If being a SAHM is a job then do working mothers have two jobs?

[Banana8080]

....if no extra help eg cleaners etc

🙄🙄🙄

If both parents work full time all chores
and responsibilities should be equally split. Although anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that some men don't pull their weight at home.

Oh good, another SAHM vs working Mum thread.

My personal view on this completely over done debate is this. Being a SAHM of children under school age is hard work. It is relentless and can be incredibly isolating and boring. If you are literally with toddlers and babies all day it is like a going out to work job in fact in many ways harder.

However. If you are a SAHM of SCHOOL age children with no additional needs who are at school full time it is not a job. Yes, of course School age kids need you- in many ways actually they need you more than babies and toddlers. But essentially you have 6 hours a day, 5 days a week with no children and no work. Before anyone starts arguing, housework, ‘admin’, errands, sorting children’s school stuff etc etc is all normal stuff that FT working parents have to do as well. It is not an extra job.

If you are a SAHM of school age children, there is nothing wrong with that at all. If you can financially do it, and it feels right for your family, it’s such a good thing to do. There to drop your kids off and pick them up, help with homework, be there at bedtime etc. It’s hugely valuable. But I get so so irritated by people who claim to be ‘so busy’ or ‘so rushed off their feet’ but have children in full time school and don’t have a job. A lot of what SAHMs choose to do are choices. You can’t compare having a FT job out of the home and juggling everything else against having 30 hours a week free time. You just can’t.

SAHMs of pre-schools- as I said- entirely different.

For full disclosure I have two School age kids and Work PT. I have two free days a week to myself and I love them. Hugely lucky and think it is the best of both worlds having done both FT work and FT SAHM.

I also think it’s worth saying again that what works for one family may not work for another and it’s also dependent on how much the other partner does around the house etc. My DH works ridiculously long hours. Usually gone by 7.00 am and not home until 11. During the week he does literally nothing in the house. Maybe takes the bins out. When I was working FT and trying to do everything in the house and working in the evenings at home AND dealing with 2 small children we nearly divorced. We could not do it. I’m very fortunate that I’ve been able to go PT. It works much better.

DC at school - I work, look after all activities, house, cleaning cooking clothes shopping co ordination etc etc etc etc.

Yes I have 2 jobs.
So SAHMs whose kids are at school have it harder!!!!!
Seriously -stop taking the piss.

speakout, what then would satisfy you as being indicative of all SAHMs?
Without an answer to that I fail to see that my experience is less valid
than anyone else's.

I've said this before. I had ds1 in my mid thirties. Before that I had full on job on a trading floor. I didn't have much me time before dc.

I was lucky eough to be a sahm for 7 years. I had the jobs done by 9.30 and a clean and tidy large house mostly. I did everything at home because dh became the higger earner. Everything included parents' eve's, school transfers, all transporr, homework, managing building projects etc.

It was a huge privilege and I played a lot. I had enormous amounts of free time, used some of it well and had fun.

Takeit - serioudly, mums like you definitely have it much, much harder than me, i feel blessed in comparison. It must be stressful and exhausting

Of course having kids and working full time is full on - I don't know about the phrase '2 jobs' - but I am up at 6, get my daughter up, ready for creche at 7:30, do a full day's work with all the objectives that the boss demands to be met, collect her, make dinner, do bedtime plus all night waking and then up like clockwork the next day. I have been at home with her and while the roof of looking after a toddler is hard, the mental energy needed to bounce from work demands to dc and the physical energy, is one of the toughest things I have done.

Ethylred

Your experience is relevant to you and you can with a good degree of authority say that your mum would be better off working. I don't think speakout is doubting that. What she is saying is that you can only speak for your mum not any one else.

Lots of people actually have little outlet for their intelligence during their working day. My friend gave up her job as an accountant as it was incredibly dull to be a stay at home mum which (as her kids were both in school) gave her a few hours a day to do things she found more interesting.

Ethylred nothing is indicative of all SAHMs- that's my point.

Just because your mother became bitter and blocked by not working outside the home does not mean that applies to other women.

Every situation is unique.

No it doesn't mean you are working two jobs.
Being a sahp is different for everyone, it depends on the family set up.
Personally I have been both a sahm and wohp. Staying home was hands down more difficult then going out to work for me, but no one could just compare that to their life because they are not me.
Imo it is impossible to compare a sahp to a wohp as people's life styles are different.

No being a Mum isn't a job, nor is being a Dad, it's a choice to be a parent and with this comes responsibilities.

So working or not, does not mean lesser responsibilities, nor does being in a relationship with the child's other parent, however hopefully they would share the responsibility of raising the tiny humans to adulthood.

I can imagine being a SAHP can be tough going if you have more than one pre-schooler at a time. But hearing SAHP complain how busy they are when their kids are all at school makes my blood boil! I have 2 children and worked the first several years part time and the last couple FT. I must admit working 40 hours outside the home whilst still doing most/all of the housework and cooking and taking children to activities is hard going. But then I think how lucky I am in every other way and just suck it up and be happy! I would truly love to have had even a single year of life as a 100% SAHP, but that’s just not what has happened. I think each family just needs to try their best to find a balance. I’m still working on that bit!

Because I assume that whilst you are at work the children are out of the house in childcare and therefore not trashing the joint and asking 8,000 questions of you (and that's just whilst you try to have a wee).

Being a parent, SAHP or WOHP is a labour of love, but not a job. Contributing to the workload of keeping a house is something all adults do (or should do), again is not a job, it's just part of having a home.

A job is generally somewhere you are employed and paid to do and noone should be seen as employed or paid for the time they spend with their own child or maintaining their own own household. It would belittle the actual role and importance of that person and the part they play in their loved ones lives and hearts.

I wriggle out of lots of stuff now that I'm working. I used to be on hand to accompany younger child's class to swimming, helping at school, cooking from scratch. Now I do nothing at all and we live on takeaways. I need to find time for ME as they say. I had time for that when I was a SAHM and that is not to be knocked.

I'm not sure it's a job exactly, it doesn't have working benefits for a start 😁 it is exhausting though. I've just got in from work having started earlier this evening, my husband works 9-5 plus commute. He gets home just as I'm bathing the children. I do all the Childcare and household management through the day then go to work. He leaves just as they get up
for school so I get up with them. He comes home does bed time then had his own free time when they are asleep. I don't think I would compare it to having two jobs but it definitely isn't a walk in the park!

Yes, but it's 2 part time jobs

speakout,
Sorry, my observation is that you are wrong: there are many women
besides my mother who became (in your very descriptive words) bitter and blocked by not working outside the home.
If I had thought that my mother was unique I would not have bothered posting.

Having three preschool children, all under nursery age with no childcare... not sure if it’s a ‘job’ or not since I’m not employed. If I were I’d be complaining about the conditions and lack of lunch break! Seriously though your question is pretty irritating. Would you say a childminder isn’t doing anything all day. When working parents are at work their children are being cared for by someone else, being cooked for by someone else and being cleaned up after by someone else. So no you can’t be doing that whilst you are not with them. Obviously you don’t since to be a parent but you clearly aren’t doing a whole host of tasks that a sahp would be doing in that time. That’s not some sort of criticism, it’s just a fact!

^Cease not since

Oxford English dictionary defines a job as: A paid position of regular employment.

It defines work as: Activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.

Being a sahm is not a job. It is, however, work. I think every mother is a working mother. Some do only unpaid work in the home. Some do additional paid work outside the home. Same applies to fathers.

The childcare element is a job, either you do it or you have to pay someone else to do it (unless you can persuade a family member to do it for free). Normally parents who go to paid work don't take their dc with them and look after them at the same time, though I suppose a few do.
How about we don't pass side judgment on other parents?

dictionary.cambridge.org/amp/english/job

SAHPs come under definition B2

Yep. Still have to do everything a stay at home mum would do plus a working week and work at home. I was a sahp for the first 2 years. It was a piece of cake in comparison. Wish I was in a privileged position so I could stay home