To not want to work.

[kahase72]

Hi. I’m a housewife currently. I have 3 DC, youngest 15. I’ve been out of work for about 18 years to take care of my DC. My DH wants me to go back to work now theyre more independent but I don’t want to. We don’t really NEED money, but it would be nice to have it. AIBU to not go back?

Def easier to work when kids older. My friend was saying her lack of confidence would hold her back now. I do school hours. I sometimes feel I havent any more left in me to take extra hours. My mother is elderly and needy too. Im just tired from it. So sometimes people give advice without the full picture

to Anxiernie and IcePurple,

It's obvious this only applies to the old "office" based jobs. It's comes from a place of privilege yes, the same as it comes from a place of privilege not to work for a decade plus. At the moment we are struggling to recruit staff even though the flexibility and remote work are offered. This includes roles in admin which are perfectly suitable for someone not working for 10 years plus.

The more able to make choices, the more different those choices became between the sexes.

How did you come to this conclusion? The study you were referring to was talking about self-reported personality traits and didn't actually study the choices people make in their roles. Clearly more men take paternity leave and more women work in Sweden than in Malaysia, to start with..

Agreed, @Anxiernie . There’s too much “should” in these debates. People do what’s best for them and their own family. Equality within a marriage could be really important for one couple; not having kids in childcare could be really important to another. You make choices and there are (inevitably) pros and cons of those. People make their own choices for their own lives and circumstances.

A friend of mine married a Swedish man and lived there when her first was born. She got swept into this notion that all babies should go into day centres at the age of 1. From her perspective, it was an utterly miserable existence for her and her child. For months on end, she was dropping him off in the dark and picking him up in the dark - over-stimulated and frequently ill. She described it all as a 'happy clappy' institution, but an institution nevertheless. She felt that it was a soulless existence - I remember her saying it was like being a hamster in a slow wheel - where basically, the whole agenda is to get everyone paying tax. Almost as if young children are viewed as an inconvenience. She now lives in Cornwall and WFH very part-time and says she'll be damned if any state is going to dictate to her she can't be with her own babies. She hated the mechanical 'cookie cutter' existence snd said it was disturbing that people there think they have such a great deal.

I think the entire opposite. Attitudes of ‘oh there’s plenty of crafts to do and I love reading in the garden’ are the ones that come from a place of privilege. I think those of us being realistic about wanting to have some level of independence to support yourself are the more grounded ones. We’re not all in fabulous and exciting jobs.

Excellent post!!

Totally - if one person didn't like it in Sweden then they must be doing it wrong! 😕Maybe nobody told her but it is not illegal to stay home there either.

I know - and the hyperbole. Soulless existence… This random woman got ‘swept up in the notion’ and somehow that’s the state telling her she can’t be with her baby. Because she put her baby in childcare. As if you get booted out of Sweden for not using a daycare. ‘I’ll be damned if I let the state tell me I can’t be with my baby.’ So OTT.

You dont have to put yr baby in creche though. Swedish women can stay home with their baby. So dont knock the swedesh way of giving women the real choice to work.

No you don't HAVE to put babies in a crèche in Sweden, but I was responding to the post about how public policy can influence attitudes. So although you will hardly be imprisoned for keeping your baby at home, if your 'societal norm' is that they go to crèche at 12 months, you are more likely to feel you're swimming against the tide or 'wrong' to not follow suit. Also, there would be no other mums (or dads) and babies around for you to socialise with - the 12 month olds and above are all in the crèche! So there would be not much to do in the day and no local baby groups, activities, etc. Playgrounds empty etc. This is how societies come to believe babies NEED full-time crèche 12 months 'so they can socialise.' If you're wandering round with a one year old in a pushchair, people might be looking at you're as if you're a bit odd. So yes, public policy shaping attitudes. I would argue, it's not in a good way, but Sweden seems to be hailed on here as some kind of equality nirvana.

@SAHMonMN It’s considered such because one of the best ways to achieve gender equality is to make it financially viable for women to remain in work if they want to. The Scandi countries do this very well. The fact that take up of the inexpensive childcare is so high that someone would be regarded as weird for pushing a buggy in a shopping centre suggests that the problem isn’t Sweden, it’s that the SAHM model is not one which the majority of Swedish women want to follow. And that’s OK. They don’t need to follow it just to give other SAHMs someone to socialise with.

Ultimately I think you believe that women are being brainwashed into not being SAHMs, and that’s quite insulting.

I seriously doubt people are giving you odd looks for pushing your baby in a shopping centre. That sounds like paranoia. They’ll just be thinking oh a baby. How would they know your baby isn’t in daycare four days a week and that’s his day off? Or you’re coming back from an appointment etc? Unless people were marching up to you and screaming ‘get that baby in CREEEEECCCHE!!!’ In which case you’d have a point.

Doesn't sweden also have a really high suicide rate?

No I'm not saying that at all rainbow milk. As I said (in response to another poster) it's worth thinking about how policy affects what people consider 'normal' or 'desirable.'

For instance, I'm not British and where I grew up, children don't really start formal school until the age of 6. Yet in the U.K, it's age 4 - and they're expected to wear uniform, sit at desks etc etc. Mine were getting homework every night in reception. But nobody really questions this as it's the societal norm. Because if this, people believe its 'best for the children'. You should have seen how competitive some reception parents were at the school mine were at when it came to reading book bands and maths and who was going to get into such and such school at 7+ (Ehich, Zi discovered, were exams for prep schools they take when most of them will still be 6).

I'm not saying anything is right or wrong and I'm all for free choice and women doing whatever they want. But, it seems to me, that when some posters on here talk about 'real choice' what they man is 'you must be at work or you're not really making a real choice.' This kind of 'feminism' is very naive, I think, and it's just replacing one set of expectations with another. You can't talk about 'real choice' or equality and then mock women who don't make choices you want them to make.

You can't talk about 'real choice' or equality and then mock women who don't make choices you want them to make.

Well, yes. But I'm not the one disparaging an entire country based on someone else's experiences in a shopping centre.

Also, plenty of people question whether or not the British education system is the best way to do things. I haven't met anyone that slavishly supports the way we do things here simply because it's how we do things, so it must be the best. Parents get competitive because regardless of whether or not they approve of our system, they want their kids to have the best chance of succeeding in it. They're not doing it as a way of expressing how awesome they think that system is.

Ironically, one of the best ways to implement a policy in which kids go to school when they're older is to provide affordable childcare so that their parents (but especially mums) can continue to work throughout the pre-school years. Which is what Sweden does.

In the 1960s it did, but social welfare measures were implemented and these have reduced these considerably. There is a known issue in the Scandi countries where given the reported high life satisfaction rates, the suicide rates are higher than you'd expect. It's generally thought that the long, dark winters are a significant factor.

I've lived in several countries (including Sweden, Switzerland, France and some others) and nowhere is perfect. But as a parent, you certainly have more choices in Nordic countries - how many times have you read on MN that women can't afford to work due to childcare? It's not really a free choice to stay home if you can't afford the alternative.
(And the dad has never spent a day alone with the baby, so the poor thing of course has no idea how things work and can't won't share the workload...)

This 100%.

At the very least you should look for part time work to cover your own food, clothes and activities, even if he is still covering all of the bills. You can't expect him to pay for EVERYTHING.

'Well, yes. But I'm not the one disparaging an entire country based on someone else's experiences in a shopping centre.'

Thats not what I even said. Anyway, you would never find me commenting on any thread about women who go to work full-time, part-time.... whatever. I literally have nothing to say about so-called "WOHMs". Certainly, I wouldn't be starting threads about them, nor making sweeping generalisations about their financial security, husbands, what example they are setting to their children, how 'interesting' they are, blah blah blah. As if! Yet the reverse is not true and it's open season on MN when it comes to SAHMs - from women who declare no interest in being a SAHM and barely even know a SAHM in real life. It's laughable! Yet it doesn't stop them pontificating. Bizarre that people on MN are hell bent in droning on about "SAHMs" as if they're all one and the same. They not.

Some people seem to genuinely believe that if you don't earn the same as your husband and are doing exactly 50/50 in all areas of life then there us something wrong with you. This is very limited thinking. Would you tell a woman who works part- time and thinks she has a great work / life balance - "er no, sorry ... you actually should be working full time because I do and, you know ... equality..."

There is no such thing as the optimal family set-up - only what's optimal for the individuals involved.

Equality should mean equality of opportunity. But in my case, what opportunities didn't I have? I am as educated as my husband. I have my eyes wide open. If I wanted to work and use childcare, what was stopping me? Nothing.

Some people will always make a lot of money in relation to others - bankers, entrepreneurs etc etc. Whether that's fair or not is another thread. But some people will be married to those individuals. Even if you are working but married to a much higher earner, you lifestyle isn't still essentially funded by them anyway, whether you SAH or not. This is the reality. People make choices in different contexts. Some women will be at home due to children with special needs... all kinds of scenarios. Nobody on here has the right to pontificate about anyone else or use a narrow definition of 'equality' as a stick to beat other women with. They need to look to themselves as to why they are motivated to do this.

• is still essentially funded by him

(sorry for typos)

Higher than UK, but much lower than it used to be. Almost all of the Scandinavian countries score higher/the highest in the world on happiness, and while the suicide rates are on average higher than here the difference can be at least partially explained by the longer, darker winters. The incidence of suicide seems to be correlated with low levels of daylight during the winter and prevalence of SAD.

looking at other relevant indicators they are also typically in the top 10 for quality of life on all major indexes unlike the UK. Sweden scores higher for life expectancy, and healthy life expectancy compared to the UK. They also do significantly better on other measures which could affect life satisfaction like poverty, child poverty, as well as gender equality and social equality. For overall life satisfaction Sweden ranks about 7th out of 41 OECD comparator countries while UK ranks about 19th out of 41.

I haven't really spent much time in Sweden, but we have been to stay with friends in Denmark over the years. My personal observation fwiw would be that they do believe they have a better society than in the U.K. They will openly say this. I couldn't comment, but overall, I think it's hard to compare really, because it's a much smaller population and they don't have the ethnic, cultural , religious diversity of the U.K. Also, our friends there would say things like "we have no real problems in our town" - while I was thinking, hang on, there's a mink farm down the road for a start! Not sure people would turn a blind eye to that in the U.K. But anyway, maybe happiness means different things to different people.

Get yourself a part time job you only need to do 16 hours it will be good for you.