Guardian article on SAHMs

[branflake81]

here

anna - spot on re the 11 year old thing. I really do feel like i missed out. Wouldnt ever tell my mum though as water under bridge and all that.

Awen - I think you make a very pertinent point! I actually felt I had rather less mindspace when I was home on maternity leave with 3 tinies. I think having mindspace is probably more about having a balanced life than whether you happen to be home or not.

i think 'mindspace' is like the elusive grail and also means diff things to diff people. I drift off when feeding ds2 and plan what i need to do etc (at the moment i am planning what needs packing next, what not to forget etc). I dont feel like i need to 'clear' my mind as it were and equally i do not feel like my life is unbalanced. My life is mine and I kinda like it. If i didnt then i would try and change it.

But surely the problem is that way too many men still just expect that women will do the shitwork and that, if they father children, their lives will continue pretty much along the same lines (they will go out to work, get a regular wage and be 'entitled' to do fun things for themselves at weekends because they have been 'working' all week even if the bulk of their paid-work day consists of scratching their nuts and looking out of the window).

in my experience the menfolk expect that when babies arrive the division is ever more apparent and they start forgetting the stuff they used to do. like decent shag

You see madamez - I think part of the problem is that too many women allow themselves to be impregnated by tosser men who have that attitude, and then let them get away with continuing to have it.

if they'd tossed this wouldn't be a problem

I see another main divide between sahms and wohms - the childcare issue.
I think your perception of what it will mean for your child to attend some sort of childcare hugely influences your decision. If you genuinly think nurseries for whatever reasons are awful places for children, then the step to put your child in childcare must be huge. Of course there is so much in the media, steve biddulph, scary documentaries filmed by under-cover reporters in nurseries, I am not suprised many parents hold back. I think reading posts about lack of pensions and loo-cleaning-politics then almost doesn't matter, because you are already feeling that childcare is not an option for you.

Oh, and never mind mind space. I need "loo space" Going to the loo by yourself while at work. I eeenjoy it.

Fairymum IMO the childcare issue comes second to the decision to go out to work or not.

If you need or want to work, you make it your mission to find the best available childcare. I don't think the steve biddulphs of the world stop those women who need to bring in a wage, or who truly love their jobs.

If, however, you would quite like to be a SAHM, you can look to biddulph and the sensational documentaries to reinforce your choice.

Pendulum, I would agree with you in that women pay more attention to those studies or believe in things that reinforce their choice whether to WOHM or SAHM.

However, I do feel that on the issue of childcare, women who would otherwise wish to return to work after maternity leave, might read a Steve Biddulph or a damning bnursery report and decide at that vulnerable time in their life to stay at home instead.

My feeling towards the end of my maternity leave with No.1 was that I had to come to terms with a less family-friendly employer, fight for flexible working, reconcile myself to being taken off the career track, dealing with a difficult clingy baby who I questioned whether would settle in a nursery, work out how to do a nursery run and run a house with dh when I got home etc

If I read that I could in addition to all the above be 'damaging' my baby, I might just jack it in. Fine if SAHM was already on the cards. But not fine if the decision was made in frustration without a proper appreciation of how difficult it is to get back onto the same track years later (in my line of work, that would most certainly be true) and the increased vulnerability of being a SAHM, particularly financially.

As for mindspace, my personal experience is I have much more mindspace working pt than when I was on maternity leave where my mind turned to swiss cheese and I endured the minutiae of babycare and housework. Even a rush hour commute offered much more opportunities for thinking than balancing a whingy child on my hip and trying to have a meal.

I find it interesting that the posters such as Prufrock and Anna who have the mindspace to be 'sounding boards' for their dhs (although I quite like to think I am a sounding board too but I probably flatter myself) also have well-off dhs who allow them the freedom to sub-contract the more tedious aspects of housework and possibly childcare at points. I somehow do not think that the average SAHM at home alone with 2+ children and without paid help or grandparents or family closeby would be extolling the luxuries of mindspace.

As madamez observes, the lot of a SAHM, if it is good, does depend on having an enlightened WOHP, good communication and shall I say, personal confidence?

Otherwise, it is hard, and I salute SAHMs who do it, under conditions where it is easy to take them for granted.

blueshoes, agree that it might be enough to tip the balance towards SAH. But most of the weight would need to be pointing in that direction anyway I think, for that to happen.

I was in the same position as you after no 1 (and from reading other threads I think you are in the same line of work as me, so I know where you are coming from on that!). Thankfully most of the Biddulph stuff came out after DD wazs happily established and thriving at nursery. Otherwise, it couldn't have affected my choice to work but would have just made me feel more guilty and impotent.

"but ideally you need a responsible mother-figure when you get in from school to unburden to, make you a drink and listen to you recount your day"

but you don't need someone there at age 11 when you get home from school if you know someone is going to be there at 5.30, You can make your own drink and, if you were like me, make your own food and build your own fire in the fireplace.

Pendulum, I would agree that I always intended to go back to work anyway. Although a lot of that could have been a little naivete on my part that I could carry on as per normal after children. Then of course, I had dd ...

I did read a damning nursery report on my maternity leave. I still have the clipping somewhere. So my personal compromise was if dd could not settle, then I would re-think my situation, not necessarily SAHM right away, but a less demanding job.

To my immense surprise, dd DID settle and went on to love her nursery. I never looked back.

Which is why I do make it a point on mn to point out there are nurseries and there are nurseries as there are different children. And as a mother, you don't know until you try and then you can decide otherwise if it is not working. But don't take the Steve Biddulphs and Oliver James of the world to heart and change your life plans because of them ... I do this for free too!

Pendumlum, I am assuming that people have a choice to WOHM or not, as I did (to an extent). So yes, if there is no choice but to WOHM, then it would be pretty dire to believe Steve Biddulph.

I found having a child (children, in fact, because I got three for the price of one IYSWIM) and being a SAHM gave me hugely more available mindspace than work ever did. Very liberating. I didn't have one minute of childcare, btw, and barely any grandparental support - my daughter was with me 24/7, and the boys quite often.

Now I work again, and my daughter is at school part-time, I do find that my mindspace is taken up with work and school concerns and that has put pressure on our relationship that wasn't there previously.

On the childcare dilemma - absolutely, I definitely didn't think childcare for a baby was a route I would be happy with.

Only yesterday lunchtime was I chatting to another school mother in the park when we spotted the nanny of another child in our children's school asleep on a park bench while said child and a baby played unsupervised in the sand pit . Such is the quality of the childcare around here. I know that childcare is not like this everywhere.

I found having a child (children, in fact, because I got three for the price of one IYSWIM) and being a SAHM gave me hugely more available mindspace than work ever did. Very liberating. I didn't have one minute of childcare, btw, and barely any grandparental support - my daughter was with me 24/7, and the boys quite often.

Now I work again, and my daughter is at school part-time, I do find that my mindspace is taken up with work and school concerns and that has put pressure on our relationship that wasn't there previously.

On the childcare dilemma - absolutely, I definitely didn't think childcare for a baby was a route I would be happy with.

Only yesterday lunchtime was I chatting to another school mother in the park when we spotted the nanny of another child in our children's school asleep on a park bench while said child and a baby played unsupervised in the sand pit . Such is the quality of the childcare around here. I know that childcare is not like this everywhere.

madamez - please give women some credit for having minds of their own! We don't have to choose pig ignorant chauvinists who want us at home skivvying while they swan off to work every day! Some of us do actually choose partners who are our equals, and talk about these issues before choosing to start a family, and then continue to talk and renegotiate through the journey of parenthood.
Blueshoes- your posts are really thoughtful. I agree about the mindspace thing - it's a bizarre idea that a women cannot possibly have enough mindspace to interact effectively with her husband if she is a F/T worker!! I think having 'mindspace' is as much about having a stimulating life yourself - like you, I found that the time I probably had less of it was when I was on maternity leave with 3 little ones, my days were busy but repetitive and although my 3 were very stimulating, I wasnt getting that balance of adult/intellectual interaction. It's a bit like that saying, 'If you want something done, ask a busy woman!' isnt it? We can get hung up on this idea that having personal space means having acres of the day to ourselves, whereas many people thrive on the buzz of being intellectually stimulated and keeping busy.

findtheriver, you make a lot of sense.

I do think it is a personality thing as well. I coped less well with maternity leave because I disliked chaos and not being in control - having a demanding baby who barely slept was a huge shock. The lack of mindspace, personal space, time time time to do anything other than pander to dd/ds, with cooking and housework piling up despite a cleaner, was not my idea of fun. Years of focused study and grafting at work under deadlines made me into a lean machine - but I was out-of-my-depth at home.

But I see that there are others who would enjoy this hullaballoo. Maybe the sort who keep open doors in their houses and have all manner of children coming and going?

It is still hectic working pt, with 2 split school runs, playdates, birthday parties, show-and-tell/school plays/fancy dress, an aupair, a commute, work and the inevitable out of hours socialising. But that is something I can organise around. And I run a far tighter ship from work PC than I could at home.

LOL blueshoes - my home is never chaos... work often is though

FIndtheriver: trouble is, a lot of couples don't discuss it in much depth until the situation arises and then (as threads on Relationships often show) you get these situations where men are belittling and criticizing their wives for insufficient housework being done, even hitting them for insufficient 'respect' to the man's superior status. No one consciously chooses to hook up with an abuser: abuse of any kind (whether it's violence or chauvinistic verbal bullying) builds up gradually.

Anna, I know you run a tight ship as well.

Chaos is also a state of mind. My home was still relatively clean and tidy. But the sheer effort it took to achieve that, juggling dcs' needs, meant that my cooking/housework was a constant inexorable work-in-progress as I eked out the minutes to do it is stages. All I can remember was walking into each room carrying dd, but seeing the amount of tasks I had/wanted to do but no time to do it.

Also, it does depend on whether your dcs are prepared to play by themselves or whether nap well. Imagine if your dd could not nap in the day without you rocking her continously and needed your constant stimulation when awake ... that was my reality. I bolted as soon as it was safe to do so.

Yes, and we all get overwhelmed by different sorts of things.

I (and my partner) are both the sort of people who are absolutely never late for anything and tidy up after ourselves as we go without it being an effort. So I suppose that when I am at home in an environment that I control, I am constantly tidying up after myself in a totally automatic-pilot fashion that doesn't require any mindspace at all, leaving me to think about other things.

When I am at work, I have to interact with lots of other unpredictable trail-leaving adults which I often find much more frustrating /chaotic.

Anna, I don't know how your home can be a controlled environment if you have a young child in it. I assume your dd gives you a decent amount of 'space' to do on-the-spot tidying up and whatever cooking and admin that a normal day comprises.

I can see how if I was at home with dd, now aged 4.8, that it would be totally different to her, at age 0.8. She has come a long way from her baby days.

As for trailing leaving adults and colleagues, lol. It is a fact of my working life - far worse things than trailing leaving, they do. The great thing is that I can just switch off my PC and calm and order prevails, until the next day ... which I cannot do if I am at home with dd.

Maybe she's just like us?

Obviously she chucks the sofa cushions on the floor and thinks the dining table is a climbing frame etc, but it doesn't take a second to put back (and the general decorative scheme is very pared-down anyway).