to think SAHMs should stop referring to this as "a full time job"?

[ConfusedintheNorth]

Ok I'm probably going to get pulled apart for this, but this really gets under my skin. Every time I go on facebook or twitter there are a barrage of statuses/comments from friends who are SAHM going on about how busy and hectic their lives are and how "being a mother is a full time job", and it's driving me insane! I'm sorry but it's just not, is it? I was a single mother who home schooled, and ran my own business full time, and managed to get through every day without any sort of time travel devise. I am aware everyone does things differently and I'm possibly over reacting, but seriously if you only have a couple of kids, a supportive partner and don't have to work, in the grand scheme of things you have it pretty good and should probably stop endlessly telling the world how hard your life is. (and breath!)

If you aren't working you cant claim you're not taking anything from the State, the NHS isn't free you know.

Until recently I did work and I do pay tax, I meant that I don't claim any benefits. I suspect that very few posters fully cover everything that their family takes from the state. As a family we quite rightly pay a lot of tax, I don't know if that covers everything we take from the state right now.

All fine unless relationship breakdown happens in which case the sahm of school age kids could be finding she needs to get a job particularly if she isn't married

The hardest thing about being a sahm is invalidation from bitter people - be they wohm or men who think that women just hang out having coffee. That's why I hate threads like this. It's hard to hang on to self esteem when your kids are your boss and you have no external validation - so how about a bit of sisterhood and living and letting live?

Possum dear, I have paid and still pay enough tax to justify using the nhs what a pathetic argument why do so many people have a problem with someone being a housewife? It's the way we choose to live, it works for us, I don't care if someone else preferred to work all families are different

OP - Sorry people have been so mean. SAHM's always hate to hear anyone doubt that what they do is a full time job. It isn't a fair comparison and quite frankly i feel gets chucked about for self validation where it isnt even needed.

You take care of your kids all day so what? Why do you need to compare it to being a brain surgeon? . It's like comparing an apple to an atomic bomb - random and irrelevant.

To be fair it depends on what you actually do....many women have a partner/babysitter/cleaner and act that they are saving the world everyday. It's pathetic and to be perfectly honest bloody over dramatic. Motherhood isn't a competition about who "works" the hardest, who feeds their kids the finest organic foods, who breast fed the longest or who took an eipdural or not for christs sakes.

I know women who have babies that literally fed like angels and slept all day. After cleaning (1 hour max) and cooking dinner for when DH got home (1 hour max) and feeding the baby (all together 1 hour approx as baby fed well) she had fuck all to do and got depressed. Some women have 3 screaming kids under the age of 4 to give attention to, a house to maintain, doctors appointments, play dates, therapy sessions, etc etc etc it really depends on what your situation is.

It's not fair to paint all SAHM's with the same brush....at the same time with that being said there are too many SAHM's who think because they run around like an animal all day every other SAHM does the same and thus "has a full time job" too. Not the case. Valium was created for bored shitless housewives/SAHM's. It's not this traumatic gruelling 24/7 job some women make it out to be.....

cedricsneer I agree with you but being nice goes both ways....a lot of SAHM's make working moms feel like they are neglecting their kids...I think everyone should live and let live.
I dont mind either way however referring to being a SAHM as a full time job and comparing it to being a working mum etc is a bit annoying. We both have different (both gruelling) experiences of motherhood and on both sides we should accept each other and support one another. The constant comparing etc needs to stop not good at all.

Is it not sad how little value society attributes to childcare & the role of raising the next generation? Predominately amongst the working classes?

For instance, I don't think Prince George will be home educated by an individual who has had very little sleep, pulling triple time in an unrelated job single handedly with no support. I doubt the mere idea wouldn't be countenanced.

Yet here among the working population it is presented as something to achieve, to induce guilt in those who do not work so hard, to provoke shame & unworthiness of those who do not achieve such heights of martyrdom.

Are we and our children worth so little? Where does this value mindset come from & why do we seem so brainwashed by it?

Then when child benefit, tax credits, nursery & school places get cut we are all outraged. But aren't we encouraging it by our sheer mindset that really, child raising isn't that valuable and us women must work 3 or 4 times as hard doing 'paid work' on top of raising children that others wouldn't even deem worthy of the title 'job' to justify our existence?

Mrs dear dfo.

I just struggle with this whole being interested and giving a shit about what sea gees don't.

This one man upship thing as well. If you want to be a stay at home parent then go for it, if you want to work from home then go for it and if you want to work out of the house then go for it

I just can't bring myself to give a shit

If you want to pay someone to look after your child or do it yourself why does its tree to anyone else?

As I said earlier you will get judged no matter what you do so do what you want and what makes you happy!

Mrsbird311 - Fair play to you and no I'm not being sarcastic. Working isn't a moral choice (unless you are committed benefit fraud) but a financial one. If being a "housewife" (bloody hate that term) is what works for you so be it.

What's annoying is simply when people who do have the luxury of a cleaner and childcare etc act as though their life is a huge circus and woe to them.
Whats wrong with saying ; "you know what, I'm so so blessed to have help and it's actually a good thing because I get to really enjoy my kids etc etc"and actually share with people the perks of being a housewife / SAHM.

Why does it have to be this woe is me competition in the form of working mums v SATM's?????

If you're going to use the logic that anyone who isn't an income tax payer should feel guilty about using the NHS, it logically follows that most children should feel guilty about using it. And a lot of disabled people. And people who are too ill to work. And a lot of elderly people. And then you can add anyone working in a job that pays so poorly or has so few hours that they fall outside the threshold for paying income tax. Etc etc. (Which, on another subject altogether is why I am very suspicious of political parties who promise to remove low earners from income tax, because as soon as they have done it, they will be branding low earners as non contributors to society).

When I was a kid my mum stayed at home, my friends mum worked, back then there wasn't the distinction there is now. Why is the subject so polarised? As women shouldn't we all stick together?

candidkate you daren't say that you are lucky to stay at home either though. There was a huge thread recently where loads of people said that they hated people saying they were lucky to be able to stay at home because it implied that women only work because they aren't lucky enough to be able to stay at home .

There is absolutely nothing that a sahm or a wohm can use to describe their situation without someone else somewhere being angered by it.

Isn't everyone who is a parent doing the same amount of 'work' though? Whether you work all day looking after the children or are out at work for all or some of the time we're still all doing the 24/7/365 parenting job, aren't we? The posts that go around FB now and then that SAHM's are cooks, cleaners, taxi drivers, nurses etc etc still apply to working mums Completely agree.

I was watching a quiz show the other night and the woman introduced herself as a "stay at home mum" then said both her children were at school... so no. You are unemployed.

You are unemployed. No to me that isn't appropriate. Only for someone looking for employment.

You are unemployed whether you are looking or not. You are not employed = unemployed. I am employed. So am I an "away from home mum"

It's all bollocks. You either have a job or you don't. Either are perfectly fine unless you are breeding for benefits. But don't make it out as if your employment has been replaced with children and you need to label it. No. You are just at home with your children. It isn't a job as much as it isn't overtime for me when I come home to my child - It's my life!

I work part-time, I still have to get up at 5.30, do breakfast, housework and deal with dcs whether it's a work day or not. The only difference is I get to drink HOT coffee at work It's not a fucking competition

NellysKnickers great name

I stayed home with my one DD on a maternity leave that lasted just over a year. Prior to and following this leave period, I've worked full time in a professional job.

I can tell you, the culture shock of being at home with my kid was far greater than any I've experienced at work. I'm in the office between 35 and 40 hours a week, and that's it. Once I'm done, I get to switch off, and don't have to think about my Excel spreadsheets or work-in-progress documents (unless I'm feeling really keen or really behind) until the next business day. If I switch off on a Friday, I get an entire 63-hour break from my dull, yet challenging, office job.

At home every day with my interesting - yet even more challenging - DD, I never got to switch off. Ever. Not through the night, when she wanted to be breastfed every two hours, even at 13 months. Not through the day, either, because she wouldn't nap. Not depsite having a committed and engaged DH who tried valiantly to help, because her intense separation anxiety lasted for several months, and only I would do. Not after introducing solids, because even a 1-minute Ella's or HIPP micro meal took at least a half-hour to feed to her. I don't think I had PND that year, but I was so exhausted so often that I did worry sometimes.

And that's just limiting the perspective to accomplishing day-to-day tasks.

Nobody screeches in my ear at work. Nobody starts and ends conversations with, "How old?" People are even happy to have a good yap with me, regardless of whether my bundle of joy was born the exact same month as theirs.

It was absolutely harder!

Totally agree nesshitto

Are we and our children worth so little? Where does this value mindset come from & why do we seem so brainwashed by it?

Then when child benefit, tax credits, nursery & school places get cut we are all outraged. But aren't we encouraging it by our sheer mindset that really, child raising isn't that valuable and us women must work 3 or 4 times as hard doing 'paid work' on top of raising children that others wouldn't even deem worthy of the title 'job' to justify our existence?

unepmployed/drain on the state/kept... starts to sound like jealousy from those who don't have a choice.

Nelly on here everything is a competition!

I don't think in RL people argue about this. It probably goes like like this:

Woman 1: hi I'm a stay at home mum, you?
Woman 2: oh I work in a office.

Then nothing else is said about it

Coffee you are not 'unemployed' if you are not looking for work. Would you say a disabled person who cant work is 'unemployed'?

True Resurrect. On here things wind me up that I wouldn't even sniff at in RL.

And thanks Ratfink

I'm not jealous at all.

I think whoever can stay at home with their children all day everyday is very lucky, and I would do it If I could.

I love being a mother, and I hate my 42 hour a week job.

But If I could quit my job to be with my child, I wouldn't consider that my new full time job, I would just see it as me getting to spend all my time in my home life.

IT's a nice luxury I'd like to have, and that's what it would be, a luxury not a new job.

And luxury isn't to say it is easy, but it's a choice, and it isn't a full time job where your time after work for "switching off" is with the children all evening, all night, getting them ready in the morning and then getting back to work again.

Otherwise all "working mums" are working overtime except for when they sleep.

Everyone thinks differently about it. It'll never change

I was a single mum on benefits so a scrounger who couldn't afford to raise her own children.

Now I start a job next week I am that single mum who isn't arsed about looking for after her child so why did she have him.

Well on here anyway.

In RL I'm just me. No one bats an eye lid.

On MN it's a constant competition between people who want recognition from online strangers.

No one needs to explain their self or their choices imo