Sorry Xenia...

[duchesse]

...for starting that thread when I didn't believe you existed (and I genuinely didn't). I've done some proper research now, and realise that you are real person with fantastic real achievement. I apologise unreservedly for my previous thread, which was genuinely not designed to get at you since I did not believe you existed. I am aghast and incredibly impressed at how much you have achieved, and look forward to sparring with you again some time...

Karen, I am not suggesting you can't. I am trying to explain that the recent swing towards more mothers staying at home is as much a concious decision as a need to fulfill a traditional role.
I am not the sahm equivalent of Xenia and would never suggest that working mothers were less fulfilled than me.

I've read some odd threads in my (short) time, but this one is most impressive, if laughable. A thread arguing about the views of one mumsnetter - who did not even start the thread and has appeared only fairly briefly on it.

Xenia - my hat off to you for being such a beacon for those dying to wrestle again with the SAHM/WOHM curse and defend their own choices to you people who don't know them and who therefore should not really matter/care.

And for the island. Never googled you. Did not know. Coo.

Lillian- I know what you mean, I try not to get drawn into this because it really has all been said before.
But I just can't let certain remarks go unchallenged..
I really do feel equal to all the men in my life. But then maybe I am not around the macho misogynistic types who like to earn loadsamoney and have trophy wives. Do people like that still exist?

MrsR and Mrsm, I agree. I actually am full of admiration for SAHM's. And I applaud the fact that for some women this is a choice they can make. For some women there is not much choice but to work.

Tbh I am a rubbish SAHM. I feel guilty for saying this, but I am bored. This is the reason for me working. I will be fulfilling my desire to be out earning a living and my own money. I do not like being financially dependent on someone and I like the freedom that earning my own money gives me.

I would love for every woman to be in a position to have the freedom and ability to be able to pursue whichever avenue they desire...

Oh, I don't know@Elffriend - I quite like the way threads morph into something completely different than the original along the way .

Personally, I feel the same as mrsruffalo. I don't feel the need to defend my life to others, but I am riled by certain posters comments and I do like to put my own opinions forward.

As has already been said, it is precisely Xenia's inability to grasp the phrase "vive la difference" that is so baffling to many of us!!.

I don't think any of her choices are wrong as such, what I object to is her pronoucements on other people's.

Don't get me wrong - I love the morphing - I just find it fascinating! Funnily enough, I think I am far more wary of posting my own opinions on here (about important stuff anyway)than I am in real life! Most people here seem so definite and clear about their own choices. I have the horrible paranoia that everyone else is happy and secure that they have the right approach whilst I drown in guilt and wonder what I'm doing wrong...

Xenia is a fascinating catalyst for all of that. I find some of what she writes breathtaking but with a horrible ring of truth about the way the world actually works. Some of it reads like pompous bo**ocks. Some of it is funny.

If Xenia was not real - someone would need to invent her!

And I'm not sure how us all (men and women) working flat out, full time and pretending that our childcare responsibilities aren't actually responsibilities, can help the situation, either@sprogger....?

The whole WOHM vs SAHM 'debate' is false, and irrelevant to most people's lives. People like Xenia only perpetuate the myth that there are two types of women - career-obsessed women who find children boring vs. bread-baking 1950s housewives who sponge off their husbands and give feminism a bad name. None of the women I know fit either description. It's not quite as black and white as the Xenias of this world would have us believe.

excellent post sprogger

Elffriend - very true. Xenia certainly does polarise opinion!
I actually think most people are like you - muddling along, not entirely sure what they are doing is right, but making the best of the (often limited) choices they do have.

In response to sprogger - can I just say, over the months (years?) I have composed many a reasoned argument opposing Xenia's narrow view of the world, as have many other MN-ers. I think it is actually Xenia who is most likely to be found rambling on in a highly subjective way about 'my five kids, my nanny, the rich woman who lives next door to me...' and so on. Her arguments are very rarely based on anything other than her own incredibly privileged life.

The thing is Xenia posts from a very particular perspective. Her marriage failed, she had to pay her husband a huge sum of money as a settlement, he pays her no maintainance and she has five children to support. I'm not sure choice really comes into it anymore. Good for her that she embraces it rather than moaning about getting a raw deal. I sometimes think her posts are to reassure herself as much as anyone else - after all she can hardly turn the clock back and spend more time with her kids even if some mumsnetters were to persuade that that would have been the best thing to do.

I didn't go into details with a more reasoned argument because I couldn't be bothered tbh.

MM, I love you post of 13:18. I nfact, I agree with all you have posted. Give us a kiss

I'm a bit confused about the "reasoned debate" sprogger. Isn't the point that there is no right or wrong in the whole SAHM/WOHM debate, rather that people make their own decisions based on their own circumstances and that each individual's decision is perfectly valid.

blows kiss at mrs ruffalo

(sticks out tongue and scarpers)

My understanding of feminism is that women's free choices should be treated with respect, not that all women should be forced down certain avenues.

Given the biological imperatives of recovery from pregnancy/birth and breastfeeding, I'd say that women staying at home with young children is, in some ways, the obvious solution to the early-years childcare conundrum.

Childrearing and home-making are regarded with derision not because they have no value (I'd say they have incalculable social value), but because they have always been regarded as women's work, and thus undervalued by male-dominated societies.

A fully-conscious feminism would celebrate child-rearing and home-making as being among the most significant, powerful, important things that a person can do, rather than perpetuating the lie that only out-of-the-home work is valuable.

This is not to say that mothers should always stay home, or that fathers cannot do most of these things just as well - breastfeeing being the obvious exception (and the elephant in the room if you ask me).

What a sensible post@policywonk

Message withdrawn

Thank you MrsM. Don't suppose you'd be willing to pay me for it?

V much agree with your and MrsR's posts on this thread.

Sometimes I am INSENSIBLE

Are you a writer?@policywonk (in awe of pw's ability to stick her head in and wham!bam! write something clear, concise and intelligent in the blink of an eye)