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.

MB - if by being at home with a single person you mean - a child who stays at home all day every day with his/her mother until the first day of term after his/her birthday when he/she starts school?

Yes, children are damaged by that scenario. I have an aunt who did that to her two children (my cousins). Both seriously damaged by it.

I can honestly see both sides of this and like all parents I have a view

To me it's all about influence. I would not want my ds in childcare full time beacause I want to influence his life and behaviours more than I want other people to at this early stage.

Anna, as stated by previous posters, you can never go back and raise your child differently and find out whether or not if you did the opposite, the child would be better adjusted or less 'damaged'.

As a parent with more than a passing knowledge of the studies and debates, I decided I wanted to give going back to work a reasonable go despite the potentially detrimental effects of having to use childcare under 3. I did not think my clingy children would settle in nursery but they did and even thrived. They seem to be doing very well and growing up nicely. I am proud of that.

Same for a person who decided to SAHP. If your child is thriving and you are happy to be at home. Why change?

Now if anyone cannot understand that both models could work very well for the children of families into which they are born into, then there is definitely a mental block at work.

Bear in mind I am responding on a AIBU thread with an inflammatory title.

Anna, no, i'm actually not talking about something that extreme. But if we're discussing research evidence, when the 'childcare is bad' studies have come out, critics have often said where are the studies comparing whether there are poor outcomes for stay at home kids (ie those cared for by a parent)?

It is intuitive to say 'oh it MUST be better', but actually I imagine such research would show just the same variation as the nursery studies: that parents on low incomes and with less education and with limited socio-economic options have children with less good outcomes than those from higher up the social scale. Just like the nursery studies...

I don't think it should ever all be about one or the other: parents should have proper, well-supported choices both to care for their children and to work and to mix it up.

I'm going to back out of this thread soon because I despair at the ill-informed positions that either one or the other must be better. Not you Anna, just in general.

Riven - 16 years out of the workplace will definitely have de-skilled you to a huge extent. Totally bizarre/denial you should think it doesn't matter. (This BTW is in reply to your comment about this, not the one about cortisol.)

Bitch bitch bitch

blueshoes - among the population of my daughter's school you can make factual observation that demonstrates a major difference between children who have had SAHMs until they started school and children who haven't.

pw, monkeybird, who sounds far more knowledgeable than me on these matters, has already responded to the Rowntree report. I expected my dcs to not settle at nursery because of having heard about reports akin to Rowntree and be anxious and stressed, and for me to then try a cm or a nanny and then if not, quite work. They weren't. Because despite the report, lots of other factors could dictate how well a child does in early years childcare, like the family they were born into, their individual personalities, the dynamics of the relationship with parents etc.

I found that I had so much more options as a result. Yes, I could possibly have it all .

I don't want women to be discouraged from giving work a go in some mistaken belief that a child would ALWAYS be damaged by early years childcare, provided they stay flexible and always use their children's response as the barometer.

Anna, I can't. All I will say to that is that your enclave of the world sounds quite screwed up at times, as you yourself have described.

MrsMattie, was that to me? I'm talking from experience, unfortunately. It's taken me 1.5 years to get re-trained back to the level I was when I took a different turn in my career 15 years ago. I did medical research for all these years and now I can go back to clinical work. Surely, nobody would want a doctor who's been out of touch with the clinical side of things for 15 years? I don't see how it's any different in any profession.

No@Cristina, It's at the whole bloody thread. It makes me so grrrrrrrr. It's NOT a proper debate, it's just endless reams of people sniding at each other. For the love of God, when will this whole fabricated SAHM vs WOHM bullshit die a death on MN?

I find this debate interesting although the 'would you put a six week old baby into nursery' question is a bit silly. I personally wouldn't put a six week old baby into nursery but people presumably do because:

a) because they do absolutely have to get back to work and hate leaving their child;

b) can't cope with the tiny baby so maybe better to get a nursery to do it

c) because they are basically selfish people who shouldn't have had children because it interferes with getting their hair done.

C is going to be a pretty small subset of a very small group but the child may well be better off by going to nursery than having a mum like that

ALSO I don't think this debate should ignore the fact that there actually isn't a right to flexible working. There is a right to request flexible working which is different. YOur employer doesn't need to grant the request and can refuse if there is a business reason to do so which there usually will be if they want to find one.

This means that on return from M/L, you need to balance beign a SAHM with the fact that you will have to return to work F/T or find a new job, you will lose experience and professional development; being an SAHM will put additional pressure on DH to work so he may well have to work longer hours to make up the difference and you are completely dependant on DH. Where you fall on that balance is your own decision.

Sorry for length

My mother worked when I was little, which caused a few raised eyebrows in the 1970s. Possibly because she wasn't a teacher or childminder (these seemed to be 'acceptable' jobs for a Mummy, somehow). One horrible little girl once refused to allow my sister into a Wendy house at playgroup 'because your Mummy works'. Grrr.

Said sister always claimed she would stay at home when she had her own children. But actually she's a nurse, loves her job, her patients really need her (she works with a very vulnerable group who get treated quite badly by society in general) and her little girl is doing very well in a fab nursery.

Cristina, I agree- 16 years out of the workplace WILL de-skill you, unless your speciality is stacking shelves. Like you, I speak from experience. I am 5 years out of the profession field that was my career pre-children. I was long ago de-skilled from my previous field, despite now working in a related field.

The modern workplace (as anyone in it knows) waits for no one.

MrsMattie, OK, it's just that your comment was after mine. I did those 15 years in a different career to be with my husband more, have children, have a life etc but I do have regrets now, even if I didn't at the time as it was the right thing for my frame of mind then.

I've never seen a WOHM vs SAHM debate IRL, perhaps because we all know each others' circumstances and know life isn't black & white.

Riven - sorry to be blunt but you are massively deluding yourself. As a psychologist you should know better. You may have kept up with all the papers (really, have you got access to all subscription-only journals) but have you discussed them critically with anyone? Have you had any piece of work done and evaluated by others, even if that's just your clients? You are so, so out of touch, you have no idea.

I am sure that no one with half a brain would think that a child would ALWAYS be damaged by early years childcare that is not the opinion of the OP or probably anyone who prefers to be a SAHM. I prefer to be with my kids it is as simple as that. The point the OP was making was the complete refusal of some parents to make any allowances for the fact that they have had a child. I should think that even the most stalwart SAHM is aware that some parents HAVE to work and dont have any choices, unfortunately. The point is when you dont HAVE to work in the early months but do so for your own reasons then thats just plain selfish. Sorry but it is.

Also someone said that SAHMs feel threatened by WOHM. Maybe some do but I can assure you I dont. I feel sorry for you that you cant be with your kids for whatever reasons. I always assume that you must NEED to work for financial reasons otherwise why would you not choose to be with your kids.

Xenia you live in Cloud Cuckoo Land. I have never come across anyone so narrow minded and unsympathetic as you.

ok riven, having read your last post, I accept that if your field is neuroscience/psycology and you have kept up with the developments and acquired relevant RL skills, I can see how you have not become de-skilled.

Perhaps I was describing marketability, rather than skills. Heck, I think I still have a reasonably good grasp on international capital markets and keep up with the press, but no employer will consider me a serious contender for a job having been out of it for 5 years.

Riven - so could you just walk back into your old job or a similar job without any re-registration or some other form of accreditation required? I'd find that worrying TBH.

Riven - as if that's just the thing you do with your spare time as a SAHM, go trailing your offspring into a library to read the latest journals. I don't buy it.

blueshoes - but that field (international capital markets) is one in which the average age of employees is very low. Fields in which youth, hunger and energy are highly valued (marketable) are much harder to take career breaks from that fields in which years of distilled experience are valued.