"Oh I'm lucky that I don't need to work, financially"

[TerraNovice]

I'm going back to work next month and while chatting with other mums about it I've come across the above phrase a few times. Perhaps IBU but it sounds insufferably smug to be - so they married guys with money, so what? There's nothing wrong with saying you're a SAHM so why add the caveat that you've got a rich husband?

@ DontDrink, very true.

And double @ Pag The Oval!

I've said this in the past. I'd still say it if anyone asked me know.

I simply don't want anyone to know I'm on ESA, and am too ill to work. That's nobody's business except mine; I don't want to be judged for being on benefits, neither do I want to explain why. Saying I don't need to work is the easiest option for me. If pressed, I usually just say I have an inheritance, which is true, it simply wasn't that sort of money. Bit ingenious, but stops questions, I'm a very private person in RL.

I'm guilty of saying this but would love to go to work so am not being smug at all.

I think some people are just determined to be offended regardless. The retorts about husbands leaving with their money is just sour grapes.

Lucky to me in this context, means that the preference to stay at home marries up with the option to stay at home.

It's just acknowledging that some people have to make choices that wouldn't be their preference. Plenty of people who would like to stay at home but can't sacrifice a second income to do so and plenty of people who would like to go out to work but can't afford the childcare.

I have just started a research job (so pretty flexible in terms of working around childcare etc) but I am completely blown away at how stressful running a home/children is with working. I say often how lucky I was not to have to work. It is not smug at all, more a "thank God we had enough money to eat/be housed/stay warm without me having to work". We made choices that a lot of people wouldn't like so that I could stay at home as it was really important to me.

I'd love to go back to work after I have my second child but because nursery is so expensive, it would cost me a weeks wages to send 2 children for 2 days. Can't do it.

Actually in a position where I can't afford to work, nothing to be smug about, not really lucky at all but I am lucky in the sense that I get to spend time with my kids.

Some of you seem to be lacking social skills and sensitivity. It's fine to feel lucky to stay at home and it's fine to feel lucky to have a career. Sometimes though it's better to keep those feelings to yourself. If your friend can't afford to stay at home then don't bleat on about the fact that you can. If your friend is feeling worried about an imminent return to work don't bleat on about how happy you are not to be. Likewise if your friend said she was worried about not being able to return to her career after a long break don't bang on about what a great career you have.

Just because you feel a certain way doesn't mean you should be compelled to tell everyone about it in every situation, or phrase it in such a smug way. "I don't *have" to return to work" implies it's something that isn't a choice (which for some people it isn't).

If your friend tells you she's feeling sick you wouldn't say "I'm so happy I'm in good health" even though it'd be fine to feel that way.

i know!

It isn't lucky to identify the best way for your family and adopting that lifestyle in order to to it.

It is unlucky if you can identify the best way but can't or don't adopt the lifestyle to enable you to do it.

You may feel lucky or unlucky to be living how you are, that's your feelings that nobody can argue with.

If a person is a friend they won't be insulted or upset at your own personal feelings, but a twat will.

Can anyone tell me is the proper response then

Whatever the hell you feel describes your position accurately! If that is "I am lucky enough to stay at home" so be it…..I do feel I am lucky…... If people interrupt that as smugness, so be it.

Me too. I know just how lucky (financially and otherwise) I have been since I've been married and had children and barely a day goes by when I don't reflect a little on that and feel thankful for it. But I don't rub anyone's nose in it unless they force me to.

It is not necessarily smug and telling women to suppress their views of their own circumstances in order to avoid the potential for any possible slight to any woman who has chosen differently is just plain old women slagging off other women. Again.

I agree.

TwoOddSocks I completely agree with you, of course people need to have some sensitivity and to read the signs of when it's not appropriate or diplomatic to bang on about their own great situation in the company of people who might lack the same choices, but I think it's a rare (and insufferable) person who actually does that. There is no suggestion that all these 'smug' women are necessarily volunteering this information apropo of nothing just to make others feel inferior. It's more likely they are just responding honestly to direct questioning.

o dear. I have kind of said this. I see myself as a sahm but do a bit of party plan (like avon). I have been guilty of saying that I don't do it for the money. I am fortunate that dh has a great salary (didn't have when we married.) If he runs off taking his wallet with him (nice!) he will have to pay maintenance. I will also be entitled to tax credits to help with childcare and child benefit so I will be able to afford to work again.
I don't know if the mum discussed in op was being smug. Maybe as others have said she was fed up of having to defend her choice and didn't want peoople to think she was on benefits.

"Fuck me some of you are seriously lacking in imagination. Can you really only see other people's decisions in the context of your own preferences?"

It's something of a common affliction on MN, I find. grin

Absolutely agree! Far too much of the "if it's not something I have personal experience of then it's not right/real/true" on here for comfort, sometimes.

I agree morethan if the person is a mate, you can be honest about your feelings.

A friend said to me last week that she was so lucky that her DC are clever. She wasn't being smug. She knew it wouldn't offend me.

Anonymously on MN too. One can talk about inner feelings and that's part of what makes MN interesting ; a look inside the lives and minds of others.

But with people who we don't know well, we have to show a bit of sensitivity. Sometimes people want you to own the luck, other times its best to STFU.

I'm giving up work to be with DP and be dependent on him. He is rich and I will be slightly smug.

Meh.

You're lucky, He's lucky, We're all lucky!

I do think it's said just to avoid further comments by other people on their choices. It's a bit of a minefield, this conversation. People tend to WOtH or not for very different reasons.
My position is that currently my family could afford to live if I didn't work (we might even be temporarily richer if I didn't pay for childcare) but I worry too much about the future to be able to contemplate giving up work. What if something happened to DH as sole earner??
I don't work for job satisfaction though. After 6 months back at work following mat leave I have never been unhappier at work.

OP, I'm one of those who was lucky enough not to have to return to work after the birth of first baby (I had to leave my job anyway because we moved away just before birth).

If we'd bought our new home using both our salaries that wouldn't have happened though (so our new home was what we could afford on one salary and it was in the days before daft house prices). It meant that I could choose whether to work or what work to do after starting the family rather than choose by the amount of wages coming in iyswim. So in that way I consider that I was lucky to have the choice.

I decided to become a childminder, a rather different job than previously. I became the type of cm that I would have liked my children to go to and was kept busy for several years. I loved it, but then when kids were older after a few years I became a classroom assistant at a primary school. It's low paid but very, very rewarding, again, I am lucky to have that choice.

OP, I don't think that original comment was meant to be offensive to you, or smug. I wonder if sometimes we just don't think enough of the consequences of what we say in innocence.

My dreadful health seems to somehow cancel out my good luck with dp and finances in the eyes of others. they somehow can allow me my luck happy in the knowledge I could keel over at any minute ;)

As pps highlight, many women can't afford to work/not work.

I work almost FT and do get annoyed here and in RL when people state or imply that WOHPs (well, mums, because dads don't get judged so much) do so because we value material things over spending time with DC.

admittedly feel jealous when DH and I struggle to compete with men (fathers) who work much longer hours, network and travel more, often getting better work or promoted. Then tell myself that we need to be for our choices.

Don't think it's great that there are so very few men whose partners work longer hours and the men do the childcare or work PT or in lower paid work.

I don't think it's smug.They are just acknowledging that they are fortunate

OP - you said you are soon to go back to work, so I'm assuming at end of maternity leave. have you said anything about being nervous, about being worried about settling your DC into childcare, worried about leaving him/her? Because then the 'lucky' response would make a lot of sense!

They are 'lucky' to not have to go through that.

However, it doesn't mean they have a rich husband. Just one who's wage can cover the bills with a bit left over. Those bills might be considerably less than yours because they've planned to be able to have this choice. We could have borrowed nearly 50% more than we did when we bought this house (when I was pregnant with DC1), the bank would have lent us what we thought was a huge amount, but DH was very clear, we should be able to live off one wage, whichever one it was. As it is, that was very sensible, as having DC2 meant my wage would have been entirely taken up with childcare and commuting costs. (realistically, we couldn't afford DC2, and I do know someone who stopped at 1 DC because they couldn't afford to drop to one wage and her wage would have been wiped out by childcare costs).

Oh and yes, our marriage might break down. Of course at that point, having not worked for 3-4 years will mean my degree/other qualifications and decade of work experience will suddenly disappear off my CV and i'll not be able to get any job at all, plus the equity in the house will magically vanish, the savings and shares will disappear, and everyone knows no one has ever taken the decision to be a SAHM while their DCs are little and then managed to get another job in the next 20-30 years of their working life after their DCs are a bit older...

Look round the 60-something working woman retiring now, most will have had a few years out of the work force raising DCs, it's not a 'forever' decision unless you want it to be.

SOme of them may have got into a good financial situation before children and so could go down the stay at home route and then go back to work. Most women work but not all are dependent on men if they take time out

I have been guilty of this also and my husband is on 34k per annum, pays £250 css per month and we have 2 kids, a dog and a mortgage. My 'luckiness' was that I budgeted very tightly and we went without so I could stop working in a 60+ per week hour job. Luckily I found something else 6 months later but my sanity would have been in huge question had I not quit when I did.

it's rarely men worsening their earnings or labour market position.