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...

O, it certainly didn't benefit me. Huge huge cost on the divorce. I don't know how any higher earners can risk it. And the children's father doesn't really see them or pay anything. Another reason to work as so many men are so unreliable particularly after divorce.

I would not like to mix with women who think I should have married better. I don't think most people are very happy living off male earnings. It's a chattel like status most women don't suffer in 2008.

I think when you're over 20 years into being a parent as I am you get a better idea of the over all picture and long term which when you've a small child you don't.

Anna may be right and we all know people of both sexes who are never happy with what they have (working or not working). The grass is always greener syndrome. But it's better grass if you've the money to pay for someone else to fertilise and mow it and you bought the grass with your own money. It's easier being miserable if you earn a bit of money than in poverty. I think my mother did very very well from where she started (poor widowed mother in the 1920s when she was a baby) to pass the 11+, get her teacher training certificate and it was partly because she was very clever. She completely moved class actually and I suppose after 13 years teaching she chose to give up work and I think she was quite happy when we were tiny although she was the only woman on the road without a nanny and cleaner in those days. That's the trouble put yourself amongst people with more money than you and you feel fed up (lots of studies on that), surround yourself with people a bit worse off and you feel better.

I believe she resented how things ended up - answering the door to my father's psychiatric patients twice a week and yet I don't think he would ever have stopped her going back to teaching. She was often unhappy about lots of things, having done 3 loads of washing that morning when he'd been on TV or whatever. But she never effected change so it was her own fault. Women who moan but don't change things (and men) annoy me most. If you love being a housewife more fool you but carry on and don't feel threatened by working women. If you hate it change it. If you hate working do something about that too or change jobs.

I just pass on the wisdom that most women are glad they keep their careers going and many who haven't are deserted by their men in their 40s or 50s for the younger model, get little money and have lost the chance to earn a lot more simply because many career paths (but not all) are age based.

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Xenia, you completely lost any shred of credibility you had with some of your most recent comments.

If my dh was selfish and spent his wages gambling or something then I would be a working mother.
Precisely because he is keen to be 'the provider' that freed us up to have 4 children with their mum at home.
I do want to bring in money eventually for my own satisfaction and it isn't always easy to be low lying humdrum mum but all choices have pros and cons.
I chose to be this person and I'll choose to change in time. I realise that having that choice is a brilliant thing.

I hope my daughter will have such choice.

What I mean is the person you marry does have an influence on your choices for various reasons.

This is the sort of thing I meant the other day. This woman could do with some advice btw from anyone who knows their way around employment legislation and contracts.

"If you love being a housewife more fool you but carry on and don't feel threatened by working women. If you hate it change it. If you hate working do something about that too or change jobs."

Why xenia are there always those little jibes in you comments? The "more fool you" comment is unecessary, and gets people's backs up. Is it really so hard to belive that someone can have a fullfilled life without having a paid job?

They might think they are but they really inside wish they had an interesting job.

But alittleone's situation is interesting. It's how people "get on" and make their lives easier for their children. It's what my mother did to some extent and it was amazing at her funeral to see a side of her family we didn't know (she had 52 first cousins!! mostly very working class in the NE) and how different we had ended up. It showed what class mobility there could be in a generation. Now I'm not saying we're any happier than the poor working class cousins in the NE because happiness is a very different issue and also I'm not saying one life is better than another in moral terms but in terms of this capitalist working world we all live in it shows what you can achieve if you give your children clever genes (my mother's best inheritance although she gave me her good looks and that's been quite nice too), time - all working parents who are quite clever like to talk to their children and educate them at home as well as school and by paying for education.

I am sure you're not crass compared with your colleagues. I do think some people know more in terms of general education, what they learned at school, even things my parents taught me at home which not all children from all backgrounds get.

I suppose that's a different topic from staying ad home or working but women working and earning and making a better life for their children which women have always done and always will do is a very instinctive thing. Now there may be a very very narrow sub set of women in the country who can afford not to work 9there are very few of them either married to rich men or on benefits where it doesn't pay to work) but they are not very common and are dying out. A lot of men don't like all the earning stuff to have to fall on them for a start and why should they?

"They might think they are but they really inside wish they had an interesting job". Xenia, you bring to mind Homer Simpson's admiring remark "Gee, Rock Stars, they know everything".

I have never come across anyone in my entire life who lives in such a complete bubble and is so convinced that they know everything. I can't help but wonder if it's a tad lonely and sad inside that bubble.

hee hee Xenia, nope, I really don't wish I had an interesting job.
I wouldn't mind loads more money so that I can hire a chef though...
I'm not certain staying at home with children is a dying out thing, is it really?

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I agree with that, lennygrril, it's fairly unusual to not do anything at all work-wise after having children. A lot of people do end up doing interesting unpaid work though as well as raising chickens, growing vegetables and so on.

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Yeah now I think about it, all my friends work at least part time. Sigh, so it's just me then?
Anyway I'm all for women working , much much prefer to have a female doctor, cleaner etc.

Funnily enough xenia, I am a SAHM and I can honestly say hand on heart deep down I don't wish for a "more interesting job". I respect you for doing what you are doing but it saddens me you can't be as respectful for those who choose not to work.

Xenia,
Please can I CAT you?

I have followed this thread on and off over the last couple of days and found it very thought provoking.

I am curious Xenia as to whether you have always been so very sure of your own path in life and your analysis of your self/others?

If so, that must have always been very reassuring to you but, like chocolatedot, I cannot help wondering whether you ever get a bit isolated in that bubble. There cannot be many of us who live up to your standards so you must spend a great deal of time in despair at us all.

I make an okay amount of money - less so at the moment because I chose to return to work four days a week (first failure there then - did not become prime minister). No idea of my IQ, never looked. Suspect I'm cleverer (!) than some and less clever than others. I am in a 'proper' job; no tills involved. Obviously not that clever though because I did suffer from PND and have suffered in the part with the odd plummet into dark places. (Second failure - not together enough). I personally do not want to stay at home but I do hate my current job. Why don't I change it then you mutter disdainfully? Well, DH is currently out of work and searching, so I am supporting him, DS and a nanny that I don't want to lose only to have to find another one when DH (hopefully) gets a job. Therefore there are risks in moving. Also, I am not too happy about having to to go back to 5 days a week. There are not many jobs at my level that would be willing to take on someone on a part-time basis. (So my third failure is allowing my career to tread water/slide in order to spend an extra day with DS.) On the days I do work (like today , must get on....) I have a three hour minimum round commute so see very little of DS. I think it is important he sees me. None of this would be anyone's ideal model - but we don't always have the luxury of knowing what to do for the best and being able to achieve it.

I was not always like this. I may not be in the future, but nothing is clear cut for me now. I could never be confident enough to condemn as you seem to, because I have no idea where I will be. Oh. I do know I will have no more children because I am not willing for my life to unravel any further.

All of that makes me fallible and human. But I am no part-time prostitute, not a sell-out - and I am not stupid.
. The older I get, the less certiani appear to be about most things

I think it's fascinating how people end up where they do and what influences there are on them.

I was certainly a very shy teenager and my oldest daughter may be was helped in getting her first job by having lots to talk about in terms of hobbies that those interviewing her were also interested in.

I think that's the point though - it's where we end up. I have no idea where I will be. I just keep telling myself that the current situation is not forever. Hindsight and post-justifications are wonderful but not necessarily a gret deal of help when a new variabl e is thrown in - like a child. If much of your philisophy about women and their place in society were to be followed through (about which I do not not wholly disagree), then a great many more of us really ought not to have children at all. Let's not muddy the water with all this parenting chaos and go all out for a couple of generations making it the norm to find us in the Boardrooms, running the Country and mapping the origins of the universe. Then, once the playing field has been levelled we can start re-introducing the whole child care notion and make flexibility a business imperitive rather than a magnanimous (or grudging) gesture. Not sure how that ties in with people owho have five kids (! - c'mon, you must admit you are in a minority to have the kids and the career- with no blips or changes in direction along the way).

Of course the lack of off-sprng could bring its own socio-economic problems but hey, let the blokes worry about that one!

Sorry about the bad typing and punctuation. Betraying the fact that I'm not that clever after all..

(Chains herself to mrsmattie's leg and puts left leg on chocolatedot's BLUE - al la Twister)

Girls, this is a WIND-UP!!!! It's just sooooo clever, it's brilliant. OBVIOUSLY someone in Xenia's office has hijacked her web alias and is posting things to discredit her.

It could even be her bastard exhusband??

Look, there's 'studies' being quoted and '20 years of motherhood'...i would diagnose this as someone with 'expertitis'. Someone trying to model themselves on a psychiatrist even???

Secretly secretly WE WISH WE had a 'special' job (and the good looks of OUR mothers..)

ROFL ROFL ROFL!

I beg you not to knock the woman behind the man behind this thread.

(wanders off to make biscuits with big smiley faces on them because so happy)

made extra one for elffriend for the commute

(compares nets with Comeoveneer and tuts at the price of washing powder)

Can't bear nets. No idea about the cost of washing powder either

ooooh, call yourself a SAHM???

SHAM more like!

(grabs a handful of pankhurts's smiley face biscuits and wanders off again, chortling, oh and chains rattling)