AIBU to have never felt degraded by the fact I don't earn "my own" income?

[Incognit0]

I'm fairly new to MN, but recently have read a lot of threads which seem quite judgemental about women who do not work outside the home, particularly once the DC are at school. I have never come across this attitude in real life, so wonder if MN is an anomaly, or if I'm actually missing something?

It's not information I have gleaned off Google. I've been participating very long term (and very part time) on an adolescent mental health rehabilitation project. Obviously knowing the drivers of the huge increase in adolescent MH issues is key to identifying solutions.

Ok so I'm not going to believe a word you say unless you can prove it with statistics @Bobochic. Everyone can say they work on a project and chat shit

Up to you. I'm not trying to argue a case, just highlighting an issue (among many). TBH if you read decent newspapers you'd have read about this.

What like the Daily Fail?

Link to a reputed source that suggests children of working parents have better developed skills-

www.lse.ac.uk/website-archive/newsAndMedia/newsArchives/2016/11/Young-children-of-working-mothers-have-better-skills-than-those-of-stay-at-home-mothers.aspx

An article inspired from Harvard Research

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/money/2015/06/15/news/economy/working-moms-kids-better-off-harvard-study/index.html

The Harvard Research as reported by psychologytoday

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/blog/good-thinking/201505/the-truth-about-children-working-mothers%3Famp

All the proper research suggests children of working parents are happier

Uppity, I'd say that working mothers' children having better skills is less correlated to the fact they work and more correlated to the fact that they are generally better educated, earn more etc.

You can pick any random study and make it say anything really.

If you Google, you will find information to support any position you would like. Look at who funds the study before concluding that it is some kind of objective scientific reference point.

So the studies don't suggest anything, really. They suggest that people make assumptions based on single studies and not much more.

All the proper research suggests children of working parents are happier

At least I'm quoting proper research. Nobody else is. Everybody else is just slandering WP. I feel so discriminated against here.

Bobochic if it's so easy to find links to support your stance that children of working parents have higher incidence of mental illness please do produce the link.

I know both my DC are happier and cleverer (both are reading and performing in the highest sets academically, are really socially developed, and happy). I've taken care of one over a stahp and her academic and social performance has improved dramatically since she came to me.

@Bobochic doesn't have any evidence

Uppity, one child doesn't prove anything.

I have a happy relationship with my husband, therefore all people who are married are happy.

I have 2 kids. They are both top of the sets. When I go to the special achievement awards ceremonies at their schools all the parents I meet are WP. Nobody who wins any kind of achievement award in either of their schools has a SAHP. Yet I know many due to my social circles and I do get judged by them.

I am fed up by being told I'm a lousy mum just because I work full time and work really hard to make our homelife work too. I'm fed up of all of the shit on this thread. So if people want evidence I've provided it. Kids of wp are happier, better educated, there. Provide LSE/Harvard research to the opposite and I might consider living in poverty to be a stahp.

Uppity your first article's heading is pretty much the opposite of what I have read, but I think the quote was possibly out of context, becasue the sum up by the person who conducted the research is slightly different:

“The welfare and happiness of economic dependents has historically been given relatively little attention in economics, yet it should arguably be a central state of the economics of wellbeing. This paper finds that material affluence is only one of a number of factors important for the development of very young children. More interactive activities between child and carer appear related to the development of both cognitive and non-cognitive capacities – and to child happiness. The finding is plausible and suggests that active parenting plays an important role in child development…the highest payoffs are likely to derive from the activities studied here and possibly even earlier, starting from birth.”

ie promoting ACTIVE PARENTING irrespective of whether the parent is sah or not.

Also:

Professor Anand commented: ‘We are delighted that one of first economic studies to look at the behaviour of very young children comes out with positive messages about activity involvement with parents, and shows that different activities promote different skills.'

The studies I have read are that under the age of 3 the child does not have a concept of time and will feel anxiety to do with separation, and the anxiety may not show until much later in their life. I will try to find links for you.

If you provide quality time for your dc then that is wonderful. But is quite insane to think that it is not possible for to achieve the above if one parent is a sah. My dc are also doing fantastically well, as are the dc of other sahps. One of my dc suffered a trauma to do with an infection of heart and lungs and a large part of the recovery has been the amount of time I was able to give. And yes, I had a highflying career for more than a decade before dc, and will return to that at some point in the future.

Uppity - you are sounding very uppity and there is no need to bombard everyone with this "evidence". As others have said, there is evidence to support anything if you look for it.
Good for your DC in the "top sets". Chances are they would still be in the top sets if you were a SAHM. You working has nothing to do with it.
Children with working parents will thrive as long as their parents are happy and not to overstretched. It's exactly the same for children of SAHP. It's the attitude that counts, not whether you have a job or not. You are missing the point and it's a shame you're so defensive.

www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/eric-bettinger-why-stay-home-parents-are-good-older-children

This is from Stanford.

But like I said, you can make any study say anything.

Uppity

Who is making you feel bad for working?
You are doing the best for your family, it doesn't matter whether that's dancing the hula hula, staying at home and caring for children, employed in an office job, or any other type of thing.

I don't agree with who does better, whose kids do better, it's bollocks to continue the argument amongst mums, because then it stops us complaining about men

My family are better for me not working for the 25 years I was a sahm, I'm better too.
This doesn't mean it's the best or right way for others, it just worked for us.

None of my dc were in top sets for everything, a couple made one or two subjects in top set throughout their school life.
My dd is at an elite school for gifted dc, does that mean you have to sahm for 25 years for your child to join the school, of course not.

Uppity your second link was a brief reference to the results of your third link which has been analysed more carefully by psychology today, and i quote:

"One difficulty with disseminating this conclusion is that the study is not yet published, meaning that it has not yet passed the rigorous peer-review that is required for publication in a scientific journal. Instead, the results were simply reported in a Harvard news release.
....
the results of [this] meta-analysis are actually more nuanced than that:

The results actually show that early daycare is associated with better outcomes only for kids growing up in single parent, low-income families.

In the researchers' own words,

"...moderator analyses indicated that early maternal employment was associated with beneficial child outcomes when families were at risk socioeconomically, particularly in the context of families with single parents and on welfare; these findings support the compensatory hypothesis of employment for these families (e.g., NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2003)." ...

"In contrast, other analyses indicated that employment was associated with negative child outcomes when families were not at risk financially (i.e., when families were middle or upper-middle class); these findings support the lost-resources hypothesis for these types of families (e.g., NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2003)."

The timing of maternal employment also mattered. Infant daycare during the first year of life proved to be detrimental: "Timing of employment was also an important moderator, such that Year 1 employment was negatively associated with children’s achievement, whereas later employment (Years 2 and 3) was positively associated with achievement." The results highlighted in the Times article would seem to suggest that there is no need for parental leave programs because children are actually helped rather than harmed by early introduction to daycare. Yet a more careful reading of the results suggests a very different conclusion, namely, that daycare is beneficial during the first year of life only for low-income single mothers who are overwhelmed from trying to do it all themselves.

.... Another factor that looms large in research on childcare is the wide variability in outcome based on the type of care and instruction provided by the daycare center.... "

I'm a single SAHM, I don't much care who thinks what of me,
Do what's best for you