Do some mums just not like working?

[Dragontooth]

I know this sounds awful, and judgey but I'm trying to understand. I am not a benefit basher and I used to be on benefits, also a single parent.
I'm on a lot of 'being skint' forums, I was on UC but now I have quite a lot of experience in various things so I like to try to help.
There are a number of mums who were previously on legacy benefits who are terrified by UC and the work search appointments. Lots who are unemployed and some who do very part time jobs, 10 hours or less.
I don't understand why they are so resistant to finding work or better paid work. Having been on benefits, it is a horrible existence. I was paid £850 per month. Clearly it would only take a MW part time job to make me so much better off. And they pay for childcare/ holiday club.
It literally changes your life. You can pay for things to have a better, easier life like driving lessons. Not only that but you are back in the work place so it's not such a shock when your children leave home.
I feel these women are so anxious, they can't see how their lives could look with more money/ options. Not only that but a lot of them have their heads in the sand about retirement, will we even get a state pension? Then there's the fact that it's so much harder getting back into employment after five or ten years out, I think that's what UC wants to avoid. I'm not saying it's a kind or person centred system but in reality is taking years out of the workplace really in these women's best interests either?
Disability/ disabled children obviously excluded.

So are you okay with others getting stressed out paying their taxes so you don’t have to?

This.

🤣

I work full time with a nearly 3 year old and another on the way. My job pays fairly well,
can be stressful, but I contribute a good chunk of our household income (husband earns a bit more than me) but we can afford a nice house, a foreign holiday each year, day trips a and a couple of weekends away and I never have to worry about paying for things like when my son needs new clothes and shoes, plus he has a savings account for when he’s older to contribute towards a house deposit / uni etc and the new baby will have the same.

but I work hard for these things, never take them for granted, and I switched jobs after having my son then was hit with redundancy after 18 months and have been in my current role just under a year. Plus with surgery a month before I found out I was being made redundant.

It isn’t easy, but I’d far rather financial security than not work. And I don’t want to be financially reliant on my husband either, I never was before we had kids and I don’t plan to be now.

You seem to think because you have a visible disability it’s more valid than those with invisible or mental health related difficulties.

lots of people with severe mental illness are in just as much emotional pain and cry every day too and can’t get out of bed, just because yours is physical related doesn’t make it more valid.
You claim your WAV is essential but you say you WFH and barely get out of bed most days so it must sit in your driveway most of the time .
I don’t judge you or care why you need your vehicle but some might, it’s none of their business though, you have to make choices that are right for you and your needs and stop policing others needs, disabilities and pain levels. You never know what others are going through and have been through in their pasts.

Yes exactly, if you have few or no school qualifications, the only jobs realistically on offer to you are care or support work… if you have your own children with ASD, why go and be a support worker for someone else with that condition when you are needed by a loved one with the same issues?
Many, indeed most, care or support type jobs involve working with people with challenging behaviour, not everyone can handle the risk of being hit or attacked or spat on as just a daily part of the job. Most of the smug, university educated, “I work from home so why can’t everyone else?” would not last two minutes in these sort of roles.

A SAHP on one ordinary wage was an anomaly of the post-war era (say 1945-1990) to think " it's the way things were" is a flawed concept.

As I've previously stated, I have five mental illnesses. My mental health symptoms are worse than my physical symptoms and I'd take pain any day over mental stuff.

I'd love to see where I said that physical disabilities were more valid. I'll wait.

I really, really couldn't care less if someone judges me for any of my decisions as a disabled person. Literally means nothing to me.

It use to be that the culture of one parent (typically the mother) being at home to raise children was the norm. Now woman are seen as lazy if they want to do that. In both scenarios the woman is considered less so I guess that hasn't changed.

Barriers to working-

Lack of qualifications/experience
Not enough jobs
Can't afford to learn to drive/poor public transport
No suitable child care options
A lot of MW jobs are shift work so unsuitable for people with children
Unsupportive employers
No one to have children when they are ill.
0% contracts so no guarantee of wages
Mh/disabilities make working more complicated
Childcare unaffordable in school holidays

For a lot of poorer people it is easier not to work.

I literally said I wasn’t judging you, I pointed out you seem to think you get to decide what’s essential to you (such as a car you hardly use) based on your personal circumstances which I know fuck all about and don’t care about yet you seem to think you can dictate to others what’s essential and what’s doable to them when you don’t know their circumstances. We all make choices about what works for us in the face of the cards we re dealt in this life, you come across like you have no empathy, or ability to realise not everyone is exactly like you. (Thank god for that).

Five! Plus being bedbound and vomiting 30 times a day and working full-time. You are superhuman.

It's not superhuman to need to support my family. I have to work because I have to earn money, despite everything that's wrong with me.

Are you implying that I'm lying?

Good job teachers with kids don’t think like you do! Or the workers who produce the food you cook etc etc!

Whilst I do think there are some people who abuse the system, it isn’t set up well anyway. When I became a single parent I had to use universal credit (self employed and earned enough to pay my 50%, but not 100% once EX moved out). As a self employed person you have a minimum income floor, and no additional support if for any reason (child being ill, business just being down) you don’t hit your MIF that month. I used to get council tax support as well but once I earned over a certain amount that was cancelled; if I had a poor month it’s not like I was suddenly entitled to that money again, so it made a few months a bit concerning on how I was going to pay all my bills.

Luckily business is a lot better now but I do understand why women, especially those who are single parents with no family support, work 16 hours and stay on universal credit. Once you’ve taken away the additional financial support you get, cost of after school clubs or sitters, I would imagine it’s hardly anything more going into your pocket each month.

I left school with just GCSEs. I had my first child just after my 23rd birthday, they were in NICU for a month due to complications. 6 months after they were born I went back to work full time. I then had another child at 26 and went back to work full time 5 months later.
Yes it was tricky finding childcare but not impossible. If you want to work most people can find a way (obviously excluding disabilities etc). I know quite a few women that don't work or work very part-time and the excuses they come up with involve some serious mental gymnastics, they know I have worked solidly since my children were born.....its like they don't realise I am not their target audience!!
I think a lot of women/people don't join the dots and realise that if the majority of us decided not to work the money they receive in benefits wouldn't exist.

Many people who could work, do not want to work. Variety of reasons: lack of confidence, laziness etc. Being a SAHM is women sanctioned by society so some women take advantage of the set-up. As do men whose careers then flourish.

And many women on MN don’t care about the gender pay gap or want true equality.
So many here criticising the fact mothers work now. Not realising that work can give some women a better chance to leave unhappy abusive marriages etc. It’s like feminism never happened.

With hindsight, I can explain. I am the main breadwinner in the family, travel a lot both around the country and abroad. Had enough to send dc to a minor day school, extras, etc. My dc friends' mum from Poland (they went to Alliance Francaise together taken by my dc) is on benefits, as is her husband. She is a physics teacher, just does not want to work.

I have to be objective and acknowledge, that the end result she achieved with her children at a state school, by staying at home and never doing a day's work in the UK, far surpasses what I achieved with my dc with all the money I earned.

She sat with them doing homework (she has 3 children), she took them to all the free classes going, she guided them through every daily step. She corrected every educational oversight of their school she noticed, she was their home tutor, nanny, friend. She was able to pick up on their mood if they were bullied at school and deal with it. (I could not do it over the phone and men, I am sorry, are not great at picking these things up).

And then there is her quality of life. There is not comparison between a sahm and a working mum, tired, and stressed with work.

The only thing you get if you work is the childcare element. You have to be on a very low income to receive most of the things you quote.

The world would still function if just one gender worked?? Ie only men or only women(although this would be impossible)
There were many years in history where it was almost exclusively men that worked outside the home. So no I don't think mums not working for a period of time causes problems in the greater scheme of the world. Quite the contrary actually

On the other hand, my friends and I have all just become empty-nesters. The ones without careers are now panicking. Two have expressed regrets about being SAHMs. I would never in a million years have predicted they would say that.

Every case is different.

I want to work more but the lack of available after-school clubs plus paying full time nursery on MW makes no sense. Just saying you had no trouble finding childcare doesn't mean it is easy for the rest of us especially with no family nearby I probably won't be pushed to work more by UC when my child is three because of my husband's wage but I do actually want to.

Which years? Poorer women have always worked. In low-paid manual jobs. In this country and others.

Not really, you're thinking of victorian times, where there were factories etc where the women also went to work. If you think farther back most homes were more cottage industries, so mum sat and weaved at home or assisted husband as a blacksmith or the society was agragarion so the worked alongside her husband in the field. (With children underfoot) It was only since the industrial revolution than woman, and more men, left the home and the 'home/cottage industry.

Why? My DC were in nursery full time and in Afterschool club. Both 16 plus now, both very driven and academic. Both lovely people with zero resentment for being in childcare. In fact they don’t even remember being in nursery, and had fun at the Afterschool club. Many of us can’t afford, or don’t want to be at home with kids all the time. In my case it was finance, I’d have gone 3 days if I could have. But I’ve no regrets really. I’ve had a very easy time raising two teens and I don’t think childcare has any negative affects on any of them.

Why the hell would you think she'd be worried about that??

Let me guess. You assume every unemployed mum on benefits is living in a council house, in a deprived area, has input from outside agencies, kids barely fed or washed, poorly educated, and because of mental health issues is immediately in the social services radar??

Disgusting assumptions but so very common.