To be a SAHM/Housewife with children at school?

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I've been a SAHM for the last 6 years. My youngest will be starting school in September and I'm unsure of what to do next. Financially, I don't need to work at present. Would you still be a SAHM if you didn't 'have' to be?

It's notalwaysa choice. Try being an expat trailing spouse in a country where you need three languages to work at the supermarket cash till, where you have 19 weeks school holidays a year, where there are unfavourable tax implications if you earn, and when your dh travels almost constantly, usually with very little advance notice

But being a trailing spouse and the implications of that......are a choice.

He was very keen to have that for our boys.

I find comments like that very interesting. Keen to have that for his children, but not to the extent that he’d provide it himself.

So he has all the security and benefits of working, while you don’t. With you providing his mummy at home vision for his kids. Nice one, for him that is.

Depends if you are happy or not. Depends how vulnerable if suddenly your partner wasn’t there to support you.

I made the mistake of not returning to work full time and considering my career options in the frame of being the primary care giver for my child. It’s taken me 4 years to get back to where I was career wise.

It's not always a choice. Try being an expat trailing spouse in a country where you need three languages to work at the supermarket cash till, where you have 19 weeks school holidays a year, where there are unfavourable tax implications if you earn, and when your dh travels almost constantly, usually with very little advance notice.

You chose to be an expat trailing spouse! You could have said that it wouldn't be fair for him to take a job abroad as that would mean you couldn't work.

It's not always a choice. Try being an expat trailing spouse in a country where you need three languages to work at the supermarket cash till, where you have 19 weeks school holidays a year, where there are unfavourable tax implications if you earn, and when your dh travels almost constantly, usually with very little advance notice.

It's telling, though, that nearly all trailing spouses are in fact trailing wives.

We didn't even really need to invent this new PC term.

The reality is that it's more than possible to work with school aged children, if you don't it's because you don't want to, not that you can't manage it.

Exactly. I think it is fine not to work if it is affordable but people should they want to put their feet up rather than giving pathetic reasons and insisting that they are really busy. There are SAHM with teenagers on this thread stating that they need even more support than younger children and that they appreciate coming home to a hot meal (as if working parents don't provide this) and a hot drink (which would take them a couple of minutes to make themselves). As someone who has teenagers and was a teenager with a working mother I know this is bullshit.

Edgeofheaven yes you excluded expats but others did not. And you judged some sahms to be a "certain type" who are "keen to be taken care of" which is not only insulting but unwise, as you can't possibly know what motivates a collection of individuals given their varied circumstances. Many of the sahm I know in the UK and abroad are very busy taking care of everyone else in the family and (being older) have brought significant assets and savings to the family pot as well. It's so rude and simplistic to generalise.

And no Clannlir I wasn't kidnapped but I didn't know that my DH's job was going to lead to him setting up a business abroad (no fancy expat salary "package" here either!) and working here for as long as he has and neither did he! Like most people who aren't millionaires, we stay where the work is. My DH also had other family members to support so he had little choice in the matter either. When we first married, I kept my job in London and "commuted" fortnightly back and forth. But that wasn't sustainable once I was pregnant and in the real world people make decisions based on what is best financially and otherwise for the whole family, not just themselves.

Outsourcing it to some randomers

This is beyond ignorant. I also think it's interesting that some SAHM are so disparaging of childcare professionals while simultaneously claiming that caring for their own children is the hardest, busiest, worthiest and most important job in the world.

I hate all the 'how do single mums manage?' comments. I know a few single mums. Vast majority, despite not having a partner, have loads of family support, grandparents, aunts etc who look after their dc in school holidays and do the school run.

It’s pretty sad really. Women fight for equality, especially in the workplace yet there’s so many willing to stay at home and live off someone else’s back. If genders were reversed this would be a thread filled with ‘cock lodger’.
With a very few exceptions it’s perfectly possible to work with school aged children.

Why don’t these women want to let their partner go down to 3-4 days and have time for hobbies or basket weaving classes, or just ‘me time’ as some put it?
Any woman who relies on a man to pay her way while she chooses not to work fully deserves the shock she’ll get if it all falls down around her ears and she has to try to find a job at 50 to start paying her own way.
‘Oh but there are sports clubs to get to and nutritious meals to cook’ as if working parents can’t manage anything.
I swear sometimes this forum has shuttled back to the 50’s.
Where is your self respect?? You’d have no respect if your husband didn’t work because he didn’t want to, while you worked every day to pay for his hobbies and clubs. None.

There's work everywhere, nobody needs to move country to find it. They may want to but it's a choice.

DH would have been going on his own if he decided to work in another country. I wouldn't want to stay with him if he thought everyone else should uproot and follow him as I would find that incredibly selfish. So my home, my job etc wouldn't count? No thank you.

Oh and I’m a single parent whose nearest family is hundreds of miles away. I manage just fine and even cook these mystical nutritious meals that apparent requires an unemployed mother.

This is a parenting website - mainly for mums. I find it astonishing, that whenever there is a thread with the word SAHM in the title, there is a relentless rush of women with the usual spiteful, supercilious comments about this way of life. The need to say, “Well I work and still do ALL that”. “My children respect me more.” “I value my independence” “My DH believes in equality” and do on, blah blah.

Literally, here we have 500 plus posts of variations on this insecure nonsense.

No SAHM on here has to justify ANYTHING. If her DH, children and her are happy, then it’s quite simply, NONE IF YOUR BUSINESS!

If you feel the need to come on here and criticise women for how they live, you need to be honest with yourself and ask why that is. People who are truly content with their “choices,” don’t feel the need to put others down.

If you find the idea of a SAHM so provocative - ask yourself why that is.

I cringe reading the comments on here. Why do people care? Who do you all think you are? This thread is women at their worst, it really is, and some people should be ashamed, frankly.

It would be my idea of hell to work again full time. I can not think of anything worse than dealing with that rat run of a life again.

It may be possible with one child, a brilliant nanny and lots of paid help at home, and even then it felt precarious every time the nanny was sick etc. It was the most difficult period of my life, and compromised all of us in the process. I was running on empty most of the time, barely connecting with my dc, and my marriage resembled the passing ships at Southampton. All for what? For me to say I am 'contributing'. I was doing that anyway! I am 'independent' - yup I became independent at eighteen long before children. I believe very part time may be a good option, but unless you have to for financial reasons, I would consider carefully all the very many negatives as well.

Yes be financially secure, yes have a plan B in case your marriage hits a wall, but working full time, or even part time is absolutely exhausting on every level, and anyone that tells you otherwise is being very economical with the truth.

Outsourcing it to some randomers

That comment always makes me laugh. Somehow they get over not leaving their children with new people to use the free pre school hours and then start school

Dungeon I've just explained and given dh's family commitments it wouldn't have been financially viable to give up his job (specific to here) where he earns X 10 my salary so that we could both go back to the UK and earn less in total than his one salary alone.

AlaskanOilBaron where I live there are lots of trailing husbands - so many in fact they have their own support and activity group.

I don’t think it’s as straightforward as that itcantbe

The issue is that in a lot of cases, high earning salaries and part time hours are not a ‘thing’. I know there are exceptions to this but if you think of high earners, they are for the most part full time roles.

When I posted yesterday and said this had implications for feminism, the reason I said this is because in the vast majority of cases it is the woman who goes part time, and this quickly lends itself to the ‘job not career’ school of thought.

There is no definite reason why two parents can’t both work a four day week, meaning the child is cared for by her parents for four days out of seven. However, this doesn’t tend to happen because going part time stalls a career, so the decision is made - one parent will work three days a week and have a ‘job’, the other will continue in their career, and overwhelmingly the three day a week worker is female.

Three years later another DC is born, it’s a disposable job not a career, she gives up work entirely and that’s that.

I think as a country we need to be adaptable to job shares, part time work encouraged for mother’s and fathers and not equating to the end of a career.

Parents that choose to be with their children contribute to society and work very hard raising their children.

Of course many will make parenting feel worthless on here to support their own choices, but we all know what a difference a loving parent can make to their children, the love, time and effort that goes into that child is priceless.

If a parent chooses to make that decision based on the well being of the whole family, and they can afford to do so, then it should be valued like any other work. The demeaning comments on here are pretty shameful.

I know a few single mums. Vast majority, despite not having a partner, have loads of family support, grandparents, aunts etc who look after their dc in school holidays and do the school run

That's not the norm for single parents. Maybe you're not seeing the massive organisation that goes behind building up that network of support, and the returned favours that eat into the precious little free time that a single parent might have?

My concerns are about the future for our girls, who need equal education and employment opportunities.

I'm old enough to remember when it was quite usual to fund boy children through private school, and not daughters - "because they'll be getting married and having babies". Is that the direction we want? I have to confess I'd be devastated if my daughters' only aspirations were to marry well so they could spend their lives cooking and cleaning.

Parents that choose to be with their children contribute to society and work very hard raising their children.

are you saying that working parents are 'not with their children' and don't work hard raising their kids?

I find comments like that very interesting. Keen to have that for his children, but not to the extent that he’d provide it himself.

I know two men like this, absolutely hilarious that they highly prioritise "a parent being home with the children" but of course it mustn't be them because they are big important men with big important jobs.

Shadycorner I'm sorry if you're taking my view badly but there are SAHMs who are so because they don't want to work. I can completely understand staying home when you have babies and toddlers, but if you have a 10 and 8 year old, I'm struggling to understand why you would still use your DCs as the reason that you're not working. Be honest - you're not working either because you don't want to, or because you haven't retrained or gone back to education and your skills are wildly out of date. It's not because you're just too busy meeting your DCs every need.

but we all know what a difference a loving parent can make to their children, the love, time and effort that goes into that child is priceless.

I work and take offence to that. I am not a lesser or less loving parent because I work. In fact, I work because I love my DC and part of parenting is to provide for the kids. Housing, food etc just doesn't come out of thin air, does it?

As someone who has teenagers and was a teenager with a working mother I know this is bullshit.

You are talking about a process, when some of us consider the outcomes are more important!

I don’t doubt I could have worked full time (apart from the fact there was no child care for DD1 with severe medical condition in the school holidays) and got home at 7.30 pm like DH during the teen years of DS and DD2; but I could not have spent 5 hours a night helping DD2 with ADD through secondary school and get the high grades she did at GCSE and A level! She had to work 3 times harder than her peers to achieve! By the time I get home from commuting at 7.30 pm, assuming the trains are not up the creek (a big IF) in which case it could be 9 pm, I am physically and mentally exhausted as is DH. After I had cooked dinner (because DH wouldn’t), I would be in no state of mind to tackle GCSE physics (my worst subject at school) or A level German literature, when I did not even do GCSE myself!

I wouldn't do it for many reasons.

Firstly, I find my job extremely rewarding. It allows me to make a difference, it's intellectually stimulating and I work with some fantastic people who make me laugh every day. I am lucky that I'm able to work 4 days a week, term time only so I don't have to worry about holiday childcare and feel I have a good work/life balance.

It's important to me to earn my own money. Although DH is by far the higher earner but I like knowing I am making a financial contribution to our household and I wouldn't want to be completely dependent on him. I would also feel guilty if he had the pressure of being the sole breadwinner just so I could sit at home all day while the kids are at school as I know I would hate that if the roles were reversed!

I have several friends who gave up work when they had their first DC and have never gone back. They constantly talk about how hard it is being at home with the kids all day but when you say "if you're not enjoying it why don't you go back to work then?" they get this look of panic on their faces and immediately reel off a million reasons why they "couldn't possibly" work, none of which are actually insurmountable in any way. A couple have admitted that they feel bored and unfulfilled but that they have lost all confidence after being at home so long and the thought of attending an interview, yet alone going back to work, is terrifying.

I like being a sahp. I like earning some small money on the side. I like being here for the children. I can't tell how it I'll or won't affect them for the future. I can only do what works for me and them and dh.