Yet another article re: why mothers should return to work

[boogiewoogie]

Just snatching a couple of minutes during a coffee break, will come back. What do you think of this?

Well I had that issue post DD1 too - but an Industrial Tribunal soon disabused them of their sexist behaviour!

Some times we have to stand up for what we know is right. It is far from easy though!

Ah yet another article sticking the boot into SAHM, what joy! It is always nice to see how well appreciated we are for doing the job rather than paying someone else to do it for us.

I thought the idea was that we could choose:

You could choose to go to work and pay for childcare.
Or you could choose to stay at home and diy.

Both have financial implications, we know that as dh's wage is paltry but we manage, despite the struggle it has been worth it in terms of being there for dts. I know lots of people who tied themselves into a joint mortgage only to find they had to keep working even though, a situation I would have been in if I had continued work, at the end of the month they are left with about £10 once everything is paid for!

If sloppy writer doesn't like SAHM then fine for her but to say we are such awful people and to use the "f" word against us, what does that accomplish. Oh and I have noticed that while lots of guys are interested when they hear I am a SAHM I have only ever heard or experienced the bitchy "you contribute nothing then?" attitude from women. Thanks sisters. For the record, my cousin is a SAHD and enjoys that too, but no one would ever write an article like this on him.

i'm surprised to read that, crunchie. we are just about to advertise for a p/t accountant. will consider part qualified and flexible hours. no out of hours work or travel required. £35-45K pro rata.

are we ofering too much????

"btw yellowrose I find your comment a little bit off, how the F* do you know my kids would be miserable in nursery"

crunchie did I say they WLLL be miserable ? no I said they MAY be. I talked about RISK in as much as the author is talking about risk.

i think your baby being miserable in nursery is as big/or small a risk as your dh being run over by a bus.

i said you have to DECIDE which risk you are NOT prepared to take. so please read the post properly before you kick off.

my neighbour works in recruitment (top end, highly skilled prof,. women) and she said she rarely comes across professional woman who give up to stay home as long as me. so it seems that the vast majority do not stay at home for long any way, so what is the fuss all about ?

oh and crunchie, i am not talking about school age children. i was talking about infants under 1. so you are very unlikley to meet someone like me at the school gates. in fact by the time ds is school age i will be self-employed. you are making assumptions that women like me stay at home for good (just like Xenia), they rarely do. they go back to work once their children are old enough for school.

Twinkel, of course a stay at home father gets "custody". Why not? Men stay at home fathers get it all the time. There's no assumption women will. It's a risk you take if you have a stay at home husband. Isn't this what the author is getting at - by all means do what you want but do sit down with your calculator and worst case divorce husband disappears, husband kills himself, husband dies etc, husband gets residence of the children with him calculations.

In fact before we split up I saw my lawyer solely to find out if I'd lose the children but she said I wouldn't as we had a full time nanny etc so my husband was not a stay at home father and the older children wouldnt' have chosen to live with him. There was an article in the FT 2 or 3 years ago about high earning women with stay at home husbands who on divorce are of course in the classic male post divorce situation which is so pernicious - paying out to women who choose not to work for the next 30 years, rarely allowed to see their children at the whim of the mother and unable to afford to buy anywhere new so living at their parents or in a grotty bed sit. This too is an issue for working women with non working husbands to think about. All the more reason for both to work actually.

That is a good point YR - Govt policy is aimed at encouraging single parents back to work and increasing childcare options for all - I find little to help people stay at home - I don't know the statistics - doing a bit of googling now but not having much luck yet - but the number of families with two parents working is in the 70%'s I thought - which would indicate a good number of women working without having read this article(probably not just in case their husband leaves them then but for more mundane reasons like paying mortgage etc.)

The arguements come from insecurities rather than fact - I feel I 'ought' to be working to make a contribution because being economically inactive is not socially acceptable - whereas if I were working the pressure would be to be a perfect parent and guilt about leaving children,stress, not having enough hours in the day - still doing the vast majority of housework etc. etc. However if I compartmentalised my activity during the day (except right now of course, I am only doing things I would end up paying someone else to do.

That is a good point YR - Govt policy is aimed at encouraging single parents back to work and increasing childcare options for all - I find little to help people stay at home - I don't know the statistics - doing a bit of googling now but not having much luck yet - but the number of families with two parents working is in the 70%'s I thought - which would indicate a good number of women working without having read this article(probably not just in case their husband leaves them then but for more mundane reasons like paying mortgage etc.)

The arguements come from insecurities rather than fact - I feel I 'ought' to be working to make a contribution because being economically inactive is not socially acceptable - whereas if I were working the pressure would be to be a perfect parent and guilt about leaving children,stress, not having enough hours in the day - still doing the vast majority of housework etc. etc. However if I compartmentalised my activity during the day (except right now of course, I am only doing things I would end up paying someone else to do.

that point was so important I had to make it twice!

I think calculating every risk and idemnifying yourself against it is a very dismal and depressing way to live - naive possibly but I am not alone I am sure.

procarst - quite my point.

the choice for MOST women who do not have astronomical salaries is do I work full-time and spend every single penny to pay someone else to take care of dc or do i do it myself ?

if you are earing a very very high salary than the answer may be yes, because you can afford to pay nanny/other child care/cleaner/gardener/private school and still have enough to pay mortgage, luxury holidays, etc.

How many women whether single or married are in that position though ?

the author of this article fudges this issue completely. she also does not talk about the well-being of pre-school children which is a factor for MOST SAHM's i come across. in fact she doesn't talk about children at all, she talks about risk/reward for the parents and doesn't talk about the children. absurd.

How does anyone stand the dullness of not working once their kids are at school though? I think some people just aren't temperamentally suited to it, maybe. Thanks to the slow wheels of public sector HR, I've been "between jobs" for the last 6 weeks and I am so very, very bored.

No job yet = no money I can rightfully spend so I can't do loads of nice expensive things, my motivation is at an all time low so I rarely do the worthy things i have planned such as taking in some art or a lunchtime concert. I sit around on the internet all day or read crappy crime books interspersed with rushed bouts of inadequate tidying up and wondering what to have for dinner in between. I am eating more through boredom and exercising less through ennui and simply because I'm not going anywhere most days. I don't achieve anything, I have nothing to tell my partner at the end of the day that he doesn't know already and the power balance has shifted so that the housework is "my job" and he asks grumpily why I haven't washed his socks. Even though it's completely fair that if he's working I should take the vast bulk of responsibility for hearth and home I irrationally resent the expectation that I must take on a housewifey Anthea type role that I didn't sign up for and for which I am ill suited in terms of skill and enthusiasm. But why does anyone want to sign up for it, I wonder (unless there are special circumstances like Gess's)? It's rubbish. The only good bits are the rare times I've seen friends during the day and being able to get the boys from direct from school rather than rushing to their playcentre but even then I am only seeing about 1 hour per day more of them than when i was working f/t. All in all I can't wait till I can start work again. Really.

Oh Scummy - I will watch the reaction with interest!

You are describing me when not working tbh. I gave it all up when the DCs were 2 and 3yo, lasted 6 of the most depressive months of my life - and hot footed it back to the workplace. It was strange as I really enjoyed my mat leave with the children - I still don't understand why this felt so different.

However, if it came to it and the children were obviously being damaged by my working, then it is a price I would pay - but is it a life I ever hanker over for myself? NO, not in a million squillion years!

scummymummy - I am always a bit disconcerted when SAHMs tell me they are bored.

What I just love about NOT working is that my brain is my own. I can think about whatever I want to think about. I am NEVER bored. I suppose I do housework and tidying (because the house is always clean and tidy, but I only have 3.5 hours a week of cleaning help) but I don't think about it all. It's as automatic as walking down stairs and my brain doesn't focus on it at all.

When I was out at work (before children), my brain was rented out all day and to practically full capacity. And often the things I rented my brain out to do I found pretty dull. I certainly would never have spent so much time on those issues had I not been paid to do so. I really resented not having any brain space left for thinking about things I want to think about.

scrummy - i totally agree. staying at home after children are at school would be impossible for me. even if i didn't return to work or self-employment or something, i would need to occupy my brain such as do another masters a phd or some other qualification.

my sister has stayed at home for years (3 children), her husband is a businessman and so they can afford it, but she absolutley WANTS to stay at home even when the kids aren't home. I could never do that, but we have very different personalities so i can see why it works for her but it wouldn't work for me.

lol scummy - I have read the entire collections of P Robinson, Harlan Coben and Henning Mankell since I've been at home.

My advice for not giving up work would only be that it is incredibly hard to get back into it once you've been at home for a long period. I'm not talking 6 months or a year but a good few years. In fact, I think the DSS did a study of people who weren't working and found that once they'd been at home for longer than 2 years, the majority would not return to work (I can see why that is now!).

My children are 2 and nearly 1 so haven't had chance to find out what it is like when they have gone to school yet - I will probably want to work in some capacity when they are - but I find myself flapping about constantly bemoaning the lack of hours in the day at the moment- I am fitter and healthier than I have ever been because aas I cannot drive I have to walk everywhere and during the summer I love spending hours at the park or whatever. I know this time with them will come to an end so I make the most of it. My house is generally a tip despite seeming to be doing housework all day which does get to me. But sitting around in the office used to drive me insane I did have to go on site visits and meetings (I was a transport planner) so I made as many of them as I could but I would much rather be playing with and enjoying my children at the mo than discussing the optimum location for a busstop with beardy blokes ... life is what you make it etc.

Scummy, my love. I do sympathise. I know that when I don't have enough freelance work on I don't write more of the Great 21st Century Novel, I just hang around in a frantic sort of way.

And I like crime novels.

i agree with anna that employment is not the ONLY way to occupy one's brain. in fact i think some jobs and careers ruin/take away your capacity to think independently, originally, creatively, i.e take away your ability to think full stop.

there are women who stay at home after dc's are at school, have cleaners full time, etc don't do anything all day except lunch with friends and get their hair/nails done, etc., but they are such a very tiny % of women that it irriates me when SAHM's are portrayed that way.

My brain space has always seemed roomy enough to encompass both work and family, tbh, Anna. I'm not always particularly reflective or imaginative, i suspect. But it is not the sort of brain which enjoys drudgery (aka housework) and isn't that the main contributory role of a non worker without caring responsiblities? I just don't find housework a worthwhile activity in any respect other than making the place habitable for us as a family. Always a duty, never a pleasure. Unlike childcare, which i quite enjoy. But if children are all in school childcare doesn't enter the equation. So I am left despising my lot. Apart from the crime novels and mumsnet and lots of other things because I am very lucky really. But i still can't wait till my job starts even though i know that sods law decrees that it will start bang smack in the middle of the Easter holidays and I will then long to be off with the kids but be unable to rock the boat of a new job by asking for immediate annual leave!

Anna and YR - what do you think about? What do you do with all this spare thinking time?

I also studied political philosophy at uni and have found being at home has given me time for profounfd thoughts as well as the profane. maybe when 1 of my children is at nursery i might be able to write some down! A marxist analysis of nappy changing perhaps....

I have been a sahm and I am perpetually lazy where housework is concerned and my husband and learned to accept this

I suspect there is a difference between not working and being between jobs. Waiting for anything is always awkward, and you think mostly about what you are waiting for (a bus, a phone call, a baby...) I think not working has a very different feel. I know I was very happy on maternity leave. If I had pots of money I think I'd do up houses and loaf a lot and really like it.

"discussing the optimum location for a busstop with beardy blokes" - ah what an interesting life that must have been - lol - but Xenia will be telling you any minute now that you must AIM to be the boss of those beardy blokes so that you can become a happy, fulfilled woman !