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Original poster

Whats you opinion of "stay at home wives"

986 replies

strawberryperogi · 24/05/2018 17:10

After reading another thread about SAHMs I am curious about what people would say about SAHWs, I know you will all say it should just be unemployed but if the person isn't looking for a job then are they really in that catagory?

Could you respect or be friends with a woman who didn't work and earn or at least look after her children?

Just curious!

OP posts:
JacquesHammer · 26/05/2018 14:09

I really don’t agree with the whole dressing it up as something it’s not: ‘we’re a team’, ‘he couldn’t have built his business without me’ and so on

He really couldn’t. I bank rolled it through my superior salary....

nannykatherine · 26/05/2018 14:10

mostly it's just jealousy isn't it ..
if you disapprove of someone d who can stay home ?

bananafish81 · 26/05/2018 14:14

Those of you who would feel like a non person, go mad with boredom, feel like a kept woman....That's about you!
Perhaps you should question why you have the inability to occupy yourselves or to feel fulfilled without a job.
It's possible to feel absolutely fine and happy if you sit doing sod all...but you just don't know how to. 😊

Of course it's about me. Why would it be a judgement on anyone else? Doesn't make any difference to me what someone else's choices are, as long as it works for their family and they are happy, crack on!

Of course others are able 'feel absolutely fine and happy if you sit around doing sod all', as you put it. We're all different and different things make us happy

If I didn't have a job then I would need to replace it with something substantial (voluntary role, degree, retrain in a new profession) to feel fulfilled because that's my personality. I don't want to sit around doing 'sod all' (as you put it) for extended periods of time because that doesn't make me happy.

Just because I felt like a non person when I was stuck at home unable to do anything meaningful, doesn't mean I think the same of anyone else. Different strokes for different folks

MaisyPops · 26/05/2018 14:48

If I didn't have a job then I would need to replace it with something substantial (voluntary role, degree, retrain in a new profession) to feel fulfilled because that's my personality. I don'twantto sit around doing 'sod all' (as you put it) for extended periods of time because that doesn't make me happy.
I agree.

I could quite happily do casual work in an area of interest, be a trustee of a charity and volunteer regular shifts at community groups, higher study, launch a hobby business. Sitting around indulging my hobbies all day and pottering around the house doesn't sound like a way of life I would enjoy.

Perhaps you should question why you have the inability to occupy yourselves or to feel fulfilled without a job.
It's possible to feel absolutely fine and happy if you sit doing sod all...but you just don't know how to.
This is the sort of trite nonsense from some SAHW that makes me Hmm.
Obviously, anyone who doesn't want to be a stay at home spouse only doesn't want to because we are nowhere near as cultured or original or creative or unique as SAHWs. The fact we want more to our lives than housework and hobbies is a sign that we are sad, boring individuals who couldn't possibly have interests outside our job.

Different people have different ideas of the lifestyle they want to lead yet some SAHspouses love to convince themselves the whole world is jealous of them.

spontaneousgiventime · 26/05/2018 14:56

Obviously, anyone who doesn't want to be a stay at home spouse only doesn't want to because we are nowhere near as cultured or original or creative or unique as SAHWs. The fact we want more to our lives than housework and hobbies is a sign that we are sad, boring individuals who couldn't possibly have interests outside our job.

As I've said I was a SAHW then a SAHM. I don't judge anyone on their life choices and with friends who work full time, part time, don't work, dedicate most days to charity, do hobbies and interests and all sorts in between I also don't agree with a stereotype of any of them. I have some wonderfully educated friends who have never worked some exquisitely arty, highly diverse conversationalists among those who work full time. No-one should be stereotyped, we are all so very, very different.

MaisyPops · 26/05/2018 15:00

spontaneousgiventime
My reply was in response to the suggestion that people who don't want to be a SAHspouse are just incapable of being interesting without their job.
I know not all SAHspouses share that view.

Most people on this thread seem to be 'I do x and think y would be wrong for me' or 'I don't z because' and then there's a few people who are determined (both working and SAHspouses) to prove how the other side is wrong or dress up a different view as jealousy.

boomboom12 · 26/05/2018 15:01

It's possible to feel absolutely fine and happy if you sit doing sod all...but you just don't know how to.

Everyone is different though & has different wants & goals so why the judgement. If sitting at home makes you happy than great but it wouldn’t make me happy & it’s regardless whether I know how to or not. Over my 2 mat leaves I learnt to sew, screenprint & to drive & pass my test, I just like doing stuff. Over the next few years I want to learn a new language & maybe do some upholstery, but that is me.

Agustarella · 26/05/2018 15:02

I think SAHW would count as economically inactive rather than unemployed. Same difference, except that the latter implies that someone needs to find waged work in order to survive long term, whereas the former is likely to be financially independent. Actually either could be appropriate for SAHW. Nice work if you can get it, provided the husband's not too much of a PITA.

RandomWordsStuckTogether · 26/05/2018 15:05

I really don’t agree with the whole dressing it up as something it’s not: ‘we’re a team’, ‘he couldn’t have built his business without me’ and so on

There's a book called 'Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?'. It's about women and economics, but that's not why I mention it.

I mention it because of the fantastic title. Implicit within it is the suggestion that Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, was able to fully realise his brilliance because he didn't have to clean the bathroom and stack the dishwasher before he sat down to work. If he was in peak flow in his study, he didn't have to stop halfway through to make dinner, someone simply brought it to him (his mum, as it turns out).

Men can put all their energy into their careers when they are able to open their drawer every morning to find clean socks and pants there, ready and waiting, lovingly laundered by someone else. When domestic shit isn't taking up your headspace, you can use it more productively.

So yes, it is a team effort. And fair reciprocity in that situation I think. If the SAHW was to refuse to do laundry or cooking or any housework at all, then she would be a minge-lodger, because then they actually become a detriment to the other partner - taking half of everything and contributing nothing in kind.

spontaneousgiventime · 26/05/2018 15:06

MaisyPops I replied because I see many of us tarred with the same brush and I wanted to correct it. Do I think working wives are jealous of us? In the main, no, of course not, but a small minority are. I've come across them in RL over the years too.

It's no different to thinking we must sit filing our nails or going off to the spa every day to fill or loneliness and boredom, it's a nonsense. Days where I am bored are once in a very blue moon, and my DC are all grown and I live alone now. I hate spa's, I do like swimming, I'm not one for salons although I do have a regular cut and colour. This is the point I am making, we (as a group) are being stereotyped and it's pathetic. None of us are the same or live remotely the same lives.

Magpiesarehuge · 26/05/2018 15:06

Jeez, no wonder my ears were burning! Sahw for 16 yrs now, never went back to work after having kids. Positives and negatives like everything else.

SemperIdem · 26/05/2018 15:08

I envy them quite a bit. I would love to be able to do the same. So I work full time because that is the one option I have and make the best of it.

BakedBeans47 · 26/05/2018 15:08

I’d think they were probably a bit lazy, wonder what they do all day and roll my eyes when they talk about being “busy”, but as long as they were decent people I wouldn’t let it put me off being their friend.

RandomWordsStuckTogether · 26/05/2018 15:11

Personally I would love it. I've worked my arse off for nearly 20 years doing a career plus the lion's share of childcare and housework. I'm burnt out and knackered. If I had the chance to be a SAHW I'd jump at it.

RandomWordsStuckTogether · 26/05/2018 15:14

wonder what they do all day and roll my eyes when they talk about being “busy"

I remember a pretty heated SAHM/WOHM thread on here a couple of years ago where one SAHM tried to justify her busy-ness by breaking down a typical week for her and she allocated an hour a week for 'present buying' like that was an actual thing and not something you do on the Amazon app on the train home from work.

I'm a SAHM at the moment myself (I look after a TV-refusing, boisterous toddler all day - I WORK!) so I'm not having a pop, but that present thing did make me smile.

JacquesHammer · 26/05/2018 15:20

she allocated an hour a week for 'present buying' like that was an actual thing and not something you do on the Amazon app on the train home from work

Maybe she felt doing on the Amazon app on the train home from work wasn’t a thing Wink

gillybeanz · 26/05/2018 15:21

I like that a sahw can't say she's busy, I must remember to tell my friend when I see her and she says she's had a busy day. I'm sure she'll be bothered by what some random women say on the internet.
I was really busy as a sahm, quite often very busy doing nothing.

This is my goal in life. Grin
RandomWordsStuckTogether · 26/05/2018 15:23

Maybe she felt doing on the Amazon app on the train home from work wasn’t a thing

Possibly, but as an adducement to her argument, it wasn't a great example, since plenty of women who do work still manage to buy presents without setting aside a whole hour per week, is my point.

BakedBeans47 · 26/05/2018 15:24

I’m not saying they can’t be busy, but when they’re moaning about it to a bunch of women who work outside the home and/or are looking after young kids it’s a bit much.

JacquesHammer · 26/05/2018 15:25

Possibly, but as an adducement to her argument, it wasn't a great example, since plenty of women who do work still manage to buy presents without setting aside a whole hour per week, is my point

But why the competition I guess is my point.

She isn’t wrong. You’re not wrong.

As an aside I knew a horrid woman who was incredibly rude about SAHM. She once (once too many) sneered “what on EARTH do you do all day”. I replied “all the things you don’t have time for”. She never did it again Grin

I don’t give a fuck what other women do. I do give a fuck about women who somehow prescribe their own circumstances onto others. It’s so narrow-minded.

GreyToGreen · 26/05/2018 15:28

BakedBeans47. Surely it would just depend on the individual as to whether any claims to be ‘busy’ were deserving of an eye roll or not. I don’t work and some days I’m really busy 😂. However, I’m not complaining about it as it’s totally my choice.

I’d be eye-rolling anyone (be they working or not) who claimed to be busy when they weren’t or who was complaining about  self-generated pointless or martyr’ish  ‘busyness’.
LipstickHandbagCoffee · 26/05/2018 15:30

...that’s about you well,reality check,all posts are generally 1st person,oneself POV
So all posts can be surmised with thats all about you

RandomWordsStuckTogether · 26/05/2018 15:31

*But why the competition I guess is my point.
She isn’t wrong. You’re not wrong. *

Yeah I hear you. At the time I read that present buying comment I was working full time and juggling all the housework and wrap around childcare for a two year old while DH was out of the house 7-7 every day. So reading that someone thought they were 'busy' because they needed to spend an hour each week buying presents really grated on me at the time. Because I also had to remember to buy presents on top of every fucking other thing as well back then.

Now I'm a SAHM and my perspective is different again. I often have days where I don't even sit down from the moment I get out of bed, until after I've put the DCs to bed - and those days don't even have to involve leaving the house, just the usual breakfast, dishwasher, tidy up, nappy change, make lunch, tidy up, ad nauseum bullshit. It feels busy, but it's a completely different kind of busy to rushing between meetings and having to remember to get cash out to pay the childminder on the way home.

BakedBeans47 · 26/05/2018 15:32

*That’s a point - what do ‘stay at home wives’ NOT SAHMs put in the profession box when filling out forms?

Profession: Wife?*

I’m sure I have seen forms where it’s listed as “homemaker”

spontaneousgiventime · 26/05/2018 15:32

GreyToGreen I agree. My son-in-law phoned me the other day from work, he was bored out of his mind. I was up to my eyes is batch cooking at home. I didn't roll my eyes at him.

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