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 ?

That’s not what that study says at all.

Its says children who have warm loving relationships with their parents have less chance of having mental health problems.

Plenty of sahp do not have warm loving relationships with their children. Lots do.

Plenty of working parents have warm loving relationships with their parents. Some don’t.

The choice between working and staying at home is not an indicator of wether you are a good parent or not.

Parenting is work - just different work than employment. I’m glad I can manage both relatively successfully. I don’t care whether others can/must choose between the two as it’s none of my business.

@Firsttimetrier

That research has nothing to do with use of childcare or a mother’s working status?

I have never seen any credible research (and I have looked for it) that supports the idea of long term damage to children from the use id childcare.

If anything the research there is tends to suggest having a working mother is, all things being equal, a positive for girls.

But it’s so interesting that the ‘we are making the best decision we can’ almost always priorities the DH’s career AND his downtime.
It goes like this: my husband is a big shot so he couldn’t possibly:

1. do the night wake ups
2. is too tired after work to do the dishes
3. sort out fancy dress, birthday parties and extra curriculars on weekends
4. absolutely needs to go on cycling trips with his buddies but I have not had a day or night’s break in years.
5. when I go out with my friends I have to organise childcare or make sure jobs are done
6. and god forbid I go away, DH needs detailed instructions to remember the basics and I probably come back to a mess

I don’t understand why so many women find themselves disadvantaged not just financially (because people will say there is more to life than money) but just in their every day living arrangements. If you and your DH truly do value your contribution then why are we not treating it as ‘work’ with husbands genuinely pulling their weight when they come home from their ‘oh so important job’ (which surely can’t be more important than being a parent, right?) . There are over a thousand MN threads every year complaining about this.

And surely we should make decisions based on who is good at something. In my family, DH is amazing at playing with kids. He has patience I don’t. So he plays a lot more with them. I am a significantly better cook. So I cook. I hate laundry and grocery shopping though so DH handles that. And I hate holiday planning so I don’t. It however turned out in lockdown that I am not bad at teaching small children, so I handle homework and their general academic progress. Just because I have a uterus doesn’t mean that I am automatically better that any or every aspect of parenting.

I’m surprised that in 2024 people (women) are saying I’ve allowed my H to prioritise his career. We want girls to aim high but then step back and let the men have the careers. Very odd.

also to those posters that are saying that their H couldn’t have a career and bring up children. Show me a man that 100% would say I will have children and not earn money. Most men “fall” into parenthood. It’s not a choice they generally have if their partner wants children.

It says at the bottom it’s about time and that working parents have less time.

I’m working full time, so by your assumptions I’m calling myself a shit parent. When in fact I’m saying there’s research that there’s benefit to parents having more time with their children, which means you would need to not work full time to have more time with your children.

“Some may need help learning how to do that, but we should not underestimate the importance of simply giving them time. Closeness only develops with time, and for parents who are living or working in stressful and constrained circumstances, there often isn’t enough. Policies which address that, at any level, will have many benefits, including enhancing children’s mental resilience and their capacity to act positively towards others later in life.”

@Firsttimetrier the study doesn't mention anything about working parents or SAHP . You're assuming the closeness is damaged by the parents working. That's not necessarily the case or even true for all working parents. Various working patterns are out there and various family circumstances.

But I asked for actual data of outcome in children with SAHMs vs WOHMs. Children with WOHMs not being as close to their parents is one massive assumption.

A study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in the US looked at the influence of both child care and the home environment on over 1,000 typically-developing children [1]. They found that:
• "children who were cared for exclusively by their mothers did not develop differently than those who were also cared for by others" [1, p.1]

That only makes sense if stay at home mother earns less than the cost of childcare

No they won’t… not if you earn over a certain amount. The only free childcare for those earning over 100k is 15 hours the term after they turn 3.

Agreed. This thread seems to be more about lifestyle choices.

TBH there was a time when I thought being a SAHP would be amazing, then I became a single parent and realised I had to work more hours so there was no choice. If I was going to work full time I had to love my job as surviving was not enough so progressing my career became essential. I'm actually shocked at myself these days for accommodating my exes.

I read a good article put forward the view that some professional jobs are now so demanding and ask so much of people that two adults both doing those jobs is unsustainable for the family. These jobs can’t be done part time. So couples are forced to prioritise one career and the other becomes the default parent. That’s usually the woman but actually in my old City job it was increasingly the woman with a support dad.

Both parents doing more than full time with day nanny and night nannies etc is pretty miserable for everyone.

@MangshorJhol

Exactly.

The working assumption is always that everything in the running of the family is structured to make it as easy as possible for a msn to do his paid job.

Working mums (particularly working single mums) don’t have this army of “facilitation” to protect them from the challenging cognitive dissonance of having occasionally to leave work early to take a child test the dentist or to remember to buy a present for a birthday party. Woe betide that a man’s precious work focus should be impinged upon by such domestic trivia.

Whereas the average working woman does this half a dozen times a day.

If they find it that difficult to get their jobs done with the tiniest distraction are they really worth the pay premium they still routinely get over women?

The researchers saw beneficial outcomes for children associated with higher amounts of childcare for both advantaged and disadvantaged children. This suggests that regardless of a child’s household income, childcare benefits their development.

It is not work. I clean my own house. I don’t think of it as work. My paid job is though. A cleaner working for someone else is working.

Staying home isn’t a job as an individual choice.A job has a job description tasks and expectations that the tasks are done to Certain standard for a salary. Looking after your own children isn’t a job isn’t equivalent to a job and it’s utterly ludicrous to suggest it’s a job.

Essentially it’s a very individual act it doesn’t financially contribute to society you’re not benefiting a greater mass of people or other citizens. You staying at home is solely for your family and that and it’s self is the individual choice. I work full-time I pay taxes I contribute I have a job which directly benefits other people for that I’m paid a salary which I spend ,which distributes money in the economy and is distributed around through spending. I also contribute via taxes and NI.

A housewife is not contributing to the economy, not paying taxes or NI and is solely dependent upon the salary their partner earns. It is precarious being a housewife because essentially you don’t have any current skills and you lose your work experience and you’re financially dependent upon the salary that your partner brings home .If that partner and you split up you have no recent work experience you have no recent experience of earning your own money and you’ve been financially dependent as an adult.

This. Many of these husbands that have jobs that require long hours, travelling, running their own business, were doing this long before you started a family. So you knowingly chose to have a family with someone who either wouldn't/couldn't commit to being at home more.

Being a SAHM is hard. Children are hard. Managing a house with children is hard. IT IS NOT A JOB.

Expecting that people need to respect you CHOOSING to have children and YOUR DECISION on what caring for them looks like, is just bizarre. As parents it is our responsibility to care for our children, however that works for the family.

I say this as someone who works part-time with 2 under 2 - if working parents do everything stay at home parents do then what do we pay the people who look after our children to do?! Surely we all agree there is immense value in looking after children for a living, otherwise why would we take such care to choose good childcare? If a woman wants to do this for her own children why would we view it as less valuable/less of a real job/less important/less noble or whatever? If I claim to do everything a SAHP does while working outside the home also, surely by default I’m saying the person who looks after my children while I work is doing…nothing?

But again, you are extrapolating findings.

The study didn’t look at whether parents work or not. And there’s no stated time per day that is the key.

As a working parent you know working parents also spend time with their children. They give their children time. Nowhere does it say ‘a parent needs to give X amount of time per day to create this bond’

There’s no proof being a sahp creates a better bond. That’s down to loads of factors.

and it says ‘parents who are living or working in stressful and constrained circumstances’

not ‘parents who are living in constrained or stressful circumstances or work’

People who work and are not in automatically constrained or stressful circumstances. People who are sahp are not automatically free from constrained or stressful circumstances.

It even points out ‘living OR working’ which can apply to both wohp or sahp.

The point is that the quality of the parents relationship with the child is what’s important. Giving time to the child is what’s important not a set amount of time.

I certainly don't consider SAHMs 'less than'. Looking after children is full on and exhausting. In an ideal world, I think children benefit from having a parent as the primary caregiver pre school. I remember my own mum doing that and how precious that is to me now. However, no one size fits all and everyone's circumstances are different. I raised my son as a single parent and always worked full time because I had to. That said, that was a choice between work and benefits so we all have choices. I had a truly excellent childminder and a truly fantastic sister who helped me. Without them, I couldn't have done it. Also, being a SAHM makes you financially dependent on your partner and that is something I could never envisage (based on personal experience). There are so many differing situations and no one size fits all. Being a parent is extremely hard. let's support each other!

Why on earth is it AI? Lots of people would agree with the statement.

This is the case amongst a number of families we know.

Not necessarily a SAHP, but the reality is that one parent has to take a big step backwards in terms of career otherwise the family simply couldn't function. If nursery pick-up is at 7pm (the latest nursery closing time around here), then you can't have both parents potentially tied up indefinitely in the office on international conference calls. Someone has to be reliably available for the kids.

'Enabling her husband to work by taking care of the house and kids'

It's not the 1950s ffs

Do you mean 'enabling one parent to work whilst the other takes care of the house and kids'

I see this shit trotted out so often.

As someone disabled (like millions of people in this country), my finances would only go down if I re-entered the work force (also millions of jobs are low paid and care is expensive so people are not better off in work) and I hold a uni degree in a medical discipline so its not like I've put no effort in in life. It would also damn near kill me physically and mentally too never-mind to work full time AND look after kids and keep a home.

There's such ablism to this utter crap that everyone has to have a 'job' to hold worth in society or that if 'you' can do it everyone else must and on top of that also be the magic mum caregiver and a maid.

There such ignorance to the idea everyone would be 'better off' with a job too, most people requiring UC assistance while also still struggling to meet basic living costs HAVE jobs and work hard and still can't survive off that. Most of the rest are made up of carers and the disabled.

People who spout the 'I have a job and keep a home and cook dinner and spend time with my kids'... congrats on being entirely fucking able and lucky enough to have the money, health and luck in life (such as not having to care 24/7 for a heavily disabled/dying family member etc...) that allows that.