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?

Fairymum - I don't think anyone has suggested people should be paid for doing housework.

Yes, but you can contribute to your family as well as work. You don't end up with ASBO children just because you go out to do some paid work you know. Seems to me some parents might be able to work fulltime as well as bringing up perfectly healthy happy children and living in a tidy and clean house whilst others can't even cope with a bit of hoovering around their kids. Anyway, parping myself from this thread now as actually need to get a bit of hoovering done.

Caligula, please do me the courtesy of reading my posts before responding to them. I never said cleaning didn't need to be done. What I said was it can be shared and fitted in around a job (or other activity like child-care). Anything other than 3-4 hours cleaning per house per day can't really be necessary (unless there are exceptional circumstances like you live in a mansion) and if this is shared amongst the family that's an hr or two each. This is probably slightly more than we do in our house every night (not cos we can't cos we don't feel we need to) as well as work.

'You don?t believe it is right for mothers/fathers of school aged children to not be working during school hours.' I HAVE NEVER SAID THIS. YOU CANNOT ACCUSE ME OF SAYING THINGS I HAVEN'T.

but there are women who want to stay at home with their children. what is wrong with wanting to do the whole stepford wife thing?

'Beatie you point about after school clubs meaning emplyers will see less need to offer flexible family focussed employment is so true.' Employers have to consider their employees' request for family-friendly working hours. Its' the law. They can decide it's impossible but they have to give evidence for this. The existence of after-school clubs would not be considered evidence.

airlines dont offer family friendly hours, i used to do night flights, 5am starts finish early hours morning dd used to have to stay overnight at childminder on a number of occasions. and the company i worked for was mainly part time working mums

Nothing Nulcat. I never said there was. But I admit I'd rather my taxes weren't contributing towards paying for men or women who are fit and able to work (with or without children) to be at home (without small children) and clean, go to the gym or have lunch with their mates and do nothing which benefits others apart from themselves and their family if they have one (like pay taxes or voluntary work) during school hours. I'm not saying it shouldn't be allowed. I'm not saying they're bad people. And I'm sure they all, each and every one of them do a fantastic job of looking after their home, partner and children.

But you can't 'be there' for your kids when they're at school themselves Juule. I don't think your teenagers would appreciate it very much if you turned up in their classroom!

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.

Yes, well I'm not talking about you am I, because you are obviously perfect and you and your Dh have the perfect set up. Not everyone is you or like you.

Do you ever see the other side of an argument? Do you not play devil's advocate as a teacher to help enlighten your students that the world isn't always the way it appears through their eyes?

im planning on baby 2 next year and i will be selling business and giving up work to be a sahm and army wife. i cant see how i will be benefiting from anyone elses taxes after all my husband will be paying taxes and i have paid enough of my own taxes and ni contributions in the 20 years i have been working

No, well there will be some businesses which would find it fairly difficult to accommodate family friendly hours. Ideally they should offer you a job within the co. that can but I don't know whether they're obliged to do this (as they are when you're pregnant).

"It's not a necessity"

That's what you said about housework.

And you keep saying it can be fitted in around other work. May I ask how old you are? Because it can easilty be fitted around other work if you are young, healthy and effient at housework. If you are old, knackered and incompetent (as I am) it can't be actually. When it gets to about 7pm I am overcome by exhaustion. That may be because I am 40 or because I am lazy or because I have a health problem I don't know about. But what I do know, is that there is no way I can physically drag myself around the house to clean it up. You keep on avoiding the point I keep making, that different people have different skills and different strengths. My mother, who is over 70, can clean a house in about a fifth of the time it takes me. That is because she has a skill I don't have. Some people have it, some don't. Stop insisting that it takes a couple of hours - it takes you a couple of hours perhaps, but it takes me a lot longer. I'm becoming increasingly irritated by your insistance that I can do housework the way you obviously can. I just wish it were true.

sorry meant efficient

TBH I don't know why some of you are so bitchy. I have never suggested that I am perfect and not once did I say anyone else was 'worthless' or even think it. I said I was planning on trying to be a good mum.

Again, this makes me think that something else is creating such strong feeling. Perhaps making blackandwhitecat into a devil cat and making up everything she says so it sounds like she hates every other human being on the planet(which she really doesn't and has never suggested for a second) makes it easier to discount some of the quite valid points she is making and that some others have made too on here or at least agreed with??

Yes, I do consider other sides of the argument. That's why I've been posting on this thread. TBH it's quite hard to consider some of your views when some of you are so incredibly nasty and insulting but I'm trying to remain open-minded and to resist the obvious question (does being a SAHM make you behave really horribly towards working mums?).

Goodness B&WCat. You're quite pedantic. I hope my dd's don't ever have a teacher like you. Or I at least hope, that you occasionally try to see your students' points of view from time to time because I think you are deliberatley missing the point everytime someone posts a response to you.

"'Beatie you point about after school clubs meaning emplyers will see less need to offer flexible family focussed employment is so true.' Employers have to consider their employees' request for family-friendly working hours. Its' the law. They can decide it's impossible but they have to give evidence for this. The existence of after-school clubs would not be considered evidence."

I don't think you live in the same world as everyone else does. Have you ever read any of the threads on here about the difficulties working mothers have trying to get their employers to agree to flexible working hours? Your profession is perhaps the most family-friendly profession a woman could be in with regards hours and school holidays and the way the timetable can be worked out so that someone works 50% of the time over only 2 days (that's an example by the way, I don't mean you)

But, back in the other world which most women populate, a lot of employers find mothers in the workplace a nuisance.

BTW - parents can only request flexible working hours if they have a child aged under 6. So, parents are a little buggered if they want to change their job once all their children are settled into school.

Making after schoool clubs the norm does undermine the proposals for more flexible working hours for parents - whether you care to recognise that or not.

No but I was 'there' to pick up my teenage dd when she was sent home from school with raging toothache and needed emergency root canal filling.
When she was given a dressing down by a teacher because 'she let the whole class down and was a waste of time' the one and only time that she had misplaced her coursework which she had completed. She was distraught by the severity of the dressing down in front of the class and sent home ill. I collected her.
Forgotten p.e. kits, homeworks, banged heads. Various phone calls from the school in which teachers thought I should collect my child from school.
Teenage children who had left coursework on the side table as they left for school.
Notes from school for cookery ingredients which I then went out and bought for the day after.
Parents evenings? held during the day to take the pressure off parents and teachers in the evenings.
When my eldest son took his gcse's it was me that ran him and his friends to the school to sit them as the buses were unreliable.
I was also transport for part of the school gymnastics team to a competition during the day.

And to be honest some of your views come across as incredibly nasty and insulting.

how has this argument come from someone asking why some women are happy to stay at home doing everything

OK, Caligula, I meant the excess after the 3-4 hours. But then if you are saying there are people who find it hard to fit cleaning in around a job that doesn't even have anything to do with being a mum or having kids of any age does it? Are there still people who don't have kids of any age but don't want to get a job because they can't fit it around their cleaning!!!

If I was too knackered to do any house-work after coming home from work (which happens regularly) then I wouldn't do any. I would make tea, stick dishes in dish-washer and that's about it (and dp would help or do it for me then I would do it the next day so he could have a break). You can take short-cuts you know or use your time wisely so that you limit the amount you have to do after work e.g. cooking for freezer at wkend.

Like Fairy says 100s of working parents seem to manage. It's not easy but it's possible and you make compromises (not with your kids with your home and your job).

does being a SAHM make you behave really horribly towards working mums?

No I just took issue with your debating style.

rofl at this thread - sahm's with school age children have been called "lazy effkers" on here - that's way nastier than any criticism of working mothers.

But BAWC, why should they manage? What is this glorification of everyone being exhausted, overworked and uncomfortable in their own homes because they don't have any time? Are you a member of the Blair cabinet or something?

And I'll be able to pick my kids up from school too when they need me Juule as I have from nursery. OMG, how cruel do you think working mums are? The school will just have to phone me at work (which is a 10 min walk from my work) rather than home.

Juule didn't say she thought working mothers were cruel.

Caligula, I think I have said about 100 times that nobody 'should' have to do anything they don't want to. I manage being a working mum because I want to as do many others. I wouldn't want it any other way but if others are happy to be SAHMs for eternity then that's just lovely.