More women staying at home because they want to spend time with the kids - is this the reason?

[JustineMumsnet]

Hi all,
Am wrting in the Standard tomorrow about latest research suggesting stay at home mums are increasingly not returning to work because they want to spend more time with their children. Now Patricia Hewitt has said that Mothers who stayed at home had been under-valued for too long by the Goverment. What do you think - in an ideal world would you stay at home full time? Do you feel strongly about raising your kids yourself? If money were no object would you jack in the job and what, if anything, would make returning to work more attractive?
Have to say now I've chalked up four the thought of being a full-time mum is pretty terrifying (call in the professionals I say )

I'm at home during the day and I work part time in the evenings. I get to be with my children, but I'm pretty much exhausted most of the time. On a 'working' day I'll be up at 7am and won't go to bed until after 1am the next day. Would I give up work to be a 'proper' SAHM? Er....in a flash. For me work is a chore, I'd rather be home and if I could afford it I would.

I'd imagine that most people who would want to work actually have a job( a career even) that they enjoy doing. I've never had anything that excites me like that.

I've no plans to go into full time work until the children are at least late teens (tbh in my dreams never). Until then, once DD is in reception, I too will be looking for the mythical part-time, term-time work.

To answer the questions raised in the original post.

Yes, SAHMs are undervalued. Why else would the government be willing to subsidise someone else looking after my children, but not think it's just as worthwhile to subsidise me to do it.

I did not have children for someone else to lokk after (I hated the whole time DS1 was at a CMs) That in no way means I have anything negative to say about anyone who's happy to do that, different strokes etc etc

What would make me want to go to work? Good money doing something I love (no idea what, can you get paid for sitting on the sofa reading books? )

Women were never meant just to be 'mums' even in our evolutionary past we had vital jobs other than being a mother.

But, I should add, those jobs never clashed with being a mother either. It wasn't either/or.

i think women leave themselves in an enormously precarious position if they give up work completely. what happens if the relationship breaks down, dh gets made redundant, or you suddenly find for some reason you need to earn some money and have given up all contact with the work place? and what happens to yr pension etc. also, the balance of the relationship changes, because the economic power is all one way. The Gov was right to encourage women to work. The next thing is to get the financing of child care more state subsidised

Bit of a turn around in attitudes from government - was it Margaret Hodge who made the comment that stay at home mothers were a drain on the economy, wasting their education?

Agree mothers have been under-valued and government has concentrated on booting everyone out to work whether we want to or not (speaking as someone who does work).

I waited nearly 4yrs for my ds and wouldn't dream of missing anything so have given up my job. In saying that, I always planned on being a full time mum anyway. My dh also had to change jobs last yr just after ds was born and is now on a lower wage so we are far worse off than if I were to go back to work. We just make sacrifices and are a bit more careful.

What does stick in my throat though is I have friends who went back to work; their children are in sub-standard childcare, simply because they get around 80% of the costs paid, whilst bringing home a half-decent wage, while someone else brings up their child to a mediochre standard. All for the sake of money, which is usually spent on babysitters and pubs at the weekends, and the holidays they are going on while leaving the children at home! This subject touches a nerve!
I am at home because I want to bring my children up as best as I possibly can, the places some children go for daycare really is no substitute and I don't think you should compromise on that. I think women (and sometimes men) who chose to leave work to raise their own children should be financially rewarded by the government. I believe children who are brought up by their own parents usually cannot do any better (except in some cases which is another story) and those who have children with intentions of returning to work as they "simply couldn't do it"- personally I'm not sure they should have children. It's the most important job you'll ever do, so do it well.

edam..it was patricia hewitt who said that. she's had a bit of a volte face since

agree with all that serenity has said.
I have no prob with mothers who work- everyone is different, but i didnt have kids for someone else to look after either.
when this one arrives, i will be giving up work till they are both in school (there will be 14m between them) then i will be looking for work 9.30am till 2.30pm if i can find it of course!
my mum stayed at home to look after us lot and thats the example i have seen, it's what ive always wanted to do. how boring am i?!
Finanacially we will be almost screwed but we have some plans in the pipeline.

I think it is rather sad that the government have an obsession with pushing mums back towards the workplace and not doing more to support SAHM.
I work from home so have the best of both worlds, loads of time for my boys and interesting work - we have a nanny. The amount that I have to earn to cover all this is terrifying and we get no support at all towards this from the government. What annoys me most is I pay tax and NI then pay employers NI out of my after tax salary as well as all the other childcare costs. I have cut down my hours to sepnd more time with the boys but now probably dont earn hardly anything at all after expenses and I am very well paid for what I do. Like many parents I hate the idea of institutionalised wrap around care and believe PH needs to understand that the key to making any policy work is flexibility not trying to push mums into some idealogic box that fits the governmnet agenda to keep people in the workplace

My answer was facile. This is such a sensitive & potentially explosive subject that I hate to enter into it seriously. I do think though that we all generally we do what we think or hope is best for ourselves & our children - if in fact we have a choice.

I haven't read the rest of the thread so sorry if I say what other people said.
I am one that feels very strongly about raising my children myself. By the time they are 4/5 they will have plenty of other outside influences.
One of the main reasons I agreed to up sticks and move to NZ was because it would give me the opportunity to give up work and become a SAHM which just wasn't an option in the UK.
Like Kipper, I am a teacher and when DS was a baby my biggest problem with work was that I was looking after other people's children and paying someone else to raise my son ... It just didn't make sense.
It didn't take me long to work out how hard being a SAHM was ... I think we had been in NZ for a month and I was crawling up the walls .
But despite finding it a very hard and often thankless job, and despite times when I yearn to get out of the house and not be at the beck and call of two small people ... I still feel that what I am doing is the most valuable job I can be doing at this time.
I could go out and get a job tomorrow. I could easily find (and afford) daycare for my 2 year old. But in one year she will start Kindy, in two years she will be doing 5 mornings a week, in 3 years she will be in full time school. That time will be over in a flash and before I know it I will have missed it all. I don't want that.
Having said all of that, I do work ... I run a business from home, completely around my family and very part time (evenings mainly). This I feel keeps me sane, gets me out of the house, allows me to dress nicely once in a while ... and keeps my hand in for when my toddler is older and I can devote more time to it then. But I do that without compromising my role as a SAHM ...

Don't say boring ShaysMummy.

I have to be honest and say that I've wanted to have children and be a mother since I was 11 years old. Is this something to be ashamed of? Does not wanting some high powered career mean I'm too stupid to have one?

Do I feel undervalued? I feel undervalued, belittled and a total alien in today's society.

Yes, this is a sensitive subject.
I'm sure nobody meant it to, but some of the posts in this thread have rather upset me. Sometimes I think dh and I have a good thing going - due to the flexibility of my work I really do have both worlds (but a lot of tiredness with it) and sometimes find myself at SAHM-y events like LLL groups feeling for all the world like a 'proper' SAHM -, sometimes I just want to be aforesaid 'proper' SAHM with FT-working, FT-earning dh - though I would never want to take the wonderful time dh and ds have together away from either of them. This whole situation is one of the many reasons why bf is so fiercely, consumingly important to me and why I'm dreading the day that ds self-weans.
However, having had my childhood severely affected by my mother's bitter resentment of my father for not earning 'enough' so that she 'had' to work (all relative in their case mind you, she would not have had to work to just survive), I'm determined to make the best of the situation - whatever happens, I am not going to do that to my children.

If money were no object there is no way I would work. I didn't start a family for someone else to bring it up! I believe passionately that children need a stable family life, and for me that means a close relative - mother/father/grandparent at a push to be there for them as much of the time as is humanly possible. Nursery for 1/2 sessions a week is fine and for many children a positively good thing - socialing, learning that other adults are good people to be with etc. - but at the end of the day it should be Mummy or Daddy giving them tea, asking about their day, giving them a bath and putting them to bed. And I don't think that a child's need for that stops when they start school. I think that adolescents probably need as much day-to-day support as pre-schoolers, just in different ways - hormones, exam stress - remember what it was like being a teenager!

I can't afford to give up work until my kids go off to university/college/gapyear/whatever - even if we could manage now, pensions etc are a issue. For us, the solution is that my PIL will look after our dd whilst I am at work 2 days and she will go to nursery on the third day - not ideal, but not too bad. I think that dd will actually benefit a lot from a small amount of group care - she is a very sociable girl. And my grandparents looked after my dsis and I when we were little during the holidays, as our mum worked part-time - I have a fantastic relationship with them even now, and giving that opportunity to my dd is almost going back to work for!

But I am very lucky to have such fantastic childcare available to me - and it has nothing to do with anything the government is providing.

When my dd (and any others I may be fortunate enough to have) are all at school I will hopefully be able to adjust my working week to school hours, so that I can be at home to support them then. If possible, I don't plan on going back to work full-time until they have left home.

i say boring only because i think women are expected to want more nowadays.

but i dont, i want my kids, my husband and my doggies and i just want to look after them all.

i currently have a very good job in a bank which was a bastard to get and i earn a respectable wage atm part time.

i left school with excellent grades :o and am not stupid, but ive never felt satisfied with this.

its not what ive always wanted to do. i will do that when child2 is born.

:)

I am SAHM and have to say that in my case the research is true. I want to spend time with my children and be the main influence on them and I don't really trust anyone else to give them the level of care and attention that I do.

I am a SAHM partly because I want to spend time with DS but mainly because I think he needs me. We are lucky in that DH is a high earner and therefore we don't need my salary but this doesn't mean it was an easy decision to give up my career.

It never occured to me before I became a mother, that I would ever stay at home. As far as I was concerned,staying at home was something that boring, uneducated women did.

In truth, it can be dull sometimes but for the most part it gives me far more than work (which I enjoyed) ever did. It's also fair to say that it does affect the dynamics of my marriage. DH never makes me feel like I contribute less but I think I often feel it myself. I spend less frivolously and act a little more 'wifey'.

I also have no idea when the best time to return is. As a teacher, I know that my job, more than many others, fits in well with family life. If i didn't teach, I'd just assume that the best time was when they went to school. However, my experience tells me that KS1 children esp. Reception kids need their mums more than ever so I just don't know. With baby #2 not due until the summer, the thought of not working until 2013 is quite scary!

Judging by the various responses here, it seems dilemas abound whatever your financial circumstances or eagarness to work.

no its cos work is DULL DUll Dull

DOh

Thank you Mommie. I had this strange feeling that it was Hewitt herself and thought, no, I must have got that wrong. What is the woman on?

ok this has been my day
woke up this mornign at freinds house
lounged aorund as kids playted

went to soft play area wiht our kids
ate lunch

droev home
kidsplayed i washed asomes tuff cooked tea

kids in bed me mesing around

HOW is that so effin hard

justine, i haven't read all the posts but what is indisputable to my mind is that yes the role of the carer (male or female) that stays at home to look after children has been grievously undervalued and that the governments myopic focus on getting women out to work and children into daycare has had me spitting nails. that policy has not empowered women or given them more choices which is what it has been puporting to do.

in terms of making going back to work more attractive, being paid an equal wage for equivalent work would be a start!

good luck with the piece.

Thanks so much for all your posts - have drawn on them heavily for short column - should appear on op-ed page of tomorrow's Standard.

I did give up my career to be there full time for my children. I was a lawyer with a good career, but, for me, having children was such a gift that I wanted to give it 100%. I am fortunate in that my husband earns sufficient to enable me to stay home, but, even if he earned less, we would have made sacrifices to ensure that one of us was here to raise our children on a full-time basis.

I do work now that they are at school and I am needed less on a day-to-day basis, but the work I do is mainly voluntary so that I can be available whenever needed, when they are sick, have Baker days, are sent home from school for whatever reason.

There have been times when I've craved the challenge of work, missed the social side of it all, but, all things considered, I definitely feel that choosing my children over my career was the best decision for us.