Staying at home with kids IS a contribution and it is also WORK

[carshaker]

A lot of people don't respect a mum who's ' just at home '. Like she's not really contributing to the family.

The reality is though, that it's very much a big contribution, even if it's not financial.

If you took away the financial risk of staying home long term, what's the issue with it? Why is it considered by many ( especially women ), less than ?

If this is a woman's choice, what's the issue ?

Snap.
Personally working full-time and outsourcing domestic chores & childcare whilst working has been so much easier than when I was a SAHM.

So when I worked 50 hours per week as a Nanny earning £45k per year, that was definitely work.

But you think now that I do the exact same thing with my own children (without the salary!) it is not considered work?

Women shouldn't have to be Superwomen. It should be ok to be normal/average. It's great that so many are capable of it, but women shouldn't have to go to sleep at night mentally compiling their "to do" lists for the next day and working out how they can be in two places at once.

We need to make combining work with family responsibilities easier. Some employers have stepped up, but some haven't. Men, by and large, haven't stepped up.

I've got two friends, both doctors, one is a consultant. Both had children around the same time and when they returned to work, both told me it was easier than being at home with their kids.... just saying.

It's not going to cross my mind because it's how you chose to read it that's the problem. Any sensible person would know I meant childcare. I guess I give the women here more credence as far as their intelligence goes than you do? Good luck.

I don't know if you think I suggested that if you're a working mum you aren't working 24/7. It's just that if you're both working, you'd think that the husbands would pick up some of it, like night wakings and that kind of thing too.

I know working mums are on 24/7 as well. It's just if you're a stay at home mum and your husband works full time, you'd naturally be expected ( in my opinion ) to pick up more, to let your husband rest etc.

Whereas if you're both working, he needs to get more stuck in, generally speaking.

I'm unlucky to be a working mum who also has to do everything else because my job is more flexible than his, so I can.

@madameparis genuine question , what do you do extra , that you wouldn't do if you were working? Especially if your kids are school age.

Yes it's a contribution and yes it's work. But work which leaves you vulnerable in the wake of the relationship breaking down. Don't be naive and assume it will never happen to you. Do be naive and assume the single mum in the school playground somehow deserves her status.

I know working mums are on 24/7 as well. It's just if you're a stay at home mum and your husband works full time, you'd naturally be expected ( in my opinion ) to pick up more, to let your husband rest etc.

That assumption/opinion is your own failure and low standards.

@Treesnbirds I found being a working mum easier than staying home with kids. I go out of my mind. Working is a break for a lot of parents, male and female.

It’s not all parents - both parents have to be working and have to earn over about 7k a year but no more than 100k so it actually excludes a HUGE amount of working parents, especially in the cities. Plus most nurseries don’t offer it as “fee” it’s “funded”

Preschool?

My child will attend 15 hours per week of 3 and 4 year old kindergarten, which is a preschool program. This is the standard government funded pre school offering where I live in Australia, it works out to be 3 half days per week which is really all that is needed for this age. The benefits of childcare/nursery only start around 2.5-3 years for children with safe, nurturing home environments.

We currently attend a weekly playgroup that runs for 2 hours and parents or carers must stay for the duration. Plenty of socialisation for children of stay at home parents, not that babies need to socialise!

I hope to have a second and third, maybe even fourth child so probably will be a stay at home parent for at least a decade or more even if I have pre school and primary school aged children.

@carshaker some of us are lone parents, there is no partner to "pick up the slack"

Being a SAHP is a massive privilege but also a massive risk.

It's rarely an absolute choice though, right? Most SAHM's have worked at some point. I am one such. I worked from 21 until 38, then though fuck it, had enough, and became a SAHM, to older children. DH worked away during the week, and it therefore was much easier, less stressful, for me not to work at that time. We are lucky that we were able to do this, it's been a much better balance for us. We didn't need the extra money, and the extra time is valuable.

I think this is the main concern. I'd support my sons and daughters to make any decision they want about staying at home or working outside home, or any combination of the above, but I have told them they should always maintain the capacity to work, if there is a need for it. It can be a vulnerable position.

Because we were both still doing our FT professional jobs at the same time? No furlough in our house and DSs were 7 and 4. It was awful.

I was with you until this.

Allowing men to do even less with their kids is actually negative to society. Stop having children with any male who thinks this way. Men NEED to be part of family life and NEED to contribute to care.

OP all SAHM , like all jobs, aren't created equal.
A SAHM with young children/SEN kids etc is different from one with healthy teenagers.
Despite you claiming it's a '24 hour job' I know SAHM who put their kids in childcare, have cleaners, and who get more of a break than full-time working mums! Have time to potter about doing stuff they like.

Also some people are wealthy enough to not work...no, they're not making any 'contribution to the family' etc by staying home, their husband would be wealthy with or without them. They're just lucky. No need to justify.

It doesn't matter what strangers on the internet think, 'respect' IRL depends on the context. Someone with more time to do things that other have to pack into a few short hours/outsource isn't going to get much sympathy by comparing to the pattern. By contrast, a working mum having more money , lunch out etc moaning about work isn't going to gain respect from a SAHM stuck at home with screaming children all day!

Why is there no nuance on any of these..?

Agree and the Government should make it financially possible for a parent to stay at home if they want to. Seems they are more willing to pay someone else to look after your child rather than make it easy for the child to stay with its own Mother.

Completely agree. The pressure mounts I think throughout motherhood too. It’s an incredibly tough gig to keep up with the weight of expectations and manage/juggle the amount of absolute shite that comes our way from all angles- how we look, who we’re friends with, how clever/sporty/attractive/mature/well mannered our kids are, how our house looks, where we go on holiday, how “busy” we are, how much we earn, how much we nurture, how “clean” our kids diets are….. It never feels enough.

edit for typo

Not necessarily it depends on the work.

Plenty of low paying jobs are exactly that, there’s little to no career progression available.

I think within each family people should do what works for them.

But also, while I agree it's work, I think the unspoken tension comes from the fact that it's work that is by and large done to "too high a standard" to be worth it for society.

As a society, we want kids to be reasonably fed and reasonably clothed. All the extra effort spend on finding a great birthday gift as opposed to a fine gift? Good for you but not something that benefits society at all (unlike the time one would spend working, say, at work). All the effort spent by parents in benefitting their kids at the expense of others? (Vying for school places etc) Actively costly to society.

So parents do a lot of work. But a lot of it is stuff that we are not, as a society, willing to pay for. You can also see this by the great treatment most kids receive at home Vs the appalling treatment in foster care. The latter is - apparently and disgracefully - how much society values its children. The difference between that and the care received at home is work that parents are doing, that has less economic societal value than those parents would like.

For example, people are like "a high quality nanny for kids would cost X and the SAHM does it for free so her work is worth X!". Well, no, because the price society is willing to pay for that work for those children is not a nanny, it's foster care.

I suspect this will sound like I am trying to devalue SAH work and I am not trying to do that. I am trying to pinpoint what I think is the unspoken economic assumptions.

I would consider someone who can afford to stay at home to be extremely well off. I don't know any parents who stay at home in my circle. We all need to work. Other than that, I wouldn't think more about it. Obviously they're contributing to their own family.

As ever, first post nails it.

to indicate working women don’t do all the things stay at home ones do is frankly insulting, add in all the posts on here where SAHMs complain that their partners don’t do half the housework and it just comes across as lazy.

I think most people - men and women - are perfectly capable of advancing their careers without having a SAHP to deal with the domestic stuff, and there are vanishingly few roles where this is actually necessary.

And as a society, I think we should be moving away from the expectation of presenteeism in the workplace in any case, and acknowledging that all employees at all levels may have family responsibilities outside of work, whether that is for children, elderly relatives, disabled family members etc.

As a Chief Executive, I would consider myself to be a failure if I ran things in such a way that only those without any responsibilities outside of work could progress and get promoted. In my experience, the very best employees are actually those who have a good balance between work and the other aspects of their lives.