Anyone else feel that being a dad and sole breadwinner is a lousy deal?

[SpareWheel]

DW and I are SITCOMs (single income, two children, oppressive mortgage). I work crazy hours and race back work half-done to see the kids a little bit before bedtime then try to finish off work and fall into bed. At the risk of sounding like a whinger, I feel like I'm becoming a crap employee, crap husband and a crap father all in one - surely I'm not the only one...

But Xenia, I thought your brother's (or whoever's) Oxford cronies all considered it a bage of honour or status symbol to marry well-educated women who then stayed home with their children?

Actually Xenia, I like thinking.

And I never used to get much time to do that at work.

'May be up to GCSEs but what in your A levels and degree do you really need if your life is then shopping, potatoes, wiping bottoms and chatting to teenagers? Surely GCSEs are enough to do that well.'

OMFG, I am speechless

Perhaps by the same token we should say that if you have babies but then decide to go back to work full time, you must give them up for adoption because what's the fecking point if you only see them for half an hour a day?

Be fair Gobbledigook, it's 2 hours a day Xenia recommends.

'I think there's amoral duty to work and it's better for families, the country, other women and your children.'

ANd that's a load of bollocks too.

Re nurses - 'Thye're not clever enough to become doctors, that's all.'

And this is surely teh wind up of the century?!

God I've got work to do. Get me outta here!!

anybody seen dw,
wondered whats for supper..

what about me though I'm not cleverer enuff to work.

Ah but working parents of both sexes are so clever and better at being parents than stay at homers that they give more to their children in those two hours than the stay at homers do all day.

To be polite Xenia - why do you have such a utilitarian view of what education should be about ?

On a reductio ad absurdam analysis of your views, all degree courses except the wholly vocational should be scrapped. And while we're at it why bother with most GCSE's and A levels too - who needs music,art or the classics ?

Xenia, your last post

you wish

Ah, she's just a wind up merchant.

I know!

mind you, she's good at it!

It's widely held that in developing countries it's vitally important to educate girls. Because they will go on to be mothers. And educating mothers is believed to benefit the whole family. That suggests that society gains from well-educated SAHMs (and I'd say also from SAHMS with less formal education too).

same old same old from xenia then?
I wait with baited breath for a thread where her solution to the problem isn't 'earn as much/more than as dh then all your problems are solved'.

"xenia is a troll.

i firmly believe it."

so do I - what was that other pearler

something about putting your nation before your kids

like you do ....

Although I'm not sure I can possibly know what I'm talking about you see, I'm just a menial SAHM with sh*t for brains, I've drained the educational system by obtaining O levels, A levels, a Degree from a prestigous Uni and a Masters - all of this and I 'chucked it all in' to stay at home, living off dh. Gosh do you think one day I might realise the error of my ways and devote all of my energies to earning more money than dh because, as we know, this correlates perfectly with happy, well balanced children, harmonious homelife and successful marriages doesn't it?

"Ah but working parents of both sexes are so clever and better at being parents than stay at homers"
Yeah, I'm sure that arriving home knackered at 6/7pm with dinner to cook and over tired child you have sooooo much time to devote to playing with your child/talking to them/taking them to activities/eating with them/just watching them, because you're so clever at fitting this into 2 hours than I am in the 12 wonderful hours I have. It's OK, I'm quite happy for you to believe this - if it helps Xenia, as long as you do actually realise that you aren't fooling ANYONE.
I did it you see, I tried it and I realised there are just more important things in life than being on a permanent power trip that revolves around earning potential.

But a lot of women sacrifice huge amounts of time and fun to get good A levels, degrees, professional qualifications etc and just when it would all come right and the career they wanted was there they throw it away...poof, into the wind and they can never get it back. So what was the point? We need people with some level of education to be at home but if you all agree that mumsnetters who left school at 18 make perfectly decent mothers then why waste tax payers' money on you getting more qualifications and more importantly years of slog when you could have hugn around having fun catching rich men (see other threads) if you're just then going to stay at home. it's a perfectly reasonable question to ask surely. What does a degree and masters do, benefit your children that had you left school with A levels only would have better equip[ped you to clear up 4 spills on the floor, sing some nursery rhynmes and then iron your husband's shirts. If you live that kind of housewife life you'd be better off at 16 at finishing and then cookery school surely????

"but if you all agree that mumsnetters who left school at 18 make perfectly decent mothers then why waste tax payers' money on you getting more qualifications and more importantly years of slog when you could have hugn around having fun catching rich men (see other threads) if you're just then going to stay at home."

Because I have chosen to take time out to do what I consider to me a much more important job for now
I haven't 'thrown it all away...poof', as I fully intend going back to it.
However, even if I didn't intend to do this - my education will have equipped me with the knowledge, confidence and resourcefulness to be able to educate, stimulate and communicate with my children in a completely different way.
Or maybe it just allowed me to bag a dh with much higher earning potential ..that of course being the main aim of us unversity graduates who don't pursue the holy grail of neededing to out-earn our male counterparts .

Afraid I can't hang around here - I've got to demean myself by ironing, cleaning and being a general dogsbody to my wonderful family. Such a waste of an education eh?
Byeeeeeee

That's university as finishing school for children of a certain class option - the thicker girls went or go to the Oxford secretarial colleges etc to nab the clever rich boys at proper Oxford etc. Or you might need the Oxbridge degree which you then sacrifice so men like some of my brother's friends can have the trophy wife who was prepared to give up huge earning power to devote herself to her man which is seen as a greater sacrifice than marrying the pretty 18 year old who might be good in bed but has made no career sacrifice at all and so isn't as modern or impressive a trophy.