To be sick of reading on MN that you are a "good role model" to your dd if you go back to work??

[ssd]

have read this over various posts on MN over the years

usually posters give various reasons to return to work, all viable and good, but then the poster throws in the "good role model" shite

why always harp back to this?

if you love your kids, teach them to respect and care for others, learn manners and discipline THEN you are a good role model

most of us eventually will return to work at some stage and if we don't we will still be good role models unless we are lying about the house taking drugs and leaving the kids to go feral, which I;m sure not too many of us do!

I know I'll get slated on here as the going back to work to be a good role model line seems to be very poplular round here and I'm not trying to wind up posters who use it, it just seems to me people work out of necessity, not to be a role model

And BTW where's all the role models for ds's??? or is just loving them enough?

apostrophe - I am arguing with the people who say that you need to go out to work in order to model a good work ethic to your children!

I am surprised that people say they haven't seen it on here-it occurs a lot.

' What makes you a good role model are your morals, your love and your caring and your attention, how your child sees you treating other people, how you treat your child, being honest...'

I would agree with this-whether you work or not is irrelevant. You can work at a really high powered, high status job and be a terrible role model, you can stay at home and devote yourself to your DCs and be a terrible role model-it has nothing to do with whether you work inside or outside the home.
The important thing is that they know they have the choice.I think that people do what suits them and then try to justify it!

( Lindenglass - thought perhaps you had misread what I, or someone else, wrote)

lifes not a bowl of cherries - if you want pennies you have to earn them -

now all teenagers when they ask for money - i tell them to get a job.

becuase my job as a parent is to make my children functioning adults - functioning means working.

its not some high and mighty thing - its not a case of 'i go to work to teach my children by example'

i go to work - to eat, to live, to pay for things its not a choice. its a necessity.

but custardo, why can't a Dad teach that? I'm not saying it must be the Dad, but why not ever?

you can't teach financial independence by not working though, can you?

oh dh teaches that too.

i am saying its teaching by default - not design.

its compulsory to work...to live - for both of us.

As HaventSlept (how do you live without an apostrophe in your nickname ) says, it is one of the few "excuses" that WOHM have to offer when they are being shot down in flames for not being at home. And they are shot down in flames for not being at home all the time on MN. Not in real life I find, but definitely on MN. Most people who are brave enough to raise the fact that I have worked since DS was 9 months old express admiration at my juggling skills. Possibly if people are actually thinking I must be a crap mother they are too polite to say so - an inhibition no one on MN suffers from.

I think the role model aspect comes in when women are trying to make the point that they don't want their children to think that a woman's function is to service her family domestically. I don't see it as a DD issue - I have a son and I certainly don't want him to think that it is some future woman's job to cook, clean and do for him when he leaves home.

Big caveat: you do not need to be a WOHM to teach your children this - SAHM can teach their children this perfectly well, I am fully aware of this.

Well I can tell you that being back at work doesnt make me a good role model..unless you consider being permanently exhausted, snappy with kids and staff alike (due to knackeredness), attending meetings covered in snot then fogetting what you were talking about and living in a house that is actually dangerously filthy setting a good example for your DD'S!

I dont think working or not working makes you a good role model.Its what kind of person/parent you are that counts.

I think YABU and YANBU at the same time.

I think YABU to assume that parents working is not providing a good role model. I think it does provide a good role model. I know my daughter knows that we have to work to earn pennies to pay for things and so that is a teaching model.

However YANBU in noting that there are many different positive role models that one can provide. I think too often there can be the assumption that working is the only positive role model one can give. Of course that is rubbish - one can also provide a positive role model by staying at home and raising a family. I think it depends on what 'role model' you want to provide for your children, and of course that is subjective.

I also think dads working (or indeed dads staying at home) also provide a good role model, of providing for the family, paying for things etc...

There are hundreds of different role models - yes being a good mother is one role model, but so is working or staying at home too. You choose the model you want to pass onto your children, but I think you are always sending out messages about the world to your children through your actions, so if you are sending positive messages to yuor children through working, or through staying at home then you are being a good role model iyswim!

I think it is just as important that DCs also see that if for a while (or forever with good reason e.g. carer duty) you don't have paid employment outside the home, the world still turns, and the important thing is to find something useful and worthwhile to do with your time, and set your own direction in life.

My parents modelled the "have to work to live" financial independence thing like billyo. With gritted teeth and grim determination. Yes, that part of it was valuable, but it left my sister and me much less daring in terms of changing direction in life, seizing unusual opportunities etc.

I think that working mothers take lots of shit on MN. So they need to resort to the role model card, otherwise they are classified as: irresponsible, part time parents, why have children if you are not there for their most precious yrs, selfish, etc etc ad nauseam.
And no, I don't work.

I thoroughly agree with the OP.

I actually think that not working for money but rather working for the development and happiness of your family can be a fabulous role model for children, of either sex.

Apostrophe I am the major breadwinner in our home, dp works part time from home and is practically a SAHP for dd. So I totaly agree that it doesnt matter who does the working, caring or a mixture of both.

I am a bit of a hairy feminist so I like the fact that dd sees me going out to work rather than being in the home. She can just about remember me being at home though, so I think we have done well at showing her that the roles at home should be flexible.

That's not to say you have to be a SAHP to be a good role model, of course not. But to despise anyone who doesn't earn their own money (a minority attitude that occasionally appears on MN and elsewhere) is definitely damaging IMO.

"I think that working mothers take lots of shit on MN. So they need to resort to the role model card, otherwise they are classified as: irresponsible, part time parents, why have children if you are not there for their most precious yrs, selfish, etc etc ad nauseam."

Thank you franca. I have had all of those things said to me on similar threads to this, quite recently.

I think women get a lot of shit on MN, it never ceases to amaze me how vile and unsupportive women can be of each other.

Well said, Twinset.

I wish I had known in my teens that female bitchiness was apparently universal. I thought it was just the girls I knew.

I used to teach in a school that had predominately female staff and it was a nightmare because of the bitchiness. One of the factors in me leaving and looking for a school with a balance of male and female staff.

I just dont know why we do it to each other, I even do it myself and sometimes have an out of body moment when I think twinset what are you saying?

I have a foot firmly in both camps. I went back to work full time when dd was 6 months and plan to go back again when ds is 6 months. I would like to stay at home longer partly due to wanting to and partly cos I hate my job (not the work you understand..)! But I must go back and I'm proud that I can earn a good living and that my dd particularly knows that I contribute to the household, that I am happy and fulfilled most of the time.
I don't care what other women do, just don't make me out to be Superwoman or Superbitch!

Why does it always have to be a debate, with both "sides" having their tired lines.

WOHM "you are a good role model"
SAHM "why have kids if you are not going to look after them"

We are all parents, trying to do the best we can. Whether we SAH or WOH does it really, really matter as long as we love our kids?

"Some women ought to get their yummy mummy asses back to work or down the soup kitchen volunteering, and get some perspective in life, IMO"

boffinmum, that was a post from you on Wed 18-Mar-09 16:46:09

female bitchiness eh?

pot and kettle.........

Interesting, Twinset. I feel like that too sometimes.

Another way of looking at the SAHM/WOHM debate: AIBU to want people to move on from this, which has been stuck in the same groove for 25 years or more, and get on with their lives in the way that they think best for them?

But searching through people's posts to make a point is not a bitch free act either.

'when I think twinset what are you saying? ' Oh me too Peachy (well when i think Peachy, not TP LOL )

I think that these debates are actually quite silly often becuase many,many women go through both SAHM and WOHM persiods. I was a WOHM with the first two, now am a SAHM with the second pair; it's come to a point where my roleas carer is now the predominant reason but I would have been a SAHM atm anyway. Both sides have their equal value IMO. The older two kept a roof over their head when I worked (DH was going through a bad time and in and out of work for a bit) but now they have the benefits of me beinga round, and can see that it's nt all sweep- This Morning- Coffee, instead I will be volunteering at both schools, have studied and got a degree, etc.

We all have a palce in our society and the best role modelling is to make the best of the lot we have (and change it if we can and need to).

Kids also learn about balance: my D-Sis and her Dh work every hour and a few more, just buying a house or half a million. When the boys get they understand that if I am to be at home with them I can't bring in the money: whereas DN has to understand that having the massive priveledges he has, such as world travel / posh house / etc means he can't always have Mum and dad at every play or picking him up. It's the way of the workd and it's a fab lesson to learn, from whcihever angle. We choose our priorities and we make the compromises necessary toa chieve as much of them as is humanly possible.