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”.

I wouldn't consider you a 'hormonal new mother' after about 4 to 6 months. That's why.

Oh, biology, or holding a baby in my arms wasn't why I wanted to be a SAHM. It just made financial sense, and was what I'd wanted, and we'd planned on, since I first knew I was pregnant. And being able to work in a full time job that could actually support a household wasn't an option for me, so there was no possibility of knowing I could provide for my family alone. Everyone is different.

I don't think talking positively about being a working mum is frowned on? I think it's great to be a working mum, if that's what works best for you and your family.

I’m sure they do love you being a SAHM now. My point is how things may work out in the future, which is important to consider.

My mum was a SAHM until I was 7 and I had no recollection of her doing that.

Many of us like our jobs. Many of us have jobs that don't require us to be at screens each day.

I like going to work. I like earning money. I have a job that makes a difference to society and I raise my children too. I want to look back at my life and realise I did more than leisurely chats with friend, preparing meals and cooking meals.

You don't want my life and that's absolutely fine. I wouldn't want yours. It sounds completely empty way of life day in day out when your kids are at school.

But the point is we're both happy with our choices and that's the main thing.

No. We both prefer to do one thing and do it very well. Both trying to focus on work, home and kids is very muddled, nobody is clear on who is doing what. I’d actually rather work FT with a SAHD than do that, it’s more clearly defined who’s doing what, nobody forgets or argues. All the best companies run with clear divisions, you don’t get everyone doing a bit of the admin, the finance, etc. My husband can focus on work and excel, I excel at home and never forget anything. My home runs beautifully, I like to focus.

Actually, all of my relationships with family and friends have flourished since I’ve had more time up dedicate to them. I especially love spending more time with my own mum.

It's my business because you're wanging on about your perfect life on a public forum because you believe it's the way things should be. If you think your life is no one else's business, don't share it in a public forum as the gold standard while putting everyone else down. Simple.

My husband is very happy, we both work less than full time so we spend half the week at home and half the week at home so have plenty of family time and a strong financial future for our child. He gets to work less because I work, I give him the freedom to have more time at home and less time at work by working myself, because we're a partnership. He's very grateful and thoroughly enjoys being at home with his daughter more than most men get to, it's a great gift if given him to contribute my labour and earnings to the family pot than to be a hanger on who expect him to do it all by himself while I live the easy life. I wouldn't tolerate somebody wafting about the way you describe while I work my fingers to the bone in a place where I felt like a slave, therefore I wouldn't expect my husband to tolerate it either.

I'm not quite sure I said anything about your relationships or your mum.

The point is there is no one superior way to do things. I don't look at your life and think "wow I'd love to live like that". I'd hate it just as you'd hate mine.

And I also have good relationships as well with my mum. It isn't exclusive to stay at home mums!

Why did you do the same, with additional angry rants complaining about your experiences? It's a mystery, I suppose.

Well choices had to be made at 6 months but I also breastfed for a long time, which means the hormones cling on…

I breastfed for three years with each of my children, and I was not some hormonal creature because of it! I suppose perhaps you were.

Still, when you said 'hormonal new mother', I was imagining 6 weeks postnatal.

That's one thing I loved when my children were small, and I was fully SAH - I visited my mum most days of the week as we lived within walking distance and she had some health issues at the time (a bad shoulder needing surgery, which she was on the wait list for for ages), and we did so many activities together with the kids - art galleries, matinees, museums, zoos, parks, gardens, and all sorts of interesting experiences. It was a really special time for me.

ha! Well done you. Perhaps all those leisurely coffees sorted your hormones out quicker than me. Or, you know, maybe we are just different. She also didn’t sleep which won’t have helped with emotions, but I would say it’s fairly normal to still feel “postpartum” for a good year.

H loves messing about with big computers, data centre big, which is his job. We could not afford a hobby data centre. To give you an idea, if I got a job my yearly salary (around here) would be about his quarter bonus. Which to us isn’t worth it because H would lose a lot of his free time and our standard of living in the house would plummet and we would become a much more unhappy household.

I don’t need to feel appreciated by society, it’s irrelevant, and I do bring in income but it’s by choice when I feel like it.

H & I are happily utterly dependent on each other.

If you want the morbid details I am covered financially if he died, he could afford a housekeeper, we have had these morbid conversations.

We know we are in a privileged position to be able to maximise time/money/resources as a family. We both work at this to give our children what they need, what each other needs and what we both want. We each have our insecurities, fears but talk them through, we regularly check-in to see if we need to change anything.

I am a creative, educated woman, I have been offered work and turned it down, once teens are out of the house I have a plan. H is going to retire early and he has a plan.

This isn’t the family set-up for everyone. But it’s the one that has emerged best for us. And we acknowledge we have these choices, that aren’t available to many.

Not sure what more appreciation is required really.

Not read any of the thread apart from OPs posts. Hopefully it’s not turned into a bun fight of stay at home vs working mums. Everyone has a different financial situation, personal preferences and priorities. I’d say the majority of mums are doing their absolute best for their kids and judging them based on whether they work or not is irrelevant. A lot of the time it’s not an actual choice: people need to work to provide for their kids. I know lots of working mums and a few stay at home mums, all doing a great job.

Back to OPs posts.

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.

You are referring to Conservative Party’s recent proposal to end the current policy where once one parent in a family is earning over £100,000, the family is no longer eligible for 30 hours “free” childcare from 9 months, or for tax free childcare. Instead they are eligible for 15 hours from 3 years old.

From BBC news:
Badenoch said: "What we want to see is more people in work and not taking the wrong decisions or the wrong choices, and it doesn't matter whether they're earning £10,000 or £100,000 - what matters is that people are out there working". Asked if this could result in someone who earns £1m a year getting free childcare under a Conservative government, the Tory leader responded: "It doesn't matter what you earn - we don't want you to be punished for working hard. What we're trying to do is grow our economy."

This is a change from their previous standpoint. It is a good idea. The £100,000 threshold is arbitrary and if adjusted for inflation I believe it would need to be £135,000. I do not think it devalues being a stay at home parent at all; it is aimed at encouraging parents to earn more and therefore pay more tax. Badenoch is basically saying she doesn’t want parents to be tempted to fiddle their earnings to be under £100k so they don’t lose funded hours. It may also encourage higher earners to have more children as it will be more affordable. More children now means more tax payers in the future. The birth rate is falling so the government needs to make having more children more appealing.

It will also enable more families to make an active decision for one parent to stay at home because they want to, rather than being forced into that decision because of the cost of childcare. Such as in the following scenario:

Parent 1 earns £110k
Parent 2 earns £40k
Total household income £150k

Already have a baby, get pregnant again with twins. Three under two. Childcare costs £91 per child a day, £61.5k a year for 45 weeks childcare for three children. Parent 2 is basically “forced” to give up work, although doesn’t want to as they enjoy their job and there is potential pay progression. Or parent 1 reduces their hours or pays more into their pension so they are still eligible for funded childcare. Either way, less tax is being paid to government. Plus, imagine the impact on the mental health of parent 2 of giving up a job they love, and having three under two full time?!

However, if they both earned £99k each, they’d be eligible for funded childcare and tax free childcare, despite earning more as a household than the previous scenario.

The lower earning parent in these sorts of scenarios might struggle to get back into work through loss of experience and confidence once their kids are at school. They are also very, very vulnerable to financial abuse by their partner if their partner is a dick.

The current threshold also unfairly penalises single parents who earn over £100,000 and don’t have another parent to share the childcare load with. Long story short, 100k threshold is arbitraty and unfair, it belongs in bin.

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?

From government policy point of view: we need more taxes/tax payers. Otherwise the economy will shrink. If everyone chose to stay at home until their child was at school, less tax.

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”.

The current policy change will help make this an actual choice for more families. Unfortunately in the current economy being able to choose to be a stay at home parent and have a comfortable income is fairly uncommon.

BUT I’m sick of having to feel guilty of my choice to stay home.

Who makes you feel guilty?

Unfortunately, society does tend to undervalue “women’s work” on the whole. Traditionally female jobs such as those in education and healthcare are looked down on. But without them, society would break down. Same with the work mums do, both stay at home ones and working ones, it’s all irreplaceable. But it’s also implicitly expected.

Someone always has something to say about the way you are a mother. I got mum shamed by a stranger just yesterday. Just ignore any negative comments and focus on doing the best for you and your family. Everything else is just noise.

I’m a stay at home mum for now. I value it. My partner values it.

I know what you mean, I did extended breastfeeeding and was a soppy mess. A happy soppy mess most of the time but the crying at John Lewis Christmas adverts whilst the rest of the house looked at me emotionless as I cried at a man on the moon looking though a telescope with no protective spacesuit!

Although the first 10 minutes of Up no one can get through without a tissue!

Have you given him the option to be a SAHD while you go to work full time, given how he feels?

I just think it's possible to make sensible decisions as a woman even if breastfeeding. I wouldn't want to think that people think breastfeeding = irrational, and hormonal. But fair enough - we are all different.

I think it's laughable some SAHMS making digs at mums being "wage slaves" and hinting at freeing themselves from the corporate world as if they are some part of the anti capitalist establishment sticking it to the system.

The only way women can stay at home is because they have a husband out there working in a job funding them to do so. And time and time again we here how them being at home allows their husbands to focus on their jobs and careers without the demands of childcare and housework.

It's capitalism and these corporations that allow SAHMS to stay at home in the first place. You aren't any less part of the system than those that are working. If you're husband is able to focus on his career to able to fund you stay at home then you have a lot less freedom than you think you do if you're reliant on one wage. Relying on one wage, doesn't give you autonomy. If the main income goes then it can have disastrous consequences.

Most people accept these risks i assume but this idea that you're somehow have total freedom and automony as a stay at home mum is ridiculous. You're still dependent on someone paying a salary to enable you to stay at home.

I did make a sensible decision. I just felt emotional about it because I was hormonal and not sleeping. Jeez…. Not sure why this is so hard to comprehend or why it needs so much discussion.

Breastfeeding is facilitated by hormones. Breastfeeding mothers are factually, hormonal. Nobody but you has said it makes women irrational and unable to make sensible decisions.

Absolutely this. Everyone's life experiences and challenges and coping mechanisms are different and nobody should be judged either way. I'm sorry you're going through this. I also struggle with various health challenges and it extra hard when mine were so little - and that was even with my mum's support! So I absolutely empathise with you. It must be so hard. I hope you can find some support and help with your situation. x

They really do need to bring back that 😂 emoji!

The argument at the moment about how we need more tax payers, there are huge numbers of people, young, middle-aged, in their working twilight years, who are looking for work and can’t find employment.

If employers were crying out, we need workers, we are willing to pay well, we are losing production we have positions we can’t fill.

This might be an effective argument.

But right now there are hundreds of thousands of people looking for work or under employed or underpaid.

In some ways me staying out of the workforce is leaving a job for a household who needs the money more.

We get no money from the state and H, even with my lack of tax contributions, and the teens, we are still a net contributing household just income tax wise.

If H took a lower paid, fewer hours job so I could get a job we would switch to being takers out of the system.

You see, you are actually the one stating that the ideal set up is both parents working reduced hours. That’s pushed a lot on here. It’s not something we aspire to. We have been an extremely strong partnership for 20 years, many of the strongest familial or professional partnerships are made up of 2 people who play to their different, but equally valid, strengths. Your way of being a partnership is not the only way. It’s actually a fairly modern trend.

According to two other posters, it makes them unusually emotional, which isn't usually considered particularly rational. Personally, I don't think it's helpful to push the idea that women with breastfeeding older babies and toddlers are hormonal and emotional because of it - women hardly need a reason to be taken less seriously by society.
But there we go.