SAHM, what a bore?

[Incognitopest]

Apologies for the antagonistic title…to get traffic!

Im 9 months into mat leave, i absolutely love and adore my daughter but christ i find this monotonous. I could go back to work early but also know this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

How do SAHM do it? Do you enjoy it or do you see it as a job? Im fortunate that we have a cleaner once a week, dog walker a few times, and i go to the gym solely because it has a creche.

Im so conflicted between being desperate to go back to work yet knowing i should be embracing these days with my baby. Every day feels so repetitive. Im guessing some people are made out for it more than others?

not sure what the AIBU is…. I guess aibu for struggling being a sahm whilst considering part time child care?

Having been a SAHM I'd agree that maternity leave covers the most boring stage. I often had other mums tell me that they couldn't do it when they'd gone back at 6/9 months.

I work in primary and have never had or heard a conversation about whether children have been with a SAHP or not. By the time they start school it's such a mix with most at least doing some pre school hours it would be impossible to tell. It's not like all nurseries and parents are the same either so I don't think you could ever compare. Lots of school staff are working parents - we're not judging anyone

It definitely isn't for everyone.

I took a year off with my first and I was absolutely desperate to get back to work after about 9 months.

I found it beyond boring (I know I'm probably not allowed to say that). I wished a lot of the days away. I went back to work after the year and everyone was expecting me to cry and be really upset.

I was overjoyed at being able to have a coffee in peace, being able to go for an hours walk on my lunch on my own.

I have 2 kids now and I feel like I'm about to drop dead after spending a week off with them. I could not be a SAHM. It must be so difficult.

I got through mat leave with audiobooks

You are on mat leave not a sabbatical to have fun, the whole point of the time off is to look after the baby you've just had. Mat leave can be hard, if you have a career you love it can feel like self sabotage. I wasn't into baby groups and found it dull hanging out talking about babies, but unless you have lots of unemployed friends the only people not at work are the fellow mums on mat leave, most of which just love the whole yummy mummy thing. I stayed off for a year twice and 9 months with my third, I loved the time with my children, but yes it was dull.

I'm a SAHM and like others was a teacher before and didn't think I could balance it, the baby and the hours of my husband's job too (plus I'd become pretty disenchanted with the education system tbh). I think how happy you are probably on a whole variety of things including your personality, the job you go back to and your family dynamics.

I just wish that we could stop being so judgemental about women's choices. I'm sure that women who do go back to work get comments too but I do find that relative strangers are quite happy to tell me unprompted how bored they would be in my place/how their brains would have atrophied etc. If I made a comment like: 'I didn't want to miss out/I wanted to be there' it would be seen as insulting (understandably) but it seems okay to imply to me to my face that my brain is being frittered away. I just wish that we could take our own paths without feeling obliged to justify ourselves to others by belittling theirs, whichever decision we made.

The phrase 'nobody lies on their deathbed wishing they had been in the office more' is frequently directed at men, usually workaholics who spend very little time with their family.

I agree too. I’m an optometrist and although I’m chatting to patients, I’m shut in a room all day!
hardly sociable.

with one baby, I’d have made plans most days to see someone - maybe that’s where you’ve gone wrong?

See, I really loved maternity leave. Yes, the lack of sleep was tough, but I didn't find it difficult overall, not did I find it boring. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed the time with my dd, and experienced it as an extended holiday from work - lovely.

However, I think it really helped me to know that it was a finite period and not just my life from then on. Knowing that I was going back to an interesting and meaningful job that I loved meant that I could just relax into the monotony of caring for a small child and enjoy it for what it was - a relatively brief but delightful interlude in my career during which I could focus on my gorgeous new baby. Without that sense that it was a temporary situation with a clear end date, I wouldn't have been able to make the most of it.

It is sometimes directed at men, its true, but on this site its mainly aimed at working mums and is often accompanied by broadsides about how "boring" it is to work in an office or how lacking in imagination you are if you enjoy your job. Usually from people who haven't worked much themselves and certainly have never had an interesting or enjoyable job.

Yes obviously there are people who work more than is good for them. But nobody lies on their deathbed and celebrates having spent their entire life without enough money to enjoy their own life or improve that of their family, that's for damn sure.

In my experience, it's never directed at men with a view to telling them that they would be better off quitting their jobs to look after their children full time. Instead, it tends to be used to make an argument for a better work-life balance so that they are encouraged to find the right mix of work and family responsibilities. When it's used about women, however, there seems to be little concern about the concept of balance - quite the contrary, in fact, as the phrase is used primarily to explain to women why they should not want to work and why they will instead be much happier and more fulfilled if they give up their careers to care for their families.

It's the same with the narrative about the meaning and satisfaction that people get from their jobs. Women are often told on these threads that they are deluded if they think their work is meaningful or if it gives them a sense of purpose and achievement, that they have somehow been gaslit or brainwashed into thinking that what they do is important, when the reality is that they're just mindlessly pushing pens with a view to making some anonymous shareholders rich. As if they are caught on some kind of pointless treadmill, and they would be so much happier if they would only get off and focus on what's really important. And yet we don't see those same SAHPs, who are passionately making that argument, making the same case for their DHs to give up work so that they too can experience the real joys of focusing on the purposeful and rewarding activity of childcare. Somehow, it seems OK for the men to remain on the mindless treadmill, and there seems to be relatively little concern about whether they will regret it on their deathbeds.

Surely if you really buy into the argument that work is pointless and soul destroying, and that nobody ever looks back on it at the end of their lives as something that was valuable and worthwhile, the only logical conclusion would be to have two parents working part time, sharing the childcare equally between them, so that they each got a fair deal between the meaningful childcare and the "pointless grind" of providing for the family. Nobody who loved their spouse would expect them to work full time in a meaningless job simply to support their own much more meaningful lifestyle, so there would be no SAHPs at all.

@Anothernamechangeplease

exactly

@Anothernamechangeplease

Surely if you really buy into the argument that work is pointless and soul destroying, and that nobody ever looks back on it at the end of their lives as something that was valuable and worthwhile, the only logical conclusion would be to have two parents working part time, sharing the childcare equally between them, so that they each got a fair deal between the meaningful childcare and the "pointless grind" of providing for the family. Nobody who loved their spouse would expect them to work full time in a meaningless job simply to support their own much more meaningful lifestyle, so there would be no SAHPs at all.

Spot on.

There's a stunning lack of logic about this "no one wishes they had worked more on their deathbed" position. The people arguing that WOHMs should rush off the treadmill and stop being "gaslit" by capitalism haven't thought this through enough to realise that in a partnership with children, by definition someone, whether the man or the woman, is going to have to be gaslit by capitalism to keep the lights on and the children fed.

But for some reason its always considered preferable for a man to be enslaved to the system while a woman finds "value" in looking after children.

So many of these patronising homilies come unstuck at the first sight of logic though. My other bête noire is this phrase: "you'll never get the time back!". Really?!?! How on early is a parent who has to work to support their kids supposed to be driven to any kind of life-changing revelation by this moronic little insult.

@Anothernamechangeplease

Very well said!

@Thepeopleversuswork

I'm always baffled by that phrase too.

A) why would I want the time back?!

B) what is it I'm supposed to be missing out on?

Do the people who say it never leave their child side incase they miss out on time they won't get back? What about school age kids? No school or activities in case their sahm misses time with them they won't get back?

Children are in our lives for the rest of our lives

Panicking about missing a few hours while they are babies seems very odd to me

@Topgub

Quite. Prior to the age of about five mums are required to have eyes on children at every waking minute in case some amazing milestone gets missed. But for milestones which occur after the age of about five its fine "not to get the time back". So, learning to swim, first school play, SATS, school trips, Brownies, GCSEs, getting a degree etc. None of that matters. It's just the infant milestones which matter. If I didn't know better I'd think it was about infantilising women as well as children.

Also like a lot of these stupid phrases its completely economically illiterate and takes no account of the fact that not every parent in the world can just down tools for five years and do nothing because "you'll never get the time back".

The phrase 'nobody lies on their deathbed wishing they had been in the office more' is frequently directed at men, usually workaholics who spend very little time with their family.

Except on MN where it's directed at women who choose to work. It's a snide way to tell working mothers that they've made the wrong choice.

I really would still work if I won the lottery. I have a job in the nhs that I love and find interesting and stimulating. I have a job that was my main job that I now do in my ‘spare time’ that I also love - I used to do it for fun and now people pay me to do it. I’d still do that. My husband has a hobby that’s also a paid job. Why would we give these up? We don’t have to do them now? The money is nice but after tax it wouldn’t be worth it if we didn’t find it fun!

my mum was a brilliant SAHM because she loved doing activities with small children. They just happened to be her children. If you find small children really boring then probably you aren’t going to enjoy it as much 🤷‍♀️ No crime in that!

Each to their own. I loved it. My job was boring 😁

Wow. This is condescending.

I went on holiday ( long ones, 2-4 weeks per trip) with Baby whilst on maternity leave and it was really fun.. I see exactly what you mean about the monotony , probably because I have the same problems .. older mum and not many friends with young babies , so spending most weekdays alone whilst everybody else is at the office…

I’m late to this party but…

My kids primary school teachers say they can tell the difference between kids who have a parent at home and those who are in full time care.

Could they also tell the difference between the breastfed and formula fed kids @WeneedtotalkaboutBrunobaby ?

What a load of absolute shit you speak.

Working or SAHM, ELCS or birth suite with a packet of Polos for pain relief, co-sleeping or independent sleeping, BF or FF, disposable or reusable nappies… all just a load of choices women make which work for them and which are used as sticks to beat women half to death with.

I had an ELCS, worked, FF, put my baby in his own room at three months, used disposable nappies….imagine the comments I’ve got over the years. Even though both he and I are very happy and healthy.

@Anothernamechangeplease, @Thepeopleversuswork, @Topgub

Brilliantly said.

My kids primary school teachers say they can tell the difference between kids who have a parent at home and those who are in full time care.

Im not sure the teacher meant what you have interpreted this as meaning.
In 2019 there were multiple reports regarding children who had never been in preschool or nursery being unable to use cutlery, unable to dress themselves and not potty trained when they started school.
Also in full time care is usually used in reference looked after children not childcare which is a few hours per day.

@HereHerejustforthisone I couldn't agree more.

I was almost opposite of you - other than CSs after a failed home birth, I BF, co slept, did BLW and was a SAHM for about 7 years (3 DC) People had plenty to say about that too. Like you say, it's just another way of putting women in their place and trying to make them feel guilty whatever they do.

Mine are teens now and I doubt it's made fuck all difference to anything other than it being the right choice for us at the time so everyone was (mostly!) happy. There's no way you'd be able to tell any of those early choices from how they are now.

Research has shown that the biggest driver for higher IQ is socioeconomic status of the parents. Other important factors are - head circumference at birth and up to 3 years, parental education level in particular the education level of the mother (presumably because in the formative years (first 2 years), it tends to be mothers who spend more time with children), attendance at nursery or day care and meeting developmental milestones (up to the age of 3). There is no conclusive evidence that children of SAHP are more intelligent (emotionally or otherwise) when compared to those with working parents. It is about the quality of time spent rather than the quantity.