to want to post on the "For my husband to earn £65,000 per annum and we still can't afford to live"..... thread because it's full???

[chockywocky]

i cant believe its full and and havent had my say.....

The thing is I can see some semblence of a sane argument in what Xenia has to say it is just clouded by...well god knows.

It is of course important to have strong female role models but I disagree that they must solely come from industry.

I was lucky in that I was in an environment where education was encouraged, was bright and able to take any opportunites afforded to me.
Not everyone has those opportunites.

As women we must work to provide the stability, support and opportunity that we need to go further and then we must support our decision to do exactly as we chose with our lives.

It's the ability to be what we want and do what we want that is important and working is just as valid as mumming as long as you are happy with your choice and not forced into it.

(kicks over soapbox whilst slinking away)

Wow, now there's a thought. I think I'm too old

Oh and syb you haven't upset me in anyway and I agree about the nursery thing we saw some that I wouldn't have kept our dancing bear in

I am lucky that I have a flexible working arrangement. But let me tell you, it is fucking hard work.

I am up at 4.30 every morning to either go into the office or start work at home so I can get stuff done before DP goes out. I then work when he gets back, either at the computer, or I go out teaching. I go to bed around midnight. My 2 are still young (2 and 3) and are very demanding.

I am, quite frankly, fucked.

I agree ronaldinho. my mum hasn't worked since she got married. But she's been a good role model, she is very sociable and pulls the wider family together, she's a good diplomat, selfless but no doormat. I've never doubted that she was very intelligent too, she still reads a lot, plays bridge, does the Times crossword in 5 minutes, but most of all, she is content, she's not materialistic, and she is very much her own person and utterly unpeturbed by what a stranger might think of her never having worked outside of the home.

A very good role model to me and my siblings I think.

I don't always agree with everything Xenia or anyone else says, but I think it's good to have such a mix of opinions on here & that people don't seem to be afraid of voicing there opinions.

Xenia, I'm just interested, what will you do if one of your daughters chooses to be a SAHM?

Also, your point about your DD's friend is quite patently irrelevant. Her parents are choosing a man for her and yet it is the fact that her mother does not work that makes it likely that she will not have a fullrange of choices when she leaves university. Really? Even you cannot believe that.

All I am saying is that everyone should do what they want - just please don't be so smugly superior about it.

Xenia, I'm just interested, what will you do if one of your daughters chooses to be a SAHM?

Also, your point about your DD's friend is quite patently irrelevant. Her parents are choosing a man for her and yet it is the fact that her mother does not work that makes it likely that she will not have a fullrange of choices when she leaves university. Really? Even you cannot believe that.

All I am saying is that everyone should do what they want - just please don't be so smugly superior about it.

By Xenia on Sat 08-Nov-08 12:28:53
"I don't find it particularly acceptable or in women's long term good in 2008 for them to live off mail earnings and most do work of course.

Xenia - with reference o your above comment....Here's something you've not thought of..... a partnership where one parent goes out to work to earn the cash and the other parent stays at home to look after the children. This is what I do and it's fab - my kids benefit so much, I'm happy to give my time to my family and my dh is able to get on with his work knowing everything is fine with the kids.

My mum was a sahm whereas my dad worked really long hours & we barely saw him from one week to the next but it's my dad who we always felt was there for us. Being a good parent has nothing to do with whether you work or not, still trying to figure out exactly what is about however.

Ready2, that's exactly the question I wanted to ask Xenia. What d'you reckon Xenia?

Cups etc

If women are unable to support themselves financially in an environment where divorce rates are just shy of 50% then that is very much a political and social issue.

Of course it's political, but then everything is. Still though, that doesn't negate any woman's right to be a sahm or say she's causing such a sorry state of affairs.
Now where's the wine..

I've often been asked that before on every mumsnet thread on working women of course. It's up to them. I'd obviously explain the draw backs but they hardly need to know those having come from a family home where their father did what he did etc. and doesn't support anyone. I would imagine they would realise many women cannot rely on men and how much I enjoy work. My son isn't into capitalism. That isn't a problem for me at all. I would hate to produce cloned children who were the same as me. I delight in the fact they often disagree with me.

On partnerships, funny how it's always the woman who irretrievably damages her earning prospects and the man who conveniently avoids domestic servitude and gets to preserve the nice balance of work and family though. If it were 50/50 as likely men or women stayed at home where one of them would only anyway earn a pittance then fine but it's not like that - women follow a norm of depences on men and many men in the end leave them anyway and huge numbers of women in their 40s - 60s bitterly regret that decision not to pursue a career. It also keeps you going in the 20 + years to 65 nad beyohnd when as a parent you're pretty redundant or have difficult teenagers or a husband who's disappeared if you have fulfilling work rather htan just the gin bottle and a daily trip to the gym or whatever. It is indeed a bleak long term prospect for most stay at home mothers. You have been warned.

Let's come back here when we're all 70 and see how regretted her choices.

I hate all this politcal bollocks! Surely the only important thing is choice! If you want to work. Fine. If you want to stay home. Fine. To me, the tax and childcare situation needs a good overhaul to really give this choice. We can't all be highly paid lawyers.

Most women with children would be a SAHM if they could afford to be.

My DH earns enough so I can be a SAHM. Many of my friends have to go to work.

Who envys who?

Well personally I don't envy you but I am glad that you are fulfilled in what you do.

And I hope my DD marries someone who allows her to be a SAHM if she wants to be one. I would rather that than she be a brain surgeon trying to juggle and £120k a year job and three kids.

Oh gosh. Do you think that women should be educated then? Surely a waste of money training all these women to be doctors and lawyers and stuff if all they are going to do is wipe bottoms and clean kitchens? Save the taxpayer a fortune.

xenia you wrote "It is indeed a bleak long term prospect for most stay at home mothers. You have been warned." on sahms.

I have to say that you just think about the money but a partnership can be equal in terms of what it contributes. Looking after kids is just as worthy as bringing home a salary.

Why is everyone talking as if staying at home to bring up young children has to be either done until they are old enough to leave home, or not done at all? What's wrong with one parent (mother OR father) taking a break from full-time work (if they can afford it) while the kids are young and need their parents, and then plough back into the whole career thing when the youngest starts school? If one of you CAN afford to hold back on climbing the career ladder for a few years and go back to it later, yet choose not to do that, then honestly, WHY take the decision to have children at all? Honestly, I just don't understand it. I can't see how anyone's benefitting in a situation where both parents would rather be at work for most of the hours that their children are awake.

It makes me absolutely guffaw when I see the likes of Posh Spice and Amanda Holden (noticeably looking groomed to her arsehole on Gordon Ramsey the other night), worrying about their career and their appearance to the extent they do. Those bloody long nails, how on earth do they even slather the Sudocre on their kids' arses?! I want to scream at them to have a few years out of the bloody limelight that they seem to crave, cut their nails short, and give their children some proper attention rather than hire a nanny to do it for them. And THEN go back to work when your children are less dependent. Selfish cows......to that type of women, children are just the latest must-have accessory. You see those sorts of women gathering at Pizza Express on a Saturday afternoon, impatiently pushing their offspring to the other end of the table and saying "In a minute, Serena", whilst they chat about the latest Botox treatment with their new best friend. The look on such children's faces makes me very, very, very ......the gap between the way us British and, say, the Italians, view children is HUGE....

re Xenia's "it's always the woman who irretrievably damages her earning prospects and the man who conveniently avoids domestic servitude and gets to preserve the nice balance of work and family though"

Yes, I am aware that my earning prospects are damaged by having paused my career and became SAHM when DD was 6 months old. However, there is no such thing as part time work in what I do (investment banking) and the few months I went back to work after maternity leave, it became clear that I would not see her at all during the week if I continued to work, for she slept at 7 and I worked until at least 18:30. Considering how I hated the brain death of daily baby routine during maternity leave, I knew SAH would be hard. Still, I quit work because I decided that DD's psychology in the first three years is more important than mine.

Now that we are expecting #2, my employment prospects look dim for another 3-4 years but the timing isn't too bad, given the current economic climate. Afterwards, we will see if I have indeed "permanently damaged" my earning prospects.

So, yes, I do see what Xenia is talking about, and she is right - working is intellectually challenging and fulfilling, while SAH with babies or small children kills your brain one cell at a time, with only other mums & kids as company. (This is not just about money, but I understand why someone doing minimum wage jobs would think it is.)

It's good womken talk about these issues. I find it incredible anyone might think it would be awful for a woman to be a mother and earn £120k a year as a brain surgeon. There can be so much fun in doing work you love. Brain surgery would be fascinating. Quite a few people in my family are or were doctors (consultants) and the work is brilliant if you love it. Why for most clever would would that be less desirable than being at home? Also no woman shoudl be the one juggling children and work. I never did that. We together mother and father juggled work and children. Often the problems are caused by women tolerating sexist men and not right at the start establishing that the father as much as the mother is juggling. Of course if you earn a pittance and he earns £100k that is much harder to achieve.

It all becomes a bit stark on these threads whereas in practice most people even if they stop work for a while do go back. I am not saying they never do but in some careers like posh spice, like mine where you have to maintain your reputation and contacts to be known as one of the best in your field, my brother's (he a psychiatrist, he has to publish paper, travel, lecture, be known in what he does and if you leave for a few years it's hard to get back to that level), investment banking presumably or any work - it just isn't possible to leave and then come back 5 years later and continue very easily. Some women however in pretty badly paid jobs use the time out to rethink and then return setting up a successful business and earning 10x what they did before. I am not saying that isn't possible particularly if you have enough self belief and capacity for hard work.

It's 7.45am on a Sunday. I could be in bed (no children are up yet). I could be tidying the kitchen (although it's pretty tidy anyway) but I'm in my office doing some work emails arising from my business trip to Iran this week and then I'm going to do some work and I'm doing it not just because my mortgage is over £1m because I divorced a financially rapacious partner but also because I genuinely like the work. Technically we could probably (or could until the recession started) sell up, rent and just about live in modest circumstances on the interest and not work again thus I work from choice really and always have even when 24 years ago I went back to work when daughter 1 was a small baby.

I don't agree with the poster above that a child up to age 3 does better psychology if the mother is at home. Very very important issue isn't it in general as to whether women stay home. I just don't believe on the evidence that the child suffers if the mother isn't there and therefore that has always made these decisions about work 1000 times easier for me than for women who believe the popular myth designed to keep women chained to sinks that it's mother or nothing or otherwise the child's psyche is shot to pieces for its lifetime.

'n partnerships, funny how it's always the woman who irretrievably damages her earning prospects and the man who conveniently avoids domestic servitude and gets to preserve the nice balance of work and family though'

No, it isn't always. Stop making such sweeping statements. Many people choose. You made it sound like evil men forcing women to leave glittering careers. Why do you hate men so much?
I chose to stay home. And when it became necassary, DH had to stay home too.
Maybe its cos I mix with home educators rather than rich people but there's lodas of SAH dads and couples who work part time each. There's no one way like Xenia seems to think.

'So, yes, I do see what Xenia is talking about, and she is right - working is intellectually challenging and fulfilling, while SAH with babies or small children kills your brain one cell at a time, with only other mums & kids as company. ('

Tosh. Home educating 3 lively children is challenging, fulfilling and hard work.