To be shm after children are at school

[Notthinkingclearly]

I have 2 dc who are 6 and 9. Since my first child was born i have been a stay at home mum. My DH works away alot abroad so I am often on my own. My Dc's have not been the most robust and have both had quite a few weeks off school with legitimate reasons over the last few years with hospital appointments. I have felt that if I had been at work I would have been a rubbish employee. I seem to be really busy all the time but feel I am constantly justifying to everyone why I don't have a job. I look after a relations 2 year old one day a week, help in school one day a week and I am a member of the schools PTA. I don't go out apart from supermarket or a walk during the week and only ever sit down to eat my lunch during the day. Am I as spoilt and lazy as I am made to feel?

The PTA comments are weird. When dd was at primary, most of the PTA meetings were in the evenings, I think the members were a mixture of WOHPs and SAHPs. Men as well as women. I didn't hang around that long though, as I found it very cliquey - more like a social club to be honest, with a bit of fundraising on the side. It is a very active PTA, but the funds they raise are just a drop in the ocean as far as the school is concerned - though of course, every little helps. Personally, I prefer to give my time as a school governor instead.

No-one had yet answered my question - honestly when you are working, how do you manage children being sick (one of mine has just been off school for a week), school holidays, INSET days, school meetings, appointments? Do you have to take the time unpaid?

DC sickness - no underlying health issues fortunately, so this isn't a regular occurrence, but usually I'd work from home or take leave if dc needed a lot of time and attention. DH would also do some sick days, or we would both do half days etc.

School holidays - I get just over 9 weeks of paid holiday, including bank holidays, so I can cover a lot of the school holidays and dh can cover most of the rest. We do occasionally do childcare swaps with other working parents and my parents are happy to help out if we are stuck. I'm also able to work at home if needs be. We have also used holiday clubs in the past, but only when dd has actually wanted to do them - we never had to go down that route for childcare alone.

Inset days - as above. They're usually tagged on to school holidays around here, so don't really notice them.

School meetings - most important meetings are in the evenings in my experience, but for the odd assembly/open classroom and other stuff happening in the school day, my job is very flexible so I would usually just go and then make up the hours as and when. DD is at secondary now, so these things don't really happen any more.

Appointments - just take the time off and make it up later.

I work full time but have lots of parents in my team with childcare responsibilities. I bend over backwards to accommodate them because I know that they will appreciate the flexibility and give a lot back. And yes, quite a few work school hours, including some in well paid professional jobs.

OP, I think it's fine if you choose not to work. I wouldn't choose the life that you have chosen, but as long as you and your dh are both happy with your family set-up, then you really don't have to justify your choices to anyone.

So basically my life is only worth something if I am doing tasks (a job) for someone else for which they pay me.
Then the money they pay me goes towards the taxman, and paying another person to do the tasks I can't do when I am at work (childcare, cleaning, gardening, decorating, recipe boxes, ironing etc, judging by the working parents I know.)

So that's ok. But if I do those tasks myself that's not ok because I don't have a job so I must be lazy and stupid.

That wasn't directed at you broken biscuit but at previous posters!

Nothing wrong with paying taxes, someone's got to!
And plenty of SAHM pay for cleaners, childcare etc, it's not just a preserve of the WOHP.
But if it works for you then do it.

But if I do those tasks myself that's not ok because I don't have a job so I must be lazy and stupid.

Good post!

BUT statistically if you work and then pay someone to do the tasks you can't - because you work - then that takes 2 people off the unemployment figures (actually only one because you can't claim job seekers)

Every government undervalued the person looking after the home children and often elderly parents because statistically you are preventing someone else doing those tasks

It's no ones business tell them to piss off and good for you having a good providing man too

Ok so I am a lot older than most posters here and I have been right through this and out the other end.
My advice is: enjoy now, but think ahead.
My kids are aged 27, 25, 22 and 29. Two have moved out and the younger two are away at university. So I have had a long view of this situation and right now I have a lot of lonely time to mull it over.
I have always had some kind of part time work going on but never "gone out to work". I always persuaded myself that this was fine. But it wasn't. And the trouble is, it is now too late to do anything about it.
Looking back I'm really glad I devoted a lot of time to the children when they were children, though I think I could have worked harder at the time to make it fun. I do not feel guilty about that part of the SAHM life BUT I should also have looked ahead more carefully at careers, proper careers, with structures and pensions, that I could work my way into for when the children became teenagers.
I did not. Instead I faffed around with short-term courses that have left me with nothing but contract work with no pension rights.
I now feel very underemployed, with an acute sense of having no status; even though I do love my part time work, I have no pension at all, and am totally dependent for that on the prospect of some inheritance one day.
I kept thinking I was too old to apply for jobs - even when I was 40. Now I am 58 and the chance of ever getting a "proper job" is gone.
Even if she doesn't want to "lean in" right now, I would say to the OP that she should start thinkingwhat she could do when her youngest gets to secondary school - maybe start training or laying the groundwork for some serious training.

"A good providing man" ???

Meaning I thinks it's great OP has the opportunity to do this and her husband supports it as many men don't .

The depressing thing about this thread is not only those who think it's ok not to work and to live off another human for no reason at all other than laziness, it's the putting down those who manage to hold down a full time job and run a household.

So what if a job defines someone or they'd be lost without it, good for them and at least they'll have something to turn to if their breadwinner partner leaves them for being a lazy scrounger.

It's a good job your other halves dont agree with you otherwise you'd have to do the unfathomable and get a job!!

The point in making about exhausting hobbies isn't that I'd run out of things to do by retirement if I didn't work, it's that I'll appreciate them all the more when I do have the opportunity to fill my days with them, as opposed to having done the same thing for decades.

What do you talk about when you OHs get home? How marvellous the new bathroom cleaner is?

For all the perceived attacks on SAHM as freeloaders, I can count as many against WOHP basically impliedly calling them shit parents, not providing love or attention, or emotional support, or home cooked bloody lasagna.

I think there is a place for both WOHM and SAHM in society but what bothers me most is the 1950s housewife mentality on this thread.

Where are these privileged high flying career men, and what did they do to deserve a domestic slave for a wife (whether voluntary, hard choice, financial, economic or power led?)

I love my kids. I enjoy and value my work. I am financially independent which ironically is priceless to me. Being a good parent and working are not mutually exclusive.

WizardSally you are quite frankly the most ridiculous poster ever to graced Mumsnet.

This thread has really saddened me. I have no idea why so many women feel the need to be so nasty about other women and their life choices.

Why do people care so much about other people's choices?

I love my kids. I enjoy and value my work. I am financially independent which ironically is priceless to me. Being a good parent and working are not mutually exclusive.

I love my kids. I stopped enjoying my work, and the LA certainly didn't value it (I actually achieve more volunteering one day a week). I am financially independent and have a good pension provision, which is priceless to me. Being a SAHP and lazy fucker are not mutually exclusive either.

WizardSally - You are like a one track record with issues.
Your job is just that you know - a job. Step outside the box and realise that most people define happiness and self-worth in a fat more multi-faceted way.

Ok folks, peace to all! Time for bed as i've got some shopping and lunch with a friend tomorrow. Night, night.

I only read to page 7, but my perspective is similar to WizardSally. I don't really understand how SAHMs fill their days, or really have a sense of satisfaction or accomplishment. Because I'm just not wired that way. Each to their own, I suppose. Like some posters, we would be considered "very affluent" and my husband's salary is several multiples of mine. But I value my job every bit as much as my husband values his. It's not just about the money.

I also don't want my children to internalize the message that a woman's role in life is to facilitate her husband's career ambitions. (Because, let's face it, it's almost always the women who gives everything up under the guise of "flexibility".)

bunnylove99 some of us have a working-for-pittance man and still can't go out to wprk
Does that male everyone else a success and people like me failures then??

I haven't read the whole thread, so sorry. But wanted to mention about how being a SAHM apparently teaches girls that women can't work and be mothers and that we should be teaching them they can have it all.

Ive been thinking about this a lot as I know both my Nan and my Mum suffered a lot of sexism in education, including my Mum being told despite being in top sets at Grammar school that her education had prepared her to be a great wife and mother (this was late 1970s)!

Mine is the first generation of women to be told you can work and be a mother, you can (and its inferred, should) be able to do both roles well. But that often doesn't work. I had to give up a job I loved as it didn't cover the cost of two in childcare. My husband works full time and studies because despite both of us having degrees and me having a good teaching qualification on top (and massive debts that go along with that) neither of us earns above the average wage. What I should have been told at school is... you can be a great mother and have a career if you hold off having babies until your mid to late thirties, just keep your fingers crossed you have no problems getting pregnant at that point. And yes you will have to work full time unless you manage to be in a flexible industry and have a good employer.

Please don't tell girls they can have it all, it sets up unrealistic expectations. Tell girls and boys they can't have it all, they have to make the best choices they can and be happy with them.

And my husband is amazing btw and does loads of childcare stuff. He also pays into a pension for me. I feel the irony of being a 'housewife' having spent a fair bit of my very expensive education studying early feminism. I really do. In the 1920s women were arguing if, now they had the vote, they should continue to press for women to have the same rights as men, or whether they should campaign for society to give more respect to those (generally caring) roles traditionally done by women. And still the debate goes on...

Sailaway, what if it's a stay at home dad? Does it just bother people when it's women?

I won't get into how I filled my day as that's been covered here. I never had a problem.

But satisfaction?! I've seldom found satisfaction in doing crap jobs where the pay isn't great and the work is not valued by my bosses (my last job required a degree and was very much brain work but my boss - who had never done the job - said "oh, anyone could do your job"). It's found huge satisfaction in making food my family loved, holding the kids' little hands as I walked them to school, seeing their smiles when I came to daytime school events (never feasible when I've been in paid work), being there for them after school when they were excited, tired, down, being able to volunteer at their school & seeing how happy they were to see me (again, not possible in my jobs). They are my most important job and being physically there to improve the quality of their day - and see how much they enjoyed that - is all the satisfaction I would ever need.

My one still at home is so sweet and thankful when I make his meals and bring him stuff when he's sick. My ability to do that is not what it was as I'm divorced and have to work. But it is meaningful for him.

lalalalyra Being a SAHP and lazy fucker are not mutually exclusive either

are you sure you meant to say this?

Little point in education, teaching them the value of things etc if they don't work and let someone else pay.
Well I get to pass on my knowledge to the son I spend all day with! I dont just sit in the cupboard and talk to myself although sometimes I might as well as DS has selective hearing

they'll have something to turn to if their breadwinner partner leaves them for being a lazy scrounger
What happened to the usual mn rule about all money being family money? Joint bank account and full financial openness? Would it sit better with you of I billed him for half the childcare, cooking and cleaning?

What do you talk about when you OHs get home? How marvellous the new bathroom cleaner is?
I do like to regale him with the latest storylines in Dance Moms and Home and Away
Far more interesting that what happened in the office today

I don't really understand how SAHMs fill their days, or really have a sense of satisfaction or accomplishment
Yup get no satisfaction in spending all day with my son, being able to take him to feed the geese or doing tickling spiders or going to play groups or seeing him interact with his cousins. Absolutely no sense of accomplishment from seeing him learn and grow and develop into a new person. I'm fairly ambivalent towards the small person tbh!!

And another thing that gets my goat, why is the cost of childcare nominally deducted from the mother's wage in a two parent situation? thereby creating a false economic perception " oh there is no point me working as once childcare cost is deducted, I'm not earning much" oft expressed on this thread.

Why is the childcare cost not viewed as a household expense, borne by both parents jointly if they both work?

Why do women say "my dh is very helpful with the kids, and helps around the house..." ?

Helping? With the wifework? Sometimes I think women do more to set back progress towards equality than men do. Parenting is a joint responsibility. And so is financially supporting the family. Even if the duties are divvied out according to earning potential, choice or personal strengths. Let's not view them as gender roles. For the sake of our daughters and sons, to have genuine life choices in the future.

MommaGee my comment was directed to SAHP whose children are in school all day. Other than school holidays I would assume they are not spending all day feeding the geese...

Mommagee

I've heard this before, the puzzlement over finding satisfaction in being w your kids. How odd! I adored watching my kids change and grow. And their curiosity! Wow. I have had amazing conversations with them. All those things still come up in chats we have - we have so many shared songs we made up, lovely little things they remember.

It broke my heart to suddenly not be there after school for them when I got divorced.

And not everyone has a job that provides compelling topics of conversation. Am laughing at the thought we're all doing work that provides scintillating topics of chat.