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.

Not once, ever has somebody said I am a ‘stay at home mum/dad/parent’
This has been over a 15yr period

I'm sorry but I don't believe that for a minute. Not all of those people will have grown up in the region you are working in and it's not a phrase that is only used in one small pocket of the country. It's a very very very common way of describing staying at home with teh children.

You might not remember anyone saying it but I highly doubt no one in 15 years has uttered the phrase to you.

“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.”

Yes. Thankyou.

It's better than the term 'full time mum'. I work outside the home but that doesn't make me a 'part time mum'.

@SMBH

“ 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.

Yeah it made sense to me (SE) like bath/baRth grass/graRss.

But I still don't see why OP thinks people pronounce SAHM in real life. If I was saying WTF I wouldn't say "wootuf" or DVD as "duvduh".

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

Thats bizarre. Surley that then leads to people thinking you've either recently lost a job, you're currently unemployed or that you're too lazy to get a job?

Yes I have heard people use the full phrase but not actually pronouncing SAHM as a word in itself

Some of the literal pronunciation examples are making me laugh 😂

Doubt all you want - doesn’t make it any less true in my experience
I’m not saying that people doesn’t use that phrase
I am saying it is not as widely used as some people assume

It doesn’t have to be widely used though - the OP asked if anyone did and clearly some people do use the phrase, but not SAHM as a word

@FloconDeNeige

Some of the literal pronunciation examples are making me laugh 😂

Me too, I’m going to start using ‘wootuf’ I think .

Wootuf, you’re a sarm? What does your duhu do? How many deecees? Fancy coming round to watch a duvduh?

Fuck me now I'm reading all the acronyms on every thread stupidly. I'll never unsee 'sarm'.

Fairly common phrase and if it was to said in abbreviated form it certainly wouldn’t be said with an R.

If someone asked me what I do for a living, I’d just say I’m not working, so nothing.
I'm a stay at home Mom covers the "looking for work", "cba to get a job" questions though

I’m not saying that people doesn’t use that phrase
I am saying it is not as widely used as some people assume

But it really is very widely used. It's not like you only hear it if you visit one small part of the country.

It's frequently used in news reports, on the BBC, in TV shows or in books etc which presumably wouldn't use the phrase if people didn't commonly use it as part of their day to day lives.

@sangak

Maybe Stay-at-home-parent might be a category on certain forms or for the census or something.

But never in my life have I heard anyone actually say, “I’m a stay-at-home-mum.” Nobody ever says this. I never thought of myself as that until I realised it was a thing on MN.

I've heard a few of my friends say this!! They've happily described themselves as stay at home mums because... they are

@TheGrumpyGoat

You live in a different world to me. I can’t imagine a primary school where none of the mothers worked.

I was out with some friends the other night and it just struck me that we were all, sitting round that table, Sarms. And I thought, shall I tell them they are Sarms? Then I realised we don’t even think of ourselves as ‘Stay at home mums’, let alone Sarms. It never even occurred to me that I was in a category.

@Toottooot

Fairly common phrase and if it was to said in abbreviated form it certainly wouldn’t be said with an R.

If you have a non-rhotic accent it might be

People pronounce things differently. It’s helpful when people with non-rhotic spell things phonetically take rhotic accents into account, but sometimes they don’t

‘Sarms’ isn’t a thing!!!

@Carboncheque

You live in a different world to me. I can’t imagine a primary school where none of the mothers worked.

When I worked in children's services, 99.9% of the service users had at least 1 SAHP (or the single parent was sah). There were schools we worked with where almost no mums worked- mainly in very deprived areas. And I know lots of schools that have breakfast club due to deprivation and not as a childcare need (and don't have after school club because there's no market for it).

Everyone just says stay at home mum op.

SAHM is pronounced 'stay at home mum'.

I would imagine you’d need to be in a very deprived or exceptionally wealthy area to find that.

Then I realised we don’t even think of ourselves as ‘Stay at home mums’

So what do you all think of yourselves as? You are all stay at home mums whether you think you are or not.