To ask if you work or are a SAHP..

[DontBeTight]

Just that really, those of you who have children under school age. Do you work, or do you stay at home? Or work part time? My youngest won't start school until 2026 so I'm considering giving up work and having the rest of the time full time at home with her as my income makes very little difference to the household.

Those who stay at home, do you enjoy it?

mine are grown up now or almost - I always worked. A few years part time, but mainly full time. Working is part of me, and I’ve got a good job and recently got a promotion and now wanting to really push forward even more. My kids both tell me they don’t even remember being at nursery so glad I didn’t give up my career! When they were babies I did struggle sometimes thinking I didn’t have enough time with them, especially my eldest as I had to go back full time then. But my daughter I dropped to 4 days so still able to spend a day in the week, do things after school. We have a close relationship so I don’t think it’s ever impacted and my kids both have a great work ethic already and I hope my daughter knows that she doesn’t have to give up her career if / when she has children

My lawyer disagrees but go off.

I'm a SAHP to a 14 month old- planning to go back to work when she starts nursery at three (I'm one and done). I do really miss work, but it's only three years out of my working life, which isn't much in the grand scheme of things!

All our money is family money. There is never a point where I cannot spend "as I like" unless we genuinely cannot afford to.

Oh... anecdotes

Wonder why this is the story over and over again. Why are women not entering highly paid careers pre-babies?

Because I would be a liability in any maths or science-based career. Because I make a better dance teacher than a businessman. Because I am not career-driven.

I'm curious, @Youcannotbeseriousreally; do you look down upon women who don't work, if the situation is of an husband or partner being the sole earner?

Or, is it just your writing style that is inadvertently conveying contempt?

Because men are largely socialised to be the 'providers' and a lot of well paying careers are male dominated.

Women are largely socialised to be the 'carers' and most jobs which are female dominated including caring roles are poorly paid.

Basically, sexism.

I decided to work part time despite being able to afford for me to stay home. I love my job and don't want to give it up and then struggle to find part time later down the line. And also, I love the balance working part time gives me. I enjoy the days I'm home and enjoy the days I work too.

@WithACatLikeTread not necessarily..

Esp a child who interacts at toddler groups anyway.

Dc white don't attend a nursery can still get lots of peer interaction. I also wouldn't trust a busy nursery worker to implement speach stragety

@DryRotter somebody has to do the jobs that are "just jobs" - not careers.
It would be literally impossible to have a society where people (men or women) only worked in career jobs.

You do realise that not everyone cares about having a career?

I did have a highly paid career for 15 years - because I’d worked hard and DH was happy to continue working hard I had choice.

Are you interested in why it is always the women that give up their careers? I’m not talking about individuals. I’m talking about society and why we have this imbalance.

Everybody has their story of why they did it because it worked for them and it is nothing to do with inequality between the genders. Very few people want to actually look at the wider dynamics.

Men seem to care more than women it seems though 🤷🏼‍♀️

My youngest of 3 starts school in 2026 too. Been a SAHM for 8 years now and loved it!! Such a privilege overall. Just started 2 years of training with a job at the end of it so will work out perfectly for when she starts school :) Nothing is forever! :)

Yes, but out of people that do choose to have highly paid careers why does it seem to be the men and not the women that are choosing the high-powered careers? Does nobody else see this?

I’ll tell you when I could have done with taking some leave off work. The teenage years! In my view, it is relatively straightforward to look after babies and toddlers and change nappies etc. anyone can do that stuff and cuddle cute kids. It is the teen years where I have felt drained and that my kids needed me emotionally
more than ever! And I had pretty easy adolescents. I am not sure I could wangle any paid ‘teenage leave’ though sadly ;-)

So why am I automatically entitled to half of everything including my husband's pension etc yet in order for you to be the same you have to sign lots of paperwork in order to get the same rights? Marriage automatically gives you legal rights.

Some combination of sexism and biology. Just like women are over represented in caring professions.

The question is. Do we need to change things? I think we do. We need more men to take shared leave after the babies are born. We need men to request part-time working. We need men to go into jobs like nursing, care work, childcare etc. These careers are valuable but they are low paid because women do them. But then again I see people’s reactions about male staff working in nurseries so I can’t see that situation changing any time soon.

Marriage might automatically give them but it’s really easy to get them if you are not married.

The pension nomination takes less than 5 minutes. We both did it online.

We jointly own the house and there was no extra paperwork.

We have all funds in joint bank accounts.

We have LPOA for each other. Which even married people should have.

The only “extra” thing we did was pension nomination, which as I said just required us to log into our own pension accounts and type a name in a box.

I wouldn’t say I look down on anyone. But people with little ambition or who are happy to be ‘kept’ or reply on others to pay for them ( whether that be a partner or benefits) aren’t my kind of people.

I could have easily afforded to stay at home, but I feel like in the process you completely abandon who you are as an individual and that’s really not for me. I also don’t think it’s fair to discount that some people don’t return to work purely because that are too lazy to do so. It’s not about the kids or anything, it’s about them , not wanting to work.

I was a SAHP for nearly 10 years and starting working a little PT this year. I've generally really enjoyed it, spent time with my children at various groups, made lots of strong friendships and been available for the school age children to do homework/clubs/attend assemblies etc. It's helped having a close bunch of friends who are in a similar position- available for coffees, play dates, childcare swaps and more recently we support each other in thinking how to get back into PT work.

It could be very lonely, and the baby stage I found the most boring. I do run a toddler group and volunteer at other things, as well as do hobbies. So my world is broader than the children which helps too.