Incentives for SAHMs - anyone read Fiona Phillips today?

[bohemianbint]

Link here

I think if you can get past the slightly guilt-inducing title, what she is basically saying is quite interesting. It's the first thing I've read in a while that doesn't write SAHMs off as useless bovine idiots.

Obviously don't want to start the old fight of working vs sahm, but what do we think about some kind of incentive for mums to stay at home?

FWIW I have recently become a SAHM by accident after stupid sexist boss forced me out of my job - I am taking him to a tribunal. I am looking for work but am pregnant so not sure how that'll go down with potential employers! I'd like to work PT ideally but I feel really under pressure from everyone around me to get a job and stop being a "boring" SAHM.

Twinklemegan: how do you actually square that with some people being paid less for doing the same work because they are not living with dependants? Not everyone lives in nuclear families: are single, or non-heterosexual, or childfree people with no dependants to accept that their work is worth less money?

Work isn;t only work if one is being paid for it - but there is unpaid work and paid work. If you want to be paid for working then you need to work for someone willing to pay you. Working for your own family is unpaid work - why should anyone pay me to do my washing or my ironing or clean my house or any other myriad of chores I do for my family?

I'm not saying that though. Maybe they should get the primary wage?

The fact is that nothing is fair in the world of work. Despite what I just said, I feel that the work I do (and certainly what I've done in past jobs) is pretty hard for the pitiful money I receive for it. And just ask nurses or care assistants if they think they're fairly remunerated for the work they do. And in the public sector you can, for example, get clerical assistants doing very similar work in two different departments getting completely different wages depending on how much that department is valued politically.

It's all the same principle. It just depends where the dividing lines fall.

if people do the same job but one gets paid more - its not fair.

this did happen historically to women - but please remember that poor women always worked whilst their babies were doped up on opium in the factory cellar.

i dont believ ethis has anything to do with repression of a particular sex - i do believe that everyone seems tied into earning more and more - ye everyone is skint. becuase we have bouht into a consumerist society.

It just seems bizarre that it is 'work' if I watch someone elses child and they watch mine, but not if we watch our own.

I might say that a lot of the "unpaid" work in this country is a hell of a lot more value to society than a lot of the "paid" work.

Twinkle - do you do no care of your child at all - do you not share his care whilst you are at home and at weekends? Do you do no cleaning, washing, ironing, gardening, tidying, domestic admin etc etc when you are 'at home'?

If you do so, are you not also working for your family as well as doing a job which requires you to be outside your home for 11 hours a day?

I rather fear I am a rare beast though, who found my spell as a SAHP a walk in the park (perhaps literally) compared to WOTH. When both parents woth there is still a helluva lot of child care, housework, domestic admin etc to be done when you get home.

Perhaps it is easier for the traditional one parent working family - where all the chores are done by the SAHP and the WOTH parent waltzes in at the end of the day, bangs the table demanding food and then slumps in front of the TV for the evening As if!

Of course I do. I do the shopping, I do the cooking, I bath DS when I get home, I make DS's food in advance for the freezer. But I don't think I work as hard during the day as DH.

Twinklemegan: I would imagine that there are plenty of ongoing union battles about people doing the same jobs but being paid different rates. But really ,really, are you seriously advocating the idea that, when one applies for a job, one has to state whether or not one is married or a parent an be paid accordingly? Don;t you think that would just set up a thriving black market in people pretending to be spouses (spice??) and lending their babies to each other? Let alone being utterly unfair and unethical...

Jellybeans - it would still be unpaid work though - she would pay you £100 and you would pay her £100, so no-one generates an income. So the financial effect is exactly the same as you choosing to SAH.

Which might sound a little odd (incidentally I do the shopping because I'm better a budgeting) but with a 17 month old toddler being at home is pretty darn hard, as I'm sure you remember.

I didn't used to feel that way in my old job btw, even though I was at home more, because I hated the job and I hated my boss. I guess I'm pretty fortunate now.

Well that may be Madamez. I'm typing off the top of my head so of course there are many many holes. But sometimes things need to change fundamentally to create greater fairness in other ways.

What on earth does he do Twinkle? What on earth is that hard about looking after a child?

Maybe I am a supremely substandard parent, but what on earth is hard work about looking after a child? It might be dull, and repetitive but it isn;t exactly slugging it up the Northern Line in rush hour is it?

My SAH spell seemed to be an endless round of coffee with friends in the morning, a bit of shopping, feed the baby, clean the baby, wash up, put the baby to bed for a nap, quick tidy up and bung on a load of washing or do some ironing and then sit down with a mag for an hour or so. What is hard work about that?

What a crock of shite this thread is.

What a fucking funny world we live in, when a woman who looks after her own child until they start school is viewed as a scrounger on society.

Words fail me.

He does the same as I do when I'm at home with DS, who is extremely engergetic and hardly ever sleeps.

Namely he watches him like a hawk to avoid him endangering himself in a rented house that isn't child friendly. Tries repeatedly and fails to put him down for naps when he's tired. Does all the cleaning, washing and ironing. Prepares food for him. Takes him out in the garden and for walks. Reads with him, plays with him, talks to him.

I think DH suffers from being too conscientious actually. Whereas I go to work and I exercise my brain a lot, but I don't feel as tired at the end of it.

ohhhhhhhhh soapy you've done it now!

Ah yes, I said we had a mortgage earlier on. I didn't want to over complicate. We did, and we will again, but currently we're between houses and renting.

Twinklemegan: how is it a greater fairness to pay people working for the same employer, doing the same job, different wages depending on their personal lives? To a greater or lesser extent, the taxes people pay go to fund benefits for society in general (transport maintenance, sanitation, the NHS in the UK) but that is based on income, not actual work done. It would seem essentially fairer that the better paid you are, the more tax you pay rather than however hard you work, what money you get is dependent on whether or not you are a breeder.

and soapbox ... that last post of yours was 100% twunt.

Have to go to bed now Madamez, but will reply in the morning (assuming anyone's still interested).

Custardo perhaps I have opened Pandoras box and ossibly it is the rose tinted glasses, but nothing that TWinkle has written sounds terribly arduous.

Maybe I was a bit luckier in that we had a couple of stairgates strategically positioned to give a bit more safety whilst all the lovely mummies ate biccies and supped coffee, but other than that it is all pretty much par for the course.

No actually I'll reply now. Personal lives aren't "personal lives" they are "lives". People with children are carrying out a service, both to their children and society as a whole. I'm not saying pay people without children less (god knows when I was ttc that would've made my blood boil). I'm saying pay people who choose to go out to work when they could (should?) be looking after their children a bit less. Thereby recognising the important roles of the primary earner and the primary carer respectively. I'm sure there are lots of gaping holes to pick in this one as well. Now I'm off to bed.

Desiderata - it might be to you - but I have been a SAHM and a WOHM (and also had two spells of mat leave) and I just do not get what is hard about looking after a young child/ or two. Perhaps if you have three or four young ones, I might start to think it is hard work.

All of Twinkles stuff, other than the pure child care, is still waiting to be done at 8/9/10 o'clock at night if both parents are working. The evening meal, washing, ironing, cleaning, domestic admin, still needs to be done. It's not like the brownies - the elves don't come out at midnight and magic the chores away!

Soapbox - I'm not saying DH is killing himself with work. I'm just saying that being AT work is pretty easy by comparison. Less responsibility for something important for one thing.

Although of course there are fewer cleaning and domestic chores to do if no one is in the house all day, are there not (harking back to my earlier post which was a little bit, but not very, serious).