thinking its mad, how everyone assumes your going to return to work, when your dcs start school?

[milkgoddessmakesthefinestmilk]

im not planning to, i want to be the one that takes dd to school picks her up from school is there if shes sick or on holiday.

don't school children have about 3 months of hols a year?

although as an epitaph:

RIP FindtheRiver
'The Poor Man's Quattro'

has a certain ring to it!!!

This thread is turning increasingly Daily Mail.
Children as accessories and bloody quality time at the weekend. Ha! What is this world coming to?

Ecoworrier - your first post was excellent.

Quattro - what is your purpose here other than to humiliate? Trawling through PP's posts to pick holes in her logic. Sheesh.

Do you really not have any work to do?

I am amused by this need to justify how we spend our days in order to be considered worthwhile human beings. Successful men take pride in being able to spend time on the golf course but if a woman talks about engaging in enjoyable, unpaid activities during school hours, many on MN label her a waste of space!

Chances are your gravestone will say "rest in peace" or something like that. Unless you really luck out and get to have "poor man's Quattro" on it.

www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/libimages/376.pdf This is interesting and questions whether we should be putting economics and feminism before childrens needs.

Janni, what nonsense. Why would I have an agenda to humiliate? All I can say is that I'm not the one on here who's had a post deleted!

PP told me that she wasn't opposed to women working - so I found evidence that suggests otherwise. Anyhow I really am off this thread now - it's not been a productive discussion - I suppose there never really was going to be much mileage in discussing women's rights with women who fundamentally want to eschew them ...

I would rate a man as a bit of a twat if he thought being successful was about being on the golf course.

posie is nuts. Or pissed. Or both>

But men and golf is not a good example of anything. Golf is famously risible.

I am not sure how it can be 'womens rights' to deny (or want to deny) some women the choices that they want to make. I have both worked and stayed home and may do both in the future and I am grateful for the choice. Surely it would be dictation to force mothers to turn their children over to someone elses care when hey are quite willing to do it themselves.

Going back to Daddycool's comment on how lots of people in extremely well paid jobs hate it...well, sadly, many people I have encountered seem to prove his statement correct. DH was in investment banking for many years and he and his collegues/friends all bitched and complained about how they hated the job and thought it was boring, but they all stayed because of the carrot of million pound bonuses. Same for the extremely well paid corporate lawyers I knew.

I have worked very hard in my life (anaesthatist), and am now a sahm due to a variety of reasons. Who are these sahm who have the time to watch telly? My day:

6:am wake up, pump, get breakfast ready for everyone, change and feed baby. Make sure DS1 eats, help him change into uniform. Make all beds, clear away breakfast dishes

8:30 drop DS off at school

9:00 tidy kitchen and living room, do laundry, check e-mails, answer e-mails (usually related to DH's work)

10:00 wake and feed baby whilst doing some PA things for DH

10:30 get lunch prepared (not sandwiches...a proper meal), put laundy in tumble dryer

11:15 leave house with baby to run errands (I do PA things for DH who works from home, plus always lots of diy things for house or last minute groceries to buy)

12:00 pick up DS from school

12:30 back at home. baby to bed. Eat lunch with DS

1:15 clear away lunch things. Sort and answer post. If get a chance, take care of garden for a bit

2:00 wake baby up and feed him while doing some research on the web for DH

2:30 dinner prep/e-mails/PA work or school PA work

3:15ish: Take DS1 to various activities (sports, museums)

5:30 back at home. Feed DS2, bath him, feed him again, put him to bed.

6:30 feed DS2, bath him, read books with him, put him to bed.

7:30 get DH and my dinner on. eat. clean up dishes

9:00 relax

9:30 pump

10:00 wake baby up for dream feed

10:30 tidy up house

11:00 read in bed

11:30 sleep

This doesn't include school PA meetings, different art or charity events I like to attend or excercise, which I try and slip in.

Not eaxtly on my bum watching Jeremy kyle and stuffing my face with bon bons!

There's more to life than money, morning glory. I wouldnt stay in a boring job that I hated just for the money; nor would my DH - there's a world of exciting opportunities out there.

Who wants to deny women the choice to stay at home? Not I.

The issues that troubles me is that women earn significantly less than men - a difference which is only partly explained because they work in significantly worse jobs than men - which in itself is an ishoo. Less financial independence, worse pensions yadda yadda yadda.

I honestly don't see this as a wohm vs sahm debate - most women work - just in pretty bad jobs - and I think that's actually quite a bad thing for equality.

The pnes i knew were in the states.

I agree with findthe...., but once you start earning that kind of money, it's hard to leave.

There seems to be an assumption by those employed that we can all have happy fulfilling jobs but the reality is that there aren't that many great jobs to go round. We can't all be educating the next generation, saving lives, helping people or being creative. Most of us are stuck doing retails or office based jobs, even if they are professional boring things like law or accountancy

morningglory - who are these mothers who sit at home watching daytime telly? I don't know any either. Only telly I watch is whilst I eat my lunch (because I don't want to get butter all over my laptop so I can't MN then).

I have said before I know very few SAHM who do just that. We all some combination of voluntary work, working on small jobs for themselves or their husbands or studying.

I do find it strange that WOHM try to tell us how great work is and how awful being a SAHM is when the reality almost all of us have had experience of work before children arrived and yet, in most cases, they haven't had similar experience of being a SAHM. I suppose we ought to forgive them their lack of understanding since they haven't done it themselves.

But then do you think women choose 'bad jobs' or that society encourages this? I did read that only 5% of new mothers want to return to f/t work where maybe the better jobs are. I know quite a few women who work at supermarkets now yet are higher qualified, but they say this work 'fits in better' or they can work 16 hrs and get the tax credits (for a lone parent friend). Isn't this an enabling choice in some cases? I guess it depends on whether you are working to pay the bills and your circumstances.

niece, a lot of WOHMs have had some SAHM experience through their maternity leave. I took a year off for each of my 2 dcs, making a total of 2 years' SAHM-dom.

Thanks morningglory. I'm satisfied that your day is productive only joking. That does look pretty packed! I'm guesing pump is exercise? That's something has definitely taken a back seat for me!

gravestone will have to say something good in order to divert attention...

I'm still at jajas. I think that would be the life for me if I could afford it!

well, personally I think its sad that work in a supermarket fits in better when you are a highly educated skilled woman. I think you should be able to find higly skilled work which would fit in with your role as a parent and pay the money you are worth.

jellybeans, I think it is just a function of demand and supply, rather than 'society. Women are more likely to take a career break when their children are young and then seek to find work when their children are at school that allows them to do the schoolrun and fit around term time.

There is a limited universe of jobs that allow that kind of flaexibility, and they are flexible precisely because they are unskilled work (shelf-stacking). In other jobs, it becomes too tricky to offer such flexibility where the skillset becomes higher because how are an employer going to find a skilled worker who is prepared to cover the role ONLY during school holidays, say?

Result, too many people (usually ex-SAHMs) chasing too few unskilled jobs. Result is bad bad pay, no prospects. Brings down the earnings figures for women.

To get a wellpaid pt job, you need to work fulltime in a responsible position, prove your worth to your employer, who MAY then consider flexible, maybe even term time working as a sop. But that usually means no long career breaks. Which is why SAHMs lose out when they step off the employment line.

Alternatively, go back to work fulltime after a career break. At least, there will be a wider range of roles out there which are responsible and pay better, if you can find an employer that won't penalise you for the career break (skills obsolescence is a big issue).

Oh sh*t - did pump meaning expressing breast milk...?

agree blueshoes. I took 3 maternity leaves, of varying lengths, and on my third one was running the home and looking after 3 pre-schoolers. So it's fair to say that many WOHMs do have experience of being at home.

I think there is some truth in what you say niecie, but to some extent, how much you get out of a job is a subjective thing. Some people love the analytical aspects of specific types of legal work for instance, while some people love accountancy, and others may love the social aspects of other kinds of work. Of course there will always be some jobs which are generally held to be low status,low waged and deadly dull - and IME, the vast majority of parents value education and training opportunities for their children precisely because they want them to avoid these.
jellybeans - I think to answer your question, it's a complex issue. I have known some women who are in a sense 'underemployed': they have the skills and qualifications to work at a higher level but choose not to. In some cases this can be empowering, if it's a positive well thought out choice, ususually for a fixed period, to tide them through a particular phase eg I've known friends do night shift care work because they need the income but have several preschool children and cannot afford childcare. In that situation, then yes, to work at night when your partner can do the childcare is a positive solution. But I think a lot of other women fall into the trap of thinking that they have to fit around school hours (more so if they stayed home during the preschool years I think, as they have no experience of using childcare). This can be a limiting thing rather than empowering. The woman can lack confidence that she can return to a higher status job, and also lack confidence that her child will be absolutely fine in childcare for a few hours after school. So I think it's a complicated issue, with no one single reason.

morningglory, your day is packed, and rightly so, because you have a young baby to look after. Lazyhen, wasn't your question in relation to mothers whose children have gone to school?

well when dd goes to school, if i wanted to i could get some locuming work, pays about 25 to 30 pound an hour, but i don't need to or want to.

so, ner ner ner ner!!

although, i do agree i may well change my mind by then or decide to have another baby!
yikes...