AIBU to think staying at home with children is undervalued?

[Amby99]

I’m not ignorant of the fact that staying at home isn’t financially possible or desirable for everyone, and I don’t think children who go to nursery are disadvantaged whatsoever . There are brilliant nurseries, brilliant working mums, and plenty of happy, healthy children being raised that way (and fulfilled and happy mothers)
However, I do wonder whether society (or the government) has become so focused on measuring “productivity” through paid employment that we’ve started to undervalue the work involved in raising a child.
Badenoch saying that the government doesn’t want to “punish working parents” in relation to childcare costs … it made me wonder why being a SAHM is so rarely viewed as valuable or productive in its own right.
Preparing my baby’s first solids, BF him, reading, playing, taking him outside, talking to him, letting him explore and generally being available. It feels like important work, yet because it isn’t paid it often seems invisible.
There are of course many advantages to nursery, and that work can be important for a mother’s identity, finances, career and mental health.
But why does the conversation seem to focus so heavily on encouraging parents back into paid employment, while choosing to provide that childcare yourself is rarely encouraged or valued in the same way? I’m not talking about mothers that sit at home all day feeding their child McDonald’s and claiming every benefit under the sun. I get why they may be encouraged back into the workforce and their children would be better off at nursery. BUT I’m sick of having to feel guilty of my choice to stay home. Every parent I know who was a parent in the 90’s stayed at home and it wasn’t so frowned upon.

I just think it should be seen as a worthwhile and valuable choice rather than something that needs to be justified because you’re “not working”.

Agreed. It’s like they really WANT this to be the outcome isn’t it?

You are also missing the point that the rich have never looked after their own children, in the past or now. Rich women did not work but also had an army of staff, or at least a nanny. Only the poor looked after their own children and then one person had to stay at home as there wasn’t many options. Single mothers would be put in work houses, if you had a husband he was the only one able to have a bank account and buy a house.
being a stay at home is now being placed on a pedestal of ‘I am looking after my child’s better than working women’ but in reality you are not, you are just doing grunt work that was either passed onto staff or done as a necessity in past times.
children thrive with love, education and good role models, plus a little luck and genetics thrown in, who looks after them all day has nothing to do with it.
so no, your stay at home mum role doesn’t hold any status, it’s a choice, do it or don’t but don’t expect anyone to pay for your privilege, especially from the taxes of other working women.

And it seems, now that having children is both optional (happily), and raising them (whether with the help of full time nursery care, or stay at home parenting, or a mix) is seen as something doesn't contribute to society, people are stopping having them...

People also talk a lot about careers, but a lot of us (perhaps not on middle class mumsnet) are just in low paid jobs (someone has to do them, after all), and so giving up work for a while isn't a sacrifice that hugely impacts earning potential. However, having children is still a financial drain, whether you go back to work ASAP or not.

Like op? 😂

I think a child whose parents see raising them as "grunt work" or akin to cleaning are probably better in paid child care.

I think there is a middle ground and working part time is the sweet spot. I don't think its good for anyone for children and parents to be together 24/7 but I also don't think its good for kids to be in childcare 5 days a week 12 hours a day

which is actually pretty nasty isn’t it? This thinly veiled resentment that children of WOHM grow up just as happy and well adjusted as children of SAHM…

Being a SAHM is a totally valid choice it that’s what a woman wants and has a partner who’s happy to support it. But it’s irrelevant beyond that - it’s no one else’s business. And as I said upthread, if a woman does it expecting her children to grow up happier/ better adjusted/ more successful than children who had working mums - they’ll be in for a disappointment! Hundreds of thousands of us have raised children to adulthood while also working. It’s not some new phenomenon!

I went job share and their grandparents had them 2.5 days. I loved my time with them. Skint for 10 years but they were my happiest days. Every day was a laugh.

I know a lot of women who have taken the job share route (and one man), mostly in education, and none of them regret it. I'm glad it worked out for you too. Some things are more important than money, ime. That time flies by so quickly, and it's so precious.

Raising them is different from doing things around the house related to them. There is plenty of grunt work involved in childcare, you can raise kids but outsource the grunt work. Many people do. Cooking, cleaning, washing, admin etc. There is the easing part and there is the grunt work part. Rich people outsource the grunt work and have done since the dawn of civilisation.
I personally do all the parts. And there is a considerable amount of grunt work involved.

This government is deliberately targeting the aging population, in just about anyway it can, probably because they don't vote Labour.

That's why I said many, not all.

Children in full time nursery spend 40-50 hours/week in these settings, which comprises the majority of their waking hours. We know that nursery aged children are developing at an exponential rate, and that their development during this period has a critical impact on their later life.

Large numbers of children spending long hours in nursery is a relatively recent development. Children are now spending hours and hours of their lives in a very different environment to the children in previous generations.

There is a lack of evidence to show their developmental needs are being met as well or better than they would have been in more traditional childcare arrangements at home and in the community.

Given the huge importance of the development of children on society as a whole, it is short sighted for government to fund initiatives to generate additional tax in the short term without considering possibly longer term effects.

I'm education!

Some things may be more important to a child than having regular nutritionally balanced meals, a bed to sleep in in a warm, clean home and clothes to wear but I struggle to think of many.

Anyone who says "some things are more important than money" has never really had to worry about money.

Well, you'd be very wrong then. Grew up dirt poor, spent time homeless as a teenager, and technically speaking, we're still fairly poor even now, compared to the average at least. But we have what we need, we live within our means, and we're happy.

Skimmed a lot of comments, has anyone said why bother to have children if you don't want to raise them yet regarding working parents?

at least once, these threads are very predictable aren’t they?!

Not all children of WOHPs spend 40-50 hours a week in nursery settings in any case. Mine certainly didn't.

But the evidence doesn't suggest that their developmental needs are not being met in any case. If that were the case, then we would expect the research to show less favourable outcomes for these children as they grow up, but it doesn't.

OK I stand corrected but surely you can understand that when you do have to work to support your children, having someone who has the luxury of not having to do this pop up and loudly proclaim how much better a job she has done than the people who work is more than a bit tone deaf?

Telling parents who have to work to pay bills that "there's more to life than money" comes across as staggeringly lacking in self-awareness?

There may be more to life than money in the sense of a child's hierarchy of needs, but the money to supply the stability, the nutritional wellbeing, the ability to do anything at all, is pretty damn important.

As someone who has always worked to support their child (not by choice), one of the things which I find most insulting on these threads is the implication that working mums work in order to fund "luxuries": fast cars, make-up and clothes, expensive holidays etc. Working mums by and large work to support their children. You may feel that you're doing the right thing by not working (and who knows, you might be right) but don't insult us by pretending we do it out of neglect.

And yet on another thread, there are women insisting that if a woman has more than 2 children she should quit her job because it’s an inconvenience to her employers and colleagues.

Not yet but it's only a matter of time before someone breezily tells us "you'll never get the time back!"

It’s a good job this poster doesnt know my children. My three have grown into happy well adjusted adults with dh and I both working. My three all achieved well at university and are embarking on interesting careers. They have a close bond with Dh and me. They have healthy, happy relationships and friendships.

obviously not what a small minority of posters want to hear. Why, I wonder….? 🤔

I think its because society, for obvious reasons, values work outside the home because the jobs people do are things we need. Women out in the world are often providing necessary and important services, and are also giving us representation in the public sphere, role modelling for future generations of girls that the world doesn't have to be run by men alone. These are important and worthy things.
Women who choose to opt out of these things can sometimes feel the need to frame their decision to do so as superior, to over compensate.
Which is all a bit silly really. As we should be able to acknowledge the societal value of the contribution made by working women, and accept without judgement that sometimes women want to make decisions for the benefit of themselves and their families alone for a time, and that's OK, and doesn't need justifying or affirming by framing it as the better model.

As I said, there isn’t a huge body of evidence and it’s obviously complicated by the fact that there is huge variability even within home environments and childcare settings. The research does not clearly show favourable or unfavourable outcomes either way.

If government are going to incentivise parents to put their children in paid childcare for longer and longer hours and from younger and younger ages there is responsibility to ensure that these settings are good enough. At the moment, we don’t have that evidence so we don’t really know.