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?

'But housework and childcare isn't generally seen as gender neutral, even if me and you choose to see it that way. Saying you'd like these things to be equal is great but how do you achieve that?'

If you read my posts, you may find I've actually made quite a few suggestions as have others including Gem. IMO the best way to achieve equality is by both genders sharing both paid and domestic work which is how me and dp do it. My kids don't see house-work as women's work and paid work as men's work they see that mummy and daddy both do both kinds of work as well as looking after them to keep the show on the road. Yes, I know this won't work for everyone. Yes, I know not everyone wants this to work.

BTW - just for the record, and for anyone coming in late to read this, I have never and would never criticise mums who work or mums who don't work. I have not attacked you B&WCat for choosing to work part time, I have attacked your views about women who choose not to work.

Fab debate - haven't had one of these for a while. Think I'll add my views for what they're worth.

1. I feel really lucky that I had a choice and that I wasn't my mother's generation - where it was frowned upon to be a working mum & almost impossible.
2. This SAHM thing is so new historically speaking. Up to about 100 or so years ago, it barely existed. Regardless of social class you worked one way or another other than looking after you children. If you were wealthy, you ran the household - organised servants, budgets, decorating, entertaining, social events etc etc. If you were poor you helped in whatever way you could: in the fields, baking, sewing, and so on. The idea that a woman should solely devote herself to the rearing of children is a mostly 20th century concept.
3. Those of you with no pensions - should be worried!!!! One in three marriages ends in divorce - who is going to pay your pension? It won't be your ex-husband, you'll be lucky to get 2p from the State & if you don't do something you'll be very, very poor in your old age. I keep banging on about this but it never makes very interesting reading.
4. I really hated looking after my children when they were babies & toddlers. I found it as dull as dull can be, despite doing it "properly". It made me weep with frustration & mindblowing tedium, so I choose to go to work part-time & my babies/toddlers had a fab time with a childminder who loves children & who I am still great friends with & then on to nursery where they also had a great time & I still see the same members of staff 5 years on.
5. In many ways we are our own worst enemies. We have this inner critic that we use to undermine ourselves with and also other women too. We so often get bogged down in the detail that we can't see the bigger picture: worrying about tiny things & missing the bloody great missiles flying overhead!!! (Me as much as anyone else )

'women that are at home with their children are contributing nothing to society?! ' No, I never said that.I think it's not much to expect to ask you to check your facts before posting. I've also said it's impossible to judge who contributes more/most to society objectively. But that doesn't stop us having our personal value system which is allowed.

B&WCat - did you see my post of 8.05am?

Bugsy2, you are wonderful too. And thank god someone else cares about pensions so it's not just me who everyone's laughing at.

And another thing ... my children have never known me working and yet they know that I had a career before they came along. DD1 often talks about what jobs she will do when she's older and actually feels valued because mummy decided not to continue working. Do you really think that children only learn from their parents roles, we SAHM's are capable of educating our children. DD's know that it's important to have a good job like Mummy did and DS knows that it's important to be involved in household stuff, just like Daddy. I wouldn't want my DD's to go straight into motherhood when the leave school, don't you think that this message will get through just because I'm at home now?

Also re: taxes - I had a very well paid job before 1st baby, in fact better paid then DH and so I think I did my fair share of paying tax then and DH pays for our family now.

Fwiw my pension will always be half dw's pension too as she is at home caring for the single most valuable things in my world whilst I am at work earning money to ensure we all have enough to survive on both now and in the future. God forbid we should split up then she is still entitled to half of what she and I have contributed to.

As a SAHM I do care very much about pensions. That´s why DH pays it.

But I agree some SAHMs along with many many working mothers don´t think of the poverty they will live in in old age.

"This SAHM thing is so new historically speaking. Up to about 100 or so years ago, it barely existed. Regardless of social class you worked one way or another other than looking after you children. If you were wealthy, you ran the household - organised servants, budgets, decorating, entertaining, social events etc etc. If you were poor you helped in whatever way you could: in the fields, baking, sewing, and so on. The idea that a woman should solely devote herself to the rearing of children is a mostly 20th century concept."

Men tended to work closer to home though and either the whole family worked together - kids helping out with the family business/farm labour/whatever and grandparents and/or older siblings helped out with the younger children as extended family tended to live in the same house or very close by.

I know we should appreciate the choices women have today but each choice comes with a compromise. Children being cared for by strangers or women feeling overwhelmed and isolated for too many hours per day due to SAHMotherhood. These are the two extremes, I realise, but they are a lot of people's realisties for at least a short time.

'Do you really think that children only learn from their parents roles, we SAHM's are capable of educating our children'

No, I don't and never said this. I said that our roles are very influential often without us realizing it. I am a working mum with 2 girls and teacher and have a supportive partner who is also a teacher just like my mum. Did my parents ever tell me to do what I do? No. Did I copy exactly how they work and parent in a really quite spooky way the more I think about it without even being aware that that's what I was doing.

Your daughter will quite probably be a high-flying academic and career girl if that's what she and you want for her. But she may have to work harder not to follow your role as it has been while she has been growing up. My kids, obviously and unfortunately, are doomed to be teachers who do precious little hosuework. Oh dear.

Did I copy exactly how they work and parent in a really quite spooky way the more I think about it without even being aware that that's what I was doing.

That's meant to be a question and the answer is meant to be yes.

Nice idea Wheresmyfroggy, but sadly not the reality. I wasn't entitled to any of my ex-H's massive non-contributary final salary pension! Been together for 11 years & married for nearly 7, but none of his pension for me!!
Lots of less well off people who split up end up having to cash in their pensions if they have them so that they can afford two homes. In a divorce a pension is seen as its cash value.

Ladies, you can't imagine how relieved I am to hear you talking about your pensions. My whole existence on this thread is justified. I will sleep easy in my bed tonight.

I don´t think daughters of a SAHM have no role model or fewer expectations of a future working life because their mum stayed at home. If this were the case so many woman wouldn´t go out to work nowadays.

A think longer term SAHMs also send out a message to their children that they are IMPORTANT enough for mum to stay at home to look after them.

Yes, they did all work together Beatie, but not necessarily as a family unit. Children beaten by strangers in coal mines, factories & chimney cleaners. Infant mortality so high, women barely mourned a lost baby because they didn't have time.
We have such a rose tinted view of the past, but if you look at social history & anthropology it was anything but what we think. For most people it was back breaking hard work all their lives before a premature death in their 30s or 40s. It may be far from perfect now, but I know what era I'd rather be living in.
That doesn't mean I don't want to see change - I really do, but I don't think the past was better.

"Your daughter will quite probably be a high-flying academic and career girl if that's what she and you want for her. But she may have to work harder not to follow your role as it has been while she has been growing up"

My mother didn't work until I was at Senior School and then she went back to college and worked part-time from then onwards. I did NOT ever see myself following her role and part of this was due to the expectations my father had of me. I went to University because my father expected me to. I tried very hard not to get pregnant as a young woman before entering the world of work because I knew my parents would be disappointed in me.

I don't know quite what to make of the insinuation that my daughters will have to work hard not to follow the example of the role I have given them.

We spend a lot of time talking me and my dd. I hope I plant a lot of seeds in her head when we are out and about and I am showing her the world around us. I've never considered that my being at home with her during her infant years would make her more likely to become a young mother with no career aspirations.

"We have such a rose tinted view of the past, but if you look at social history & anthropology it was anything but what we think." Bugsy, no, I don't have a rose tinted view of the past. God no! I'd have hated to live like that.

Someone said that women had always worked and I was pointing out that when women worked 100 years ago, they didn't face the same childcare dilemmas and all family members helped raise the children.

It was different, not better. But I agree, it doesn't mean that the situation now is one we should be happy with. Which is what you said too

Anyway, the baby is about to wake up and I have a kitchen to clean. I cannot put off this exciting task any longer

I´m not sure if life is necessarily easier for women nowadays than in the past. A friend of mine, near retirement age now, had 5 children very close together in the 1960s. Imagine no washing machine, hundreds of nappies to wash, 5 children to breastfeed, wean and feed. She thinks that the mothers she cares for today (she´s a social worker) have a MUCH HARDER LIFE nowadays than she had, because the family support networks etc. are not in operation anymore. Intersesting and surprising, don´t you think?

Unfortuneatly I don't find it that suprising tbh. The family network was much better and childcare as it is now was not so necessary. Nowadays grandparents/brothers/sisters don't all live in the same area/street as they may have done previously which made childcare much easier.

I think that there probably was a brief "golden era" after the 2nd world war, when people were not yet so geographically mobile & standards of living and healthcare had improved. So, women had some mod-cons, slightly smaller numbers of children, infinitely better health & social care and lots of extended family & community support.
However, I really do think that this existed for a very short period of time and still did not afford women the choice that they have today.

it didn't exist at all imo.

what did happen is that women - who had always worked were sacked so men could have a job coming back after the war. which left the family no better off

my nan started her own decorating business rag rolling peoples living rooms. there just wasn't an money.

they were expected to look after the chilren work, put dinner on table and keep house.

aye - kiss my arse n all!

I wish your nan could come and rag roll my living room. It's looking grim and in need of a make over.