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?

Where exactly have I been 'nasty and insulting'. Oh fine, you carry on picking on me if you want to, I'm going to bed. Thanks for your support sisters.

I think all of us manage being working mums, whether they're WOHMs or SAHMs.

I haven't looked at this thread since yesterday afternoon and am stunned that you're all still at it.

Seems to me that B&W is being attacked because it's the best form of defence. I've only had a quick scan through the many posts since I left off, but am still yet to see one making negative statements about working mums. However B&W you are making negative comments about SAHM's and lots of assumptions.

I don't think that SAHM's do behave horribly towards working mum's because society is far more geared up for mothers to work. Most magazines talk about how hard it is to juggle family and working life, most parenting magazines have a section devoted to working parents - I've rarely come across an article about how hard it is to stay at home. We SAHM's are underated by both men and women and B&W if you're wondering what nerve it is you've touched maybe it's that one. If other Mothers can't see that staying at home is a hard and valuable job, then what hope do we have of being recognised for being of great value.

Work gets a bit fed up after a while though with the time off. When meetings are interrupted and you have to leave in the middle of them. Colleagues get a bit cheesed off when you have to finish early or start late. Compromises do have to be made and they include your children. When company representatives have travelled hundreds of miles for a meeting it's a bit difficult to cancel so even though you know that your child would really be better at home, you have to send them to the childminder/nursery/school and hope that they are okay.
You have to save days in case the children are ill and so have to miss the various assemblies or achievement ceremonies.
And in the end you feel that you are not doing justice to your job, your family or your home. There just isn't enough of you to go round.
And yes that's with dh's help aswell.

my god! whats going on here?
easy everyone!
there are pros and cons to being a working mum AND a sahm are there not?

Right, so I'm mad, nasty, insulting and selfish. I'm a bad teacher and a bad mother whose children are going to suffer and whose house is going to be reported to environmental health but I'll probably drop dead of stress before then. What a happy, reassuring and optimistic bunch you are.

back to the original post, my dh feels that even though he will be going to work and i will be changing from a working mum of 1 to a sahm of 2 in sep, he should do his bit when he can. kids are not stupid and they soon realise which parent does the most for them.
my dad didnt do much at all with us, it was all mum, and although he put the food on the table etc, we all felt mum brought us up single handedly.
we would so have loved for him to do things with us.
also, why should a woman who gives up her job, or career in my case, not have a break to be herself for a couple of hours at a weekend.
dh says he wont miss out on his boys and will do as much as he can.
only time will tell though!!

this list made me piss

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.

i do all that with three kids and work full time.

i dont understand mums who stay at home when they have teenage children.

are they really your whole world?

We're not here to be happy, reassuring and optimistic bawc. Welcome to motherhood, mumsnet style.

Now you're exaggerating. But what juule says is true. Colleagues and bosses get really pissed off after a bit. All the lip service in the world doesn't change an atmosphere of fed-up-ness in the office after yet another day off because child was ill. And after years of feeling on edge, it really isn't surprising if women vote with their feet. Denying the necessity and reality of domestic commitments, will not make women's working life better. It just plays into the hands of employers who don't want to change.

i dont know what you just said caligula. please tell me again i dont understand

BAWC I have never said you are nasty or selfish or a bad mother with a messy house. I have said your veiws are nasty and anti SAHM

BUT I am going to very pedantic here (why change!)

'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. From one of your posts tonight - agreed??

From a post yesterday -
'I personally would not be happy to pay taxes to help pay for one woman or man to stay in her or his home and clean it while her or his kids are in school. That's just my opinion and while I may change otehrs I won't change this one.'

Again look at yesterday's post
'I completely understand why SAHMs or dads stay at home while kids are pre-school and think it's commendable and probably important for the whole family and perhaps society (I play at being a SAHM for 2 days a wk and work for 3) but when kids are growing up I think it may cause problems for everyone (esp the mums themselves) if they're full-time SAHMs and if it's long term for the reasons I've mentioned (money, pension, independence, obesity, isolation, depression, feeling a lack of self-worth, messages to kids). I've got a real thing about pensions because so many women are suffering or vulnerable in their old age because they've been SAHMs.

If the PM's wife doesn't see house-keeping, being a wife and mother of 4 as a full-time job then I just find it hard to see how anyone else does. Yes, I know she has help but we all could and should from our partners and children. Obviously it's different for single mums and mums of children with SN etc etc.'

So if Cherie thinks it isn't enough, we should all be working.

Oh and here.
'To clarify, I'm quite happy to pay my taxes to supplement the pensions of those people who've stayed at home to look after their kids, in fact, I would pay more taxes to help pay those women to stay at home with their kids if that's what they wanted to do. I'm not so happy to supplement the pensions of women who have stayed at home while their kids are at school (where I am the one looking after them by the way) while they clean their houses (because that's what some of you have told me that some of you 'like doing') and have 'lunch with their girly friends' (because that's what some of you have told me you do do). Don't really see how this is contributing to the greater good.'

So here you have said a NUMBER of times that you feel mums with school as kids should be contributing to society, and you have implied a NUMBER of times they can only do that by working (or doing volenteer stuff, which you would gladly pay more taxes for, so there was no need for volenteers andthey could all go out and get proper jobs)

If I am reading all these posts wrong I am very sorry.

crunchie I love you x

love you too x

Well, how can I re-word it? I was agreeing with juule. Employers get pissed off with mothers after a bit. It's OK if you've got a senior position, you can negotiate that whenever your kid is ill, you can work at home (if that's possible in your job) or that you can stay an hour later so that you can attend that special assembly, but most mothers (like most people) are not in senior positions and find themselves being treated as a bloody nuisance when they try and bring to their employer's attention that they are also mothers and need to function as such. And underplaying the importance of domestic life simply panders to the attitudes of most employers. They are so reluctant to introduce proper work-life balance employment practices anyway, we don't need to hand them ammunition in the shape of a pretence that all our domestic stuff can be fitted into a convenient 15 minute slot a day outside of work time.

Any clearer? If not you'll have to wait for tomorrow for a more coherent explanation, because I just have to go and indulge in about 8 hours useless unproductive activity now...

Makes perfect semse to me crunchie. I have been watching these posts with great interest and I must say that I agree with you. Bawc has contradicted herself and even denied her own arguments. But then she has written ALOT so maybe she has forgotton what she has said

I love you too crunchie, got balls x

i love you three however if thats her argument - i think i'm with her.

yes clearer and understood caligula - and i agree with that too.

i am vry fortunate to work for a very pinko lefty charity who employ work life balace stuff.

good job too!

PC I know you are, and I respect you for that. BUT you have never been so patronising. You are too straight talking and hilarious to be patronising.

Remember I have seen you drunk Very drunk

But Crunchie - that is B&W's opinion. Her beliefs. The use of the word I, personally, etc are fairly liberally scattered around her posts.

Why shouldn't she be able to share her opinions - afterall plenty other people do on here!

And to be pedantic - she hasn't said that she doesn't think people should stay at home when they have school age children - just that if they choose to, she doesn;t want to pay taxes for them to have the liberty of doing so. If they can afford to without the taxpayer funding them, then I think B&W is saying that is a matter for them!

As an aside, my personal view is that SAHM's with all their children in school can be a vaccuous breed, obsessed with shopping and the gym. They all seem to spend so much time at the gym that I can't believe for a moment that they are more likely to be obese than woth mums There are however the odd exception to the rule, as always

Wow. I'm new to this board and have just (on and off) spent most of the day reading this amazing thread! (Glad no-one is paying me for supposedly working at this computer!)
A few thoughts.
(1) volunteering isn't all about charities and soup runs. I live in a village with a fabulous community - loads of events and clubs and opportunities to meet people and educate our kids and support other families etc. But most of what happens here (some might call it services to the community - elsewhere they are often "provided" commercially) is done by people who don't go out to work - the toddler group and running of the preschool, PTA raising funds for school, the management of the village hall where much of it happens, sports and social clubs, church management, newsletters so people know what is going on, WI, yes, and the running people to hospital sort of jobs too. These volunteers are mostly either retired or SAHMs. It is genuine community-building ie making the sort of place that we want to live in, and supporting those that we live with.
(2) Housework is ghastly, loathesome and dull IMO and I squeeze it into as tiny spaces as I did when I was in international finance...even though I would love the house to be clean and tidy. I am bit Caligulaesque in that I am not really very good at it. It's for the residents of the home to work out their levels of filth tolerance (sadly DH's are even higher than mine but DD's shaping up nicely low) and work out the balance of labour that suits their timetables and temperaments - and no, it's NOT worth getting divorced about. It's just housework.
(3) Bringing up children is a privilege (ask someone who has lost one or more.) Working hours that matched school hours would be lovely but we can't all be teachers. IMO it is in the time after school when kids are blobbing about, doing homework, just doing that end of day hanging around thing that you do long term work teaching them to communicate - which means that if there is a problem with luck you learn about it pretty soon and with more luck the child will have an open channel already to talk to you and you can avoid big problems (my big sis became a SAHM when hers were teenagers...)

why do u think i am patronising - and what has my mighty pissed up ness have to do with owt?

i dont thin anyone disagrees with tht - ffat people are fat cos they eat too much (usually)

B&WC, just going back to the bedtime/homework r
routine thing.

You say " 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"

Firstly, IME my son's primary schools did not have homework clubs for them to do homework after school. Because they were that much younger it was expected that adults at home would offer 1:1 support.

Secondly, of course as a SAHM I'd still have to wait for my kids to be home from school to do the extracurricular/homework/ bedtime stuff with them - but big difference having luxury of starting at 3.00pm, not 6.00 pm.