To hate the phrase full time mum

[NotPennysBoat815]

I was reading the mail yesterday ( ) and they kept referring to a stay at home mum as a full time mum. I work full time but surely that doesn't make me a part time mum?

Laza saying someone who does childcare all day is "not working at the moment" is arguably massively disparaging to many people who are working fairly much non stop - just not for money. You chose to say that about yourself, but your choice certainly not one you could suggest anyone else use without desparaging them!

There is no adequate term which doesn't fuel the delusion that unpaid domestic work is "not really work" or "time off" or "living off your husband" or otherwise valueless.

Saying that you don't care what people call themselves as long as it's nothing that ascribes value to their role is hypocritical.

"Senior Manager - implies the other managers are subordinate to him or her and are, by implication, junior and not senior. Chief Executive - the other executives in the company are less important in the business."

But this is exactly the case, these titles don't 'imply' different levels they deliberately identify them. Every organisation I've worked in that has 'senior managers' also has 'managers'/ 'junior managers' who report to the senior managers, otherwise that senior managers would simply be called 'managers' if there was only one level. Chief Executive is the head of the company and Board so yes, the most 'important' one if that is how you want to phrase it. I really don't understand what point you are trying to make here. That you think women who are mothers only and don't work are more important?

I have never been a SAHP. Yet I've never used child care ( except for one year when I wasn't even working).

Who has been parenting my DC? I demand to know?

Drinking I don't view caring for my own DC as 'work' or a 'job'. I think that is a horrible way to describe it. My family is my personal life, a job/ career is work. A family is something you choose rather than something you're paid for. The two are in no way comparable, they are completely different things.

Saying you look after your DC and don't work is in no way disparaging. Just because it's not work doesn't mean it's easy. But when people try to shoehorn looking after their own children into the concept of 'work' it makes me shudder a little. It's so impersonal and cold, like children are viewed as a chore rather than a joy. I absolutely love spending time with DC and could never describe it as 'work'. Exhausting at times, yes. Work, no.

*GetAHaircutCarl
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I really don't understand what point you are trying to make here. That you think women who are mothers only and don't work are more important?

That really isn't the point I was trying to make - although I am inferring a deliberate goadiness in yours.....

What I was trying to say is that many descriptions or titles in everyday use can be seen to slight others - but the fact that someone infers such a slight doesn't necessarily mean it has actually been implied.

Yep. It's annoying. Up there with 'real women' to describe anyone larger than a size ten... so I am a size ten... that means I'm not 'real

What I was trying to say is that many descriptions or titles in everyday use can be seen to slight others - but the fact that someone infers such a slight doesn't necessarily mean it has actually been implied.

But implying that a junior manager is junior to a senior manager isn't a slight - it's just true. Implying a mother with a job is a part time mother is a slight. Or some people take it as such.

Natalia your comparison is bizarre and makes no sense though, because job titles deliberately designate actual levels of seniority, there is no 'slight'. Whereas the term 'full time mother' is a slight to other mothers who are not somehow 'junior' mothers.

X post with splendide.

ethelfleda that one makes me furious!

No-one calls fathers part-time fathers but no-one cos working mothers part-time mothers either that I have ever heard. People who are making that implication are actively looking for something to be annoyed by imo. They probably sit scowling when other people get praise/or a compliment at work because they must mean the opposite applies to them.

That's just nonsense. If you have a category of people (e.g. mothers) and you then divide it into subsets by whether those people work and label the subset that doesn't work as 'full time mothers' then by definition you are stating that the other subset are not full time mothers, i.e. only part time. That is nothing like assuming the opposite of a compliment you heard applies to you.

Goldfishshoals and Cailleach666 so you honestly feel that your oh's are not full time parents because they work long hours to financially support their family? I would say ensuring the people in the family have a roof over their heads and food on the table to be a particularly large part of being a parent? Obviously you disagree on this.

I pretty clearly said that while dh was just as much a parent, he was just doing less hours of the child caring. (Hence my suggestion that 'full time child carer' is more accurate).

Of course he's still a parent when he's at work (and contributing to the household in a way that benefits his child), but he's not 'parenting' as a verb. Just as I'm not 'parenting' if I leave the baby with dh and go grocery shopping - even if I'm buying stuff for the baby.

If you said you were a 'full time child carer' people would assume you meant it was your employment. Looking after your own children doesn't make you a childcare worker any more than fixing your own car makes you a mechanic or repainting your own walls makes you a professional decorator. Making myself dinner doesn't mean I'm a chef.

How many hours per week in your opinion does a woman need to look after her DC to be considered a 'full time mother'? Employment of 35 hours+ per week is legally considered to be a full time job in the UK. That leaves up to 133 hours per week when a full time worker is not at work. Almost all mothers who work also look after their children for more than 35 hours out of that 133 hours of leisure time. Or do they have to look after their children and do nothing else, ever, to be a 'full time mother'? What happens if they go to the dentist or the gym, or have a babysitter for the evening and go out for dinner? It's all just nonsense frankly.

Some people with preschoolers are ' Full time mums' I did it for a few years then when I worked half days I paid other people to do the ' mum work' When I was at work I wasn't wiping noses, helping with toilets, making snacks etc. So not a 'full time mum 'in my opinion. Although I'm still ' A mum'

All parents are full time parents. They parent full time. Some have paying jobs others don't. It's bloody difficult for most!

gold lots of parenting tasks happen when a child is not there.

When I look back at the eighteen years of parenting I've done, wiping noses etc are the least of it ( though I've done my share).

I describe myself as a carer because what I do goes way beyond what a mum of a child my son's age would usually do. It is also the reason I don't have paid employment. I wouldn't describe normal parent stuff as being a carer though.
I think most people who use full time mum as an alternative to sahm do so without meaning any slight on those who have a job.

Looking after your own children doesn't make you a childcare worker

Right, but you've added the word 'worker' that I didn't use.

A parent looking after their child is not s 'childcare worker' but they are doing child care. When painting my walls I am not a 'professional decorator' but I am decorating. When making dinner I am not a chef but I am cooking.

And if I was for some strange reason spending all my time cooking with only the odd hour off each week then I'd be perfectly happy to describe that as 'full time cooking', as that is literally what I was doing.

I don't actually see why it matters if gasp people wrongly assume I'm being paid. That's their problem, not mine.

And if I was for some strange reason spending all my time cooking with only the odd hour off each week then I'd be perfectly happy to describe that as 'full time cooking', as that is literally what I was doing

Right so using this, you too wouldn't use the term full time Mum, you would use Full even childcare?

One is offensive, the others is not

• full time childcare

The biggest problem comes down to English grammar. To parent is not a verb. A parent is a noun. All mothers and fathers on MN are parents whether we have economic work or not. As soon as you make the grammatical error of thinking to parent exists as a verb you get into this mess over what being a parent is.

Full time childcare though is surely 24/7 - parent disappears abroad eg those children sent back from India often to save their lives from dangerous diseases who did not see their parents for 10 years. Their parents remained their parents but the children were in full time childcare in England for the 10 years.

Does anyone really give a shit? it's hardly issue of the decade call yourself what you want does it really matter?

This thread is on the wright stuff this morning