SAHM/Homemakers - What do you do all day?

[Fruem]

Those who choose to be a SAHM/homemaker, who don’t ‘have’ to work, what do you do all day?!

I’m talking the SAHM’s who don’t work from home. Who don’t have to look after the kids all day etc.

If you’ve done cleaning/washing/shopping etc. How do you fill your day?

Sorry Rufus, my 'was that meant for me' was for Cherry!

My DH has on occasion come home to see kids, then started work again once they are in bed.

Cherrry - I have to disagree. People were jumping at the chance to get on this trip he is currently on. He wasn't selected to go, he HAD to go as he was running the meetings! Me on the other hand, at home alone with the kids....!

Cherry - well there may well be some men who "hide" in the office, but why would you presume most jobs of men who have SAHWs are corporate jobs?

Most of the women I know are SAHMs to be honest. Their husbands might be .com entrepreneurs, involved in politics or TV or all sorts of things that require you to go above and beyond "normal" hours and working patterns. Yes there are some investment bankers, lawyers etc where the hours, though long, are a bit more predictable. If the benefits weren't worth it, the wives wouldn't be happy with the situation, but must are fine as far as I can tell.

Must be quite unusual to have a circle that only involves successful males and females SAH. Obviously as you know, most men are not .com entrepreneurs or politicians.

Cherry, for some jobs you really do have to travel if you want the business to expand and thrive - it's a competitive world out there. No one is being duped - we just see the necessity of it.
Not all travel is fun but my dh has seen places he would never have travelled to otherwise, which is a positive life experience.

Honestly they are. I work for a huge corporate and struggle massively to get good people to relocate and travel.
My close friend was on the transfer request list for years for london. During that time she was consistently offered relocations or temporary relocation to godforsaken industrial towns in China, the nightmare Middle East, cities like Mumbai or Delhi.

Eventually we’d convince some poor sod to take it by selling them promotion and they’d uproot their whole family. And go and tell them what an amazing opportunity it was

Housework, fitness, cooking, shopping, mumsnet, hobbies, domestic admin, online courses, try and socialise a bit for my sanity. The kids are only at school for 30 hours a week, it’s not enough time to do everything I need/want to do.
I try to keep the time when the children are home to spend with them as they are still young.

But going away on business regularly is another- presented as progression when it’s actually just drawing the short straw.
I agree - travelling is the down side of dh's job, but if the client is not in commuting distance and they win the work - they more or less have to go and the job can last for a few years. The younger ones get excited about it - the older ones just want to get the job done and go home.

Well, maybe where you work cherry.
When we relocated it was to Europe and only temporarily - we kept our own house. There's no way either dh or I would have agreed to move to some godawful place in the arse end of nowhere.
Business trips for dh have tended to be in places like Scandanavia, Paris, Germany and Shanghai. Not too much to complain about there.

See my DH loves travelling with work! Flying first class (which we would never do for holidays etc), staying in luxury hotels, eating amazing food and seeing the world. I fully support it, I am a little jealous if anything. Even though he had to go on the trip he is on now, he really wanted to as well. If you don't want to travel and you have to, that must be hell.

No chance would we ever move somewhere we didn't want to, for any reason, money, opportunity, progression. That wouldn't happen.

Must be quite unusual to have a circle that only involves successful males and females SAH. Obviously as you know, most men are not .com entrepreneurs or politicians.

I think it's called a "rather wealthy" circle.

I'm veering between being really jealous of the SAHMs having that time to do stuff in the house and cooking and cleaning and exercising, and reading, all the things I have to fit into my evenings, plus the freedom to pop to the shop without small children whining or running away, and then being really grateful that I'm in work. I think I'd love it for a while, then after about a year get really bored/ complacent.

My DD only goes to nursery 3 hours a day so she fills my time 4:30am-8:20am and then 11:30am-bedtime so I'm probably not the ideal audience.
But when she's at nursery I'll have my breakfast, do a food shop, prep tea if it's something I can do in advance, gardening in the summer, tidy, strip beds etc.

I live in a military area

So i think its been a lot more common for me to be around SAHM

And its also a 'nice' village in a 'nice' area so the 'average' wage is probably higher here

It’s not just about moving, it’s about travelling generally. As moochy said it’s something for the younger employees to get excited about. For everyone else is just shit.

Although my children are 19, 16 and 14 so the majority of my friends now work at least part time

Dh's experience of travelling with work is trying to get enough sleep on the plane so that when he arrives he can be fresh as a daisy and ready to do a full day's work. At the end of the day - he'll have about an hour to freshen up before being taken out to dinner, where he will have to be on top form, impressing everyone around the table - making them believe he is really worth the ridiculous fee they are paying for him. He'll finish dinner and get back to his hotel room to finish a report they'll have expected him to magically write over night - if he's too jet lagged, he'll get up at 4.00am to finish the report and the next day will be something similar, he doesn't get to experience much of the cultural aspects of his surroundings and it certainly isn't a jolly....I don't know how he has the stamina to continue but the intellectual challenge is apparently what drives him.

Maybe it’s a generational thing? My friends and I all have household incomes in 6 figures but 80% off the women with kids work pt. Not all of us could return to our original careers but still enjoy working

That is a shame. My DH has had downtime and time to explore, he might feel differently if it was as you described, although I know he does work hard whilst away too. At the end of the day though, there are down sides to any job (to us, travelling isn't one). No job is ever going to be perfect.

My DS’s are 25 but still live at home

I cook, a lot, tonight’s dinner will take me at least 2 hours to prepare

I have a cleaner 7 hours a week, who also changes the beds and does the ironing. But we have a large house and it still takes some ‘managing’

I walk my dogs every morning come rain or shine for an hour

I’m in a book club, I go to Pilates once a week

I visit my elderly parents and help them out with shopping, hospital appointments etc

Today I’m going for my nails done, then supermarket shopping, followed by meeting a friend for lunch, after which I’ll start dinner

I don’t need to work financially and I do have some health / disability issues after a bad accident ten years

I do work from home, but on the days I don't, I volunteer, at my dds school and at church. I walk the dog - that is a good 1.5 hours per day, and is instead of gymn membership!.

I often meet with good friends for a coffee. I teach English to a Ukrainian friend of mine.

I do some craft.

Th eirony is, that the more time I have the less housework/anything else I do. When I am busy, I start squeezing extra stuff into the day.

I think there is a lot of truth in the 2 sayings that

1. jobs expand to fit the time available (especially housework) and
2. that if you want something doing, give it to a busy person.

When kids were little and at home, I was Craft Mum, and they ingested a lot of glitter

What are you on about?

Truth is some women love the role of SAHM and thrive on it.
Others would go insane.
It's just personal choice.

Cherry - I think there is some truth in what you're saying, but I just think the notion of the "corporate wife" is a bit of a stereotype really.

It takes all sorts. My DH was an options trader for a few years, but he felt stifled by the banking world and made a break. By this point we had the first DC. DH took a risk and set up a .com which meant more flexibility than banking in one sense, but also for ten years he never really left work behind. Sometimes things snowball and you have to go with it. He sold that company and now has other business interests. No regrets, but if I'd been working as well it would have all been too much.

I know loads of women with DHs similar to mine who have made their money through risk-taking and often quite bizarre things. What they have in common is that they are all very "hyped" personalities and it's a certain kind of wife that can accommodate this, I guess. It spreads into the family and someone needs to keep a balance! There's no right or wrong, it's just different personalities really.

As I’ve previously said, it’s all about priorities.

Me and my DH are in our mid 30-s so the way I see it is that we have 30 years ahead of us in our jobs which is an incredibly long time.

The early years of our children will soon be over.....the first five years will just fly by and then the chance to be part of their life during such a special time is gone - it’s time that you can never get back.

No amount of money would ever make me sacrifice spending time with my children when I know I have a lifetime ahead of me to further flourish in my career compared to a very limited time in which to be an active part of my children’s lives.

Mine and DH’s joint take home pay is £4’000 a month which I’m sure to the families with the flourishing husbands that’s nothing. We live a comfortable life though and it means we both get to spend a lot of quality time with our children and that is what matters to us.

Yes I agree. Commonly amongst friends with a SAHM is been where both have good careers - that’s how they met- and when children arrived they realised it just wasn’t possible for both to continue as partners in law firms or similar careers. But these have been quite grown up, something has to give decision (and I find it sad is always the woman as many of these women are brilliant and important minds)

I don’t see that the same as someone “facilitating” their husband because he wants to progress his career and has decided (post children)he needs to work 100 hours a week to do that and somehow convince a their wives it’s a good deal for them. Especially when 9/10 we’re not talking masters of the universe and they’ve massively bigged up their own needs