Why do we have kids if we can't look after them ourselves?

[tothepoint88]

I offered a view on a couple of threads that is perhaps different from most of the mums on this website. I apologise for hijacking the two threads that I did and if either of the authors of the two threads were hurt or upset by my view then I unreservedly apologise as I should not have made those points on your threads. However, I do not apologise for my view and I do take exception to the responses that I got from people who were not the originators of the threads.
There seems to be some idea on here that one is not allowed to question the idea that having others look after your children while you go out to work is OK and perfect sense. It seems that we all have to abide by the belief that not looking after your kids and going out to work is OK. Well I'm sorry, there are people out here who might wish to challenge that view. OK, if you want to go out to work and leave the kids in childcare OK, but don't blindly believe that there aren't people out there who might think that it is not OK and perhaps the selfishness that seems to have crept into motherhood in the last 20/30 years has no effect. Not everybody believes that it is possible to balance a career and bringing up children. The idea that somebody else can do a better job than the mum or dad is frankly odd.

aww thats lovely wrinkly - i must rem that one [hgrin]

Although the vast majority of the children I have cared for have wonderful parents, working or otherwise, I have seen:

A child with open bleeding sores from nappyrash (his mum hardly changed him over the weekends and admitted that she "kept forgetting").

A child who flinched whenever I or any other adult came near.

A child who ripped up her craftwork and paintings as soon as she'd completed them because "that's what mummy does".

A child who once shrieked at my own son that she was sick of him, she wished she'd never had him, he was going to Tanith's house and he was never bloody coming back.

A toddler who, when I went to settle him during his nap, huddled straight under the bed clothes and stopped crying immediately.

A toddler whose mother who used to tease her that she was leaving her behind because she was so horrible and taking one of the other children home - and laughed when the child cried. She would tell me it was a joke when I interferred.

Save your outrage for the parents of those children, OP, and know that bad and selfish parenting has NOTHING to do with the decision, or not, to work.

:( Tanith

Exactly.

I'm going to be brave! I like OP. If I went back to work my wages would pay for the child care.
Oh and would find it hard to of found a job that would of been able to of given me so much time of work to look after ds2 who has spent alot of time in hospital. thankfully on the whole he is now ok, he will still need pacemaker checks and pacemaker being changed at some stage, he's also austic with speech problems so I do spend alot of time at theorpy.this hopefully will get better when he starts school full time.
Since I've had children I have done an on line teachers aid course and have a part time job in this line of work already set up for when ds2 goes to school.
I just strange like op that i've enjoyed the last 7 years at home being a mum

OP, I think that your idea of the traditional norm for motherhood is badly informed and based on prejudice more than evidence. I also think that the way you frame your views is overly aggressive. It's possible to disagree without starting a fight but your statements here seem deliberately aimed at doing the latter.

I'm very happy for people who want, and more crucially, can afford to do so, to be SAHMs. But it shows a real ignorance of social history and anthropology to suggest that those of us who go out to work are doing something radically different from previous generations.

Women from the working classes have always worked inside and outside the home, albeit in low-paid low-status professions (cleaning, mending, factory work etc..). Contrary to the rose-tinted views of middle-class 1950s relicts and vast swathes of the modern media who prefer to deal in cliches rather than facts, the majority of the population have not always been able to support a family on a single wage.

Historically, the extended rather than nuclear family was the norm and grandparents, aunts and sisters would pool and share childcare resources. Now that most of us live in ways and places that mean we don't have access to these support networks we have to recreate them as best we can using childminders, nannies and nurseries.

To hold the views you do, I also think that you must come from a very different family background to me. On my mother's side every female member of my family back to my great-grandmother has combined work and parenting, usually while living with several members of the extended family, including retired family members or shift workers (nurses, cleaners etc..) Several were single mothers, widows or divorcees. Despite this, I can't think of anyone in the past few generations on that side of the family who has been on drugs, in prison, failed to complete their education, experienced symptomatic depression, lived on benefits or any of the other "negative" outcomes that the media likes to link to working motherhood.

I asked my kids about us working, in a customer feedback kind of way. They looked a bit puzzled. I think they had assumed most mums and dads work and it is not a big deal, a bit like them going out to school or whatever. Their comments mainly hinged around the importance of one of us making it to assemblies and sports days, but apart from that, they were pretty content with the status quo. They had also worked out that things got tight financially during periods when I was between postdocs or whatever, and worked out that it was more comfortable all round if I was working. Now either they have got Stockholm syndrome big time, or us both working hasn't been a bad thing.

Another point. I think it's only very recent historically, the idea that a mum (or dad) sits at home with 1 or 2 children on their own. Previously extended families and more fluid communities meant that children roamed about and were cared for by different people at different times. The whole nuclear-family-stuck-in-a-house thing is possibly rather artificial biologically, and possibly not always the best way to do things, seeing as we are a species that is rather tribal in the main.

xposts

My grandmothers were SAHM and at least one of them was bored to death and became a bit difficult, tbh. She had worked for Allianz before marriage and was quite bright. She had a lot of single friends who were the first lady surgeons and so on, which helped a bit, but I think really if she could have carried on with a p/t job of some kind instead of being an affluent wifey, this would have been better for her and better for the family (even though they didn't need the money). But I think in those days it wasn't the done thing once you got married, in her circle anyway.

Good posts, boffinmum. I often wonder why it is thought that only the mother should have access to the children in these threads. Do grandparents, fathers and even the wider community have no role at all?

I work p/t, and I think it's good for the dc to see me going out to work. I'm proud of my career, and want them to absorb the message that women can do all sorts of things. It's not like other people "raise" them when I am at work- I raise them. Does the school then "raise" them when they go to school? Or do children only need "raising" until they are 5?

I hate this idea that working mum's don't "raise" their children- of course they do.

ben5 - if you're enjoying being at home, that's great. Some people do. If you can afford to stay home, also great. Some people can. Others can't.

The OP is trying to say that every mother should long for nothing other than to spend every waking hour doting over her DCs, should have no further ambitions for herself when the children are pre-school age, and is selfish if she doesn't fit this 1950s stereotype.

That's what we're objecting to here; not the idea of SAHMs, but the idea that being a SAHM is the ideal for every women and it's weird to be anything else, whether out of choice or necessity.

If the same things suited all of us, what a very boring place the world would be.

"I am currently thinking I would like to stay at home until s/he is 2, if we can afford it) and if I find I can cope with being a SAHM which I know can be difficult"

I found it difficult being at home with an under two year old and happily went back to work, happily meaning not that I liked leaving DS but that once in work I was fulfilled and got a break from DS. I have found it much more helpful to have teken 6 months off over the summer and for the first three months of him starting school. I have enjoyed it much more and I think that DS has got much more out of me being around than he did when I was off on maternity leave.

I also anticipate he will need me around a bit more when he starts secondary. By working hard in between I can save enough to take another 6 months off then (if it works with my job at the time).

I am not being difficult, but once the kids are at school, what do SAHMs actually do though? I have always wondered.

It takes 6-8 hours a week to run my (big) house and do the laundry for 4 kids and 2 adults. When I am on leave I rattle through it and then I am sitting around wondering what to do next, tbh. Like that episode of Friends when Joey is teaching one of the others how to be unemployed and telling him off for doing all his jobs on the first day.

I just don't really get what people do if they are at home all that time on their own. Grow vegetables? Make things? Paint stuff?

to OP

''The idea that somebody else can do a better job than the mum or dad is frankly odd''

plainly wrong being a biological parent does not suddenly endow you with the capacity to be a proper parent

and further

working away from home while entrusting the care of the child to a competent and caring professional does not mean you are not being a good parent

I am currently being very selfish by staying at home and planing to go back to work, hopefully something that allows me some time with my child and provides her with a good role model as she grows into a young woman

sfxmum - quite! I think my DDs have a far more interesting and stimulating day being cared for by trained professional than by me, a rank amateur!

I would go nuts if I didn't have a job. imo house keeping is not a full time occupation- like Boffinmum, we find that washing/cleaning (admittedly some outsourced)/laundry/cooking take up way less than a working week and is certainly what I did a degree and two postgraduate qualifications to end up doing. Looking after small is fun but very exhausting to do properly full time- after doing it full time with my older children (now aged 13, 15 and 17) I can see that a LOT of it could be outsourced. Parenthood is not an occupation, it's a role. Much as I personally would not now want to spend 60-70 hours a week out of the house while my children are small (and I did it for three years), I need something else to do besides chasing after my impish toddler. So I choose to employ an au pair to help me while I work from home. It's a win-win situation for me.

In my 17 years of parenting, I have met very, very few people who genuinely wanted to look after their children full-time. I have on the other hand recently met a lot of mothers (in particular) of teenagers who feel utterly out of the loop professionally and very lacking in self-esteem because they have taken 15-18 years out of the job market, who end up taking jobs very much not commensurate with their abilities or original qualifications.

Being a good parent is nothing to do with whether you work or not.

My own Mother didn't work when we were small but she didn't spend time with us either. Nor did she show us love or affection.

I would rather she'd been at work than at home yelling at us.

I work almost full time and I think I'm a pretty great Mum as it happens. I spend time with my DCs, they know without doubt that I love them and am there for them.

Also Joolyjoolyjoo speaks wisely! My children are raised by Me and my DH as well as their Grandparents, extended family, teachers and Childminder. It takes a community to raise a child. (Cliche emoticon)

OP - I think you are misguided, at best, and out for a fight, at worst. Most parents make their choices based on their situation at that time. When DS was born I was married, by the time he was 6 months old I was divorced. I work 4 days a week and have him in a lovely nursery that I worked hard to find

If I didn't work, we would not have a decent place to live (private rental) or have food/clothes etc. My exh was a twat who has trashed my credit rating and I will not get a mortgage for a very, very long time. I do not care what people like you think but wish you could be a little interested in other people's experiences to realise that life is not always easy.

OP - I think you are misguided, at best, and out for a fight, at worst. Most parents make their choices based on their situation at that time. When DS was born I was married, by the time he was 6 months old I was divorced. I work 4 days a week and have him in a lovely nursery that I worked hard to find

If I didn't work, we would not have a decent place to live (private rental) or have food/clothes etc. My exh was a twat who has trashed my credit rating and I will not get a mortgage for a very, very long time. I do not care what people like you think but wish you could be a little interested in other people's experiences to realise that life is not always easy.

Togorama has said exactly what I wanted to say.

But I'll say it again anyway.

Women have always worked inside and outside the home for pay and for survival.

The biggest lie this generation has been sold is that feminism was about getting women into the workplace. It wasn't. Feminism was about getting women the same opportunities as men in education and the workplace.

Ever seen a Jane Austen adaptation? Elizabeth Bennett and her sisters didn?t work. But who answered the door to Mr. Darcy and served the food and educated after the children and cleaned the house? Ever been on a school trip to a Mill and looked at the pictures of the workers? Not many men there. In fact, most started work at 6 or 7 years old?it was only in our parents lifetime that children didn?t leave school at 14.

In 1842 an act was passed to stop pregnant women working down mines. But surely Victorian mothers didn?t work down mines?oh no. They must have passed this law for the sake of it. (sarcasm)

@ Minimathsmouse
?If our forebears had not placed child rearing above all else, we might still be living in caves.?

Are you fucking kidding me here? You claim to be a feminist but have you actually read any women?s history?

Until very recently (the past century) parents tended not to care very much about little babies. Most died before they were toddlers. If you were going to give birth to 12 children and hope that 2 or 3 of them reached puberty when they could go out to work and bring in money, you weren?t going to invest huge emotion in them when newborn. (not that mothers didn?t love their children but we can?t impose our views of what a good mother is on that era)

Try reading Inventing Motherhood by Anne Dally or Centuries of Childhood by Philippe Aries. They will tell you some unpalatable truths about our rose-tinted nostalgia for the good old days when women knew their place and men were the breadwinners and children were rosie cheeked cherubs.

Sorry about the rant but this idea about women only working outside the home in the past 30 years gets my goat.

Jane Austin herself was actually fostered out to a village family until she was about 2 yrs old!! This was common. I think that maybe so many DCs died in infancy that they didn't want to get attached (just my theory)-perhaps they felt she would flourish in a rough and ready environment and boost her immune system. It seems weird these days! There never was a golden age. Women have either had the money to pay others to look after their DCs.

People romanticise about life in primitive societies and take the bit that they like about extended breast feeding etc-they ignore the fact that older siblings looked after the baby a lot while mother worked or the importance of grandmothers.
I stayed at home when mine were young, but I realise that I was very, very priviledged to choose. I know lots of young teacher now who would love to be home with their babies but they have to pay the bills-it is utterly ridiculous to say that they shouldn't have had them -and they are wonderful mothers.
It is very odd to say that being there all the time makes you a good mother. Poor little Finn in the blog is the centre of his mother's universe but he would emotionally be better off in a nursery part time!(at least IMO as I think his mother a loon!)

Sorry-lost half a sentence! Paid others to look after their DCs or had to work.

Ok have to admit have not read the whole thread.
I am a mum to 2 Dcs, i work part time, i drop my DCs to school and am here when they get home. My DS was at nursery part time whilst i worked before he started school and my DD was looked after by my sister whilst i was at work before she started school. In May I will have our 3rd baby who will be in nursery whilst i am at work. SELFISH? probably but i also see it as building a future for my children, keeping a roof over their heads and providing them with all they need. Do i have a choice? not really.....if i didnt work, my DCs would have an unhappy mummy. I say all this as a deputy manager of a nursery school and an ex childminder! Childcare is not an evil thing, it offers fantastic opportunities to children and whilst it isnt a match for parental care it IS not evil!

wow, OP if you were looking for a reaction, you certainly got it. Think you have posted as 'others' over the past few months too.

Why post this though on a forum for cms, au-pairs and nannies????

Could respond to your comments, but have better things to do.

Blondes, love your comment about a child's love

Mothers going out to work is hardly new. In 1947 when my mother put in an appearance whilst my grandfather was studying to be an architect which had been delayed by the war, my grandmother went back our to work to pay the bills.