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.

It was a very badly worded OP. She didn't specify what she meant by not making ANY sacrifices. If you read her post she is basically writing why have children if you go back to work because you ENJOY it. The way I read it was that if you are a WOHM at least have the decency not to enjoy yourself. Tbh, you often see this on MN. "Fair enough if you HAVE to work, but if you ENJOY it....."
It's the martyr-mum complex and very DM.

I can see the OP point of view although I don't necessarily agree with it. She is just meaning that what's the point of investing all your time in your career and then having kids just to be like everyone else then realising that the kids are an inconvenience to you when all you really want to focus on is your career long term. These type of people who are high fliers have kids because thats what they feel they have to do to fit in with the rest of society. Other couples who aren't so wealthy have kids and it looks like a dawdle so why not give it a bash if you have a great career, just try and fit the childcare in somehow on top of every other sucess you have in life.
Just another way of looking at it. Not that I personally agree with that, just trying to rationalise the OP's statement.

I don't think the OP has any right to start speculating as to the reasons behind any of it tbh.

But she hasn't couched it as pondering, has she? She's presenting it as a foregone conclusion that anybody who is financially comfortable and chooses to work is selfish and didn't want children anyway.

If her OP was about "my friend X has told me that she doesn't need to work but doesn't want to make any sacrifices for her children" that would be different.

All the silly assumptions in her OP are what make her "accusations" so groundless.

And these attitudes are specific to wohm-familes because....?

I can see that the wondering why part is the inane pondering of a rather simple mind, Riven.

But the OP also includes the assertion that people who work full-time when they don't have to don't make any sacrifices for their children. This is followed by the implication that they only had children because they felt they had to.

That's not pondering to me, that's small-minded ignorance. I stand by the fact that she's speculating over something she knows nothing about.

I've read her posts Riven...

If you banned speculation on MN, it would be an awfully quiet board.

I have no experience of raising a disabled child Riven, I might just open an offensive OP on here about it and she how well it goes down.

My point exactly, Riven. Thank you

You know, pondering and wondering is great and we all do it. Pondering why some women have children is implying they do not care much for their children and don't have their children's best interest at heart.

You know, no matter how much criticism sahms take on MN or the media, I don't think it can never really match the accusations against wohms for being selfish, caring little for their children and not raising their children themselves. It's really nasty no matter how well dressed up as pondering/wondering.....

Xenia, I feel you have been an easy target and have been thinking about you as I get stuck in traffic, with bloody football fans. I thoroughly appreciate people with your, I would argue, extreme point of view. Although it does leave you to believe I'm a poor stupid version of a WAG in business, marrying for money and to serve. I digress, but without women like you to question our motives (our meaning women not SAHMs) and to invite debate about whether career sacrificing is really worth it then I am sure we would be a lot further behind than I think we are. I hope that women like you long continue moving us forward as due to people like you I have a choice about career break or ploughing on. I don't agree but I'm glad for your opinion.
As for the OP she surely got the debate I think she was asking for, if she were a working parent asking why some of her friends make 'no sacrifices' (whatever that means) then I'm sure SAHM would have further berated WOHMs and WOHMs would have berated those who don't give up anything as most have.... maybe??

"Too subtle for my simple mind. But then I'm disabled so that must be it."

What the hell was that in aid of?

Although I do concur on one point, it was rude of me to say that the OP had a simple mind. I should have reffered to her posts as being simplistic.

No one commented on your mind though, Riven.

PP, thanks. I welcome debate on all these issues. I am concerned fewer younger girls are at all interested in or think about sexual poltics enough (and I mean some of my daughters' student contemporaries not mumsnet posters necessarily). It would be great if we had reached a point where it was a likely men would be assumed to give up work as women, women were as likely to marry men who earn less as more than them and the cabinet was more than 50% female but until we get there we just need to be a little bit careful not to lose carefully won gains and rights by exercising "choice" to give up work and stay at home.

There has always been a feminist debate about whether women should adopt a "male" life but I disagree - I don't see it as a male life. I see earning money, wanting success, ambition as natural components of most men and women and that one isn't selling out as woman my leading that army or country or piloting that plain or running that merchant bank.

In some ways I'd like it to be harder for women to stay at home in the sense that their husband and they would have an equal chance at least after the first few weeks of who would stay home and they would need to negotiate over who will and in a sense fight to stay home giving men an even handed chance to make that choice and women who want to work but whose husbands won't "let" them a greater feeling that they can as well as helping those men who genuinely just don't want the pressure of being sole breadwinner to balance the load by both earning even if it's in jobs they hate and not insisting man sticks in work he hates whilst wife is at home which is where he would rather be. In other words a bit more fairness.

(FT, thanks. May be if I'd been happily married that wouldn't have been the case; who can say really)

I do agree with you and I understand how you want more for our young women, maybe we need a little nudge from legislation before we all start to change. My dp not educated but works his arse off could not take a career break and still earn the money he does, on the other hand I have qualifications and the confidence to retrain and have a product nearly ready for launch we will, obviously, make millions!! And I have a collection of 18 stories ready to publish, ahem ahem with all the other steps in between!!
I do get your point and I'm glad you make it.
The closest many of our young women get to sexual politics is being equal in binge drinking and sleeping around, I am just generalising!!