To think you are very lucky if you dont have to work?

[malificent7]

Dp is amazing but not a high earner and also i want to be a bit independent howver i haul my butt out if bed to work a 12 hour shift where i get told off as i havn't been trained properly...i am very jealous of those who don't have to work.

I'v never had to work a day in my life, and realise I'm very lucky. I do sometimes have fleeting moments though where I wonder what it would be like and whether I am missing out on something.

I'm intrigued by this. How has that situation occurred? Have you never had a saturday job? Would you ever envisage getting a job if your life circumstances changed?

Try not working for several years and see if your lucky then . The social and routine aspect of working I miss so very much .

Try not working for several years and see if your lucky then . The social and routine aspect of working I miss so very much

I have and the one thing I don’t miss is the social routine of having to be friendly with people who you wouldn’t pass the time of day with if you didn’t work for a particular company.

I have friends that I have met along the way and they are people I choose to have a relationship with not people I am forced to talk to,

I am a SAHM. I am fortunate that I can stay home. We have 3 children and no family for support as well as health issues for 2 of them, which requires frequent visits to the hospital. I tried to go back to work after 12 years - kids finally healthy and could not get a job that paid for after school care etc. Now, back on the hospital rounds with my ds every 2 weeks so I guess 'lucky' that work did not happen. I do hope to work out of the home one day. In the meantime, we cut back where we can and forego luxuries. I do all the budgeting, decorating, repairs (and when I can't hire) with all the other parts of the responsibility. From time to time, I meet friends for lunch but definitely not a regular thing. The grass is always greener

@christmaslscoming Are your parents very wealthy? I'm intrigued.

I don’t work and that’s not my choice. I would love to work. OH work’s shift work, both DC have additional needs and childcare is a struggle. Very few decently paid jobs in the area.

It’s shit. I don’t have many friends, I am stuck in most days pottering around the house Dc are at school. I don’t have any interests as such. Just do housework and more housework. I’m not one to sit down for long and always like to be active. I just do the same thing day in day out. We cope on one wage but another income coming in would be great.

I hate work.
I wish I could afford to stop.

You’re only lucky to “not have to work” if that’s what you want.

I’m pretty sure there are many, many women out there in the SAHM role who would much prefer to work but unfortunately their circumstances don’t allow it.

All good if you don't get divorced. Would never willingly depend on anyone for money. Also enjoy working ( sometimes). But would love not having to and being able to take sabbaticals and choosing when to work

When my girls were small my ex-husband worked away for two weeks every month, I didn't have any family support, so just worked while they were at school, they grow up fast so I'm glad I spent that time with them.

I was in a similar situation, had to fit around my ex-husband's job, it became isolating, could you join any groups during the day?

Dp worked away every 2 weeks from before dc were born.

I had a huge problem with being totally isolated when we lived in the countryside but got back into London and a year after got pregnant with Dd and have never had a problem with feeling isolated here.

Didn’t have much money at the time but there were so many people around and so much free stuff to do I really enjoyed getting out and about.

I put off having children when we lived out of London because the isolation plus young children would have been too much

True, so many work from home now too, so some outdated comments about sahp.

@crispysausagerolls said exactly what I would have said in reply, @DonutMan

We are a team, we complement each other and we don't take each other for granted. I have the odd day when I miss earning my own 6 figure salary, but then I remember the stress, the rushing home for the nanny, the passing each other on the way to different airports as we both travelled internationally for work, missing first steps, first words and being told them by the nanny or the nursery, and think that I'm so much happier being at home, supporting my husband and my children - I'm finding they need a lot more emotional support than they did as preschoolers.

DH doesn't take me for granted - we both tell each other how much we appreciate the efforts the other is making. And, now that the children are older, I do a huge amount of volunteering and work one day a week doing something related to my previous profession, which pays peanuts, but is good for my CV should I ever want to go back to a high flying job again (can't imagine I will, but still!). I personally think I have the best of all worlds, but I know that it wouldn't work for others. Horses for courses.

Of course I'm aware that women who have no waged work may well have access to money these days. And the SAHM/WOHD set up functions OK for some people. But that doesn't change the fact that that the structure is supposed to depend on women's unpaid labour, and please bear in mind that within living memory women were not allowed to take out mortgages or loans without permission from a man.

Hear, hear @ReanimatedSGB.

Of course, I can understand the boredom/isolation aspect, but this question is more about whether women resent their husbands for earning £100k and facilitating them not having to work.

My husband earns more than double this, and it has never occurred to me not to work, or that because he's a high earner, I should be facilitating him, or that I need to arrange my career around his.

I was lucky enough to stay home for 6 years after having my son. I was really happy that we could afford it but after a few years out of work it does start to eat at your confidence a bit. I'm back at work part time now and feel much better in myself. I know I was lucky though.

I had a very good well paid office job that I done for over 20 years I didn't really like it but like you say hauled by bum out of bed and got on with it.. had always worked from age 16. Then I had 2 autistic children which in the end meant I had to give up. Then naturally because I didn't work when my parents and in-laws fell ill it fell to me to look after them. I've spent the last 8 years doing this. Its lonely, even though I do some volunteering work as well, there is no routine which I hate (as each day brings different appointments, problems), money is tight, I miss being who I used to be, I miss normality, I don't shop or lunch as people would have you believe as all my friends are in work and now I don't have the money. I've suffered with depression and honestly people treat you like a second class citizen as I think they think because they work and you don't they are more superior. You get taken advantage of because people think "oh they can do that, they don't work" all the while while telling you how lucky you are! I can't wait to get back to work. Its so boring no matter how much you think you will do hobbies or go the gym etc it's a novelty and it wears off. When I left work yes I thought great!! Actually if I had the choice for my old working life or this one Is choose my old working life everyone. The grass is not as green as you may think. X

it has never occurred to me not to work, or that because he's a high earner, I should be facilitating him, or that I need to arrange my career around his

Exactly. I personally wouldn’t want a partner that claimed they could only hold down a job if they had another adult 24/7 doing everything else.

We teach children to aim high at school but they need the role models at home to reinforce that. I don’t want mine to think males work and females don’t.

Such a good point icecream
I think it's really important that children see both parents do house work and childcare. It's one way we can start to challenge sex based stereotypes

Yes, a big part of the problem is that we still see it as normal for women to give up or play down their professional ambitions, because Hubby's job is 'more important'. Men are still allowed, if not encouraged, to feel that they have every right to pursue their dream job and have a Wife whose role in life is to pick up after them and put them first. Even if the women they marry are cleverer than them and not at all interested in domestic work...

Surely we get a biased view here as a self-selected group who have time to go on mumsnet. The high fliers I know wouldn’t have time!

And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because, as you so often see on here, women say that ‘as DH earns more than I do, it made sense for me to be the one who gave up work’, or ‘I can’t find a job that accommodates DH’s work hours/work travel, and as he earns more than me, etc etc’.

I see it in 2 ways. Yes some women are losing out on their dreams and ambitions but also I feel like some don't really have any to start with. I know of a few women of my parents generation who gave up work in their early 20s to have a family and never returned, despite being only mid-life 40s when their children were adults. One woman's DH had 2 (low paid) jobs to make ends meet, at some points. I think that's an unfair burden to the DH when she could potentially have got a pt job. They are retired now and live pretty comfortably on their state and his work pensions.

it has never occurred to me not to work, or that because he's a high earner, I should be facilitating him, or that I need to arrange my career around his

I am presuming this “career” isn’t something that pays minimum wage and is something that is interesting to you and you enjoy.

Would you have been so eager to continue to work in a boring minimum wage job that didn’t cover the costs of childcare for a couple of children?

For me not hauling my arse into an office environment for 8 hours a day 5 days a week, which paid very little and affected my mental health was bliss. Not working was the best thing that could happen to me and Dp

Not going to work meant initially our joint income went a lot further.
Then I found I could turn my hand to a lot of things that brought in a lot more than the salary I earned each month.
I have found I am good at a lot of more practical skills that earn/save multiple times the amount I earned doing a 9-5 job, whilst doing a lot less work and I don’t have to stick to a strict time table or do the same things day in and day out

And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because, as you so often see on here, women say that ‘as DH earns more than I do, it made sense for me to be the one who gave up work’, or ‘I can’t find a job that accommodates DH’s work hours/work travel, and as he earns more than me, etc etc’.

Exactly. We need to ask why is that? Why is it that largely it is the men who seem to have these well paid jobs and high flying careers and it’s the women who say they only earn minimum wage anyway in low paid uninteresting professions when a decision is made that she stays at home because it “makes sense”. How did things arrive at that point? What happens in the raising of boys and girls that it “just happens” that in 20s and 30s it’s largely women who find themselves in jobs that don’t pay well or satisfy them? It’s always written off as “it works for us”, “my job was rubbish anyway”, “dh earns so much more”. But how did we get here in such large numbers? Coincidence? Random individual occurrences? If we don’t think about it in broader terms how will our daughters get drive, ambition, strategic academic choices, motivation etc instilled in them (and how will our sons learn that they are equal parents who can share care equally and stay at home if need be) right from get go? These things impact how girls do at certain school subjects, what ambitions they have, what A levels they choose, whether they go to university and beyond, what careers they dream of. We do not suddenly, randomly arrive at apparently isolated incidents of “but my job was rubbish anyway DH has an MBA and earns tons”. It’s part of a pattern.