If you are a mum looking after your kids day to day, did give realise you were a ‘SAHM’ before coming on MN?

[sangak]

It always strikes me, that MN always has much to say about so-called ‘SAHMs.’ But if you said ‘SAHM’ (pronouncing it as ‘Sarm’) in real-life, nobody would know what this is. I know many women who don’t work due to children / family, but not one of them would know they were ‘Sarms’ or even recognise what ‘SAHM’ stands for - or that it is even considered ‘a thing.’ Just seems weird that the whole debate on here is so removed from real life.

What I’m trying to say is, nobody in real life has ever referred to me as a SAHM. I have never used this description about myself or women I know. Nobody has ever asked me whether I work or am I planning to return to work or anything like that. This has maybe happened several times in over 15 years, I would estimate.

@sangak

What I’m trying to say is, nobody in real life has ever referred to me as a SAHM. I have never used this description about myself or women I know. Nobody has ever asked me whether I work or am I planning to return to work or anything like that. This has maybe happened several times in over 15 years, I would estimate.

Yes and what we're all telling you is that situation is very unusual, almost unique. It's your experience that is not normal not the phrase stay at home mum.

@sangak

I’ve asked for this to be moved - sorry.

To me ‘SAHM’ is like ‘DH’ - ie a MN phenomenon. I’ve never heard any friend who doesn’t work but has kids describe herself (or anyone else) as “stay at home.”

What does staying at home have to do with anything?

It differentiates from Work Outside the Home Mum. Still not terribly accurate given how many women work for pay from home, especially since the pandemic.

It's a fairly standard term, and particularly widespread in the US. Even What To Expect uses it - but if you google 'stay at home mum' or 'mom' then you'll see that it's definitely not a MN thing.

But it is an internet thing - because this is where, participating in online forums, it can provide useful context as it's not like a normal conversation with an acquaintance where there will be other cues and clues to help to drive it.

And what other posters are trying to say is that your experience, in their opinion, is very unusual and rare. You are the exception not the the rule.

So, YABU.

I don't think it's something that's likely to come up in conversation but that doesn't mean it's a term that people wouldn't use for themselves in the correct circumstances. I don't think it would cause any kind of confusion (unless you pronounced it sarm of course)

Like I probably wouldn't, in a conversation at the school gates, refer to myself as employed full time. But I'd still understand what it meant and that it was relevant to myself.

In RL where I am people use housewife or unemployed. They don’t use SAHM.

I have two small children and dozens of friends in the same boat. ONE woman out of all those doesn't work. I would absolutely assume a woman doing the school run works at other times. Talking about work would be a given. Not one person has assumed I'd be doing anything other than going back to work after maternity leave (and I live in a MC area where we and others could afford to stay at home at a push). My mum and all her friends on the other hand were stay at home mums - I'd say by the 90s the term housewife was becoming much less common.

sangak I think this thread makes it clear that that's your lived experience, but its very unusual if you're talking about recent experience rather than being about to reveal that you're in your 80 or 90s and your stay at home mum years were in the 1960s or before.

It’s a normal term to me, if I meet anyone and they ask what I do for a living (just small talk, obviously) I say ‘I’m a stay at home mum’
I’d say it’s pretty normal in conversations, where you don’t know someone well, to ask about jobs.

I’ve never heard anyone say ‘sarm’. It’s just an acronym for the very common and well known ‘stay at home mum’ (although ‘stay at home parent’ is rightly becoming more common).

@sangak

What I mean is, people don’t generally ask you why you aren’t at work when you’re traipsing down the street with a handful of kids. Or obviously on a school run or doing something child- related. It tends not to come up. And then, at parties or socially, people just know my husband and me so that’s that. Nobody ever says ‘SAHM’ in conversation.

But you could be a childminder, or a shiftworker, or work nights, or run your own business, or work flexibly… just having children with you during the daytime doesn’t mean you don’t work!

This is such a bizarre thread, even more so as you are effectively telling people that because you and your friends don’t use the term that it isn’t in common currency, when all the people here are telling you it is!

OK OP let's try this. What do you do for a living?

@sangak

What I’m trying to say is, nobody in real life has ever referred to me as a SAHM. I have never used this description about myself or women I know. Nobody has ever asked me whether I work or am I planning to return to work or anything like that. This has maybe happened several times in over 15 years, I would estimate.

This is definitely different to me. I’ve been asked multiple times if I have a job / am returning to work, and my baby isn’t even a year old.

Maybe it’s because you mostly seem to know other SAHMs? Among the other parents I generally spend time with it’s very unusual for both parents not to work, so I can see how it would come up more often if a parent was a SAHP. If you’re mostly hanging around with other SAHPs they’re maybe more likely to assume you are too and not ask about it?

DH/DW/DC is an Internet forum thing from well before mumsnet

SAHM is also well before mumsnet and I have heard people use the full phrase in real life many times

My MIL was a SAHM (now in her 60s) and used to answer “I look after my children” when people asked her what she did

Stay at home mum is something that I only really came across on mumsnet. My mum and wider females in the family all worked usually around the kids evening/shift work & as we’ve got older they have either moved into different roles during the day or days used up helping with the Grandchildren.

So in theory yes my mum was a stay at home when I came home from school but off to do night shift!

"Nobody has ever asked me whether I work or am I planning to return to work or anything like that"

That's really, really unusual OP. Whereabouts do you live? I assume your kids are teens: is it still the norm young mothers don't work in your area?

I have a 3 year old and am pregnant with no 2, and my social group is the exact opposite. Of the women I met on maternity leave I'd say I'm in about 3 WhatsApp groups comprising a breastfeeding support group, people who met at baby class, people who live near me totalling about 50 women who I'd 'know' at a v surface level, and would have made lots of small talk with. I honestly only know one mother out of those 50 who didn't return to work after mat leave on her first, though some did go back part time. I'll be curious if that number increases now they're all working on number two, though so far it hasn't. In my wider circle of family I know a few stay at home mothers but tbh they're still massively in the minority.

In conversation, if it came up, I'd probably say something like 'there are really few stay at home mothers near me, though a lot of parents seem to work from home'. I think I would say something like 'oh Sarah is a stay at home mum' if it was relevant.

I've definitely referred to stay at home dads, and stay at home mums, when referring to real people. I'd also never 'say' an acronym, like 'WFH' - I'd always say working from home, and that's what I say in my head when I'm reading things out. Similar with stay at home mums and stay at home dads. Its just typing shorthand. But the terminology is real, and yes people use it in real life.

OP, have you ever seen an Amur Tiger in real life? No? So do you therefore conclude that they don’t exist, since you’ve never personally encountered one?

The same is true here. Just because in your (highly atypical) experience you haven’t come across the term SAHM in real life, doesn’t mean that it’s not a thing. It is. As you’ve been told repeatedly.

Why the weird fixation on trying (and failing) to insist otherwise?

Really bizarre…

1. Where the feck does the R come from for sarm??

1. I’d guess that 90% of the people I’ve been in my 10 years of parenting - question one ‘what’s your name?’, question two ‘what do you do?’

Can’t get my head around it

In my line of work - I speak to 100’s of people a week and one of the questions I have to ask from a data collection point of view is about employment status.
Not once, ever has somebody said I am a ‘stay at home mum/dad/parent’
This has been over a 15yr period

They do say:
‘I look after the kids’
‘I’m a full time parent/mum/dad’
‘I’m a mum/dad/parent’

I also have never heard anyone I know use that specific phrase ‘stay at home Mum’ either in my social circle.

Maybe it’s regional? Or generational?

@sangak

I always read SAHM as ‘Sarm.’ I nearly told someone I was a Sarm the other day and then realised they would think I was mad.

Yeah it's just you being weird.

Perfecy normal to I'm a stay at home Mom, weird to say sarm. Similarly, fine to say I'm the chief executive officer or C. E. O. Weird to say I'm a Cuhehoh

Sarm? Where is the R coming into it? Is that a typo?

I do agree it’s probably interchangeable with ‘full time mum’ but I take umbrage at the implication that I’m therefore a ‘part time mum’ because I also have a full time job

I’m not in my 80s . I really don’t think I’m unusual either. I know many, many women who are SAHMs in MN parlance, but am yet to hear one of them refer to herself as such in real life.

If someone asked me what I do for a living, I’d just say I’m not working, so nothing.

“ 1. Where the feck does the R come from for sarm??”

If you have a non-rhotic accent then the R makes sense. If you have a rhotic accent then it doesn’t.