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 ?

Because they couldn't go anywhere or do any of the things that you normally would with small kids? Baby and toddler groups, meeting up with friends, having playdates, going to the park, beach etc? Plenty of people living in (small, overheated) flats , with no gardens or outdoor space. Disruption to their routine and "normal" life?

Fuck all to do with how hard being a SAHP is.

I found it easy and quite enjoyed it for various reasons. Does that mean being a SAHP is easy and enjoyable?

I work and I don't outsource any childcare. I work flexibly so do school hours and the rest when they are in bed.

I do outsource cleaning and gardening I suppose

I agree. No kids yet myself so I don’t have a bone in this fight, but did used to be an educator who worked in primary schools and often the working parents were far better and more engaged .

I do have friends who are SAHM who are great though so definitely not saying all SAHM are useless but it just depends really.

Not always. I was in employment and also home educated my kids. We looked after our kids ourselves, with no help from extended family or schools etc.

Raising kids is the job of BOTH parents. In 2024 women don’t need to “enable” the careers of their partners. There’s a contradiction in saying: looking after children is this wonderful amazing thing you can’t put a value on (you can’t, I agree) AND my DH earns more so I will stay at home. Because you are saying implicitly it’s ’worth’ less.

Also you can’t say being a SAHM is a 24/7 job and so my DH never does anything. No job should be 24/7. If you are looking after small children as your job, then from the moment your DH is home from HIS job he should be pitching in. He can’t get to have a job with lunch breaks and holidays and you work 24/7 and he pats you on the head and says: oh darling you are doing the most important job in the family.

DH and I enable each other’s careers and our parenting. We both pull our weight for the other one. DH out earns me because he’s a doctor (we are in the US) and I am an academic. And yet he doesn’t consider my contribution to be less because it is financially less. He’s made career choices to enable me to progress. Similarly we parent together- he’s on the school PTA and handles all school related stuff. When I travel for work I don’t need to leave him some detailed timeline for what to do, and make and freeze food. And neither does he when he travels for work. We are both adults and we can both manage our households.

Many if not most working women are working a ‘double shift’. And feeling guilty. Men don’t get to feel that or have MN threads about their household contribution. This is how you know that fundamentally the world is still a patriarchy.

I work full time (have done since DD was 8, part time before). I'm really serious about my career and work in a male dominated environment.

The whole stay at home concept makes career progression much harder for people like me.

Child sick? SAHM sorts it out
Need to travel for business? As above
Reading time at school? Sports day?

All picked up so the man can focus on his obviously much more important job. And this can be reflected in the following ways:

Lack of awareness towards my flexibility at work - I can travel but not at the drop of a hat
My limitations when child is unwell (surprise each time by male boss - because they don't even have to think about it, whereas my partner and I study our calendars and desperately try and make a plan)
Schools continue to assume someone (usually mum) is available all the time and last minute to provide support, collections, make cakes etc

For as long as men are able to focus 100% on their career, equality will always be out of reach in the workplace because it's not a level playing field.

@Whatshappning sorry ,in my head I did include single mums in the working with no help category, but I should've specified.

Well I look after my DC as a separated mum, I co-parent but I do 90% of everything, I manage my household single-handedly (no cleaner here!) and work full time in a hectic role and earn 6 figures.

I must be fucking super mum.

That's all true but do you sense my sarcasm. Each to their own, literally pointless to constantly get so caught up in comparisons.

You're not going to get much support for this view here. A lot of MNers love to dismiss SAHMs whilst getting up in arms if anyone suggests a WOHP isn't actually parenting 100% of the time.

I don’t care or judge what others do but I do worry about SAHMs who aren’t married and don’t seem to realise they are financially vulnerable if the relationship ended. I also know it wouldn’t work in our relationship if my DH was sole earner, he’d find it a lot of pressure. And it is undeniable higher risk if the sole earner couldn’t work or couldn’t find a job

Exactly this

I don't work between 3-5, I do those hours when kids are in bed and DH and I juggle the school holidays between us (we do lots of work some weeks, so we can take more time off- appreciate we are lucky to work very flexibly.

Plus most of my Sahm friends use holiday clubs too at least for a couple of weeks. My mum was a sahm and I always did at least a couple of weeks of clubs

And most of the sahms I know used nursery too (or grandparents) to ensure they had breaks

There is no need to pay ni they get ni credits until child is age 12 linked to child benefit claim

THIS.

Yes they will. Same as some people will only ever be capable of earning a low wage and others will be CEOs.

That doesn’t change the actual role of the job and no one can pretend that having all day to run your home while children are at school is difficult or the same as an actual job.

Also if I had a son I would not want him to grow up thinking women’s only role was to enable his career!

Totally agree 😀. DH and I have always both worked full time and supported each others careers. I would have thought badly of him if he wasn’t able to plait DD’s hair, manage the family diary to check which child had a party invite, or buy their new shoes. Equally I’m perfectly able to buy a new car and discuss with the electrician what work needs doing .

Many women are Sahms to school children and don't home educate and therefore have a lot of spare time.

Staying at home esp when the DC are in school is leisure and nothing else. It's fine if of suits the family. I just dont understand what some of those who make that choice (or have it - let's face it most families need 2 incomes to survive) have to bang on about how it is work. I think it rather shows that they are uncomfortable with their choices at some level and feel the need to justify having a relatively easy life. What starting a fight over this time and time again. Just do as you like.

No I completely agree with you!

I was just adding my 2 cents in relation to the original post you were responding to and emphasising how it is for MANY single working mums.

Just stop going on about this because it’s pointless and makes women look stupid. Women do what they feel they need to do; they contribute in so many different ways. Nobody is fit to comment on what any other woman may or may not do or how they feel. Stop projecting and pontificating and focus on your own life and get on with it.

I am shocked at all the husbands who couldn't do their job if they didn't have a sahm. I work with heaps of high flying men who also have high flying wives and the men pitch in and do their share of pickups /sick child days. It doesn't seem to have harmed their careers but what it has done is make the work place feel much more "parent" friendly (and more flexible working friendly too, for those without kids).

I think there is a huge societal argument for "facilitated men AND women' in some cases.

Some people have extremely valuable skills that are in very short supply. For example a specialist surgeon could save many more lives if they weren't expected to do the school run or an equal share of the domestic chores. It isn't always practical or realistic that we can just train loads of people in these roles so we really want to maximise the resource we have. There are also some roles (CEOs and even the prime minister for example) where the job role is undertaken by an individual that will have limited capacity to be an active parent too.

So my argument to you would be why can't we promote this model where it makes sense? I think if we did this then we could tackle some of the more problematic aspects as they exist today which is ensuring the enabling parent is properly recognised from a legal and financial perspective and making sure that women have equal opportunity to be the enabled as opposed to always being the enabled.

You may or may not be fucking super mum (I'm sure you are!) but it's fucking shit that practically everything should be on you.

Women don't make decisions in a vacuum. Yes, there will be some who dreamed from school of staying home and crafting lace doilies and others who couldn't wait to start earning £££ working 100 hour weeks as investment bankers but often our life decisions are a response to circumstances. And if your partner isn't saying "You go, woman, I've got this!" but instead is weaselling out of picking the kids up on their days because they didn't want to push back on work meetings, then that is going to colour what you think you can achieve professionally. And of course necessity is a great driver, but it's fucking shit that some women are left with limited money and very little rest or leisure time because men don't step up to their family responsibilities.

It's not that women can't do it all (there are so many examples of women doing exactly that) but they shouldn't have to.

Not sure about this. Yes if the kids have needs which require one parent to stay at home, but once all children are at school I am not sure you could justify that stopping at home full time adds that much. House cleaning and cooking and doing the school run is a maximum couple of hours a day. If it can be afforded and both parties agree then fabulous. However we would have to be honest and say that most of this time would be leisure.

I worked full time, but also partly enabled my DH’s career leaving him to do the long hours in a high flying job whilst I went home at 5 to do the evenings with the children. It made sense financially as DH became a very high earner. Fast forward 20 years, DH has been diagnosed with a chronic condition and we don’t know how much longer he can work. Our 3 children are going through university which is EXPENSIVE. I cannot imagine how uncertain our lives would be if I hadn’t also held onto my career and once the children were at school I started to advance in my job too. Financial security is SO important, also for the children.

Also wanted to add that children can be looked after by other people than their parents. My children were looked after partly by grand parents and partly by nursery /childminder. I see this as having added positive value to their lives actually.