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”.

Whether the parents are working or not - exactly. So don’t muddle the two things.

Maybe it suited you to stay at home because you wouldn’t have been able to manage both working full time and have energy for your children. This is of course fair enough, but plenty of working parents manage both really well.

I don’t assume it’s always the woman. I know it’s always the woman, except for a very few men. It’s not even anecdotal 😉

Well, that’s that sorted then isn’t it.

it made me wonder why being a SAHM is so rarely viewed as valuable or productive in its own right

It was viewed as more productive when:

• women had more children & breastfed them all, so had more babies & toddlers to care for. Less so when many women now only have 1 or 2
• work in the home required more labour and included far more scratch food prep & making clothes etc, so womens time around DC was spent productively (many historical womens occupations reflect this, brewing, baking, spinning, seamstressing etc).

Nowadays many sahm of school aged children simply have a lot of leisure time. This is not productive.

Yes, but while it can happen with SAHP, it's practically assured with working parents (ETA: that there's less hands on time spent with them) - it only makes sense.

If your children are spending the majority of their waking hours in childcare during the work week, and is only at home with their parents through the week early in the morning during the rush to leave the house, or in the evening when tired, they unavoidably have much less potential for hands on, engaged bonding and learning through play with their parents.

I could've managed it fine, but there would've been 40+ hours a week that my children would've been in the care of some low paid nursery worker who didn't care about them, instead of with me. And that just didn't make sense to me. I just think more families should be able to have the choice to have a parent stay at home during those early years, instead of being so heavily financially penalised for it.

Perhaps if SAHP was more valued, more men would want to do it. That does seem to be the way men work.

I actually don’t think nowadays the sahm vs wp is a conversation that can be had as we’re all of us do exhausted with the hamster wheel that is life that in life in general most people have forgotten the word compromise exists and people have forgotten that people have different set ups and different houses have different needs. You do you has never been so apt as in the 2020s!

My kids could do with having a sahp- they are rushed everywhere and learning through us that work is something that exhausts and breaks but I was also a sahp and it has hampered us financially and they’ll see and feel the brunt of it as adults when we can’t help them or even they may see me struggling.

Also in every instance I’ve encountered the non sahp says they support the decision but I don’t believe they truly do, I think deep down they’re bitter/ not fully supportive in some way- most of the people I know who’ve split up were sahms (god I hate saying that but it’s true)

It’s actually more old fashioned to try and push one thing or another . It’s far more progressive to give the individual choice and support for whatever decision they make and path they choose.

And I agree it definitely does, but there are definitely some comments on this thread (and others similar) where it’s stated very clearly that the only right option is being at home with your child - this is obviously going to make working mum’s feel guilty about something that isn’t their fault.

if every single mum stayed at home with their children it would have wide reaching impacts including massively on the economy. We’d have a lot less people in the workforce and that would also impact key professions such as medical, emergency services and social care.

whilst I absolutely admire women who are able to stay home, nobody can pretend that it’s a perfect solution because it isn’t.

Some parents would go insane staying at home with their children, and need to be out in the world working, in which case valuing childcare/parenting more might lead to nurseries where employees are more highly trained and held to higher standards, and childcare is more subsidised.

Whereas some parents would love to stay at home during the early years but feel they can't, and would also benefit hugely from staying at home being more enabled by the government, if childcare/parenting was more highly valued.

I think valuing parenting/childcare much more than it currently is, and showing that financially would benefit both working and SAH parents - and most of all, children.

All I can say is that I had the privilege of spending seven years at home with the children, going back to work part time when dd was settled in reception.

I think the children benefitted hugely but they also benefitted from having a working mum. Not for the money but because it got me grounded back into reality.

We could only do it because we were early/mid thirties and I had thrown everything into my career and owned my own house when we got married. The first couple of years, money was tight and I did get a bit sick of the "you're so lucky comments" from the same people who'd spent five years telling me I should be living my life and travelling rather than grafting.

The children are now 31 and 28. Life had not changed for the better.

Working mums have been around a long time you know! I was very surprised by the OPs assertion that every one she knows who was a parent in the 90s stayed at home. I had my babies at this time. With mortgage interest rates routinely more than double what they are now (and pushing up way higher than double at times) the only mums I knew who didn’t work were those who had very low paid jobs, often social housing or private rents but eligible for housing benefits. Or the other end of the scale, married to a very high earning man but didn’t have or want a career themselves. My mum friends and I all returned to work after having our babies.

Now that I’m pushing 60 and my babies have grown into adults, I’m very relieved I always worked. It enabled me to have a career (plus of course dh and I both read to, played with, fed etc our children - these things aren’t the preserve of SAHM!) My adult offspring are happy well adjusted people so I don’t think it would have been any way ‘better’ if I hadn’t worked. I did reduce to 3 days a week when they were very little but that was more about me wanting to, not because it was ‘better’ than 5.

presumably if you are a SAHP you do it because you value it and your partner values it and is happy to be sole earner. I don’t know why you would expect validation from anyone else.

There should always be an element of choice but I find it a bit sad when women quit their jobs to sit around at home playing with a toddler, cleaning and watching daytime TV. It’s difficult to reenter the workplace and many don’t so even when their DC are at school they still sit around. I can tell who the SAHMs are when I (rarely) do the school run. They’re more than happy to stand around gossiping for ages and all they can talk about is their children.

But also, it sounds like your baby is quite young if you’re talking about first solids? Maybe just me, but I don’t class mat leave as being a SAHM? And mat leave is funded (albeit poorly!), plus you can claim benefits to stay at home with a child under school age, provided your household qualifies.

Staying home is great. I stayed home until my youngest was 4. Wouldn't expect the government to fund it because it does nothing for the economy and there is no evidence that nursery is to the detriment of toddlers.
Parents of young children are already supported to work very part time hours if they choose, and with childcare costs to help facilitate this. Every preference cannot be funded by the taxpayers.

I broadly agree with you OP, but I have to take issue with the appalling trope you have wheeled out about lazy mums on benefits feeding their children on McDonalds. That is an appalling thing to say. I was on benefits while bringing up my DC because I was a carer to my mum and to DP. Perhaps that makes me the ‘good’ type of benefit scrounger. I can assure you that my children were breastfed, weaned using the baby led weaning method, read to frequently, taken to stimulating venues etc etc. So sick of this either/or mentality when it comes to comparisons between those who work and those who claim benefits.

Humans never evolved for parents to be the only ones looking after children. We evolved to have everyone in the tribe to keep an eye out on children or pick them up when they are unhappy. As most people don't have a tribe around them, paying for it through nursery can be beneficial for the parents and child. No one wants burnt out depressed parents because they have to do everything on their own.

You don’t think working parents are financially penalised? Do you know how much good quality childcare cost ?

I think you just need to reign it in with your more developed and closer relationships to their parents children. My children are young adults now and I have seen this nonsense on MN for over 20 years. If giving up work fits someone’s circumstances better or that’s what they prefer, then go for it. I think you have made a mistake making your children believe they are closer to you and the other nonsense you are spouting. You have probably given them a lot of angst around maybe having to put their own children into nursery or feeling that two parents going out to work is the lesser option.

The government fund childcare because it makes economic sense to do so. They’ll get more back in taxes if parents are out at work, plus it provides jobs for others and so more taxes. Giving more money to parents who stay at home won’t generate more tax.

Then equally, society needs to understand the risks and benefits of being cared for full time by a SAHP.
We seem to have these discussions through a rosey lens where the child with the SAHP lives an idealic life of constant one to one bespoke care by the person perfectly qualified to provide it, purely on the basis that they had sex and created a child.
The child exists in a world of home cooking, imaginative play, crafts, and carefully curated social opportunities. Their home offers every equipment and activity a nursery could provide and parents are fully knowledgeable as to the early years curriculum and how to impart it.
No parent ever sits scrolling their phone while the child watches Miss Rachel on repeat. No child is dragged round the supermarket, left in the gym creche, given a screen while the parent meets their friend for lunch. No parent is bored, resentful, stressed or impatient. No parent has odd attitudes or beliefs, issues or baggage that would benefit from balance.
I'm sure there are SAHP for whom all this is true. But how do we possibly assess that in order to make generalisations about the care children recieve under this model?
The closest we can get is to assess outcomes. So we'd need to look at adults from generations where the model was more widespread. Are boomers and gen X happier, more confident, better citizens than millennials and gen Z?

Exactly. My gran didn’t even stay at home with the kids in the 1950s, she worked.

There is no measurable or observed difference on a population level in the life outcomes, behaviour or attainment of children who have SAHM mothers vs working mothers vs mothers who work part time. If SAHM were mass producing Nobel prize-winning scientists and captains of industry vs the crack-addicted-destined-for prison children working mothers were all producing then you may have a point but as they’re not, why should being a SAHM be “valued” by society? The value is to her immediate family, not the society at large.

Exactly.

Families with two working parents long, long predate the current social issues being referenced on this thread (by about 40 years). There have been numerous attempts to paint the rise of women in the workplace as detrimental to children’s health and welfare but not one has ever successfully established a causal relationship between working parents and delinquency/development/lack of academic success.

The period of our history where women stayed at home and men went to work was a historical anomaly.

People who want to and can afford to remain at home for the early years of their kids lives are very welcome to do so but why should an already cash strapped society financially incentivise women to to something which makes them (and their children) far more vulnerable without any measurable benefits to their children or to society?

I think parents talk about not being able to afford to stay at home with their children, so yes, while working parents are financially penalised (and should receive more support) SAHPs are more so.

I also think that people should go for what they thrive with - but I don't think it's fair that they're driven to make one choice or another due to financial hardship. Not when most governments want people to be having more children, not fewer children, and rates of reproduction are at all time lows.

I haven't 'made' my children believe anything - I've never talked about our parenting choices with them until they brought it up in their teens, having had discussions about each others' parents, and family lives. And no, I haven't given them any angst at all.

Yes. I am a parent to young adult kids. I have friends who worked FT, PT and who were SAHMs. All our kids now have the same ups and downs, struggles and triumphs. You simply can’t tell who had which childcare. They are all lucky enough to have stable homes though, and parents who love them.

And importantly, we never judged each other as parents!

Exactly. There is nothing for me to ‘value’ as such about someone staying at home with their kids. I am happy if that’s working for them. But I don’t need to value it?

Raising children is valuable. But actually we all do it, working mum or SAHM.

What I struggle with is women in the traditional role. I don’t think it’s good or safe and find it hard to understand how they can have self esteem without the critical agency they should have over their lives. Relying on another adult to keep your life safe, no matter how nice they seem, is fundamentally foolish. That’s what makes me not impressed by SAHM.

I'm not talking about child tax credits (which I'm happy for parents to receive). Nobody would equate receiving child tax credits as the government paying for people to "have" children. It's too negligible an amount. What you said was that the government should pay women to stay at home (equivalent to an employment salary I assume?).

Economic and financial considerations are just one of many factors why women aren't having children and the evidence shows that reason is more likely a factor in couples choosing the NUMBER of children to have but does not play as big a part in women deciding whether or not to have children in the first place.

Proof of this is Nordic countries. Scandinavian countries completely undermine the idea that women primarily avoid having children because motherhood would penalise them financially. These countries have very high female employment, heavily subsidised childcare, very generous maternal leave, culture of two working parents and strong employment protection for mothers. Despite this, the Nordic fertility rate has fallen off a cliff which shows that women make decisions about motherhood/fertility not based solely on financial reasons. Despite not being penalised financially for becoming a mother in these countries, women still choose to have less children or none at all. In fact you can see this phenomenon play out in many more egalitarian countries.

Also, there are loads of countries in the world that have tried various tactics to encourage women to have children - forgiving student loans in their entirety for mothers, no tax for life if 4 children birthed, free home for first-time parents, generous up-front lump sum payments for each child etc. None of these have improved the birth rate. Opportunity cost for women is huge now and cultural preferences and attitudes towards motherhood has completely changed. Industrialisation has made the "need" for children who once helped with family burdens once grown almost obsolete and more women than ever are accessing education and work opportunities. More women are just becoming more comfortable in saying that motherhood doesn't appeal to them.