Looking after your own children IS work

[Bumpitybumper]

Oxford Dictionary definition of "work":
activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result

AIBU to suggest that the people that suggest that looking after one's own children isn't work are wrong and in some cases are actively trying to devalue and undermine the people (usually women) that do the majority of childcare?

Would be really interested to understand how anyone can read this definition and argue that looking after children isn't work.

but the idea that a SAHM is some kind of saint and morally more superior to all other women really pisses me off.

the ONLY people who come up with that are the ones who slag SAH parents off.

I am sensing a lot of jealousy and bitterness. If you work and feel guilty about it, do something about it, don't take it on other parents.

This thread is ridiculous.

Ok, looking after children is work. AND?????

Looking after kids is hard work, but I don't think it counts as work in the colloquial sense of 'going to work' or 'i'm at work' as in - my place of employment/area of employment.

I was knackered when I had a newborn.

What was I doing?

Recovering from section, getting to grips with BF, DD got terrible wind at night and screamed and screamed for hours. Night feeds. Etc.

Women are to deny that children are any work at all now, that there's nothing to do that would make you tired?

You couldn't make it up.

First it's said it's not work in the way that say working in the garden is work
And now it's literally zero effort at all?

Brilliant.

No wonder 'women's work' is undervalued and underpaid in society if this is the attitude even women have to it!

And no wonder so many men don't do anything. What's to do? It's literally zero effort!

It’s parenting not work. Just like cooking a meal doesn’t make you kitchen staff or washing the car a valet.

I’ve never heard a working parent call parenting work, it only see,s it be those with no employment that do.

I agree with you beetroot in terms of babies/toddlers. But I do think people exaggerate how difficult being a SAHP to older children is, like when they are in school.

So if someone says I've been working in the garden today, or I did some work on the car, you would say that was incorrect? If they weren't paid.

These threads are simultaneously boring, pointless, and exhausting.

As I said earlier - All sorts of things can be vindicated work because people would rather not be doing it - cooking, cleaning, looking after kids full-time 24/7, whatever.

This difference is, this work is not employment.

I’ve just shampooed the carpets while the cleaning lady did other things. We were both “working.” But she was being paid for it. So her work was employment, mine was for myself / benefit of the family. Same tasks, different purposes.

All my kids are at school now and I’ve been SAH for 15 years. I don’t consider myself to be “working” anymore, no. I haven’t for a long time. But when they were little, I would describe it as hard work of the non-employed variety. Will that do?

There is work is the sense of the verb - ie “I am working on the laundry” or in the sense of the noun, ie “The laundrette is my place of work.”

People make such a hoo haa about this on MN, but the differences are obvious and why does it even matter?

considered, not vindicated!

it only see,s it be those with no employment that do

It comes from a need for validation from others as to your choices I think. I think a lot of people are insecure about being SAHPs so want others to tell them how difficult and important it is.

I'm not saying it isn't by the way, just that I think this is why there are so many threads and discussions about this subject from SAHPs.

Work isn't necessarily difficult or important whether paid or unpaid!

I think a lot of people are insecure about being SAHPs so want others to tell them how difficult and important it is.

possibly but an equal, or bigger, number of people is very bitter about working so want others to tell them how important and inspirational they are.

I never said it was. I'm saying I think that's what people want to hear about what they do.

I can also understand why a working mother might wince at hearing a SAHM to school aged kids saying how difficult her days been though.

Maybe that's judgemental but I can understand 🤷 and I've stayed at home and worked so I know both sides.

This has been down to death, but here we go any way.

It is work, but you cannot even pretend that being at home pottering about, doing school runs and a bit of house work during the day is as hard as having to fit everything around a job. Working parents have to do the same amount as stay at home parents, they just have less free time and less choice of when they do it.

I’m sure being in all day with a baby/toddler is draining, I’ve had babies and toddlers that I was at home all day with, I know what they’re like. The difference is, if I’d have had the luxury of being a stay at home parent, once my children were in bed my time would have been my own. As it was after tea I was out to work all evening three times a week. Every other weekend I’d have to drag myself out of bed, after a broken nights sleep, to be at work for 7am. If I’d have been a stay at home parent, yes I might have had to get up, lots of little kids wake early, but I could have sat on the sofa in my dressing gown with a coffee.

I don’t begrudge people being stay at home parents. If we could have afforded it I would have loved to have been one, until the kids started school. But it does annoy me when they harp on about how hard it is. This is obviously just my opinion, Im sure some people find being at home really tough, but I would have loved to have had the chance and enjoy a more relaxed pace when my kids were small.

Maybe both some SAHPs and some WOHPs feel undervalued and disrespected because we live in quite a fractured society in which people go around saying that they don’t care about other people, don’t value other people and don’t think other people’s families or working lives matter to them.

If you have raised the kind of young person who behaves in a decent, respectful way to other human beings, then you have accomplished something pretty great, whether you are a SAHP or WOHP.

@Oooom I do a lot of voluntary work with vulnerable children and I'm also a school,governor. I can assure you that as a social worker you would have had a bigger impact on the people you worked with than it might have seemed at the time.

I enjoy working and would rather be at work then at home with kids.

That quite a lot of women and more than quite a lot of men feel this way is often overlooked.

The fact that in my old office some men would stay late in order to miss bathtime/ bedtime shows something around this as well.

Also if you are out at work you tend to get proper breaks which you don't really with young children. Or at least you do in my job.

I can also understand why a working mother might wince at hearing a SAHM to school aged kids saying how difficult her days been though.

why? Haven't you got very good days, and very challenging days at work? Or at the weekend?

How many posters on here really work in the bomb squad and have such stressful days that no one else can possibly know what stress means?

I have done f** all today - drank plenty of coffee and eaten loads of crap, and been on internet all day. The current news are not good for business AT ALL. I can appreciate that a SAHM had a much more challenging day than me...

Ironshame I think that’s really key. I have been SAH too but I would NEVER say how tired I was to someone who worked - they had to do everything I did PLUS get up at 6am to get office ready, feed and sort baby/kids, drop at childcare, go and do 8 hours plus of work, rush to grab the kids on time, deal with the witching hour or two of grumpy tired hungry babies, put them to bed without really enjoying them, possibly do some calls/emails and THEN start the myriad home jobs that I’ve had all day to do with my toddlers at my feet.

I work now my kids are in school. I have a friend who constantly says how tired she is despite having two school age kids and neither she nor partner need to work. It makes me want to punch her - not because she stays at home but because she is now so disconnected from the real world that she has lost all perspective on life and the social tact which, were her world bigger, would tell her she shouldn’t be bloody tired or say she’s tired with 6 hours each day free as a bird bar the domestic duties other parents fit in around their jobs.

And therein lies the rub. If you stay at home, don’t bloody say you’re tired to someone in the exact same circumstances but who works. You sound like an entitled arsehole.

And also the school governor/volunteer stuff is w red herring. Loads of us fit those things round work too.

And if it’s so bloody hard, you can always get a job. It’s a choice to stay at home, not an obligation if you don’t like it.

If you stay at home, don’t bloody say you’re tired to someone in the exact same circumstances but who works. You sound like an entitled arsehole.

no, you do.

Why the need for competition all the time? People are allowed to be tired. so what. I do find leave with kids a holiday, but it doesn't mean someone else is not allowed to be tired. Maybe you cut corners because you work, and they don't. So they do more, who knows.