to honestley wonder, why have children if you WANT to work fulltime and are not prepared to make ANY sacrifices?

[milkgoddessmakesthefinestmilk]

i don't mean parents that HAVE to work to provide.

i mean the ones that choose to for no other reason, other than they enjoy their job so much.
if you enjoy your job so much, thats great.
but what i really do not understand is why have children?
no one makes any of these parents have children, you can go though life without having children.

this is 100% genuine question, i just do not get it.

Fuck me xenia, you're as bonkers as the op!

Fuck me xenia, you're as bonkers as the op!

This SAH / WM thing seems a bit like some strange fundamentalist religious war.......everyone is so adamant that their God is right !

I've got a pinny!

can someone change the record

Read the first page, saw what seemed like a very confused OP (or maybe a windup) and then skipped to the end to see if it had got violent yet.

If I have trouble working out the strange ways of modern (wo)man I ask myself what people used to do. I think it's safe to say that for millions of years mothers looked after the kids while the fathers worked/hunted. If the mothers had things they needed to do I expect they kept their kids with them while they did it.

Sorry, but that tells me that "Women who are 24/7 at home damage their children" is complete rubbish or a joke. (maybe an in joke I'm missing)

On the other hand I can't agree with the OP because the OP isn't clear what she means. Most people work or don't work because that's the way it works out. Only the very rich get a free choice.

lol@Friday - very good analogy.

Xenia is nearly as scary as Finsbury Park hook man.

Friday
not me

I think that women should choose what suits them and their loved ones.
And then they should try and be happy with their choice and stop bitching at other women about theirs.

AIBU to wonder why people start such bleeding ridiculous threads?

Greyriverside - women have always workd. The idea of being a housewife is a relatively new one.

It seems as if the OP was enquiring about the women who go to work full time and leave someone else to rear their children, a fair question. Xenia was claiming that to be a SAHM/F is damaging to children and the opposite is true, evidence prevails. Latchkey and JRF for reference.

I agree it's just a choice - you probably won't be damaging your children irreparably either way. I just find it baffling that people (fathers too!) would choose to spend 40+ of their child's waking hours elsewhere every week, especially since those years when they're so little and need you so much are over in a flash.

I don't think it's healthy that mothers are made to feel they must be the only one looking after their child 100% of the time though. My kids are looked after my friends, my mum, my sister, my boy went to nursery in the mornings when he was 3. But sending a baby to nursery 10 hours a day, or letting a nanny or childminder do most of the caring, is unfathomable to me.

Please, can we not go back to the hunter-gatherer times on threads like this?

Can I agree with the earlier poster who said that actually children probably need parents more when they are older rather they are tiny.

can you not love your children and your job? clearly not by some people's take on this!!!!

this has to be a troll thread surely?? the OP really cant believe what someone CHOOSES is wrng??? OP your a nut job xenia you seem more of an extremist attention seeker with that comment, you cant really believe that SAHM set a bad example?? that would mean you believe them to be stifiling, you sounds very set in your ways equally bad as the OP!!!

Not a troll, someone called Casbie.

Hercules. I doubt they sat around watching TV, but I think they had the kids with them while they did stuff so I guess that counts as housewife

Anyway being a housewife IS work - hard work at that.

CristinaTheAstonishing, the point is that it's silly to say that something we did for all of history until barely last week is 'unnatural'
I don't say it's the only way to do things, but it can't be evil

Greyriverside - historically, parents have had a community around them to help raise their children. This idea of the nuclear family where daddy goes off to work and mummy stays at home with the children is the problem. Except now we've solved it by making mummy and daddy go out to work and paying someone else to lokk after the children. Isn't capitalism great

And round and round and round it goes....

No, a lot didnt have their kids with them. They were looked after by family members, the woman down the road etc as well being taken to work.

Well, natural or "unnatural", that's how society is like in 2008.

The benefit system which allows a lot of women to be able to be sahps is only a recent thing.

But thast's not what the benefits system is for.

Brilliant! It's come full circle. From bashing working mums to bashing benefits scroungers. Knew it would