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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

I absolutely hate working and believe it to be the worst thing about being an adult. AIBU?

389 replies

IntoTheSunset · 01/12/2015 17:16

I'd like to allay any concerns that anyone might have about my work ethic firstly. No one has ever complained about it in any job I've had. I realise that people have to work. I just find it depressing that I will likely have to continue working into my sixties and beyond. I'm 42 and would gladly retire tomorrow if I could. I also don't like how a person's place in society is defined by their job ahead of anything else. Do any MNers feel similarly?

OP posts:
Intheprocess · 01/12/2015 22:00

Love my job, love co-parenting. Life is very hard work but fulfilling. Wouldn't want to be a SAHD, wouldn't want a partner who is a SAHM. Personally, I think an equal balance of work and parenting is pretty much the ideal life.

ihategeorgeosborne · 01/12/2015 22:02

One thing I have noticed is that now that I'm working again, I really do appreciate my days off. When I was a SAHM there was no demarcation between the two. Also, I do appreciate having my own earnings again and spending them as I wish!

maggiethemagpie · 01/12/2015 22:03

Sounds like you are in the wrong job OP. I used to hate work, now I love it! I do an interesting job, work from home, lots of autonomy...if I won the lottery tomorrow I would still work. I think you need to reconsider your career options, as a lifetime is far too long to be unhappy in the wrong job.

Fedup83 · 01/12/2015 22:03

I agree - for us me leaving FT work I've been able to see directly the monetary value of being at home with DCs. To the tune of a mortgage payment. I was actually working for very little money wise - and can make up the shortfall quite easily.

I would guess it's still the majority of men without that 'choice'. However - and I could be totally weirdly out of place and wrong here...but if men would like children they aren't the ones who biologically house them, and give birth to them. This must impact somewhere in the debate, although I'm not sure where. Postnatal depression (didn't want it but had it twice - has affected ability to work ever since), incontinence (didn't want it, again has affected ability to work in office setting), breastfeeding (influenced my choice to stay off on maternity leave).

I'm not clued up on feminist arguments so not sure if this is part of the rhetoric.

JustAWeeProblem · 01/12/2015 22:07

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Bumdance · 01/12/2015 22:25

NewLife4me the comment I made wasn't aimed at any particular poster. I've read this thread in stages so may have missed it but I don't remember that you've explained in detail your finances and nor would I expect you to, so there's no way I can be commenting on your specific situation.

Bumdance · 01/12/2015 22:29

Ah, having looked at the previous page I wonder whether I should clarify that to me this is not a sahp vs wohp issue and I do see sahp as work.

NewLife4Me · 01/12/2015 22:32

Bumdance

I realise this, but disagree with your remark because it isn't that simple.
To contribute financially you don't have to work.
I believe that saving the family money is just as good a way a contributing financially.
You can't deny the cost on family finances that some work situations make.
I have friends whose work costs them far more than they'd save if they didn't work.
Their future career/ mental health is important to them, but they don't make any money for many years sometime.
I don't judge their choices, they are my friends and I'm glad they are happy as they are me.

Garlick · 01/12/2015 22:44

Personally, I think an equal balance of work and parenting is pretty much the ideal life.

What I want is for everyone to have this option. It requires a major rethink of the way we structure "working" life and why we see things in terms of "work/life balance". Current situation was invented by Victorian patriarchs.

I will persist, however, with my feeling that, when women assume they get an automatic either/or choice if they're fertile, they support that patriarchal model to everyone's detriment in the long run. There's also the question of how much choice they really have if they've abandoned wider activities & marketable skills in favour of dependence on their man.

... whilst I give up my career and other hobbies to have his child.... - Did you even see what you said there, Mermaid??

Garlick · 01/12/2015 22:46

I wonder whether I should clarify that to me this is not a sahp vs wohp issue

Not to me, either.

Fedup83 · 01/12/2015 22:47

Newlife - I agree re money saving.

As both FT we threw money away at cleaners, convenience food, gardener, ironing person, big shop at the corner shop, big treats etc.

Not all FT couples with DC are as idiotic financially as this but it was our way of coping with being time poor cash rich.

Now I have more free time a lot of these costs are avoided and with childcare too adds up to s good proportion of what I was earning.

roundaboutthetown · 01/12/2015 22:48

You can't dictate to others what makes an ideal life. Besides, not all work is the same, not all work is paid the same and what you are paid has absolutely no connection to its genuine value to society. If anything, the less useful something is, the more profit that can be made from it. On that basis, I have very little respect for the idea that there is some kind of morality in going out to paid work that does not exist in keeping busy doing what you think is the right thing for no pay. Either you can afford not to do paid work or you can't. There is nothing wrong with hating the idea of a job defining you; hating having to do it for the money more than the enjoyment or sense of purpose; hating it taking you away from work that is more meaningful to you but which would always be unpaid; or indeed, loving it because actually you would probably enjoy what you are doing for work even if you didn't get paid for it. Frankly, I object to some "feminists" trying to turn issues of power and control (which earning money can give you in a paternalistic society) into issues of morality and "fairness." Neither staying at home nor going out to paid work are moral choices. Money is a man made invention, not the purpose of life. It is bizarre when some people think it is more the point of life than reproduction, which is apparently hiring out your uterus, now that we live in such a capitalist society that even our reproductive organs are on hire purchase!

Garlick · 01/12/2015 22:48

if men would like children they aren't the ones who biologically house them, and give birth to them. This must impact somewhere in the debate ... I'm not clued up on feminist arguments so not sure if this is part of the rhetoric.

Sure is :) And it goes a lot wider, too!

Fedup83 · 01/12/2015 22:54

Would like to read about it.

NewLife4Me · 01/12/2015 22:56

roundabout

So eloquently put, if I may say so Thanks

Beyondbelief · 01/12/2015 22:57

LOL at 'past poster Xenia' - she's on this thread! But yes, am with you generally, Garlick. Women with school age children who don't work, at all - I don't get it. Why would you squander your opportunities like that?

Anyway. Love my job. It's socially important, interesting, varied, absorbing, challenging. My colleagues are amazing. I am never ever bored, and I want to do it, or a version of it, for many many years to come.

It has taken me a long time to get to this point though, and I've had some awful jobs, so I do have sympathy with those who dislike their jobs. It's soul-destroying to spend so many hours a day doing something unfulfilling or uninteresting.

trixymalixy · 01/12/2015 22:58

I enjoy my job, but if I had enough money to not work I would give it up like a shot. It takes me away from my kids more than I would like and I'd like to have more time to spend doing my hobby.

regenerationfez · 01/12/2015 22:59

This isn't even just about the right of fathers to be sahp, just not to have the pressure to stay in a job they hate, or go part time or work in a less demanding role because there is no one else who is going to keep a roof over the kids heads. That's what a job is. It's security. It depresses me that more women than men go to university, do better at school, out earn men up to the age of 30 yet somehow a disproportionate amount have less earning power than men, or need to support their men to build their careers which suddenly become less important. Yes mothers want to be home with their babies but what about toddlers or school aged children? If work is so crap, maybe both of you should be doing a bit of work and a bit of home.

Shaffron · 01/12/2015 23:00

I always swear I won't rise to the bait, but yet again I have.

I'm a SAHM, I'm not going to defend my reasons here but can't the anti-sahm brigade see the irony in their feminist rantings?

How do you get to go to work? Because you pay other women minimal wage to care for your children. And what does that say about how childcare is valued in our society? And that this undervalued work is low paid because women do it.

So I'm sorry you are not holding the feminist banner high, merely by working.

IrishDad79 · 01/12/2015 23:01

From my experience of working in an environment with a roughly 50/50 split of male/female, my opinion is that a lot of women (not all, before you all start giving me your personal testimonies, but a lot) really struggle with the day-to-day grind of work, more so than men. I'm convinced that some workplace pregnancies are at least partly influenced by the prospect of getting mat leave, a "break" (for want of a better word) away from the daily slog of work. One of my female ex-colleagues quit this year to become a sahm. She had asked to go part-time 2 or 3 days a week but the boss said no, so she packed it in. I don't blame him for saying no, if he had caved half the women in the dept would have been at his door looking for the same thing. He's trying to run a place of work, a business. His function isn't to create makey-uppy part-time roles so people can dip in and out of it like it was their fucking hobby.

Fedup83 · 01/12/2015 23:02

The person who said they 'don't get' mums who don't work with school age kids.

Perhaps it works for them? Perhaps they are spending time on running a more efficient house? I don't think any 'type' of choice can be criticised if the person isn't hurting anyone by it.

Fedup83 · 01/12/2015 23:03

Irishdad: no you didn't.

Shaffron · 01/12/2015 23:06

And you don't think pregnancy, birth and night feeding a new baby whilst bleeding and sore and exhausted isn't a grind?

You sound like an ignorant, misogynist IrishDad.

AnyFucker · 01/12/2015 23:10

IrishDad have a little think about why many women struggle with homelife and work

roundaboutthetown · 01/12/2015 23:12

Thing is, there are different types of day to day grind. Not all of them are in the workplace. It's when both the workplace and home life become a daily grind that you know things are going seriously wrong!...

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