of course everyone is still being a parent when they go to work, but you are not doing it. You are doing something else for those hours

I think you're making the mistake of confusing parenting with childcare. They are not the same thing. Childcare is a hugely important part of parenting, yes, but so is providing food, shelter and clothing. I might have a break from childcare while I am at work and dd is at school, but I do not cease to "do" parenting.

As for voluntary work, no, that's not a job either. It is work, and often work that is hugely valuable, but it is not a job.

bloody hell, that's just a load of semantics and personal interpretation. Of course voluntary work is a 'job' what a ridiculous notion that it can't be considered a job because you don't get a wage packet. Absolutely ridiculous.

It's not a job, it's a relationship.

No not a job but voluntary work is. I hate this endless MN debate which is predictable at best and nasty at worst. I have done both and have been freelance and not much difference in how any one saw or treated me inc Dp and ds. My RL mates and I never talk to or about each other like this

Having managed both staff and volunteers (and having been an employee and a volunteer!) I think voluntary work is very different from a job.

to quibble over the status of voluntary work is massively petty. I can only assume Jinsei, that the way you mentored and trained voluntary workers was flawed. Because a properly trained voluntary worker is just as effective and essential to the smooth running of an organisation as the paid workers. If you're doing your job correctly as training manager.

and perhaps Jinsei, the root of the problem is that you don't acknowledge the fact that they're doing a bloody job! I would hate to work for someone like that.

numpties, where did I say that volunteers weren't often effective and essential to the running of an organisation?

I have already acknowledged that voluntary work is work, and I am in no doubt about the value of that work. However, it is not reasonable for a manager to have the same expectations of its volunteers as they would of paid staff, and to hold them to account in exactly the same way.

This isn't about value or recognition at all, it's about expectations and accountability, and any manager who fails to recognise that there is a difference between volunteers and employees is mistaken in my view.

As it happens, I was often told that I was particularly good at recognising the contributions of our volunteers - perhaps because I did recognise that they were different from paid staff - and many of them persuaded friends/family to volunteer as well, so I don't think they were terribly unhappy.

fine, but I still think your ability to refer to volunteers as 'doing work' but not doing a job is at best petty, at worst baffling. It seems almost to trivialise and demean the status of a voluntary worker not to want to acknowledge that they're doing a bloody job!

It's not trivialising it at all, it's about recognising that they don't have to be there and that their motivations and obligations are different.

it's a word: job.
One little word.
Calling a volunteer job a job is not hugely controversial. It doesn't have connotations. 99.9% of people would call a volunteer job a job. Because that's what it is. To say it isn't is petty.

No it's not a job.

You don't get paid and you can't get fired. You have no boss to answer to. You could call it an occupation.

Sahms do it all the time. Working mums with jobs employ others to care for the dc part time.

OK, maybe most people would call it a job and I'm wrong. For me, voluntary work and paid work will never be the same thing but that's probably just because it the organisations for which I have worked have always emphasised how important it is to acknowledge the difference. This was primarily for the protection of the volunteers, so I don't see why this should upset anyone.

As a manager we have volunteers but they are nothing like the paid staff. Its completely different roles and they are not allowed any real responsibility and are more like an extra pair of hands.

I don't see being a Mum as a job. Caring for my Dds is a job but the benefits are different for parents.

No, being a mum isn't a job, neither is being a dad, daughter, sister....

I think caring for children can be hard work sometimes, particularly those relentless phases when they need watched all the time, or are stroppy or demanding. But then lots of things can be hard work... Giving my house a thorough clean is hard work, digging my garden is hard work, but none of these things are a job. At the end of the day, I'm doing those things because I want to... There's no line management and no one is going to give me a disciplinary if I don't Hoover my house for a month. It's like the phrase 'full time mum' is daft- you're a mum or dad all the time, some people combine parenting with working and some don't.

no real responsibility and just an extra pair of hands? Really? What a patronising, depressing view of volunteers. What's the point of having a volunteer with no real responsibility? Kind of makes the role redundant. And pointless.

and also untrue. My friend volunteers at our local age UK shop. She works 18 hours a week. She uses the till. She's responsible for the money. I would call that 'real' responsibility!

Well depends on how you define job. Being a Mum can be a job and it is a very important one and that goes for Dads as well.
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I do think that volunteers can be given responsibility, but they cannot be held accountable in the same way as a paid member of staff. The buck usually stops somewhere else.

Anyone who is a mum is a mum 24 hrs a day obviously . But the words full time mum usually represent a mum who doesn't work in any other capacity and who has cares for pre school age children .
It's not an offence term to those who work unless you want to see it as such .