I'm not against working Mums but this is going too far.

[Intefering]

Name changed regular.

A friend of mine has 3 young children with a partner in the military. He is due to leave in 3 or 4 years time I think.

Said friend has told me that she will be re-joining the Navy when her youngest starts reception in 2 years time, several reasons why, money issues, she's worried that after 8 years being a SAHM she will be unemployable, she loves the Navy and nothing else career wise interests her.

AIBU to suggest that this is a ridiculous idea?! I doubt she's considered all the time away from her DC, how her DH will cope picking up the slack at home on his own. Yes she may have loved the Navy but that's behind her and she should concentrate on her responsibilities as a wife and mother.

I'm trying to advise her as her friend but I can't see past her incredible selfishness, how can she have all these kids just to abandon them? She's worried that in 18 years time when all the kids have left home she'll be in a miserable job having watched life pass her by, I really want to tell her that she should of thought of that before getting pregnant.

AIBU and if I am can someone tell me how this will work because I really can't see it.

Marlborough savvy B of course.... topped up with morrisons diet lemonade

*bringing

oh I am - I looked DEAD classy walking out of the school gates yesterday clutching a bottle of red and a bottle of bucks fizz in my hands........I was SO tempted to light up the second I was outside the gates but didn't have the balls to do it so waited until I was at my "respectable distance from the school gates" to do that............and carried on walking down the street with my bottles of plonk in hand

Right.

I've rang my friend and directed her to this thread. I apologised if I had been less than supportive in RL and then again for this thread but I think she'll get a big boost from reading this.

Whilst her decision is one I could not make if it works for them that's all that matters and all it's taken for me to see that is a couple of hundred angry women.

lol,did i mishear biddulph tamborine.i salute you

phew - glad to read your 22.13 post - welcome on board - what do you want to drink

(cough, splutter). Miss Marple swigging Dr P. No, no, no. The picture's all wrong

Personally it's not something I can get my head round but at the end of the day it's up to OP's friend and her family to make the decision and make it work. She obviously has very strong personal reasons/feelings for going back I to the Navy. I can't imagine it's a decision anyone would make lightly.

ok caramel - try a picture of Miss Marple swigging Dr Pepper with a roll-up in the other hand...........that better?????

toccata, if dad not involved they are forever bereft of the manliness element

mines a bottle of lidl vodka

Good grief. If I were not already sitting down, I would have fainted, toccata. How frightfully...liberated of you to smoke (ahem) roll ups m'dear Miss granny stockings M

cost my dear cost - tobacco is much cheaper than cigarettes.....................and after I'd switched for cost reasons I went off the taste of fags and can't smoke 'em any more

Yes well m'dear. Get a job with the Royal Navy. Good pay. Great pension, I hear

Ops friend: good luck with resuming your career

OPs friend: good luck with your career and I'd ditch that freaky name changing weirdo mate of yours!

LOL Caramel.

and ditto to what both caramel and violet have said to the OP's friend.

Have to say - I "recognise" some of the characters on the latter part of this thread from other WOHM/SAHM, Benefits/politics type threads and I know we often have staunchly different views and I'm sure I'd had more than one spat with several of you.

However, this thread has proved my thoughts that there are only really a handful of "bad eggs" on MN and the rest of you are staunch in your views but perfectly good eggs

Heavens, is this thread still going?!

Have skim read how it developed since lunch and I do think the OPs other guises and views are as funny as her original ones. How many people choose their careers on the basis of whether or not they plan to have a family?

Most people decide what they want to do in their late teens and train for that. The ones that want families at that stage rarely choose to have careers that don't combine with having a family. The rest of us choose careers that we work hard at and then later on decide to have a family. It is then we think about fitting it altogether. In my case I chose my career at aged 8 and had ds at 39. The career/child combo in my case is not ideal (on call 24/7 and high pressured job). If I had given some more thought at aged 8 I would probably have become a teacher instead but that wasn't the career that inspired me. I suppose what I should have done is have a sex change and then I could have done both the career and family, since it seems it is only acceptable for men!

OP - I think your friend should involve the children in her decision, in a couple of years time when she wants to re-join the navy, by asking them how they would feel about the changes. As, besides the equal rights issues, it would be a big change for the kids to deal with.

If they are ok with it then I guess there's no problem.

If they have any reservations that she and her dp can't solve then I think it would be rather selfish to put what she wants above the feelings of her children.

No doubt you will all flame me for being smug or something, but there is something missing or incomplete in women who identify themselves solely as being mothers.

IMO we have multiple roles - as workers, mothers, wives, friends, daughters. Don't our children need to understand that work is part of that pattern and a normal part?

After school club is awful for children! At mine if the weather is nice dd gets to play on the slide/climbing frame with her friends. If the weather is poor, she gets to do arts and crafts or play board games with her friends.

Of course it would be far much more fun for her to play in OUR tiny garden (no room for slide) without her friends, or to play snakes and ladders with Mummy (who has already done it one zillion times and finds it hard to summon enthusiam) because that it better all round, and would make Mummy feel smug that she LOVES her dd and is doing the best by her....

Quattro - I'm not going to flame you I totally agree!

I'm am not "just" a SAHM, I'm a church organist and someone's friends (I hope ) too, I was also a wife, and apparently I'm also a daughter........although my own parents seem to have forgotten about their role right now.

In the same way that there's always enough love for our 2nd, 3rd etc etc etc child (as many parents do worry about "sharing" their love they have for their first born with any subsequent children) so are we capable of capably fulfilling more than one "role" in life.

LOL Porto - my boys are always moaning at me to go to the park after school........I'll be honest - going to the park is not on the top of the list of things I enjoy doing with my children ( and it turns out the reason is that the after school scheme that many of their friends attend often takes them to the park when the weather is nice

of course she should have a career if she wants one, but i have to agree with Interfering on this one. Why have kids if you are then going to leave them to re join the navy?
I too think its selfish.
I have a career i am a nurse. I would love one day take my skills abroad and to work in India or Africa, BUT not until my kids are grown up.Until then i will continue to work locally.
When you choose to have children, you make sacrifices. No matter how wonderful a father is, children need there mums to be around.

I nver thought I would say this, but where is Dittany when you need her!

"No matter how wonderful a father is, children need there mums to be around."

well I guess that's all the children with widowed fathers f*cked them .

She's not effing "leaving" them, , she's still going to be their mother,

oh gawd Porto don't - please - Dittany and I always clash on any thread we're on