A pretender for the Burchill crown?

[monkeytrousers]

nice of her to put so much effort into it..

[suedonim]

Lol, Jan - maybe my sis could make it for your dh. It would make her v happy!

[Cam]

Oh dear nightynight I'm a bit Library Woman but without the mercs (matching or otherwise) or cleaner, and I have never been to a nail bar or had a manicure in my life (I'm too busy going to the gym or swimming and hoovering and washing and ironing - god, ironing can take up a whole morning)

[monkeytrousers]

Cracking open a beer now Melsy. Cheers!

[melsy]

open us one , although shudnt drink to much , have nasty cold and cough.

[soapbox]

But IME although HMB is right and there were lower standards of personal hygene, there were much higher standards of household cleanliness.

Not a single day would go by when my mother did not dust and polish from the top of the house to the bottom, and it was no small house, the house was hoovered every day and all toilets and baths were blitzed too. Kitchen floors were mopped twice a day beds changed twice a week, fileplace cleaned out and swept every day.

Windows were cleaned inside and out, precariously in some cases, once a week!

I think it was an age when they were so excited to have so much compared to their own parents that they were not going to keep it sparkly new as long as possible. even with a cleaner my house is nowhere near as clean


Additionally, homebaking was done every second day, with cakes and scones made. Plus of course extras to take to church coffee mornings and for our elderly neighbours.

There was always a pan of homemade soup on the go, for lunch or dinner time.

Expectations were just different I think!

[Cam]

Yes my mother's house is still that clean

[suedonim]

My mum's house is still spotless. She has summer and winter curtains and always takes them down to wash several times a year, along with lampshades etc. Any windy day and she'll wash bedlinen, even if it was only done a couple of days previously. As for an ironing pile - it gets done as soon as the laundry's dry. The cooker and fridge get moved and cleaned under weekly; mine get moved when they break down or are replaced and have to be moved.

But Janh is right. My parents didn't spend much time actually doing things with us. They were just there in the background, only intervening when the fights and screams got too much for them!

[jane313]

You can;t really generalisedthough. A friends parents were brought up in slum conditions in the thirties in Dublin. They had no experience of being house proud and their house in England has never really been looked after or cared for when their daughters were small. Nothing has changed their since the 70's and its in a pretty poor state generally and they have got the means to change it. Yet they are always very well turned out and spic and span.

[Jimjams]

well i thank the lord that I wasn't at home in the 60s as ds1 woud have been in an institution. I would have had more time to polish my front step and use my mangle I guess.

Very strange the idea that people HAVE to work to justify themselves. When all 3 are at school I would like to work, but it will have to be term time only, hours around ds1's transport as there is no way we can get childcare for him, and he won;t ever be able to be left in the house alone.

:Last time I had acrylic nails was for my wedding. They looked like pigs trotters and I spent half the night trying to hack the bloody things off.

[happymerryberries]

My mother was never manicaly house proud, but her sister was. Even in her 80s when her bed had to go downstairs as she couldn't manage them any more, there wasn't a scrap of dust behind it!!!

Shit I have tumbleweed under mine

[Nightynight]

jimjams
was that the night before your wedding, or the night after? just curious!

[Jimjams]

he he 2 nights before- went for the repair treatment the next day (some electric filer thing which made them hot) - then spent the honeymoon chewing them to try and get rid of them. God they were awful.

[caligula]

It depends on what you choose to do with the time that your children are at school, whether you have "loads" of it or not though, doesn't it? If you are fanatically houseproud, you could clean the house all day. For about eight or nine months of the year, you could easily fill the whole day with gardening. You could cook bread, jam, cheese, pasta, etc. from scratch. And then you could say "I have no time because once I've done the shopping, gardening, breadmaking and prepared dinner, it's time to get the kids."

And I suspect that many people would feel more sympathetic to that use of time, than for those women who say "I have no time because once I've done my gym session, nails, waxing, hair and massage, it's time to collect the kids".

But actually, there is an approval of burning martyr in all this - it may not be a particularly good use of time to spend your days in narcissistic treats, but it's hardly mass-murder, is it? And why should we feel more approval of the woman who appears to be using her time in the service of her home, children and environment, rather than to enjoy herself? (And anyway, no-one can go to the hairdresser/ waxing salon/ nail-salon every day - surely the nails last at least a fortnight?)

[soapbox]

Blody hell - we know* what SAHMs do all day long, they spend it MNing - just the same as those lucky WOTHs who can access it from work - not like me boo hoo

[TwinSetAndPearls]

Edodgy is right that the writer is comparing two different groups of women and therefore making unfair comparisons.

But Custardo has made the valid point that for some women being a SAHM is an easier option than being at work and is certainly not domestic drudgery.

I am a SAHM and think my life is much easier than when I was teaching. No marking until the early hours, no lesson planning, early commutes and living on crap fast food as I had no free time. My life now is very relaxed I spend my early morning sat with a coffee listening to radio 4 waiting for dd to drag herself out of bed at 8.30 much better than doing last minute marking while munching toast on the A40 at half seven in the morning. I now spend my days visiting friends, shopping, baking, taking dd out, playing rather than controlling hoards of hormonal teenagers, in meetings or pacifying parents. I work a few hours a week and have all week to plan what I will do rather than being permanently stressed and behind. I do the housework I want, and there isn't much as dp helps and once a month I get a blitz done. I do cook from scratch bit because I have the time, money and I want to, my Mum had little time as she did all the housework and worked from home every day and our finances didn't stretch to much.

I am not saying all SAHM have it easy, but I know in my case I certainly have it easier than I used to and a lot easier than dp and when I say to friends that I want to stay at home with dd I know it is an easy decision to make.

[Nightynight]

jimjams

caligula - yes, thats what my mother used to do, home-made jam, gardening etc. pure self indulgence passed off as slaving for the family.

[caligula]

pmsl at pure self-indulgence!

[TwinSetAndPearls]

I have evenings when I go to dp I am so tired I have so much to do, when he has picked himself up off the floor from laughing he says like what

My list normally consists of finishing a dress for dd, baking a cake for some event or finishing an essay = all self inflicted!

[marthamoo]

Silly, silly article - purely controversial, SAHM baiting nonsense (I could have written it and I am a SAHM - it didn't sound at all sincere to me, just a "how extreme can I be in order to get some welcome publicity?") but....it kicked off a really fascinating thread here so I think we should thank the lovely Carol.

[caligula]

Should we send her the thread?

[Wordsmith]

I read the article and though of MN too.

At first I agreed with her to an extent - I do know some mums like that (ie nail bars and lunching), but most of the FT SAHMs I know just spend a lot more time with their kids playing - not sure whether that's good or bad, but that's how it differs from the 'olden days'.

I think it was easier back then to leave kids to play on their own - as a child growing up in the 60s and 70s I could just disappear on my bike after school and come back at dusk, build dens in the local copse, go for long walks over the fields etc, without my mum tearing her hair out and dialling 999. Could any of us do that today? I doubt it. I think you'd have had a lot more mums on Prozac (or Valium in those days) if they hadn't been able to just let their kids entertain themselves.

Aloha is right though - the difficulties of WOTH when your kids are at school make it almost not worth the while. I normally work from home but am doing a 6 month in-office contract for 3 days a week, 9-5 soon. The school & nursery drop-off/pick-up routine would be impossible if DH wasn't also working from home and could do it instead of me. I've tried to get DS1 in afterschool club but there are no places! It's much easier when they are pre-school and you can choose a day nursery which offers care till 6pm or whatever.

I'm lucky being able to work from home. TBH if I didn't, and my DH couldn't be flexible with his job, then I really don't know what I would do.

So, yes, I would agree with Carol Sarler - I think many mums would like to WOTH once their kids are at school - but until we see more 9.30-3pm jobs (and I mean career type jobs other than teaching) or greater provision of accessible before-and after-school care, most mums will see it as more trouble than it's worth.

[Wordsmith]

(Sorry, didn't mean to imply that teaching isn't a career, obviously! Just that there aren't any others I can think of that fit in with school hours)

[SherlockLGJ]

Beautifully rescued

[Tortington]

goog post caligula - and i think your spot on!

there is an unerlying message in the article that tells of a pretence that some women have when calling themselves a SAHM. its such a fashionable lable at the moment.

its the pretence that gets on mi nerves - like i said before why not call yourself one of the relaxing rich or something rather than hide behind a SAHM lable.

[happymerryberries]

Jimjams, I have a cousin who is two years older than me, so he is about 45 now and would have been a child in the 60s. His mother was convinced that he was vaccine damaged by the whooping cough vaccination and he had a mental age of around a year or so, was having 40 fits a day.

She looked after him at home. I was involved as they did a regime with him called IIRC, patterning, which was aimed at stimulating his remaining brain function, invoving some signing and intensive physio etc.

She had two NT older daughters and was SAHM.

She had bugger all support from social services but the community was quite supportive.