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?

The people on this thead who are throwing insults at other people for their choices are in bad faith: if you feel comfortable with your choice, then you should feel no need to defend it negatively by insulting or denigrating the choices of others.

OP YANBU.

No WOHM is a good role-model by virtue of being a WOHM.

Likewise, no SAHM is a good role-model by virtue of being a SAHM.

Surely, we all know that.

The caricatures being spouted on this thread, e.g. kittywise for the SAHMs, or Xenia for the WOHMs, are ludicrous and cruel.

Women need to be defended in all their choices.

I salute all you mums who do their job to the best of their ability, whether at home, or at work, or both, etc.

Kitty - your comments are so prejudiced and smug I 'm not sure they are even worth answering, but here goes anyway...

WHO exactly said it is better to have a career than stay at home? So many WOHMs have been saying over and again that it is everyones choice and no way its better than another, just different.

Though you seem perfectly conmfortable with saying it is better to stay at home than have a career, and we should just accept that?

I strongly resent you saying I do not care for my children. Why is being in the capable care of another adult for part of their day so damaging? Why do I have to justify myself to you??? Of course they spend time with me!

You are the worst kind of judgemental and smug individual who gives SAHMs a bad name.

It's not always the case that your career would be impaired, though. My sister took 5years out. She returned to her career working for a different company which offered much better training, flexibility, pension and less of a commute. She has done far better there than if she had stayed at her original workplace.

I don't agree people make choices in a vacuum. The more women who give up work particularly proper careers (working on the till in Tesco doesn't count) the harder it is for other women to make their way up. Why spend £100k on training a woman in some professions if she's like as not going to leave at 34 because she marries a rich male colleague? Why bother to encourage girls into engineering or to fly planes if they will give it all up to have 4 children in their 30s and never really want to go back properly? There are many many jobs where your professional reputation, contacts, being known etc is the key issue and if you take even a year out you lose those contacts unless you work very hard to retain them. If you take 5 or 7 year out and you're worthless unless youc an build them up again.

Evey woman who becomes a housewife is taking a political decision to damage other women if she would ever have amounted to much in any career.

Penthesileia - Great post as usual.

mrsgb, why do you think it bothers me? I was not referring to your personal choice, just the general choices women have to make. I suppose it bothers me a bit that you dismiss those choices just because you don't see them as applying to you.

Xenia: have you considered the possibility that it is NOT THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY OF WOMEN TO CHANGE THE WORKPLACE?

Sorry for caps, but I needed to shout that.

Men, AS MUCH AS WOMEN, should (be made to) realise that the workplace should change, FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL: not that women should be forced into a working model that is the consequences of centuries of social injustice.

Penthesileia - a great post, I think you sum up perfectly the reality of the situation.

I don't think there is anything more to say on the subject!

(Though Xenia, thats a bit over the top. What about personal choice? I think you post some of this stuff just to get a reaction, though you do also talk a lot of sense)

(O/T: PuzzleRocks! - how you doing? Baby on its way soon, I think!! )

Well who ever said people make choices in a vacuum. People don't like in vacuums.

It's not other women's fault that making your way up in business is hard. Its always been hard. It's been hard for men. It's just the same now women do it. Men aren't going to stop comjpeting with each other to make it up the ladder, and neither are they going to give women a budge up.

And why discount working on the till in Tesco's? Simply because its not a choice you would make, doesn;t make it an invalid choice. for men or women.

Why not encourage people to do what they want and what they are good at? There aren't many women who go into aeronautics by choice and of those that do they tend to be the sort that wouldn't give it up after having kids. People are quite good at sorting themselves out actually, and working to their own strenghts - just like you have done.

"Evey woman who becomes a housewife is taking a political decision to damage other women if she would ever have amounted to much in any career." That is hilarious. Why, when you apparently have so much, do you resent other women with less, but who are happy with less? You made a desicion on your own to pursue a demanding career. No dount it's been hard. It's hard for the guys too. You joined the frey by choice. You made the sacrifces you needed to do. The sacrifices men have to make when it comes to family. Is it slso SAHM's fault that it's hard for men too - because they do it for them? Of course it isn;t. This is the reason we are all alive.

Penthesileia - Great thanks. All set for a homebirth. Four weeks to go.

(Oooh - good luck. 4 weeks! Not long! )

As you were, everyone else - Harry Hill styleeeee: FIGHT!!!!!

Penth - I agree with you that it's in everyone's interests but can we realyy relay on everyone else to do it for us...and more importantly our daughters.
Don't we have to accept that we, as women, have to take steps to ensure that the playing field equalises?
Is there any point in us simply arguing that our daughters generation should see an equal number of male/female MPs if our generation refuses to stand for parliament.

Xenia, you're thinking is distorted and biased to suit your own life/qualifications/earnign potential.

To have just had a baby (or 2 young children) and to have to rush instantly straight back to work sounds BARBARIC to me. It doesn't sound like emancipation at all. It sounds like slavery, but instead of to a husband, or to a boss, or to a salary it is slavery to a principle!! YOUR principle!!

At the moment we have choice (up to a point, although personally my 'choice' is overridden by money) but you would like to erradicate choice and have us all slaves to YOUR ideals.

(I had a homebirth, btw (just thinking that my "good luck" there sounded like I was being funny about your decision), and I really hope it works out for you as you want. )

Jack99, I don't "dismiss those choices" I make the choices the opposite way from the way you have chosen to make them. I did go back part time for a short while (as I think you have chosen to do?) I found it didn't suit our family. It has done some short term damage to my career to make this choice, but I've taken the gamble that I will recoup that, and if I don't, I won't mind too much. You suggested I wasn't admitting the possibility my husband could leave me. I'm not, I'm saying I'm taking the calculated risk that he probably won't and if he did I'd cope.

My bit for feminism will be going back to work when I am ready and succeeding to the best of my abilities, which, as with most people who have posted on here, are considerable.

Litchick: hello I understand what you are saying.

But, I don't think it's a matter of relying on everyone else to do it for you. I think women are taking steps to equalise the playing field: every woman who says "it doesn't have to be this way", is doing her bit. But simply "acting like men" is not equalising the playing field: it's the working equivalent of climbing the ladder, then pulling it up behind you. I don't want that for my daughter. True equality is not simply a matter of apeing men. We need radical thinking on this matter.

penthe I salute you. If only everybody were as intelligent and sensible as you ...

And that's why I return to my point about men having to make changes too - it shouldn't just be the women who have to "adjust".

Xenia btw I sincerely hope for your future sanity that none of your daughters is going to do just that 'train for a highflyer job and then give it up to be a housewife'.

I'm going now. had enough already of this evil thread.

Of course it is Margot. What Xenia seems to be saying is 'other womenb should make choices in order to make it easier for me to make my choices'. It puts her needs at the top of the pyramid. Thing is, if every woman made the choices Xenia did (not that I am crtiticising her for making them - good on her on being able to fulful herself) the species would be extinct.

Glados - Great post.

I'm not sure why, but I think I love the evil thread

I think I may be masochistic, though...I did, after all, sacrifice myself on the altar of my marriage, surrendering my very being to my man, devoting myself to slavery and domestic drudgery for him. It took me 18 years though, to get to the point where i thought he was worth giving it all up for. That's partly cos he wasn't quite macho enough, though....he wasn't earning enough!

And, of course, I'm slightly sadist too, cos I took down as many women with my poor political choices as I could.

Thank God I only had one child. If I'd had a dozen dds I could have eliminated any risk of future generations of women being able to succeed in a male dominated world.

Each dd would have had a floral pinny, just like me, to help with the cake baking, the finger painting and the domestic drudgery.

We squilly girls would have ruled the world (behind our men, of course - insert slightly coquettish emoticon). We could have continued to raise daughters ad-finitum who would, because of our brainwashing, refuse to take part in worthwhile employment, but instead fritter our not insubstantial intelligence on baby-making and rearing.

Ah, what a Brave New World that would be

Penthiseleia - Don't worry, I didn't read it like that.