If your children are at school and you don’t work

[Pervymenalloverthenews]

What do you do in the day?

NOT a judgmental post

I worked all my life and had my dc later (infertility) We cut right back money wise and I was able to stay with her until she went to school. She’s now at school and I’m working a few evenings and a Saturday morning, which works out well. I’ve had a couple of weeks at home during the day now that my Dd is at school, I’ve enjoyed reading books, walking the dog, watching films etc. I do any housework that needs doing, but it’s done pretty quickly, plus the food shop, dinners, school run. Just wondering what others do and what to do to fill my time (all friends work in the day now)

I alternate between a two hour dog walk and a two hour gym session in the morning, then when I’ve showered I might go out for lunch, or if its a gym day have a nice walk into the city. I’ve been doing quite a bit of diy recently and unpacking as we have recently moved. I’ve caught up on lots of TV as well, the new sex education is next on the list. I’ll be back working after christmas, but this unemployed business is a doddle.

I'll be in this situation for first time, in a few months, when I retire. Son is 12. I'm a tad miffed DP now works from home, other than one morning. He works mornings only and is a home bird. My loose plans are: sort out the house, keep it to my mother's standard - inspection ready in every room 😂Become an avid gardener. Volunteer for dog charities, see my siblings and their families regularly, see friends more, join a rambling group. Pick up the keyboard, recorder, and flute again. Step up my pilates classes, swimming, and strength training. Work my way through all the random OU free bite size courses, including languages - aim to find a language I would like to study further. Be outside as much as I can. Look stylish and wear the clothes still hanging with tickets, because I wear a uniform, and buy clothes, but tend to be in jeans and leggings oow. Learn to decorate, instead of paying other people. Read all the classics as well as rubbish chick lit. Get crafty. Activate my DS on weekends and work on his social confidence. Learn water sports. Visit DM in her NH mid week instead of weekends. All study will now be for fun/interest only, but I won't stop. I'd love to find a local pub quiz as well. I'll probably have some singing lessons as well, so I can join a local choir. I'm an early riser- that won't change,but I might go to bed earlier. Clear my garage, in the hope of having 1/2 converted as a gym and hobby zone - it's big, and just encourages my DP, who is a terrible hoarder. Maybe pick up belly dancing again, or another form of dance. I was a fitness instructor in my youth - I would love to feel fit enough to have another go, update those qualifications, for other oldies! I can't wait - I've spent 36 years in a job, working huge amounts of unpaid overtime, and taking up too much head space. Oh, and I want to be a fab cook/baker, like my DM was. I was going to look for a pocket money job, but stuff that, if I can manage without. I don't need to spend like I do currently. I'll cut my cloth, and prioritise activities.

How do your partners feel? I must admit I’m tempted to stop work. We have three kids (2 secondary and 1 primary). Two have complex Sen and attend a specialist school. They leave at 8.30 and get home on a taxi at 3.45. And I work 32 hours a week - should be doing 9-5pm four days a week but end up making up the hours on a Friday. I’m shattered. I work term time only so do all the childcare, cooking, cleaning and ironing and I’m really struggling to fit it all in. I do worry my DH would end up resenting me though that I’d have feel days. I’m likely to become a carer again when they finish school - especially for one who has a severe disability.

How do your partners feel?

I'm married to a workaholic who is terrified I'll return to full time employment. He loves his job, done mostly from home and the fact that his life runs like clockwork. If anyone is resentful it's me in our marriage.

@Allthecushions my partner feels that me being home makes the day to day running of life a hell of a lot easier - the amount of extra logistics he’d have to take on if I worked full time too, the extra childcare/clubs etc we’d need to pay out for. Freer/lazier/more fun weekends. I agree with him. Works for us 🤷🏻‍♀️

He is very hands on so it’s not like he expects me to do everything - he is tidier than me whereas I do more of the decluttering, big picture type stuff. He did 3 school runs this week. He finishes work and gets straight into parenting/playing/Bath time etc. My point being, he doesn’t feel it’s all down to me just because I’m a SAHM. We see it as anything outside of his work hours is split equally.

I have now taken an extended career break. I have 2 but my older one has a range of disabilities not unrelated to a totally preventable birth injury. Now he is in senior school one of us had to take a complete step back in order to cover all his many and varied needs and medical appointments. dh was home from birth until he was 5 then we struggled until now. He needs 24 hour care.

I'm a full time carer as 2 of my children are autistic. One of them is regularly put on a reduced timetable and school regularly call me to pick them up for refusal to do anything /behaviour problems/fighting/sleeping. Some mornings im just in from school run and they are already on the phone to pick them up. I had to give up my job due to this. I'm kept busy with a toddler too and try my best to entertain them and get housework done, dinner prepped but always on call in case school phone. No money worries as dh is a high earner but I'd love to be able to commit to an ou course but im constantly exhausted as my child is up a lot in the night and melatonin is useless. They managed to sneak out of the house one night when I'd fell asleep and the police brought them back thankfully so I need to be up with them. Work would be a welcome break away from my life but just not possible for me.

my DH is fine about it, we both do jobs/hours which we feel comfortable with and accept the limited budget that gives us. I suppose lucky we’re both in similar pages. I work 2 days and do most of the housework and cooking and childcare when he’s working so in effect we both do a similar workload and have equal time off ( he works away) money etc. Paid/unpaid work should be equally valued

@Hummingbird233

There seems to be a general assumption that the average SAHP is somewhat thick and vulnerable. Do you not think they consider their future when deciding to stay at home? I really hope you advise men as much women

It’s nothing to do with posters assuming SAHMs are thick, neither is it patronising or sexist to remind women that they should take into account their financial security when considering staying at home.

Having a SAH wife is virtually always financially beneficial to most men. It’s very unusual to serve the wife so well and both MN and RL are littered with examples of women who don’t adequately protect themselves, particularly in the event of a marriage split.

Unlike your comparison to trades who’d “be in the shitter if they broke their back” women who stay at home are often part of a high income household and assume they can rely on a partner being fair reasonable and/or current divorce law to ensure in event of split they get what they’re entitled to.

It doesn’t always work out that way and whilst there are of course a number of women who are financially independent and you must know this is a minority position and unusual for most women. Whether they work or not.

I suppose it depends what the definition of fair and reasonable is. This seems to be from one unreasonable extreme to the other. I was left with nothing by someone who claims I should of been grateful to him for a roof over my head, despite doing virtually all the housework and childcare and tax credits covering most of my own and the children’s costs and having to put my career on hold. I went back to university and separating and now earn a reasonably good salary etc. However I do read women on here expect to be maintained to their married standard of living by the ex on divorce. I’m not sure this is entirely fair. Personally agree with the CSA calculated maintenance that does take account of a higher earning ex but I don’t think it’s fair for them to demand their has a no better standard of living than themselves irrelevant to the ex’s earnings. Yes all assets should be split on divorce but it shouldn’t be an ongoing liability for the ex. This should be something women think about when they choose to give up their careers. Complaining that they would not have been any better off working is the lamest excuse ever and often made by families that seem to be able to afford new cars, holidays etc. There were times when our childcare costs exceeded my salary but there were 2 options, either we paid the costs out of our combined income or my DH reduced his hours, which he didn’t want to do, there were no holidays or new cars during this time as we couldn’t afford both but now we are better off for keeping our careers going. On the other hand I have preferred to work part time, in a large part because I wouldn’t want to do my job full time and in another because I wouldn’t struggle to manage the work of raising children if worked full time. However if I genuinely wanted to work full time there is more I could probably out source

I never said a birthday was a full time job, I am saying it might take the only morning I had free that week. Once you have done the housework and the daily crap we all have to do, by the time you ring a few venues, check availability and prices, book, order the party bags, the presents for your kids.. then it's time to pick them up?

What do I plan for Christmas?
you mean aside from the actual holiday, the presents for my kids and various relatives, the grottos, the panto, the food, the nights out... I don't know, what do people plan for Christmas?

I must be a terrible mother! My dc often go to camps during half term even though I don't work then!
I hate that smug attitude. Why the need to be passive aggressive or judging? I don't care what you do. I tend to go away with my kids. I have no reason to put them in camp, or to spend money on childcare because the whole point of being home is to be available.

I am bored of the judgement against SAHM. Yes, half the mothers are super organised with amazing careers who would be "so bored" at home and who excel at juggling everything. Good for them.

There are the same number of desperate women starting threads on this forum, drowning, in tears because they feel they can't cope, they feel guilty to miss school and kids events, they can't give as much time towards their job as they used to. There's at least one thread right now about it.
I wouldn't be super organised and I didn't want to feel guilty about missing stuff out. So I'll go back to work in a few years. I am not bored, I don't have time, and I have more interests in life than I could ever explore even if I was winning the lottery tomorrow.

I cram everything during school hours so I am free for other things weekdays and weekends. Judge away, that says more about you than me.

Agree, and when youngest started school I got a lot of “you won’t know what to do with yourself / all that free time”. Actually I know full well I’m going to do 5 years worth of neglected tasks as well as all the day to day stuff!

I do pity those who can't find something interesting to do in life, let alone enjoy spending some time with their children.

Most of those are not Nobel Price winners either, don't have such amazingly interesting jobs - the most brilliant and successful people I have met didn't even define themselves by their job, and didn't feel the need to have a role to make themselves feel important.

Have a job, don't, it's the looking down at people that is boring. I wonder if there's jealousy involved, why else would they care what SAHM do all day (aside from picking up their kids and volunteering in their kids school to help them out...)

My youngest has just gone to school and I have one non working day. I’ve been surprised how quickly it goes. So far I’ve managed to do some sorting of stuff, might do some painting, sort all the washing, hopefully will fit in some exercise. I have had thoughts of how lovely it would be to be at home all the time. I think the difference would be that all the activities we ram in on a weekend would probably shift to mid-week, I’d have more time to sort reading and homework etc as well. I actually don’t think I’d be bored if I was doing it all week. But… I also like having money and it comes down to being at home versus better holidays and the option of private school in the future.

@Pfannkuchen I do think being able to go into the school for visits/meetings/shows/helping out and going on school trips is one of the best things about not having a “job”.

Im a SAHM to a toddler with one on the way, everyone always asks me when I'm going back to work- don't know why, we can afford for me to be off and it suits our life! But when the kids go to school I'm not going back to work, I hope to never go back 😂 I'll start helping my husband with his admin but otherwise I want to be really involved with the school, I want my house to be spotless and I want to be a toned size 8 cos I'll be at the gym everyday. We'll see how much of this actually happens but that's the dream 🤣

@faban But what do you/will you do about paying into your state pension etc? This is my biggest worry and why I continue to work around the hours being at home

I never said a birthday was a full time job, I am saying it might take the only morning I had free that week. Once you have done the housework and the daily crap we all have to do, by the time you ring a few venues, check availability and prices, book, order the party bags, the presents for your kids.. then it's time to pick them up?

I was saying regardless if I worked or didn't work I wouldn't sit down & spend a few hours doing absolutely everything to do with one party.

I hate that smug attitude. Why the need to be passive aggressive or judging? I don't care what you do. I tend to go away with my kids. I have no reason to put them in camp, or to spend money on childcare because the whole point of being home is to be available.

I don't think you understand the meaning of the word smug?
Im not smug, I just disagree that the only point to being a SAHP is to be available for your dc. I send my dc to camps, after school activities because they want to learn things & spend time with their friends, it's not about me.

Pervy but your thread is asking 'what do SAHMs do all day* which is totally different to asking how SAHMs protect their future and financial position .

I actually worked sporadically as well as raising for children, and the judge basically told me I sat on my arse for 10 years when it came to the divorce. Oh, the irony, considering we were in another country. And on my Visa to get there and for us to be working there.

I did it for one year when the kids were about 8-10. We moved because of DH's work, and I couldn't find a job. I taught myself to play the piano, it was wonderful !

One day a week I visited elderly relatives and took them shopping if needed. I then started volunteering 1 morning a week listening to readers, which then led to me getting a job as a lunch time supervisor.

Most of those are not Nobel Price winners either, don't have such amazingly interesting jobs - the most brilliant and successful people I have met didn't even define themselves by their job, and didn't feel the need to have a role to make themselves feel important.

What does it matter if they are not NP winners? Many men aren't either & many men have boring jobs. There's quite a sexist narrative when it comes to parents working, fathers are very often described as workaholics or very ambitious & these are positive traits. The same traits aren't so positive in mothers though. There seems to be a view amongst some that any mother working is doing so out of financial need or would prefer to be not work at all. That isn't true just like some SAHPs would like to work. The judgement very much goes both ways.

I started my own dog walking/sitting business. Loved it. And got fit doing it. Walked for two or three hours a day with various dogs. Then did cleaning/food shop/weekday cooking/errands around that. Our mortgage is set to rocket in March so I've had to go back to proper work-couldn't walk enough dogs to pay the extra-I really miss being my own boss and being at home getting everything housey done.