To wonder why people have children when they clearly put their career first, by having a 24hr maternity nurse from day one and a full-time nanny from 3 months?

[gogetter]

Call me old fashioned but why bother when you are going to see your child for maybe an hour a day on weekdays?
It's not financially needed for mum to return to work (far from) so why leave your teeny weeny baby with a nanny during the most amazing time of their lifes?

A bit strange I fear!

dal21, exactly.

Hmmm let me think, how about the ability to pay the bills, debts, CSA, etc. Shall I stay at home and not pay CSA to my dd from my first marriage?

Both of us working has enabled us to move house, last week, from one where there are drug dealers on the corner, people throwing stones into the back garden so dd can't play there and general shittyness.

Any more?

My sanity.

LOL motherinferior!

I'll go first:

I drive a manky old Astra (1998)
DH drives a slightly newer Astra
We rent a house because we can't afford to buy one.
Last holiday I went on was me alone to visit family in Chicago because too expensive to bring husband and kids.

God knows what I'd drive if I didn't work. Probably a Schwinn.

I meant it

I love my children more than my life, but I would go barking mad if I were with them full time.

But you are already barking mad.

Imagine what encarceration with the Inferiorettes would produce !

eleusis, but surely you are well rich if both you and dh work? it goes without saying, doesn't it?

I just find it hugely sexist. If women work through choice it's "palming off". If men work they are patted on the back for their contribution to the family. Your husbands are palming their children off on the stay at home mothers but are apparently above ctiticism because you think there must be a blood link between the 9 - 5 weekday carer and the baby for it to be acceptable, or rather a maternal link. Presumably granny won't do if nanny doesn't do.

And you have a sort of sack cloth and ashes view on it too - that there is a moral good in the mother being home and doing the 24/7 childcare but if she's married a rich man and can have the children part time and have a nanny cleaner etc she doesn't win the points she gets as if she chose to spend all day with the baby. Who really finds it fun being with a 4 month old baby 9 - 5? It's as dull as ditch water and given babies do great with parents around before and after work why stay home? Still baffles me. But I'd never say a stay at home mother with full time nanny is any worse than one who stays at home and does it all herself. They are both choosing to opt out of the economic life of this country and that's a huge shame and a waste.

what i find sexist is that if a woman "choses to work" if she is married to a man that works and brings in enough to maintain the family is this, slightly different take on xenias comment (which i agree with for once, well the first paragraph anyway). The woman has chosen to work, presumably to a well paid satisfying job. Why then isnt the same term put upon the father, he has chosen to work too. Why is it just a given that the man will go out to work, regardless of if the woman stays at home or not, but that he has no choice in the matter? Does that make ANY sense at all?

With regards to the comment of SAHMs opting out of the country's economy. That is a rather short term view, if one were to take the stance that staying at home results in better adjusted chidren, then, in the long term, wont these children have better jobs and contribute more to the economy as a whole than those of working parents. That is not my view just pointing out the faults in that particular attack on SAHMs.

Xenia, I agree with you. That doesn't happen often!

Kerrymumbledore, have you anything to say to the posts that answered your "what won't you give up" question?

"if one were to take the stance that staying at home results in better adjusted chidren" then they would be making an assumption that is not generally regarded as an indisputable truth.

Come on... I can appreciate that some people might think that, but surely just as many think it's a bunch of rubbish. I wonder how many ASBOs are issuesd to children of working parents and how many are issued to children of non-working parents? No idea what the answers. And even if I knoew the statistic it wouldn't prove cause and effect, just correlation.

And, happydaddy,I have one thing to say to you:

Fuppy Shipple

Kerry - you should engage your brain a little before you let your fingers run away on a judgemental tangent. "You know. I hear this all the time here in Ireland (ancestral home of the LARGE and poverty striken family). We can't AFFORD for one of us to stay at home!

Well no, it's all about choices. It's about lifestyle. A lot of people can't afford to stay at home because they want 2 expensive cars, a large house, holidays in the sun, etc. etc.

Nobody NEEDS all these things. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the benefit of your kids"

At the moment, i am a SAHM, but i am going to have to go back to work because we cannot afford for me to stay at home. If i continue to stay at home there is a good chance we will lose our house, not a particularly flash house, two up two down which is too small and falling down around our ears but is is OURS. I dont drive, can't afford to. We have two vehicles, one tatty old van and one tatty old, dare i say it, mercedes that i love but it is old and no way an extravagance. It is a reliable, safe estate car that we need for DD. I buy all of my clothes from charity shops and a good proportion of DDs. She has new shoes, expensive ones, so what. If and when i return to work, we will most likely be able to move, afford a newer car and i can go back to shopping like a sane rational person. We will even be able to afford holidays. Does that make me selfish when the choice is that decent lifestyle which yes, we could do without, or the fact that we are inches away from having our home repossesed and wil lhave to go and live on some shitty housing estate with drug dealers on the corner and all that comes with it. Yes i know lots of people live on council estates (both DP and i grew up on one)and i know i that I don't actually NEED a car, there is always the bus. But i do think that DD deserves a certain standard of living and she deserves, later on, to be able to go on all the school trips and have nice clothes etc etc, and you know what, one day, id like to buy her a pony. Id love to do all this and be a SAHM, well at least until she starts school, then would not consider staying at home at all, but it isnt going to happen, so i guess kerry unles you are living in abject poverty subject to your choice to be a SAHM and your hubby is close to breakdown due to financial strain, you shoudlnt really cast aspertions (excuse my spelling) on mothers who work and procvide a better financial set up for their families. It is all a case of what you are used to, i do know a family who are absolutely minted who claim they coudlnt afford for mum not to work, they are talking shit, but it is their choice and their DD is happy.

I dont want to go back to work, i have to, and it just upsets me DEEPLY to think that i am thought of as materialistic and selfish to consider this.

eleusis, i did say that it want my view, but just pointing out a flaw in xenias argument. I agree that children of working parents go on to be as well adjusted or il adjusted as anyone elses.

eleusis, LOL! My dw reminded me of that the other day!

By the way, Kerry, DW and I had lunch together. She came up from her workplace to see me at mine. It was SO nice for us to have time together talking about what shit parents we are.

lucyellensmother - agreee with you about the S/T view of SAHM opting out of the economy. Again, it is way to simplistic to say that just because you don't earn cash you don't contribute to the economy. The economy is much much more complex than that. We are part of a society and not all contributions are monetary - money is not the be all and end all of everybody's choices on how to organise their families.

For example, (just a small one) where would we be without the voluntary sector which obviously is reliant on people who want to help others rather than people who have a chargeable rate for every second of their time.

Niecie / LEM - I agree - if the SAHM went to work, then she'd need to be replaced (by a nanny, childminder, part of a nursery worker's time) - so leaving aside anything else, surely there's an economic value?

I have to come back on this thread one more time before the weekend. I'm sad that there's so much negative feeling here, on what was basically an inquiring question. It was an innocent question trying to understand the motives of the people who give their baby to paid carers (god I have to be so careful I'm not quoted out of context here - they're on your back in milliseconds) immediately after birth so they can go to work.

The truth is, I think only one of those people, who have done the baby-straight-to-minder thing, have actually answered the question. Why do you have children and then leave them, knowing that they need and want you to be there(yes there are always exceptions - mental illness, poverty, but when those are not an issue)? The question wasn't why do you work? or How do you do it logistically? Or Should all mothers stay at home as opposed to fathers?

I'm from the side of the camp that sees privilege in being with children as opposed to privilege in being wealthy. Not forever and throughout my life, but for the first few years of their life.

I had children so I could give and receive love through and with my dh. To hand a baby over at birth, the child that symbolises that love, and needs you, is plain cold-hearted.

Anyone read in the paper today about the women in Harare that were asked to put their babies down so the police could publicly beat them? Let's get our babies' care in perspective here.

Have a good weekend all!

lem, don't rise to it. you'll have to get used to all this b8ll8x when you a get a job - as well as everything else. you don't have to justify your household expenses to anyone here.

"innocent question"

Interesting use of the word "innocent" here, although, from the perspective of MrsMarvel its first use, "without guilt", would be about right.

It's certainly not a neutral question, well no more neutral than "I really want to know what motivates people who choose to express their anger by stamping on small and defenceless kittens - really, I do, I'm just curious".

Am I being naive, but why do you people just want to get at each other?