Sunday Times article about working women by India Knight.........

[ssd]

Did you read it and if you did what did you think?

FWIW I agree with her, will probably be stoned now.

3Princesses - didn't IK have a little girl a couple of years ago after having two boys who were a fair bit older, ie a big gap between them and different dads? Perhaps she changed her mind with no.3. Or then again perhaps she just saw an opportunity to be contrary and 'girly', as is her way.

I don't think anyone thinks mothers, sahm or otherwise should not be educated to their full ability and inclination.

Lovecloud - i don't know much else about your situation: do you have a partner who is able to supoprt you and your children financially, or are you able to manage on benefits?

I ask this because I thiink that there IS probably a higher likelihood of older women continuing to woh and use childcare. This is because if, like me, you spent your 20's in very expensive rented accomodation, with no security, no protected rent, pouring money into someone else's property empire and were stationary on the HA waiting list, AND you were working, advancing your job and pay, you then bought a miniscule cupboard of a flat.

Having done that, you are no longer eligible for a council flat in the future, and you can't sustain a morgage on benefits. So when you have kids you are in a completely differnt situation, and options to downsize very limited. AFAIK there is no mortgage co that will give you a payment amnesty to cover the years of having young kids - which would be a v welcome facility, IME!

At the same time, in my own experience, you have developed a certain level at work that enables you to just about afford childcare of a quality that you feel is good for your kids. And on MN, most of the f/t woh mothers seem to have come to an arangement where they work flexi, squash their hours into 4 days, and all sorts of inventive shenanigans which takes a heavy toll on us, whilst ensuring that our children get a well-cared for happy secure life.

I have met many f/t woh mums and their kids, and they are ALL happy, sociable, secure loving, co-operative kids.

I do not think it is secure happy well-thoughht-out f/t working homes that make kids unhappy and insecure - it is inconsistent parenting of other kinds, or situations associated with stress, unhapiness, break-ups, break-downs, or people who do not really have the capacity to be good parents in the 1st place. A far, far more complex picture than you or Indai Knight seem to be able to see.

You can read the results of a survey in the press, which generaly, anyway, refer to a miniscule shift in percentages, read the next set of results which tell you that 3 and ups actauuly do better in group care with other children, and you can look around and see, quite clearly, that as someone said earlier, happy and less happy children are spread across all sorts of families.

If you have a strong gut instinct about what is right for you, that is good, especiially if you ARE able to live it. But you can't use your gut instinct to judge what is right for other people.

i tend to roll my eyes and then make an effort to outshine them at any given opportunity. I'd be a lousy teacher. However I have always thought I'd be a fantastic lottery winner.

Think she did, Wordsmith, and also remember that the little girl had some health problems too, which I'm sure have contributed to her change of opinion. But what INCENSES me is that 18 months ago she was saying that (I'll paraphrase) staying at home with children turns you into a braindead drudge (and those were definitely 2 words she used), unattractive to your husband and uninteresting to everyone else of normal intelligence. Now she's saying 'Women need to feel pleased and proud of themselves for choosing... to stay at home with their babies. Unfortunately, many of them do feel pleased and proud only for other women to come along and make them feel like pathetic, boring, invisible throwbacks.'

Er... that would be you then, India.

didn't know she'd written that

not so impressed now!

SO frustrated that I can't find the article. My email to her was dated 15th June 2004, so must have been the Sunday before that if anyone has access to their archive... Would dearly love to read it again!

Well said Gizmo.

Sure all us WOHM will become SAHM soon - when we get sacked for excessive internet use at work

3princesses, the article was called "Yummy Mummy Fantasy" and it was written on 13th June 2004 but I can't remember my username & password to access the article fully.

Wow, bugsy, well done! How do I go about accessing it?

We can only ever say what is right for our own kids.

I have never had a problem with the fact that ds went to a child minder from 8 to 5.30 from the time he was 4 months old (maternity leave was only 4 months then). The fact that the child minder was the house next door and that he obviously loved it (developed close relationships with the three carers there, plus the kids of the child minder, one of whom was an older boy who he now looks on like a big older brother) helped enusre that I never felt any guilt. Whne he was little, he never cried when he went in and hen he got older, he would run in, almost without a backward glance. But just as importantly, he would always run to us with a big hug and a smile when we went to pick him up. And anyway - it was joint decision by my dh and I.

He is now 5.5 and at school - and is absolutely loving it. He is a well adjusted, happy, confident, sociable wee boy - and I put a lot of that down to the experience he had at the child minder. He was at nursery part time last year (Scotland's eqiuvelnt of pre-school/reception) and the staff there were also always prasing his cheery character. He went back to the childminder in the afternoons.

I did have (and still do) have a dream of reducing my hours to 4 days a week: but the extra time would not have been used to take ds out of the child minder - it would have been to have had some time for me. That is what you sacrifice when you work full time (I am sure that SAHMs do too, but I can't comment about them as I have never been one). It may well have been that some weeks, I would have taken him out and gone swimming or something - but it would have been my choice.

The weekends and evenings, before he went to bed, were and are time for ds - once he went to bed, it was time for dh and me

I am confident and happy about the decisions we made regarding ds' care - as is my dh. And my ds is a happy confident wee boy who loves his parents. That is all that matters.

You have to subscribe & then cough up 3princesses.

Enid, not totally irrelevant - she does play a lot on being 'foxy' and once said she wanted to give out lipsticks to all the hideous women out there whom she said, needed them more than she did.

bugsy2 I don't really understand your point about using the "I" word and this making us sound like single mums. Yes I made the decision to be a SAHM. My husband did not make it for me. I am an independent person. He supports it but at the end of the day it is my decision.
why does that seem "amazing" to you?

But am currently tragic SAHM of below average intelligence / triumphantly smug and selfless SAHM... (delete as apropriate) How much does it cost?!

she was really thin at uni

and wore big hats

I can see what Bugsy2 means: although you may have made the decision on your own haprscordcarrier, others (and a lot of the discussion on here has been about the involvement/or not of the father), others, like myself, would have made the decision jointly with their dh.

Hence, even though "I" work, we made the decision.

I AM surprised when people said 'I decided to be a sahp - nothing to do with my dh'. If my dh said that he'd unilaterally decided to be a sahp and that meant I had to work longer hours to finance things, I go mad!

What I was getting at HC, is the lack of discussion, even on here, about the "parents" responsibility for their children's childcare. It is constantly referred to as "mothers" who do the handing over to nurseries, nannies or child minders, as though only mothers were accountable for their children's wellbeing.
I wasn't trying to suggest that women are not capable of deciding whether they should be SAHMs or WOHMs, more the reluctance of society generally to accept that fathers are parents too!
3princesses, for one article it is £10!

I;d love to see DH's face if I said "oh by the way darling I've decided to be a sahm so can you go out and join the rat race again and do the 3 hours of commuting instead of me? Thanks ever so"

could not agree more Bugsy!

well I can only speak about my own situation of course
we discuss things of course but I do not make final decisions about what my husband does, and vv.
I would never tell him to take a job he didn't want to do for example
and certainly not to work longer hours, that wouldbe outrageous