to ask people whose mother worked when you were young, how you felt about it?

[groogle]

I'm really interested in this, as my Mum was a SAHM all her life. I'm going to be working FT soon (DD will be 18 months), and I anticipate that this might be the case for a large part of my life, although I am lucky enough to have some flexibility. So, I wondered, if there are Mumsnetters out there whose Mum's worked FT from a young age, or close to, how did it feel, and what do you remember about it? I hope this hasn't been done before (or at least recently) - I did a search and couldn't find anything.

The holidays were the best, all my friends would come to my parent free house!

I'm afraid I'm on the 'didn't like it at all side' Can't remember exactly when my Mum went back to work full time, but certainly by the time I was 8. Never had a childminder or nanny, although we had lots of good neighbours who we knew well as I grew up in the countryside. I was definitely a 'latch key' kid from then on.
The worst bit from my point of view was coming home to an empty house especially once both my sisters were at secondary school and got home much later than me, which is why I'm slightly obsessed now with always dropping off and picking my children up from school even though I work. I probably took the freedom for granted and have always been very independent. I certainly had far more freedom than my children, although that's partly a sign of the times and the fact that we live in a town.
I wouldn't say I resented her working as I knew she had very little choice and we had fab times as a family too

My mum worked pretty much f/t from the time I was 10 weeks old. Pretty amazing considering they had to break her coccyx ( I think ?) to get me out and I was a preemie with 4 weeks in the neonatal ward.

She was training to be a doctor and if she had taken any more time off she would have lost all the years of study so I don't blame her for going back.

I had a lovely CM and was very much one of the family there. I was a bridesmaid at their daughters wedding and her granddaughters were flowergirls for me so we are still very close. Their family were huggy and tactile unlike my own parents so I enjoyed going there and still remember lots of positive things about it.

I have always been very independant but I don't know if thats linked or just a personality trait.

Looking back I don't blame my mum at all for the choices she made, in her position I don't think I could walk away from all those years of study and training. I know that she was tired a lot, and apparently when I was 2, she went away with Dad on holiday and left me with the cm, which as a working Mum I find very strange, but I think she must have been exhausted as Dad did and does nothing around the house.

I believe as someone has said earlier in the thread its more about how you behave when you are with your DCs and provided you aren't working ridiculous hours and have your own priorities straight in your head, then it can work for both parent and child. I'm glad I don't work full time though and am hoping to go from 4 days to 3 because as DS gets older , he is 3 now, he seems to need me specifically more, rather than just a loving and friendly adult, he needs to know that Mummy will be doing this or that with him and I want to be able to be there for him a bit more.

Mum worked full-time but both my parents were teachers so less hours and holidays free. Not only that but as they were new to the country and living in a horrible bedsit, I spent most of my first year 'back home' in India with grandparents.
I never really thought about it or expected Mum to be there to pick me up as she had always worked. Of our family friends most mothers worked as they were all recent immigrants-and had to if they were ever to afford a house, car etc when starting out with nothing.
Mum did really well and when she retired as a head teacher the tributes from colleagues, pupils and parents made us all very proud of her.
I went to various nurseries, then a mum of a friend had me as an informal mindee after school, then from about 8 I walked home and let myself in. I would periodically lose my key and have to climb over the side gate into the back garden but really don't remember any other problems. Oh although once I remember being off school with a vomiting bug and being left at home with a bucket and some tissues! My dad did pop in at lunchtime to check on me though...

i think this thread shows how some people remember childhood as a happy time with a loving mum, and others less so..

however, this doesn't seem to directly correlate to whether the mum in question was working outside the home or not!

my philosophy is just to do the best i can for my children, love them, keep them safe and hope that when they grow up they remember the good times and forget any bad

My mum worked fomr when I was very young, apart fomr having time off when she was having babies

I have four younger brothers and sisters, so I did a lot of work helping to look after them, clean the house and feed them. From a young age my parents wold leave me in charge.

I don't ever remember minding that my mum worked, we all knew she did it for the money (as well as for her sanity). She was, and still is, a great amazing mum who always put the needs of her children first and would take a day off if she needed to for us.

She ran her own business too whn I was in my teens, so was even more busy and her and my dad would often have to go out at night on work related stuff and leave me in charge.

I think often that we forget that parenthood isn't just about the childhood years, it is for life. Some mums may be wonderful with babies, others come into their own with older children or even as a parent of an adult or as a grandparent.

My mum admits she would probably have been bored at home with small children, but I wouldn't swap her for anybody else and I do get a little teeny bit jealous when other people like my ex BIL adopt her as their mum.

My Mum worked until I was 3 and then again from about time I was 10 or 11. Can't remember the early years at all, but we had a lovely nanny, so I'm sure I was fine. When I was older I used to love coming home to an empty house (I had 3 brothers so it was a bit of a luxury).

My mum worked from when I was 6 weeks, and although people don't want to here this - I still feel awfull when I think about it. She satyed at home when my elder siblings were young, and I'm still very jelous of them. This might be because she was a fabulous mum, and my childminder was quite dull.

When I was 12 I wrote an essay at school about why I thought mothers should stay at home. My teacher and sister were , but I think my mum secretly agreed with me.

My Mum worked.

She was/is a great Mum, but I felt a bit abandoned as a child, I had a great child minder when I young, but when I went to middle school we were put with a next door neighbour who openly hated me and my Brother, the poo hit the fan when I started high school when said child minder called me a bastard and hit me round the head, we then had to sit in the garden after school until my parents came home.

My Mum was always stressed and always cleaning when she was at home, my Dad was a senior manager so was always working too.

It didn't make me want to be a SAHM though. If I had to work to support my family I would, just like my Mum did. I'm lucky to be able to SAH.

My mum worked full time from the time that I went to school when I was 5. I hated, hated, hated it. I had 3 older sisters, 2 of whom who used to come home and physically fight each other. We lived in poverty and there was no central heating or anything so in the winter we used to come home to a freezing cold empty flat. I specifically didn't do this to my children and although we had no money at all I stayed off work until they were at school full time and then went back part time. I would never do to my dcs what I had done to me. I have absolutely no good memories of this time.

My mother worked part time when I was in infant school, full time from when I was 8. I liked it, mainly, I liked the independence, the being home alone (with siblings) after school, the sense of freedom, of not having a mother whose life was utterly invested in ours.

this is similar to another thread I've just posted on so I've C&P

My dad (lone parent) had his own business and worked all hours so I was constantly with friends/childminders etc. I didn't mind at all, quite enjoyed visiting all the different people actually! I look back now and think It Was No Bad Thing; takes a village to raise a child and all that.

I think it depends on the child, my Mum worked full time, my Dad worked away and we were palmed off onto whoever would take us.

My eldest sister was fine, but my little sister and I felt very hard done by and resented her for it although we knew financially she didn't have a choice.

I am a sahm which has been influenced because of how I felt as a child. My dh's mum was a sahm until he was in secondary school but then she worked term time only so was there when he got home from school so he wanted me to be a sahm because of his great childhood memories.

glad, my mum hated being at home and was crap at it. she was a much nicer mum when she was in work

My Mum worked FT - from when my eldest brother was 8 ( I was 7 and my little bro just 5) we used to catch the bus from school to where she worked. We used to wait outside until she finished working ( as a teacher in a further ed collage) her collegues and students were really cool and used to keep an eye on us. Although 1 night a week she used to work until 10pm which was a pain - we had to go to sleep in the car.

She is really organised so dinner was already cooking in the oven by the time we got back.

I don't remember liking it or hating it - it just was. I think she copensated in other ways, always making sure the time we spent together was "quality". I feel sorry for the amount of effort she put in which we didn't appreciate. It is only now that I am working and have kids that I realise how much effort she put in to keeping us happy. Things like taking other peoples classes/ marking because she felt that she "owed them" because they had had to keep an eye on us. Not that they asked - just because she felt that was fair.

The only thing that annoyed me was that my older brother was given more pocket money to look after me and my little bro. He regularly caught the bus without us.

my mum tried to work but dad said he didnt want his children comming home top an empty house.
any other mum who worked in our area was seen as working for pin money or husband had a shit job!

My Mum started her own business, and I remember my friends at school saying how much they admired her and wanted to be like her. I guess we were lucky because my Dad worked at home (farmer) so had some flexibility, and Mum would always come home and make chicken soup (metaphoriacally) if we were poorly...the thing I hated most was waiting for the bus to come home (school was 8 miles from home - private - and had to wait 40 mins or so for the bus, and i guess it would have been easier to be picked up. Also we pretty much cooked our own junk microwave meals for tea once she started working, but I blame the arrival of Tesco in our local area for that, not Mum!

My Mum worked nights PT when I was small, I remember her sleeping during the day at the weekends and being told by Dad to be quiet when I went upstairs. I have to say I didn't like her doing that.

She went FT when I was at school and we had a really nice childminder so I was happy with that. Then when I was 14 onwards her job seemed to make her really busy so I was responsible for looking after my younger brother and sister and cooking meals, washing, other house jobs, etc. She probably thought I was old enough for her to take her career really seriously but I did need her around a lot still and didn't like the responsibility. Sometimes she wasn't back home until 8pm which I hated and it made Dad grumpy too. She's had a successful career and I admire her for that. It didn't make me unhappy I just would have liked her around more. It's a very difficult juggling act I think.

I've chosen to be a SAHM even though we really need me to work too and I'm working on trying to do that around my children. I feel the need to be there for them based on my upbringing but that's my personal choice and everyone does things differently.

My mum started to work full-time when I was 4 and I had a miserable childhood. I felt very vulnerable and sad.
In the mornings before going to school the nanny would take me and my sister to wish our parents "Good morning" and that was it I didn't see them again until the next morning (they finished work late). Sometimes after nursery if my dad or mum were not in a meeting or very busy, the chauffeur would take me to greet them (we were not that rich but had a driver). But it was very rare.
I envied the girls whose mums did the school run and cooked lunch.
So I'm obviously a SAHM. When my children are older I might get a part time job. In the meantime the poor souls have to bear with my traumas and frustrations

My mum stayed at home and she should have worked.
She would have had a job rather than a career but i suspect a lot of her violent behaviour came from being in poverty and being stressed and had she been able to put us in nursery and have some extra cash we would have all been better off.
If you are a good kind patient mum though I do think you should move heaven and earth to stay home.

I was, and am, very proud of my mother. As a small child, this was partly because her job seemed quite glamorous - she was a journalist, while the only other working mothers I knew of were teachers.

When I was older, it was because by then she was a single parent, and I could see how hard she was working every hour of the day, running the house, looking after us and holding down a career.

She was much more fun than most of the other mums I knew. We had mother's helps so (almost) always got to come home to our own house, which I really appreciated. Being able to relax in your own space does make a difference, I think.

That's one of the things I worry about with ds, if I ever manage to get my career going again, as that kind of care doesn't exist now unless you can afford a nanny. (I'm freelance and work from home, but if I'm not going to starve as an OAP, really need to think about getting a Proper Job at some point.)

Weegle, that sounds awful

My mum worked full time when we were small and throughout our teenage years ( she retired when i started uni, a bit worrying!) and it was great. As a teenager, i had a much better relationship with her than some of my friends did with their mums. I appreciated the time off we had and, as a latch key kid, i enjoyed my freedom. However, i could win any argument hands down just by saying those terrible words ' you arent a proper mother@ what a cow, now im a working mum i fear those words will come back to haunt me!

While as an adult I absolutely respect my mother for working, and I am too a working mother. I have one of the strongest memories from my childhood being my mother walking past my school gate on her way to work at break time when I was about 6, and I was absolutely devestated that she was not able to take me home, and that I would have to go to the babysitters that evening. I recall begging her to take me with her, her crying, and me crying. She changed her route to the bus stop from then on!

Admittedly I was at school anyway, so would not have been with her right then whether she was working or not, but I would not see her until 6:30pm. I also think it was a symptom of other family life issues, so as an adult I try to not to view my negative memories of being left alone a lot with too much weight. Mum needed to work, as a single mother of 4. I understand that. But would loved for her to be there for me a bit more.