AIBU to think being a SAHM is undervalued and misunderstood?

[erereeee]

I’ve been lurking for a while and finally decided to post. I’m a SAHM to two young children, and I can’t help but feel like society (and even some people on here) massively undervalue what we do. It’s as if staying home to raise my children makes me lazy or unambitious, when in reality, I’m working harder than I ever did in an office.

From morning to night, I’m doing everything: cleaning, cooking, laundry, childcare, emotional labour, organising appointments, school runs, etc. The mental load is constant. Yet, because I’m “just” at home, people assume I sit around all day. Even my partner, who works full-time, makes the occasional offhand comment like, “Must be nice to chill at home,” which drives me up the wall.

I see posts on here about working mums and how they “do it all,” which is amazing, but can we acknowledge that being a SAHM is also a full-time job? I don’t clock out at 5pm. I don’t get annual leave. And honestly, if you added up the cost of hiring a nanny, cleaner, cook, and personal assistant, it would be way more than I’d ever earn in a 9-5.

Yet, when I meet new people, I always get that look when I say I’m a SAHM, like I’m somehow less intelligent or lacking ambition. Why is it so hard to just respect different choices?

Let’s keep it civil, but I’m genuinely curious to hear what others think.

Fuck sake! It definitely isn't always a bloody choice to stay home. I had twins. I wanted to go back to work but as a family we would have been considerably worse off financially if I had (DH has a much higher salary than me so wouldn't have been worth him staying home) I tried to convince my workplace to allow me to go back for 2 or 3 days a week so that the financial hit would have been less and I could have kept my hand in, but no. It was full time or nothing. So I had to stay home till the kids started school. It wasn't a choice. Choice is the privilege and I wish people who clearly don't know what they're talking about would stop arguing that point.
I started back in the workplace (elsewhere) the DAY they started school.
I really hated being a SAHP. It was isolating and hard work. I much prefer going to the office. In every way (although if I could I'd love to work 4 days a week but that's not an option so I'll suck up full time)
But no. We couldnt afford the childcare. As a family.

@CGaus

I do think governments should provide tax breaks to single income households in recognition that a SAHM is doing societally undervalued caring work. I’m in Australia and for lower and middle income families there’s something called “family tax benefits part A/B” paid to stay at home parents with a working spouse. The logic is that if government funds are given to fund childcare places, they should also be given to lower and middle income single income families with a stay at home parent.

I think this is a very poor piece of legislation and highly problematic for these reasons:

a) It endorses the idea that a family with one non-working spouse is parenting in a way which is fundamentally "better", which is a morally driven position for which there isn't any evidence. "Societally undervalued caring work" is a highly subjective way of categorising this, driven by all sorts of moral baggage about the value of work vs childcare. You say you believe children do better outside childcare settings, you're entitled to your view (although I disagree) but the government has no place getting involved in designating what is and isn't "valuable".

b) It effectively rewards families for keeping one partner out of the workforce, which I think is a difficult signal to give if you are trying to encourage economic participation.

c) It incentivises women to be reliant on the family unit (and thus on their husband) for their financial security: it's turbo-charging a problem we have in the UK of women giving up their economic independence to rely on their husbands. Whatever you think about the merits of having a woman stay at home versus use childcare, you surely must recognise that women who depend solely on their husband for money are vulnerable. Why would a government want women to be less independent than they currently are?

d) It's profoundly unfair to single parents for whom staying at home is almost never an option unless there is disability.

e) While you're entitled to your opinion, it's a bit tone deaf (as a PP pointed out), to come on here from what you admit is a position of huge privilege, and lecture women who don't have the choices you have, about what optimal childcare is (surprise surprise its' something which relies on having a very large amount of money).

I'd never argue the toss over anyone's individual circs but it's the 'as a family ' that's the point here.

Many women, or families balance the financial hit against their own security and career progression and choose to be poorer overall for a few years but keep that hand in.

I have several friends whose whole salary equivalent and more has gone on childcare. It is a choice. Not one you took but a choice nonetheless.

@Thepeopleversuswork excellent, insightful post.

I don't understand why more SAHM can't just say 'I stay at home because I believe it's best for me and my family. End of.' The attempt, like that of @CGaus to want to generalise that into 'being a SAHM is best for children' is bizarre. There's absolutely no evidence of better outcomes. Surely the fact that you've chosen to be a SAHM (if it's a choice, and not because you can't afford good childcare)** surely that's the reward in itself. You and your partner are the only people who need to value it. You shouldn't want approbation from the rest of society or payment from the govt to feel good about it

@Catlord

I'd never argue the toss over anyone's individual circs but it's the 'as a family ' that's the point here.

I agree: this phrase "as a family" deserves unpacking a bit. You hear the phrase "it works for us as a family" and in my experience its usually code for "it works for him and I go along with it because I don't have the financial independence to rock the boat."

In nine cases out of ten in my experience the "we agreed it works better for us as a family" line is driven by a working husband who wants his wife to be at home to make his career progression more frictionless. It's the male perspective of "as a family" as opposed to the female one and, because he controls the purse strings, the woman rarely challenges that narrative.

So the idea of childcare money coming out of the family pot to support the woman re-entering the workforce becomes taboo, because the man doesn't want it to happen. The woman doesn't feel there's enough of a financial justification for her to argue the point on it so that becomes the family narrative. And that's a tricky position to be in.

Of course there are plenty of scenarios where women genuinely don't want to go back to work and that's fine if that's what they actually want. But I often wonder how many times this little phrase "it works for us as a family" is a woman parroting back what her husband has told her as being in the best interests of the family.

Exactly. It's the need for moral and societal "validation" which makes me so queasy.

This isn't the case with any SAHMs that I know. I was a SAHM when they were little, and it's because I very much wanted to be. DH was happy to do whatever I wanted. To be honest, he would have been happy for me to return to work so he didn't have to shoulder the financial burden alone. However, he supported my decision. We always knew I'd return to work once they were at school, so it was seen as a very temporary situation.
Every other SAHM I know has wanted to be one. None of them have done it for the sake of their husbands.

Absolutely to all of this. It’s very clear that ‘It works for us as a family’ is often a spin, possibly one the poster in question actually believes, on ‘DH isn’t prepared to do his part in looking after our children and household gruntwork, so it’s easier for me to take the hit even though it deskills me and removes my economic independence’.

@SallyWD I'm sure that's true in many cases and fair enough. Everyone has their own aspirations for family life and some people genuinely don't want to go back to work.

But I am suspicious of this "as a family" narrative. As @Coriol says I think it's often a bit of PR from the husband which the wife swallows.

I know of two friends who have been sort of pushed into being a SAHM by default because the husband didn't really want to cough up for childcare to support his wife working at a much lower wage while he lost domestic support. In one case it's a long-running dispute they've had and the wife has come close to leaving over it but has now resentfully accepted that it won't change and its quite depressing. The reality is that if you're a non earner or a lower earner, it's very hard to win the argument that the family really needs to spend an extra two grand a month for you to bring in £1500 or whatever it is.

That's why I'm particularly distrustful of the idea that being a SAHM should have more "validation" or "societal value" attached to it. There are already enough men who are banging this drum vociferously, we don't need women and politicians and society at large to have drunk this Kool Aid too. If women come to this conclusion on their own fair play to them but the idea of them being talked out of going back to work "because its best for the family" makes me distinctly unsettled.

Well it's me you're talking about here. And no I didn't do it for DH. His salary was twice mine (he works in Finance, I work in the charity sector) and for 2 babies (twins) nursery would have been a LOT more than I earnt. Meaning had I gone back (full time because it was that or nothing) we couldn't have afforded our mortgage/ bills. So feel free to make your sweeping statements about how we all must be little wifey s who submit ourselves to our husbands VERY IMPORTANT CAREERS. But in my case and I'm sure plenty of others you're just wrong.
If society wants equal opportunities then more subsidies have to be put into early years childcare. It is literally unaffordable for most people with more than 1 baby at a time.

Fgs, all this wrangling about families with a SAHM and hoe it must be a 'spin' or whatever.

If a woman tells you she wants to be at home with her own child - just believe her. That's all you need to know. The end. Get over it. It doesn't need to be twisted or second-guessed by people who are clearly projecting their own feelings of inadequacy or unhappiness. The lengths some people go to on here is ridiculous! It's just mums being with the baby they gave birth to for a few years fgs! When did this become something remotely unusual or something women even need to explain?

Working parents (or mothers in this context) work their 9-5 and then come home and have to do everything you do between the hours after work. They don’t get time off or holidays either really .

I’ve done both roles and while they both have their stresses, being at home and not working was far easier to juggle. I was master of my own day.

Im not a people person but even I did find being at home isolating.

Of course but I’m just trying to point out that EVERY SINGLE PERSONS situation isn’t comparable at all. Everyone jumps on SAHM but having a toddler at home for example is different to a SAHM who has all day to do chores as her children are school age. I’m a SAHM but still have to do my ironing/cleaning when my little one has gone to bed as it’s simply dangerous/impossible to do with him around. Also someone who lives in a small new build for example has a massively different work load to someone who lives in an old bigger home requiring lots of maintenance - all very different

@outofmexico I don't think anyone is arguing with that!

I've already said, if a mum says 'I'm a SAHM because it's what I want' then fine. That's a straightforward honest statement.

It's the likes of @CGaus and a few others who want to generalise from that, that it's actually better for all children to have a SAHM and who try to insinuate that children have better outcomes if their parents don't work which is really tedious.

Just be honest. We weighed up whether to stop work or continue working when we had babies. We decided to both continue working for the various benefits that brought us. I would never argue, however, that being a WOHM made my children 'better' in some way. My 3 are all now happy, well adjusted adults with good qualifications and at the start of good careers. Which I've no doubt they would be if I'd been a SAHM too.

And you do realise that working parents don’t clock off. We do everything you do minus the time we are in paid employment.

Except you don't. That's a fallacy working parents tell themselves but if you have a job outside the home you don't do everything a SAHM does. Administratively yes, childcare workers don't make your dentist appointments for you - but caring for, raising and doing all the work that comes with children, no. During the time you're at work, someone else does it. You can't be in two places at once.

Oh he’s very much mobile! He’s crawling and rolling and I can’t leave him for long at all. Which is why I have a high chair and playpen which keeps him amused along with his toys. I can give him his toy musical remote control and he’ll happily sit with it for an hour. Once he gets bored we just do something else. I’ve been very lucky with my first for sure, but I definitely don’t think he takes up so much of time that I never get a rest!

Yes and if a woman doesn’t want to then believe her too instead of the usual SAHM trope of working mums being jealous. I could easily have stayed home with my babies full time, but I would rather have stuck pins in my eyes. I did part time and we all got the best of both worlds. Some women just want to work full time in careers they have put blood sweat and tears into and they don’t want to give up just because they had a baby, it isn’t always because they can’t afford not to.

I agree with this. It’s so much easier to go to work than be in charge of a small child all day long. I’ve done both.

When I worked full time I dropped my child off at daycare at 7:30am and picked him up at 6:30pm. I only had to make my child’s dinner, bath them, read them a story and put them to bed, then pack a nursery bag.

@Yourenotthemaincharacter wrong, dh and I raised our children. That's what parents do. It's a very reductionist thought process to think otherwise. Raising children to adulthood is about imparting values, modelling behaviours and is a whole lot more than just the practical aspects of looking after a child.

Our children spent some of their time in nursery, though of course dh and I remained the primary carers and the biggest influence.

To put it simply, As working parents, we outsourced some of the care, so some of the playing, nappy changing, meals, activities, to the nursery. So yes, during those hours, our children had other people doing those things with them. When they were at home,

Posted too soon

At home, it was me or dh.
But the actual role of raising our children was us

There is a huge difference between staying at home with babies and being at home when older children are at school. Who works harder is irrelevant to me - different jobs require different levels of work anyway - but anyone who is capable of working but chooses not to is living off the efforts of everyone else. Being at home may be what an individual wants, and may benefit other members of the family (usually the man, who has a clean house and fewer child-based commitments to interfere with his career), but there is no contribution being made to wider society in the form of producing goods or providing services, and no income tax or NI is being paid by the SAHP.

The question shouldn't be who works harder, as what does it matter who 'values' that? It should be who provides for the SAHP in terms of health, education, roads, defence and so on. It doesn't matter if the other parent pays huge amounts of tax, as their tax bill is based on their own income, not that of the family. One person cannot pay the tax of another, so that argument doesn't stand up. Also, as things stand, the fact that pension contributions are paid to SAHPs until their youngest child is 12, every year at home equates to a year of pension later on. So on current figures, a SAHP is getting something like £11500 pa paid for by those who do work, even though the money is deferred.

Of course when your kids were at home with you you did the raising. That's just... how life works. This isn't a comment on how dedicated you were to your children's development or happiness.

But while you were in paid employment you 'outsourced' the care - the physical and emotional hour-to-hour and minute-to-minute work that goes into having children in the same space as you - to someone else. So you absolutely didn't do the equivalent amount of work that SAHMs do in terms of your children's day-to-day lives. That's not an attack, that's a fact. Unless you are a magician.

@Yourenotthemaincharacter total mis reading of my post. Yes, I absolutely agree, what I said was that we outsourced some aspects of care, some of the time.

In my view, raising children is much bigger than the sum of those things. It doesn't take place within prescribed hours. The values dh and I imparted and the influence we had over our children were still present when they were at nursery (or visiting grandparents, or at school....)

Did I talk about older children at school? I did not.

I don't really know what to say about your tax argument - except that being part of a society means accepting that some people will pay more or less tax than others (and sometimes none) but yes everyone will still have access to common services. If you'd like to ensure that everyone only gets the proportion of care or services they've paid for then you might want to petition for that. Hold a rally or something.

Ultimately, as I keep saying, surely the most important thing is raising children into happy, well adjusted adults who have healthy relationships and can make a positive contribution in life. And that can be done whether you work or not! Dh and I both work; I'm sure our children would have turned out just as wonderful if I don't!