Woman on Instagram makes a joke about being a SAHM

[toylandslide]

Some dude says she should be working and paying for someone else to look after their children.

Why is this even seen as reasonable opinion?

Your mistake is expecting reasonable opinions on social media.

Instagram is the new Facebook for trolling and openly idiotic comments.

I see this opinion everywhere. I see it on here a lot too.

I know right! Imagine going on the internet just to raise a ruckus.... ps full time moms, birth moms, breast is best....

The flaw of feminism is that it neglected the value of old fashioned motherhood - caring / raising a family as being of equal value to employment. My brother talks like this guy, I don't think it's because they are boneheaded idiots, it's because this is the narrative we've all been raised with, men and women alike.

It's mainly women who see the other side of this when they become mothers and (many) struggle to juggle it all.

Hilariously, such women would get more kudos if they became a paid full time nanny to someone else's kids and gave their kids to nursery or whatever full time. It's a paradox.

I think it boils down to, if there's no money attached to SAH parenting then there is no value (to some people, certainly to people like this guy).

The flaw of feminism is that it neglected the value of old fashioned motherhood - caring / raising a family as being of equal value to employment

I think you misunderstood the concept of feminism. It is equality in socio, economic and political spheres. Every single parent raises and cares for a family, we are all mothers, working or not. However by very definition, unemployed and staying home is never going to give equality to women in social policial or economical spheres. It maybe of value to a family, it maybe what an individual woman wants. But for those three spheres by definition being a house wife does not drive equality.

Meh. Another man talking bollocks on Instagram. Who cares. It's none of his business.

That's not what feminism is.

Hilariously, such women would get more kudos if they became a paid full time nanny to someone else's kids and gave their kids to nursery or whatever full time. It's a paradox

This is true and so very weird.

What's the joke? It's too blurry to read. I feel we need the context here.

Kudos from who, what are you all talking about. It’s an individual decision, a family decision, but factually being financially inactive and financially dependent does not drive the core values of feminism.

we were unable to vote. When we got married or fell pregnant we were forced to quit work, we were paid less. Feminism has fought to change that, to make us equal,

no one gets kudos for staying home. No one gets kudos for working. There isn’t some prize giving authority.

The problem with what you're saying is that the socio, economic and political spheres have been crafted by men for the benefit of men. When you take everything back to first principles then this is really obvious. Even the concept of money is manmade, let alone assigning tasks a monetary value and deciding some activities are worth intrinsically more than others. The whole thing is a patriarchal social construct.

So by definition, of course the women choosing to undertake tasks, activities or careers that have been traditionally dominated by women will be valued less by this system. They will be paid less (or nothing for SAHPs) and will be granted lower social status. It is misleading to say that the only way that women can get the equality they crave is by basically playing the men's game by the men's rules. Women can also look to adapt the game and redefine what and isn't worthwhile in our society. It will be a hell of a fight and will require pretty seismic changes but it may well be worth it if women want what matters to them to be valued properly.

It’s not a man’s game though, fundamentally we need money to survive, there is no way round this. And to get money we need to work. Or we have someone pay for us, be it a partner or the tax payer, or both. Money is not a man’s game. It is simply how the world works.

As someone who works in childcare, it is really hard to find staff these days. Looking after young children is not valued and it seems people don't want to do it anymore. I'm 52, but I can remember a time when courses for nursery nursing were oversubscribed. Now many colleges don't even run the courses anymore, due to lack of interest. I love my job and think it's a valuable one, as is being a SAHM. I wish other people could see the value in all kinds of care. My friend cares for her elderly parents and gets a carer's allowance, but she deserves a proper wage for what she does really.

Money is important because it allows humans to trade. You can trade time, services, goods indirectly with money acting as a middle man. Before we had money you would simply trade directly and swap e.g. apples for oranges or whatever. I don't have an issue with this and think it's pretty vital to human progression but it isn't strictly true to say the human species needs money to survive. The system that has been created by men means that this is a reality now but it wasn't always the case and isn't intrinsic to us as a species.

If you envisage a world where predominately men go out and make money through trading and women take care of the children and the home then you can see why it would suit men to overemphasise the importance of money and make it at the heart of everything. In our modern world, money is assumed to be the answer for caring for the old/vulnerable/young or for getting domestic chores done and meals cooked. Unsurprisingly all these traditionally female tasks are assigned a low monetary value because men didn't traditionally do them. Women are therefore encouraged to go to work and ideally work in traditionally male dominated industries to access the big bucks. This is the actual definition of playing a man's game by a man's rules. I'm not a fan of communism but even that model can show people that there are models that value other things in a different way than our rampant patriarchial capitalist society.

I wonder this all the time! There's so many threads on here about SAHMs getting less kudos/ respect/ appreciation but from who? Surely the only person who needs or should be appreciating what you're doing is their partner.

Yeah, there's a huge problem that raising your own children - whether as a SAHP or otherwise - isn't seen to be valuable to society because it's unpaid. Parents get the blame but none of the credit, it sometimes seems.

In this area, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing doesn't make you a cynic, it makes you an ignorant fool.

Likely said by a man without the means to afford to have his wife stay home. Probably doesn’t even have a girlfriend.
Many angry bitter men online - best ignored.

If being a SAHM is a choice made, there is nothing wrong with it. If my household didn’t need 2 incomes, I told my OH that I’d stay at home, start a business or something, take care of the kids by day - and his salary can cover me. I might have a utopia view of being a SAHM as sometimes working is exhausting! (Fulfilling in its own way).

Its the choice we want.

Jeremy Vine was talking about shortage of nursery places earlier this lunchtime on his radio show. A listener called in to say parents should be looking after their own 2 or 3 year old. They'll be extreme views on both sides.

There's the problem with feminism right there! When people equate staying at home to unemployment here's the issue laid bare.

We see staying at home as value-less because no one is paying stay at home parents. Much like no one is paying someone who is unemployed.

But stay at home parents often say they've never worked harder and that they're rarely at home anyway - they are out with their children engaging in the world.

If I'm working let's say 16 hour days minding my children, saying that my child sleeps for around 8 hours a night in total what with night wake ups, and then we're out all day, what is my social, economic and political capital?

The flaw of feminism is that it neglected the value of old fashioned motherhood - caring / raising a family as being of equal value to employment.

Possibly entry-level feminism, where 'equality' is the important thing.

My feminism is the fight to free women from the patriarchy. Including the patriarchal idea that women's unpaid labour isn't important. It makes the whole world work.

It is just what it is. No one is going to give me full time salary because I stay home. Even we divide my husband's salary, still won't be enough for my ego to be tickled. So I prefer to rather ditch the ego and enjoy the fact I can stay home or work part time and wether one or the other or both, I still do not need to work right now

Great posts by @Bumpitybumper and @MrsTerryPratchett.

MN is generally very anti-SAHM though.

YABU for getting wound up about what some nobody says on the internet.

People had opinions you disagreed with before the internet. You just didn't necessarily know about them. Now, when you go online, you're subjected to a deluge of opinions you disagree with.

There's probably some bloke who lives you near you, maybe three streets away, who also has opinions you don't like. But you can go about your life unbothered by that.

This. It’s hardly controversial.