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.

oh pleeease don't make me read it pol. you precis so well.

Must attend to Mr Darcy's breeches, night-oh everyone.

(you know I have a soft spot for you, don't you?)you said "our internalized sense of the world is formed, etc etc". I mean - (sorry totally ignorant about psychologic theories), are later experiences totally meaningless then? And what about acquired knowledges, what about what we learn/culture, etc etc? (I can see that first 36 are important, but not totalizing?)

'I don't find it surprising at all that children of ft working parents who spend only 1 hour with their offspring Mon-Fri can and do thrive in specific instances, particularly if they come from homes with high educational achievement and interested parents'

i agree

'which is a far more important variable than hours in childcare below 3.' disagree to the extent that it depends what childcare.

i can see that we are all basically in furious agreement here.

i think.

g'night.

don't go just yet, I've just told you I have a soft spot for youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

blueshoes: "it was my considered opinion as their mother that my dcs were actually enjoying themselves and getting a lot out of it that I could not or could not be bothered to do with them at home."

Erk. I struggle with the 'bothered' bit every day. It boils down to these questions:

"because I can't be arsed to do it, is it okay not to do it?"

"if I am compelled by guilt to do it despite not wanting to do it, does anyone benefit?"

"is paying somebody else to do it (not by their own volition but because they are paid to do it) better than a)just not doing it b)doing it reluctantly.

My answers (this month) are no, yes, no. This month.

right back atcha franca! you know that...i don't call just anyone a meanie you know!

Unfortunately I think many sahms are threatened by wohms. If you can go out and work a full day and run household bringing up happy children then why can't they? They must find something to justify their own sahm- existence to themselves and perhaps the world around them. If you are an unhappy wohm who would love to be able to sahm, then you are acceptable. But if you dare to actually enjoy your job too? How could you! I think there is a lot of jealousy because some women manage to achieve more than others and also many sahms feel their position threatened. They want to be paid for their work and that is not the way society is going or can go.

Actually I should go to bed as well, it's difficult to leave this thread though.

Unfortunately, I find that many posters on these threads (on both sides) make grossly offensive generalisations plainly rooted in their own insecurities.

generalisation which can generally be turned around and posited the other way.

Issy - I'm with you (me and my mother-in-law too - hence "not babies but people", by the way) on the importance of the long-haul. Sometimes the early bit has to be planned in light of the long view.

You know, I have to wonder whether in all these number-crunching reports that invariably end up concluding that we should spend the first x years of our children's life barefoot and chained to the kitchen sink, whether any of those hard-nosed researchers thought to ask parents: "Are you interested in and love your child and show them this?" and the children: "Do you feel loved by your parents?". Cos it's my betting that if you could get genuinely candid answers from people about this, you might see a few of those stay at home/ go back at 2 weeks differences in outcome just meeelt away.

I don't think that love is all that quantifiable though.

This idea of the 'sahm' being someone who spends her days fingerpainting and singing The Wheels On The Bus and having nothing approaching a life of her own is really really recent in human history. When women had few or no human rights, they were still expected to work : ploughing the fields with DC either in a box under the hedge/trotting after them or, if they were in a socio-economic position where they had servants to plough the fields and cook the dinner, there would be other servants to feed and wipe the children so they could get on with the job of advancing hubby's social status/being an ornament. When women were needed to do manual/factory work in World War II there were bucketloads of'studies' published suggesting the huge advantage children gained from being put in nursery care; all the crap about women being essentially domestic animals whose children would turn to drugs and crime without years of slavish maternal devotion only came in when all the soldiers got demobbed and needed the jobs...
Most people who have to work 40 hours a week or more would rather not have to do so, most jobs are not that interesting or important, but people feel they have to put in the long hours or they will be disregarded for promotion/got rid of. There is somethingvery badly wrong with the stupid long-hours culture where 'flexibility' means 'work lots of unpaid overtime at short notice or we will sack you'. And an important point is that it's not just parents who suffer from employer-exploitation, lots of people would prefer to have lives with time to do stuff outside of selling widgets and bashing keyboards.

Well FWIW I agree with the OP. I work to earn the crust and DH is a SAHD - it's just the way things worked out for us. I really enjoy my job, but believe me I wish things were the other way around. And there is no way we would contemplate both working full time unless we really had to. And by "had to" I don't mean so we can afford a larger house, two cars or holidays abroad. When I was desperately ttc it really upset me to see all the couples out there procreating to their hearts content for their children to be brought up in daycare. So shoot me.

BANG!

Dahlink, I have sacrificed for my children - a huge amount of money to pay for good quality childcare. I love my children. They love me. They would not love me as much, I am sure, if I was a SAHM who sat on the sofa in tracky bottoms and a grubby T shirt with unwashed hair pulled back into a scrunchy stuffing my face with custard creams and watching Jeremy Kyle. Because that is what I would be like. I would be dull and depressed. I am (I hope) setting a good example to the future generation (people, not babies!) that women can have a career and be a good mother too.

So up yours.

Twinklemegan are you suggesting some parents are less deserving of children because they use daycare?what an unsavory and unkind sentiment

All children love their mothers, MrsS, whether they sit on the settee eating custard creams all day, or not.

I work full time and I spend plenty of quality time with DS, I work shifts as well, so I suppose I get to see more of him than if it was a normal 9 to 5.

That said, I take my hat off to SAHM because there is no way on earth that I could do that without wanting to put a pillow over my little cherub's face and im sure the feeling is completely mutual after a certain amount of time!

Maybe thats a bit strong, but we can get fed up of each other.

I'm not a natural with children and ds benefits from time with the childminder and the other kids there that he interacts with, I believe its a positive thing for him, I think he will be more socially confident and yes I believe I am setting a good example (not that sahm are not).

Everyone functions differently and I personally couldn't be a sahm (i tried it for a year) its a much harder job than going out to work, in my humble opinion.

Xenia has said that she is well placed to give an opinion about leaving a baby from a very young age. I disagree.

Xenia is in a highly paid job (or one that had the potential to become one in the early days), had a teacher husband who therefore had school holidays, and was able to afford a nanny.

Leaving a 2 week or 6 week old baby with one consistent nanny and lots of regular contact with the mother for breast feeding is one thing (wouldn't have suited me because I wanted to be with the baby all the time at this stage), however this is vastly different from leaving such a young baby in a nursery with lots of different faces and a lack of continuity of care and love.

There is plenty of research to back this up.

As madamx says women always worked. In fact most children were left with older siblings, even 5 year olds and until about 1850 I think most British children died before the age of 5. There is no rosy past of mothers doing nothing but care. It's a myth painted by the likes of those who want to keep women down, kinder kuche and kirche and its modern day equivalents.

When I was 22 and I left the first baby at 2 weeks with the nanny we were able to keep for 10 years I don't think my experience was too different from others. We were pretty poor at that point. We kept that nanny for 10 years (she lived out so we had deadlines to get back for) by all sorts of fairly clever methods - like teaching her to drive, letting her come back part time with a baby etc. In other words we bent over backwards to ensure continuity of care for the babies. Other parents do the same with a good child minder and some (not that many) use nurseries (which are expensive if you have 3 or more children). In fact grandparents provide more care than any other category in the UK by the way after parents. So I don't know hat "norms" there really are except that most parents of under 5s both choose to work as they always have done and as they always will even just to survive. There are lots of good political reasons women should work too which if anyone is unsure should swing it for them.

I was asked "why do you class nannies as nannies, you say nannies can have a good bond with the baby and be a important part of the babys life, therefore implying that a nanny is quite a valued job in your opinion."

I suppose that means if you're prepared to pay someone to look after your children then surely you accept a parent could stay home and do the same job. I think most parents need a break from small children which nannies get at night and working parents get in the day. Also it's better to generate money for the economy, your pension, to build up a career in case your husband leaves, as an example to girls etc so yes some differences between being a housewife and a nanny. If a woman really would have no hope of much of a job, low IQ, no get up and go, then I suppose they might as well be home as working the till at Tesco but even then I think the interaction with colleagues and the chance for the baby to know other adults would make it better for some women to get out and man those tills.

Most parents who return to work quickly find suitable child care. I don't think I know a parent of either sex who would be prepared to leave a child in a nursery or with a child minder they did not think was looking after the child properly.

Rose99 - how do you know that all those nurseries have a lot of different faces and that the child receives lack of continuity and care? My dd went to a nursery when she was an infant that had wonderful staff, very little turnover so it was generally the same people she was in contact with, and she adored them. I imagine there are some nurseries that are sub-par, but some are very very good. It's all in the staff, IMO. But there are also some mothers who are home with thier children all day, but provide sub-standard care as well. I think it's all in what is best for each individual family or child. I've done the working fulltime with a child and am now starting as a SAHM with a child, and I feel both have their pros and cons.

It's quite simple. How will my children grow up fully rounded people unless they suffer aggravated seperation anxiety when v young, and realise pdq that they are not at all important to me. Obviously.

Why else?