Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think that SAHM's with school-age children are in fact just stay at home people?

321 replies

Pissyflaps · 27/02/2008 10:40

I'm going to get flamed backwards for this, but I really don't care. I'm also going to be accused of all manner of trollery, bite me.

It's my opinion, I want yours - so, SAHM's who's children are at school-all day, aren't they just stay at home people? Not a lot of parenting goes on as far as I can tell.

OP posts:
hatrick · 27/02/2008 11:09

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

needmorecoffee · 27/02/2008 11:10

Housework and cooking dinner for family aren't part of parenting? Can I stop then?
I've had 16 years of kids being at home (home educated the little buggers) and next year youngest is going to scahool.
But I'll still have to take her for hozzie appointments, cook, clean, fetch food, deal with her numerous sick days and seizures, go to stupid boring parent-school things etc etc
Wont have time to get a job. And isn't that what a man is for anyhow?

MissingMyHeels · 27/02/2008 11:10

Around here childcare for one child for pre/after school care is about £100 per week, if you have three kids this is obviously £300 per week. That works out at £1300 per month, so the Mum needs to take home at least this per month to break even.

When you look at travel costs, additional costs of working (new wardrobe, clothes, evening babysitter etc) then you will probably realise that for most people, unless particularly high earners one person going out to work for what will maybe be an extra income of £500 or so per month doesn't seem worth it. Especially when the alternative is having your children raised by a parent in a home environment.

monkeybutler · 27/02/2008 11:11

I intend to go back to three full days at work in Sept (DD and DS will be in wraparound care at school) but then DS will also have two mornings at nursery on the other days and I intend to lay in bed with cakes and magazines. I effing deserve the time off for good behaviour!

needmorecoffee · 27/02/2008 11:11

well said Bramshott, if unpaid women weren't looking after disabled kids, elederly relatives, doing volunteer work etc etc then the country would grind to a halt and the Guvmint might actually have to pay for some of those things.

needmorecoffee · 27/02/2008 11:12

You can't get after-school care or holiday care for a child as disabled as dd. I'll never get a break

Monkeybird · 27/02/2008 11:12

from Knobcheese: 'what do blokes in suits do all day? From what I can tell, they scratch their balls, chat up people at the photocopier, wonder if they can download porn at work and get away with it, go for one more coffee and finish the day off leaning pongily over the screen of the bloke they normally fire wet paper at, discussing the football... Oh yeah, that's worth 40 grand a year...'

K999 · 27/02/2008 11:12

If it were me I would spend the whole day on MN, eating cheesecake, luxuriate in the bliss that is taking a piss on your own, and start a thread about SAHM v WOHM....for the sheer hell of it.......

monkeybutler · 27/02/2008 11:13

Like the name Missingmyheels. Wear mine round the house sometimes just for the sake of it. Would look like a right prick at playgroup in them.

GRUMPYGIRL · 27/02/2008 11:13

YABU - every school relys on parent helpers for swimming, reading, excursions - do you imagine that parents take time off of WORK to do these things. HELL NO its the SAHM who take time out of their day to help your children (just for starters)

I was on nearly £20,000 a year when I gave up work approx 8 years ago my job was office based and it was VERY much frowned upon if you didnt do at least an hours overtime each day on top of the 8.30 - 5.00 day. So for starters I then have to pay before school and after school club, then I would need to pay for childcare during all of the school holidays and every time my child was ill I would have to put up with snidey comments from my manager.

SAHM I am and I make no apologies....oh and if you are at work should you be doing what you are being paid for?

Psychomum5 · 27/02/2008 11:14

well.....for me, being a stay at home person I do lots.

I get to go to the loo on my own
I get to read a paper if I so please while not answering 1001 pointless questions
I get to drink coffee while it is hot
I get to speak on the phone and not fend off the kiddies who then try to have what food they please cos mummy is distracted
I get to make and eat lunch and not share
I get to go out in the car to do the shopping without the many bits of crap paraphenerlia(sp?) that you invariably need with 5 kiddies.

I just get to be.......rather than feel downtrodden and knackered like I have done for the past 14yrs of being a stay at home MUM!!!!!

Original poster
Pissyflaps · 27/02/2008 11:14

Yeah, I could have phrased it more nicely, I do agree. I just thought I was more likely to get more responses if I posted it this was seeing as people on here just love to bollock people who are "in the wrong."

So, good points about the voluntary work, and the childcare expenses. Any more?

P.S Crush - thanks - I tried to get Pissflaps but it was already taken.

OP posts:
hippipotami · 27/02/2008 11:14

Well, there is NO job here in Surrey that allows me to work between 9.30 and 2.30pm. At least, not one that is happy for me to take 13 weeks annual leave a year, on top of countless inset days, sports days, see the christmas play / concert days, and don't forget the 'I can't come in my child is ill' days.

None whatsoever.

I am hoping to become a TA at our school. But even then, you have to work the inset days so I would have to find childcare or ask dh to give up one of his few holiday days. And if my child is ill I will have to take him/her home. So I won't be at school either then.

So I am a SAHM (or SAHP in your view) and loving it. My dh loves it because he can concetrate on his job without getting called to collect an ill child if I am unavailable. My dc love it because they know I am always there at the end of hte school day and holidays etc.
And I love it, because after having my body ravaged after two pregnancies, and after having spent 8 years at home with small children wiping porridge out of my hair and singing endless versions of nursery rhymes, I feel I deserve a bit of 'me' time.

So there!

monkeybutler · 27/02/2008 11:15

K999 - I try to hang on to my wee till Ive clocked in at work then take a good ten minutes just sitting their. May as well do it on someones elses time and without an audience. Would take my cheesecake in their too but probably not hygenic.

Pruners · 27/02/2008 11:17

Message withdrawn

RubyRioja · 27/02/2008 11:17

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

sparkybabe · 27/02/2008 11:18

Yeah that's what I do. Drop the kids off at school and sit at home, watching daytime TV and making coffee. Until 3.30 when I am a mum again.

eleusis · 27/02/2008 11:18

If I was a SAHM...

I would drop the kids at school and go to the gym every day. Then, I'd go shopping. Problem is if I gave up my job I could afford neither the gym nor the shopping.

So off to work I go.

K999 · 27/02/2008 11:18

MB...good point. I am due back at work next week and will hang onto my wee too....as you say may as well get paid for pissing.

think I may even try and get away with taking in a mag as well........tis only fair as that is what the blokes do....

OverMyDeadBody · 27/02/2008 11:18

so what if they are stay at home people? It's their choice and if that's what they want to do, whay does it bother you? FOr all you know they spend their days cooking, baking, tidying, ironing and all the other stuff that goes with running a household as parents.

Besides, after five years of being a full-on parent to pre-schoolers, maybe they just fancy a break?!

If I didn't have to work, I wouldn't tbh.

stuffitllama · 27/02/2008 11:19

ok this is what I do
I run
I shop every day for food and cook it
I clean my house
I do a lot of admin, paperwork, bill-paying, problem-solving, wider family admin like b-days, anniversaries, vets blah blah, organising children's social life
about 1-2 hours of it is my own
then after school -- it's obvious, homework, feeding, music practice, bathtime, debriefing on the day
then when husband stops i carry on
school bags, ironing, washing, clearing up, pe kits blah blah
then i stop at about 10 oclock
what do you do all day ? bit nosey aren't you?

eleusis · 27/02/2008 11:19

I think pissy is a regular. She knew she would be flamed. And she seems farmiliar with the term trollery. Not really something a newbie would say.

I wonder if tech could give us a "Guess the troll" section on mumsnet?

TinkerbellesMum · 27/02/2008 11:20

Mum's work from the moment they wake up to the moment their LO goes to sleep for the last time. They get a break of 5 or 6 hours when they are still on call.

If you relate that to a "job" you are talking about
working from 7:30 (on a good day!)
until 9,
being oncall until 3-3:30, but that's not sleeping time, that's housework.
Working until 7:30,
working with breaks until 11, but including housework
working with sleeping breaks until 7:30.

That's all with no pay!

If a SAHM got a FT job as well you are looking at adding an earlier start into that whilst she got the kids to someone who could look after them and take them to school and could pick them up after school - of course unless you have a very understanding friend or relative that's going to cost- and still having to work when she comes home from work.

sparkybabe · 27/02/2008 11:20

Why bother? If you work because you have to/want to, nothing will change your mind. I don't have to work outsied the home, but I dontfeel I should justify myself or ,my day to you.

Don't likethe name BTW.

Or the attitude.

grow up.

K999 · 27/02/2008 11:21

OverMyDeadBody...lol at baking. The last time I attempted that I nearly set the house on fire.....tis my own fault as I was using the microwave to bake!