why are some women content to do all the housework?

[honeydew]

I meet lots of mums in my local area who, like me, are stay at home mums with very young children but are prepared to do absolutely everything for their partners and DH's! They slave away cooking, cleaning and washing at home with no help and at the weekends, they still don't expect
their partners to do anything! I have friends who never get a proper break from their children, even if it's only for a couple of hours. Their DH's leave them to it 24/7. Is it just me who has found that old style patriarchy is alive and well in society once a woman gives up work to raise her brood? My DH does help me with baby DS, he also puts my older daughter to bed and washes up after I've cooked each night, so we work as a team. So many women I speak to say that their DH's are not 'hands on' parents and do virtually all the chores and baby changing/feeding. Oviously, if one partner is working during the week they can't do that much, but some men don't want to contribute at all it would seem! Are they just lazy or simply 'expect' women to fulfill that role?

Quite noddy.

Some jobs, we could do without.

McDonalds, arms dealers, estate agents...

Not a career I would choose and probably not one a lot of MacDonalds workers would wish either. Erm ... what they are contributing is taxes which pay for the NHS, all our kids education etc.

I'm really sorry if you don't agree with this, Crunchie, and if not there's nothing I can do or say to change your mind, but what working mums contribute to SOCIETY during the hours that their kids are at school while they are in their house and cleaning it is nothing.

If they choose to spend their time while their kids are at school doing voluntary work then brilliant, fantastic, they are contributing. If they go into their kids school and listen to other kids read then marvellous, commendable, I applaud them, they are contributing.

But if they stay at home, go on the school run, clean their houses, go out for lunch, go to the gym etc then they contribute only to their own lives and their families. Now that is absolutely their choice and it really doesn't matter whether I approve of them or not (tbh I really don't care that much). It doesn't make them bad people and they may well be great mums, wives and house-keepers. I just wouldn't want to be one OK?

blackandwhitecat re the after school routine I am cutting and pasting something you said earlier:

"I have addressed the school hours issue actually in so far as I've said that a large number of working mothers use after-school care and holiday clubs (as I will too when my kids are older) or grandparents. THe people WHO I KNOW who do that are happy with it."

Do you feel after school clubs make the homework/healthy supper/reading time/quality time/ bedtime routine stuff easier in any way?

IME all that stuff still has to be done when you pick up your child from after school club. The clubs around here exist to care for your child, let them wind down, but playworkers certainly don't help with homework or hear your child read - all that still has to be done when you get them back at home. So yes, playclubs let you can work outside school hours but all that stressful routine stuff is still waiting for you afterwards! IME after school clubs are do not offer working parents as much support as imagined. Also, by sending your child to an after school club on weekdays you are having to say 'no' to any extra curricular activity on those weekdays.

In fact I think the biggest justification I would find to be a SAHM to school age children would be supporting their homework and extra curricular stuff. Personally I wouldn't use housework alone to justify my SAHM status, but that's just me. If my immediate family put lots of value on a well run, immaculate house, and my dh could afford for me to deliver this objective, AND I wanted to, then that's what I'd do.

You go on to say "all employers should offer family-friendly hours and flexible hours and as I understand it they actually have a duty to at least consider this under the law now. But, yes more needs to be done." This I agree with

FFS I never said that going to work when your kids are at school is easy or that our society is geared up or sympathetic to working parents quite the opposite. And actually, after school clubs (and many secondary schools have homework clubs and libraries and IT facilitities that are open after school) do support homework in the sense that for some kids it's the best place to do it away from family chaos. But even if you were a SAHM you'd still have to wait till your kids were actually home from school to do homework and put them to bed wouldn't you?

And Caligula, I do take your point about under-rating house-work but since I find it difficult to understand how house-work is anything other than what you fit into your normal day and takes a couple of hours a day at most couldn't you also say the same for DIY, gardening, car mechanics, sorting out bills etc? In other words, if we started to pay women or men for the house-work they do shouldn't we start to pay men or women for all these things too? Yes, I now realize that some women spend hours and hours every day on house-work but surely that's their choice (and many have said they find it pleasurable). It's not a necessity.

I just think like fairydust or whoever said we would be a healthier country and have healthier gender and family relationships if men and women started to share both paid and domestic work more fairly.

Surely if we wanted to pay mothers to stay at home after their children are born, then you could easily argue that anyone with or witout child could choose to stay at home and get paid to clean their house? I don't quite follow the argument........

sorry...meant after their children have gone to school.......LOL

just to widen the argument a little (sorry) can I ask BAWC whether she thinks my mum (aged 59) should also be out working? following her logic she adds nothing to society...

You're just not getting it are you? It really isn't my place or my wish to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't do. You and your mum must and will do what's right for you Tutters.

when my brother was about 7 he used to come up with names that were like mine, but not exactly mine. getting a feeling of deja vu...

Not with you Tutter.

Has anyone considered that a sahm with school age children is contributing to society by providing her children with emotional security, thereby nurturing the future genration. I think that is a pretty important job and contributes hugely. There are many ways of contributing to society other than payed and unpaid employment.

So you really think housework doesn't need to be done? Well I think if I didn't do mine and my kids got diseases which they then spread to their schoolmates, and I got a rat infestation that then spread to my neighbours, and everyone took the same view, then society would very quickly see how important it is to do the housework.

I just have to LOL at your bizarre idea of what constitutes contributing to society. While we are asleep, none of us are contributing to society, we should doubtless have tax credits docked for the eight hours of useless unproductive activity that sleeping represents. But of course if we didn't sleep, we wouldn't be able to work and contribute financially to society. And if we don't have some downtime in our lives, where we're doing nothing but cleaning our house or having coffee with our friends or having a nice smelly bath, it means we don't have time or energy to do the stuff you would appear to define as contributing to society - like taking time to properly parent our children.

But of course, nobody can directly quantify or measure how much time someone else needs to do the parenting stuff properly. And if you're benefiting your family by making it happy in the way that works for you, how is that benefiting society? How can it directly be measured? It can't be, which is why it can just be brushed aside as if it doesn't matter and as if it is totally valueless time.

Oh look claraboo said it much more succintly.

?I'm really sorry if you don't agree with this, Crunchie, and if not there's nothing I can do or say to change your mind, but what working mums contribute to SOCIETY during the hours that their kids are at school while they are in their house and cleaning it is nothing.?

?But even if you were a SAHM you'd still have to wait till your kids were actually home from school to do homework and put them to bed wouldn't you??

B&WCat ? I wonder if you are deliberately missing the point or just not sharp enough to pick it up.

Being a parent to school age children is as demanding and perhaps more demanding on a parents? time than having pre-school children. Parents of school-aged children have to support their child?s education by helping with homework, taxiing them to extra curricular activities, attending parents? evenings/school meetings, listening to reading etc? plus take care of their emotional well-being, i?e make time to chat to them, feed them a good meal, host a friend for tea. That sort of thing.

So, if both parents work full-time, they get home and have to deal with all the above AND STILL someone has to do the cleaning and tidying of the house and ensure school kit is laundered and work clothes ironed. And maybe a husband and wife would like some of the evening left to sit down and chat to each other or have some time to involve themselves in an activity they enjoy.

Is it so hard to imagine that a family may decide they are better off emotionally and time-wise if one of those parents doesn?t work? Perhaps they will spend the duration of the school day cleaning, laundering, shopping, cooking, tidying, organizing, to ensure the evening is clear for them to devote their time to their children?s wellbeing.

I?m not saying this is what everyone has the choice to do or what people should do or what I aspire to do. But it is what some people do. In their mind they are making a valuable contribution to their family.

Also, I worry where your kind of attitude might lead. You don?t believe it is right for mothers/fathers of school aged children to not be working during school hours. What will happen when After School Clubs become the norm? Sadly employers will begin to think like you and wonder why parents aren?t available to work a full-time day when the school day is then thought to run from 8am until 6pm.

on parents? time even.

Tutter - from Bear in the Big Blue house right?

I don't see why these threads always end up with someone being accused of calling SAHMS fat lazy slags with no value to society. I find it tedious. I personally don't begrudge anyone who doesn't want to do even an hour's paid work in their lives, but I would argue that they would have to pay for themselves. The economic argument seems completely lost every time this debate pops up. I don't see how it will benefit future generations if we decided to pay mothers to stay at home long after their kids have reached a good nursery age. The only outcome I can see is that future generations would have to work into their 90s before they could retire having paid for all the mothers to stay at home and "nurture" them. I think the money and effort would be much better spent on helping future generations strike a better work/life balance than many of us....

And of course you don't need to be at home all day in order to do homework, cook and chat with your children. Most of my friends work full days and we manage to do all the things mentioned in post below and our houses are relatively tidy. I honestly think some of the people on this thread need to opt their vitamin-intake. It really isn't that hard you know.

Beatie, your phrase "In their mind they are making a valuable contribution to their family" has just struck me about something bawc said earlier - I suspect that she's argue (and correct me if I'm wrong and imputing something wrongly to you BAWC) that making a contribution to your family is not the same as making a contribution to society.

Whereas it used to be obvious to most people that as the family is the basis of society, making a contribution to the one, is a contribution to the other. Dysfunctional families make dysfunctional societies. But apparantly not anymore - the two are entirely separate. Hmmm.

Beatie you point about after school clubs meaning emplyers will see less need to offer flexible family focussed employment is so true.

The government have said that ALL schools should offer this. Our school does, but I can see why employers may think they need do nothing more!!

BAWC I do see your point about sharing household duties, work inc childcare equally, we are in total agreement on this one. I just can't see why my mum shoudl have worked, she didn't need to, my dad could and did support her, so why make her life more difficult. Others here on MN have made the same choices, I have said if my dh earnt what I do I would also CHOOSE to stay at home. I would not think I was contributing NOTHING The little jokes I made earlier about gyms and lunch, were just jokes. I would find things to do include working voluntarily, supporting my kids at school etc etc. What I woudl not like to come across is a woman like you who has such strong opinions that I was not a worthwhile member of society - How very supportive of you. All you are worried about is me not having a pension and you having to pay taxes to look after me in my old age.

i wish i was a sahm but we cant afford that and i have a business to run not an incredibly amazing one only a beauty salon, i have a degree and once upon a time had a flash job in the city but i gave up a career because i wanted the whole wife and mum bit - didnt quite work out as planned but i blame ex for that and thats another story!

anyway i do everything in this house pretty much but it doesnt take my whole time, work from 10 til 4 tues til sat, dd goes to nursery mon to fri 930 til 430, i have the whole of monday to myself when i clean house top to bottom, supermarket and bank stuff, every day washing done first thing and out to dry or in dryer whatever the weather is doing,

pick dd up get home cook dinner more washing clean kitchen living room bathroom dd in bed by 7pm do bit of ironing generally sat down relaxing no later than 8 this includes weekends when dp and dd are at home all day making a mess!

dd helps me or dp water the garden

house is somewhere that anthea would be proud of but it doesnt take up that much of my time

im not a mug have very high standards and am to fussy to let anyone else do it. dp has suggested a cleaner but waste of money as i would probably clean before they got here as i wouldnt want them to see a messy house.

dd has been ill and we are both at home all day at the moment and even though she is only 2 my house is not any worse than it usually is it only takes 5 mins to pick her toys up after she has gone to bed, cant understand parents who say they have messy houses because they have small children

This is a quote from a TimesOnline article .
"So why do children need us more as they get older? Suzie Hayman, a relationship counsellor and trustee of the parenting charity Parentline Plus says that more than half of all the calls for help they receive come from the parents of teenagers.

?When they are tiny children need care, they need feeding, guiding and teaching ? when they are teenagers they are trying to find their own way in the world. They don?t need care in the same sense, what they need is for you to be there for them,? she explains.

?Remember when they were toddlers and would run away from you but still keep turning back to check you were still there? Teenagers are identical. They need to make their own mistakes, but they need to know that you are there to pick them up, dust them off and kiss the bruises. When I talk to people looking back at their teenage years their biggest complaint is that parents weren?t there for them, either physically or emotionally.? "

There are other articles of interest on Full time mothers

" Families using registered daycare can receive up to £7,000 pa towards the cost of that care (the childcare element of the new Working Tax Credit). Families where one parent looks after the children cannot claim, despite the fact that they have sacrificed earnings in order to provide that care."

So it would seem that sahm are also saving the gov't money by looking after their own children.

'?m not saying this is what everyone has the choice to do or what people should do or what I aspire to do. But it is what some people do. In their mind they are making a valuable contribution to their family' I think I just said this myself but contributing to their family is not the same as contributing to SOCIETY.

'Parents of school-aged children have to support their child?s education by helping with homework, taxiing them to extra curricular activities, attending parents? evenings/school meetings, listening to reading etc? plus take care of their emotional well-being, i?e make time to chat to them, feed them a good meal, host a friend for tea. That sort of thing.' I like to think I do this kind of thing myself Beattie and so does my dh as well as paid work and, funnily enough, I'm planning on continuing on being a good mum and my dp is planning on being a good dad while they are in school while we continue to work. This is what my mum and dad (both teachers) did while my sister and I were in school.

Sorry but imo contributing to the family is exactly the same as contributing to society. The family is the building block of society and if that is weak then society will crumble.

Just because I work does not mean I don't contribute to my family too Juules!! I just pay my taxes and teach several hundred of other peoples' kids each work too!