'I do all these things AND work FT'

[Bumpitybumper]

I see this on Mumsnet a lot but have just experienced it in real life. I have two friends (A&B). Friend A is a SAHM to school age kids and Friend B works FT in quite a stressful job. Friend B was just lamenting that they don't understand how Friend A fills her time as she manages to work FT AND do everything Friend A does.

The thing is, Friend B has a much smaller (yet lovely) house that is pretty chaotic in fun energetic way. It is never the tidiest or cleanest but it's not disgusting either. Friend A on the other hand has a much bigger house that is pretty immaculate most of the time. Friend A does all the school runs and volunteers at school. Friend B needs wraparound care in order to get to work so drops her kids of at 8 and collects around 17:30. Friend A cooks amazing meals for her family, has her children's friends round for fun playdates and activities and is generally incredibly on top of everything. Friend B is understandably more stretched and isn't in the position to cook lavish meals every day of the week or have friends round when she's at work. Friend B's husband does a lot (of course absolutely fair and right) so she doesn't have to attend every parents evening, sew all the badges for extracurricular clubs or assist with all the homework etc. Friend A does pretty much all of that as husband works such long hours.

I actually think both are amazing and very productive people that channel their energy, time and talent in different channels. I just struggle to understand though how Friend B can't appreciate that she isn't doing the same as Friend A or at least doing it to the same standard. Before people suggest I'm Friend A, I have my own business so don't really fit in either camp but used to be a SAHM so I guess can see Friend A's efforts more.

AIBU to think that Friend B is a bit deluded?

Yes, of course it is true that men are not held to the same standard, but women also need to take some responsibility for the harm they cause when they undermine and shame each other and then try to blame it all on men. I don’t have to reference men or fathers every single time I tell the world what I enjoy and want to do with my life. After all, men aren’t expected to do so…

‘A deprived area’ is not a subjective opinion. Deprived areas are defined by unemployment, crime rate, amount of social housing, children on free school meals…
To say nothing of the number of boarded up shops, charity shops, kebab shops, betting shops, lack of parks and libraries - definitely not a subjective opinion.

That might be the case, but I think it’s important that we should take gender out of the discussion around wages.

I don't agree with you as gender plays a huge part in how this plays out. Overwhelmingly it is men who earn this kind of money and I don't think it helps the cause to pretend it's not happening.

From my own pov I'm pleased that the economic norms of where I am now encourage women staying in the workforce. We need to look at this holistically.

I just ignored that because I didn’t think that level of ignorance even warranted my time; but since someone else brought it up …

In Scotland, we track every single pupil on two indicators of wealth - one is by postcode (which uses census data to rank each postcode on 10 measures of “wealth” such as education, income, health, housing quality) and the other is free meal entitlement.

My school has one of the highest proportion of pupils living in the the least wealthy 10% in the country, and one of the highest free school meal entitlements. So much so that we get specialist funding from the government due to the deprivation.

When I say “deprived” I don’t mean that daddy only has one Range Rover and they only got to go to the villa four times last year; I mean that many of my pupils will only eat this weekend if they get food from the food bank.

Yes but it shouldn’t, should it? By surrounding our language around men earning and women not, it perpetuates the stereotypes on both genders.

Instead, I prefer to say that where one partner is a high earner, the other may choose to stay at home.

It doesn’t even need to be about really high earners. I consider myself a high earner (49k) because in relation to cost of living in my area, that is pretty high. My partner earns more in line with the average salary here (a lot less than me) - yet there was still an assumption that I’d be the one to drop hours; purely because I have a vagina.

If we're talking about value, surely what's valuable to society is children being raised well. Children being fed healthily, kept safe, in homes where education is valued, where decent principles are imparted etc.

It's good parenting that matters. Poor parenting is actually very damaging to society - it's damned expensive aside from anything else when you look at the consequences of anti social behaviour, poor mental health etc

The fact is, children can be raised well by WOHP and by SAHP. There is no one blueprint for how to raise children well. Let's value good parenting. And of course work is valuable too, particularly when it's something which has a direct social value - hats off to anyone who teaches an important subject in a deprived area.

You still haven't addressed why your job is more valuable to society than sahm and who has deemed it so.

You have chosen to work in your profession and applied to work in that school. I wonder if for you and part of the appeal is to appear more valuable in society whereas for some sahm their priorities are different.

Deprivation can be subjective while i appreciate there are quantifiers you can quote your wording read with the intention of highlighting your own importance. If you had the same position in an inde school would you have less impact on society and if so still more than sahm? You have no idea of the impact some sahm make on society. Many are unpaid carers and volunteers. Making statements about your own importance in comparison to strangers is ignorant "There is also more to life than being the best at scrubbing a toilet and sewing on Brownies badges. I do a job that actually matters to wider society.".

@Cubic it's pointless to try to compare value between individuals because there are so many variables.

Like I said in my previous post, surely we can agree that good parenting is valuable (not being a parent per se, because sadly there are shit parents who don't nurture their children or worse, abuse them) Good parenting is done by WOHP and SAHP. Imo that's where the focus should be, not on whether a parent is working or not, but whether they are raising their children to become well adjusted, positive adults who will in turn be a valuable member of society.

And surely it also goes without saying (as a separate issue) that working is valuable in many ways too: tax payers benefit everyone by contributing to health, education and other services. And if on top of that a job has a wider social benefit (eg teacher, medic) then that's another layer of value.

Well, a SAHP’s job as a SAHP only impacts their own family. They may have other roles like a volunteering role which also values wider society, but wider society doesn’t gain any value from parent A having a very clean and tidy house, or sewing on her badges to her children’s brownies uniform, or her cooking fine dining meals for her own children.

My job (and millions of other peoples job) value wider society because there is a massive recruitment and retention crisis, particularly in my subject area, and staff within my subject area are predominantly male; so given the national drive to improve uptake in STEM subjects in girls, a positive female role model in this field is a huge advantage to thousands of children (of both genders)

I actually didn’t choose to work in this school, but I won’t get into the detail of how recruitment of teachers in my area works. But it certainly wouldn’t have been my choice - I actually nearly turned it down, but I didn’t because I realised I was more needed where I am.

I have already explained my reasoning behind my post - it was in direct response to “there is more to life than work”

Nobody who is involved in education would make a wild statement like “deprivation is subjective” because it’s quite frankly ignorant, at best.

I would absolutely never work in the private sector, but if I did, then yes, I’d view my role as less important. Children of parents who can send their children to a private school already have a positive role model. They probably get breakfast, whether I bring it in or not. They probably have a safe place to do homework, whether I provide it or not, and they probably can afford a tutor if they need extra help.

So yes, some jobs are more important to society than others, like medical jobs, education, food supply, garbage disposal and such. SAHP may have a wider role which benefits society; but most of Parent A’s role is primarily only of benefit to those in her close circle.

Yes but it shouldn’t, should it? By surrounding our language around men earning and women not, it perpetuates the stereotypes on both genders.

Increasingly I feel it's important to acknowledge the world as it is, rather than the world as we want it to be. I believe that is fundamental to effective change.

We need to understand the reasons why men (mostly) end up in these kinds of jobs and why women end up giving up their careers in these kinds of circumstances. And the first step in that process is acknowledging the reality of what's happening

Your list of important roles in society misses the means by which they ate funded, the admin positions which facilitate the workforce, settings and equipment, the legal professionals which draw up the contracts, the bankers that handle the funds, the managers which make the decisions etc the roles you view as valuable to society wouldn't be viable without other roles which are less public facing. They are all valuable and all needed.

A society benefits in many different ways and requires a multi faceted approach to function. Whatever value you place on your job you shouldn't belittle someone else's choice. You write of children going without breakfast but berate parent A in the OP for ensuring her children have decent meals. If more parents did this you may not need to provide breakfast.

Allowing her husband to do whatever his job is may be more vital in your own scale of worth (long shot I know). He could have any number of roles which could possibly eclipse yours. This is her choice and his as a couple/ team. It works for them. If his role is deemed more vital or even critical in some way, their choice to split responsibilities in this way shouldn't demish her worth in the same way others who support your work shouldn't have their worth diminished.

She may be raising decent children who don't devalue others. You do not know.

I won't polish your halo and I'm grateful you don't teach my children. I'd hate for them to have a teacher who self idolises.

I wonder if for some women the need to justify their choices of either sah or woh is so great that they can't be open to the possibility that there are benefits to opposing views. They can't acknowledge the merits of alternative ways of doing things incase it diminishes in their mind what they choose and possibly what they've sacrificed.

@TheKeatingFive
We need to understand the reasons why men (mostly) end up in these kinds of jobs and why women end up giving up their careers in these kinds of circumstances. And the first step in that process is acknowledging the reality of what's happening

Agree, it's all very well to talk about the world as we'd like it to be - and personally I'd like a world where it's absolutely the norm for men to do the nursery drop, or cook dinner or take a day off for a sick child as much as it's the norm for women. But we need to start from where we now which is that even in 2023 there's a woeful imbalance. I had my babies years ago, in the bad old days before there was paternity leave never mind shared parental leave, but despite this, dh worked hard at aiming for a balance so we both did child related and domestic stuff and also both worked. Children have two parents after all, and imo it's great for them to see both parents as carers and providers. But we certainly do need to understand the reason such vast gender inequality still exists when people become parents

Bring a SAHM is undervalued because it is unpaid.

If my partner was willing pay the bills, plus cover my NI, plus pay a decent amount of money into my pension (e.g. a percentage of my assumed income like 14%) I might consider being a SAHM.

Else I wouldn’t put myself in this extremely vulnerable position.

I have said many times on this thread that it's very difficult to assign 'worth' to roles. We live in a society where salaries and social status often don't match perceived moral worthiness. Arguably in our hyper capitalist society, money talks and put simply, our society doesn't value you and your role as much as you seem to think they should.

You seem to be a strong believer in public duty and 'making a difference'. The reality is that most people I know don't have jobs that fit so neatly into your definition of worthwhile. They work in retail selling ethically questionable, unsustainable goods for tax dodgy corporations, they are no win no fee lawyers, they are marketing managers trying to persuade already cash strapped people to part with more money or they own restaurants selling delicious yet pretty unhealthy food. Most people are doing what they think is in the best interest of themselves and their family. Few people are as selfless and publicly minded as you. Being in employment or a SAHM doesn't really change that or automatically make one person more laudable than the other.

I’m glad you added this information about deprived areas. Your final sentence is heartbreaking and disturbing in modern Britain.

You could argue, money is the biggest misogynist of them all and capitalism the most masculine of all inventions.

So, it’s kind of funny how so many feminists don’t recognise the misogyny in pushing and pushing for women to protect themselves by opting out of more and more unpaid work, which is now just reclassified as unimportant existing on this planet or silly little hobby stuff, and focusing instead on making money. Then they go further and start to call any woman not joining in with money making a weak, lazy, pathetic waste of space who sponges off the important people who do the valuable work. Then everyone faux-wonders why on earth men don’t want to join in with being called lazy, pathetic wastes of space who do the grunt work.

We could try reclassifying what people do in a less misogynistic way if we really wanted a more fair share of work to be done, rather than telling people there is all this crappy, worthless stuff that we all have to share and then this amazingly brilliant power-trip called money, which we earn for ourselves and shouldn’t have to share with anyone, because it represents our own over-inflated egos and that’s what’s important and gets things done around here.

@Walkaround you've constructed a narrative completely of your own there! I haven't seen a single person say that unless all women join in 'money making' then they're a 'weak, lazy pathetic waste of space.' Using emotive, strident language doesn't make what you're writing true!

IMO the reality is far more straightforward. People tend to partner someone with similar levels of education and ability. There are often shared life goals with the person you set up home with, whether to have children etc. I don't see this massive divide between men and women based simply on their sex. Ime most women are equally capable as their male partners in the workplace. That was certainly true of dh and me: we met at university, we set off on career paths of similar status and incomes. From being students we were both equally competent at cooking and cleaning. When we decided to embark on a family, it was a joint decision, and when the dcs arrived, he loved them just as much as me. He was always equally capable at nappy changing, playing with the kids, doing nursery runs etc etc It was much harder to create a balance of earning and caring when we had our babies because this was in the era of 3 month maternity leave and zero for paternity. However, we strived to achieve a balance as far as possible; we both worked and we shared everything like nursery drop off, child sickness days, cooking, as much as possible.

No one is saying being a SAHM is wrong. If a couple both agree that they prefer the idea of one earner and the other taking on all child and home related stuff then that's their business. But should it honestly surprise us that many couples don't want to separate the roles out like this?

The caveat I'd add is that however much anyone bangs on about capitalism, it's a simple fact that having one's own money does give choices, and choice is a powerful and positive thing. Again, it's a fact that women as a group are far more financially vulnerable, are far more likely to live in poverty in older age etc And that's not just in the case of divorce. The happiest marriages can be struck with illness or the husband can predecease the wife and suddenly she's stuck without his income or without his full pension. These are real issues facing women which shouldn't be ignored.

Anyway, like a say, I think all this frothing just results in the core issue becoming lost: Partners often have similar levels of capability and similar shared goals in life and want balance: not being sole earner with all the responsibility, and often the hours that go with it taking them away from time with their children, but neither wanting to completely give up their work life with the consequences that often go along with that.

That's quite some reaching and wild interpretation. The reality is we live in a society where you require money in order to have a roof over your head, food on the table and whatever else. We also live in a country that doesn't provide an adequate safety net anymore- as in there are children who's parents who are on benefits who can't afford to eat. Society doesn't value unpaid work, but it's not ridiculous for people to suggest women who actively choose to remove themselves from paid work to being solely reliant on a man for money (this excludes those with generational wealth or those with existing assets as they'd be fine) to really think about it because in the society we live in this does make them, and their children, vulnerable.

I don't think women generally view being a mother and associated duties of as 'silly little hobby stuff' but have pointed out that in this capitalist society you should make an informed decision and balance the risk of doing so. This is sad in itself but not the fault of women. There are some who say they would hate to be a SAHM as for them they'd find it unfulfilling which is fine; I'm sure many SAHMs feel the same about paid employment. My type of feminism is women having a choice, the only women I feel sorry for are those who don't have a choice and have to either work or stay at home due to circumstances when they'd love to do the other.

@lizzy8230 - I agree with everything you are saying. My post was not my thoughts on the way things are now so much as a response to those people (probably mostly trolls), who definitely have appeared on this thread, who have used the language you are now objecting to in my post, and one or two who have said that SAHMs are lazy. I am not going to tolerate being told I do not see my own “misogyny” when, quite frankly, it seems to me that some people simply do not understand the difference between misogyny and despising anything that was traditionally done by women in the past. I don’t want to be trapped at home, stuck in a traditional role, being denied an education, being refused access to some parts of society, but nor do I want a society which tells people they are weak and pathetic if their version of teamwork and family life does not fit a rather selfish narrative. If we achieve equality with men simply by using an unrespected underclass to so the “grunt work” for us, I won’t see that as a fantastic achievement of humanity, just a rearrangement of disrespect.

@Walkaround, thanks for replying: I understand what you're saying and I entirely concur that trolling either way is just a waste of space - whether it's calling SAHM lazy, or telling WOHM they aren't raising their children.

When I look at my own children (and I have sons and a daughter) I just hope that in their life time it becomes more the norm that roles are shared. It was far tougher for my own generation: like I said, when you're an avid breastfeeder and have just a 12 week mat leave, it takes a huge effort to get back to work and continue feeding. The easier option would definitely have been to jack in my job! Definitely with the fact dh had no paternity leave entitlement back then, and certainly none of the shared parental leave available now. I think despite these obstacles, we made a pretty good fist of getting a balance. We've both always worked and we've both shared the child and home stuff. Society has made progress - option of transferable leave, right to request flexi working - BUT there is so much further to go.

Ultimately to me it's about the children. Children deserve time with both parents, I believe they benefit from seeing mum and dad as providers and nurturers, it sets a pattern with hopefully they take forward themselves. I would have hated my sons growing up feeling pressure that one day they have to have that fat cat high flying job because they've got to be sole provider. Neither would I want my dd to excel at school and university, go into a good job and then feel pressure to jack it in because she 'ought' to be at home if she has kids.

It all just sounds really judgmental.

I am Friend B, I love being Friend B because I get a lot of my self worth from working because I love it. I also WFH so get stuff done and my DH helps

I have lots of friends who are Friend A. I wouldn’t like their lives but I don’t judge them for it. It doesn’t occur to me to comment on them being better at parenting than me because they are not. Just a different set up.

Kids don’t care about huge immaculate homes or amazing meals- people do that for other parents to show the world they are successful/better or because it’s very important to them.

Kids want attention and as a Friend B my kids have lots of quality attention and have lots of fun.

@WinchSparkle80 agree. The whole premise of the thread was quite judgey really.

Also part of the problem is the moment a WOHM says they get self worth from working, some people interpret that as 'oh so you're saying mums don't have self worth unless they work, which is nonsense. It's a different kind of self worth. I've always felt self worth as a parent because I feel dh and I have given our best to raise them well. I feel self worth in the workplace because I've worked hard to gain skills and experience and I've achieved things that I wouldn't have if i didn't work.

It's entirely normal to feel validation for a range of reasons.

@lizzy8230 exactly, better articulated than me! I definitely get self worth as a parent and being a good role model but also working.

Just coming back to this thread to say I've got a lot of food for thought from it and I'm glad op started it.

On a lighthearted note, my mum is visiting at the moment and I gave her a summary of the thread and about friend A and B. For context my mum is in her 60s, has been a single mum throughout my life, always working FT until she retired recently, and has always lived in an East Asian country where I grew up.

Her reaction (she interrupted me to rant):

"Ugh, A sounds like a busybody(+). Of COURSE she's on the PTA. I know the type. Don't tell me, always baking for the cake sales? I bet her house is really tidy?! I'm so glad you're not that type!!"

I must admit I cracked up. The WOHM/SAHM schism transcends space and time. There are mum-aliens on a distant moon griping about each other and the immaculate tidiness of their moon-caves.

In fairness to my mum she always contributed her signature gingerbread men to the cake sale - we had to stay up late to help make them after dinner.

(+)Actually she used a word in her own language which is more hilarious but roughly translates to busybody