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?

oh and i gave up that stuff too when i was around 18, found Marx quite tiresome after a while, then you watch the Life of Brian and realise every "revolutionary" org. you have ever come across is exactly as depicted in the film (meetings re. the next meeting - lol - very little revolution actually involved) and you simply dispair !

I've nothing against artists if they are any good. On the contrary.

anna - 2 of my aunts and a cousin are prof. artists (they have no money) - they are the most loopy women i have EVER met - bohemian sorts - they take their work far too seriously but are very good at it.

i know what you mean about hobbies though. if you paint/write poetry as a hobby and then talk about it non-stop like a former landlord i had, then it is terribly dull to listen too. he even put up his paintings in one of my bedrooms and i was forced to look at two really quite awful paintings of the Thames for nearly 3 years because i was worried he would be offended if i took them down and hid them somewhere - lol

i used to paint as a hobby too (before ds) but never thought it was worth talking about.

What bothers me about this particular group of women is that they are parasites - they contribute nothing financially to their families lives, nothing materially (maids/nannies to do all housework, cooking etc), I guess very little intellectually (from their conversation between themselves) and spend a lot of money pursuing hobbies (at their husbands' expense) which they call careers. And the pictures/jewellery/handbags etc they make are horrible and worthless.

I do commission art from time to time, and I love doing so. But that's from real artists with talent.

maybe they are happy? maybe their husbands like them being at home?

I think that they give SAHMs a bad name because they don't contribute to anybody else's life - they are totally self-absorbed.

Despite my enthusiasm for returning to work, when my eldest child starts school soon I am planning to work less hours than I currently do as they will be "at school" rather than in child "care" and I feel the need to provide the extra "care" that they will be therefore missing.

I want to drop them off and pick them up and talk about the day and be with them as they wind down from their school day.

Beacause I returned to work when they were very young and kept my job going at the same level, 4 years later I am now in a position to be able to say "this is what I would like/need to do, here's how I propose to make it work" and be taken seriously by my employer as I have not already had large chunks of time away from the workplace in the 10 years that I have worked for them.

I am inherently lazy and if I had more childfree time at home I personally would become lethargic/watch too much daytime TV/spend non-productive time on the internet/snack too much.

I do believe that it is very very hard to pick up your career after even just 2 years out and it's not fair to employers to expect them to hold jobs open that long. I have good friends who consider me a workaholic oddity because of what I decided to do with regards short maternity leaves and I'm not saying it's a good idea to do what I did. However, if you do intend to return to the workplace into a job that you previously had, you need to do more than tell people that this is what you intend to do, you need to plan for it.
It's not totally the government or your employer's responsibility to make it happen, it's just as much the employee's.
It's not altogether the lack of suitable part-time flexible working type jobs that is the problem it's that people didn't want to plan ahead. It's far easier to plan for a return and then abandon it because you've changed your mind than to plan to stay at home and then struggle to get back into the workplace at the right level when you've later decided you want/need to return.

Most parents get a taste of the SAHP thing when on maternity leave, for possibly up to a year, but there is no routine "trial of returning to work" thing unless you go back, don't enjoy the lifestyle of working parent and hand in your notice.

I so wish it was made seriously possible for men to request to work 4 days a week therefore able to spend three days a week with their children, one of those days without mum being around. This could potentially be a major benefit to working families, enabling mums to consider more hours working outside the home and increasing their employability whilst not resulting in the children spending more hours in paid childcare. Plus many dh's would get a better understanding of the "work" undertaken daily by their dw's and be a bit more appreciative of the need for both parents to have time to relax in the evenings or at weekends.

Anna8888.

Couldn't agree mmore about the distinction between hobbies and real work.

When it's the SAH wife of a highly paid husband it just seems so much more acceptable to society than the partner who insists it's just a poorly paid form of employment thereby ensuring that their other half has to be a serious breadwinner whether they enjoy that role or not.

I personally know someone who does cake decorating and bemoans the unreliability of the flow of work and the actual hourly rate she ultimately gets when she does the sums after the job is complete. I bite my tongue as she is family.

Grrr - I think that a lot of these women with hobby-jobs are in denial that this is what they are.

That is why I am very vociferous in my belief that work is a means to earn money. Anything else (enjoyment, contribution to society, helping others etc) is a perk. I have no problems with the perks - it would be lovely if everyone could truly enjoy their job and get real satisfaction from it - but I think society should view work above all as a financial exercise.

Agree about the "being in denial" thing but deressing the hobby-job up as "the only type of work I can fit in around looking after the children" seems to be the norm despite the fact that the children may be in school or nursery and the hobby-jobber still finds time to meet friends for lunch and go to the gym twice a week.

I don't mind SAHMs having hobbies (on the contrary) as long as they are upfront about what they are, and they are also making a meaningful contribution to their family's lives.

The most perverse form of hobby-job I have come across recently is woman doing a PhD on a really silly topic. She has 2 children, 4 and 2, and has them in school/childcare/with a nanny full-time at her husband's expense (also has a ditto cleaner) while she writes her thesis which has no useful application and won't enable her to earn any money at the end. She was quite rude and dismissive of me because "I don't do anything". Except that I do make a meaningful contribution to my family's life, and my partner is happy with what I do for him (unlike her husband, who is at his wits end).

Anna8888

Words fail me and I feel sorry for her husband. She sounds spoilt and self-indulgent.

I'm hoping she is a highly unusual SAHP example but the judging from the pposts from SAHP's on MN, the incidence of retraining for a more meaningful/fulfilling (although lower paid) career seems to be quite high amongst SAHP's. Not so common amongst the breadwinners I notice !

Do SAHP's have the right to opt to return to work in any form of employment they choose whatever the financial remuneration attached ? How do the partners who have financially supported the family feel long term ? That's a question for a whole new thread I feel.

Grrr - well, that's what I think too, but because it's a PhD she somehow justifies her activities as intellectual and worthy. SO perverse.

As for the return to work - no, personally I don't think SAHPs have the right to return to the work they choose without considering their partner or children. I think that they have to balance the pros and cons of any potential work with all the other shared responsibilities of family life - just as the other partner must. A family is lots of shared responsibilities (of which one is financial responsibility) and couples need to be clear about what all their joint responsibilities are and to negotiate a division of labour that accommodates everyone as far as possible. And I think that that negotiation is EXTREMELY difficult (probably why so many marriages fail).

what was the silly subject Anna? I have just finnished my phd on imo not a silly subject, which will hopefully, in future help me to get a better paid job, well a job that i enjoy at least. I have to say that finnishing the thesis and juggling a baby, im not fortunate enough to have a nanny (wouldnt want one to be fair) or a cleaner (now one of those i do want - cant afford it cos im a SAHM - so my house just festers, not cos im a SAHM but cos im a lazy arse) but writing that thesis and finishing the bastard thing was the most difficult thing i have ever done. I must say though, there are some post graduate degrees in the most ridiculous subjects though (i once heard someone discussing the merits of a masters degree in norweigen puppetry!FFS!) actually what gets my goat, and its a big goat, is that these things actually get funded, often with public money, hmmm, i think thats a differnt thread. I hope that my Phd has made a contribution to society in some small way as i too was funded with public money, but i never ever considered it a hobby, it was a job and i worked my arse off to get it. As it happens, when i go back to work, i intend to retrain as a primary school teacher so the money will be ok, not fantastic but at least i'll be doing something i like, which i never thought i would (like teaching i mean) do i go on too much, be honest?

what was the silly subject Anna? I have just finnished my phd on imo not a silly subject, which will hopefully, in future help me to get a better paid job, well a job that i enjoy at least. I have to say that finnishing the thesis and juggling a baby, im not fortunate enough to have a nanny (wouldnt want one to be fair) or a cleaner (now one of those i do want - cant afford it cos im a SAHM - so my house just festers, not cos im a SAHM but cos im a lazy arse) but writing that thesis and finishing the bastard thing was the most difficult thing i have ever done. I must say though, there are some post graduate degrees in the most ridiculous subjects though (i once heard someone discussing the merits of a masters degree in norweigen puppetry!FFS!) actually what gets my goat, and its a big goat, is that these things actually get funded, often with public money, hmmm, i think thats a differnt thread. I hope that my Phd has made a contribution to society in some small way as i too was funded with public money, but i never ever considered it a hobby, it was a job and i worked my arse off to get it. As it happens, when i go back to work, i intend to retrain as a primary school teacher so the money will be ok, not fantastic but at least i'll be doing something i like, which i never thought i would (like teaching i mean) do i go on too much, be honest?

I don't want to reveal the subject of her thesis - a bit too much info in public, given what I've already said.

well going back to the OP, the article convinced me at the time, really regretting giving up work and now seem to spend much of my time jobhunting. SAHMdom at least on a f/t basis really isn't a "fit" for me and therefore isn't great for anyone else in the family..I don't care if that sounds selfish,I'm a 30-something professional with lots of experience & qualifications and will not just curl up and die career-wise!

np - anna i understand, i'd be pretty pissed off if someone said mine was silly too , although the general reaction to mine is - um, why? v frustrating. But never mind, now i can be a full time mummy for a bit and not bother my pretty head (in my dreams) with such things. I do of course worry that if i dont return to work then i may have wasted the past 10 years of my life studying (went back as a mature student after first dd started nursery) its a bit like groundhog day really.

Hang on a minute, why would Norwegian puppetry be such a silly subject? Perhaps there are obscure, abstract mathematical topics being studied at the moment, but they are so difficult to understand that we can?t even pass comment on them. Who knows what Norwegian puppets have to tell us? Playing a bit of devil?s advocate here but I sensed a degree of envy in the fact the other mum was doing a PhD. It IS an intellectual, structured pursuit, one could argue more so than browsing Mumsnet and thinking about ?stuff? in general.

I also disagree that money is the defining aspect of work/hobby. If instead of the polished SAHMs who do a bit of jewellery creation your friends (Anna) were rather untidy looking stay at home mums selling home-made slings for very little profit in order to make ends meet, would you still have looked down on them as pursuing a hobby? Or would you have applauded them for doing something to contribute to their families? Are women who volunteer in charity shops or at our children?s schools also doing it as a bit of gratification?

I think your definition of worthy and worthwhile SAHMdom is very narrow, Anna. I suggest you use some of your thinking time to reflect some more on your prejudices.

Cristina

I never said the women I talked about were my friends. They are not.

I find it completely indefensible for a mother of young children to put her children in childcare at her husband's expense to pursue her own interests which have no payoff (financial or otherwise).

My work is a bit of a hobby at the moment, as I do a little from home, and hire a mothers help to watch ds and clean while I do it. But ds is only 1 and its only by doing this, and essentially getting dh to subsidise my 'hobby', that I'll ever be able to go back to work properly at all. I think its a bit mean to dismiss what others do.

oranges - then there is a potential payoff, so that's fine.

I was only condemning those who pursue totally self-centred interests.

why, Anna? Are we somehow to be saints forever more post-birth? Why the hell shouldn
't a mum have some time off on their joint money if all are happy with that? Probably better for her sanity and therefore better for them all round!

Please read what I wrote.

I was condemning women who, FULL TIME, sub-contract home and family to pursue their own personal interests with no payoff.

There you go, Anna, Oranges has given just one example of why some people might do it.

The payoff may be financial (do you know how much money they make, since now you say they aren't in fact your friends? I thought ppl don't talk about money easily), or may be intellectual (all the research that needs to be done into choosing one applique technique over another), or maybe for their own pleasure, making them happier people. If they are happy with their childcare, their DHs too etc, why would you care? Indefensible in your own eyes? I'm sure they are shaking in front of your disapproval. Do you actually LIKE anyone?