Guardian article on SAHMs

[branflake81]

here

So, Iota, do you think if you were being paid for your work, you should earn as much as your dh?

That's an odd question, beaniesteve. How can you put a price on the work you do in the home for your own family?

sorry, I'm not following your logic there beaniesteve

I agree with Beaniesteve on her point re: working hours.

If the combined working hours of the parents are 80 hours per week, I would prefer both parents to be doing 40 hours each than one doing 60 and one doing 20.

But it's horses for courses and there's not right or wrong way.

'I'm with Perkin and Findtheriver (and whoever else agreed).

That line: "I don't know why there aren't a few more mums going without a few things - because what you get back is so much more"

Is utterly obnoxious. '

Maybe she is talking from her own experience and observations though. It's true, there are many people that work through necessity but there are also quite a lot, certainly around here, that could live on one salary but choose not to. There's nothing wrong with that, but it is a fact for some people.

We could easily live on dh's salary if we had a smaller house, cheaper cars, the kids didn't do so many activities and, er, I didn't like shopping so much

For lots of people, they could cut back and live on one salary if they wanted to - and I don't kid myself - I work because it buys us lots of luxuries, I enjoy the mental stimulation etc etc - not because I have to.

I know that's not the case for everyone but that is a real category of working mothers.

same here jajas, how people manage it and stay sane i dont know. im lucky that i dont have to go out and work but would like to do something.

Perhaps it's not for her to know why though Gobbledigook.

I guess I am asking... if you stay at home because it's not possible financially to work and pay for chid care, but you can survive on one wage... what you do as a SAHM must be financially worth what you could be earning. Oh, I don't know I think I have confused myself.

"I take my hat off to households where both parents work. How on earth they have the energy let alone the time to come home and do all the domestic stuff too beats me. I'm at home out of choice "

see this kind of thing terrifies me as I am TTC but have assumed I will work after maternity leave and hope we will be able to afford the childcare we need but now I am worrying about how we are going to handle all the after work stuff. With a bit more of a contribution to the housework from my OH I hope, though I am currently chief bottle washer as well as working full time.

I think it would've been lovely to have lived in a time when men were expected to fully support their family, tbh. I'm probably just looking back of this nostalgically, but God, being a 50's housewife sounds like a lovely lifestyle. He gets all the work pressures, we get to go round to each others' houses and drink cocktails all afternoon.

I wish I'd married someone who would take pride in earning enough to support his family independently, instead of wasting time unloading the dishwasher.

We both work in paid jobs, we just avoid a lot of the domestic stuff. It's easier to ignore it if you're not in the house all day.

LOL Beautiful.

When my (breadwinning) partner took it upon himself, noticing we were out of mineral water, to buy a six litre pack of San Pellegrino from the supermarket and carry it home on foot one day, I gave him a massive earful and told him not to waste his energy on such pointless tasks as carrying water. He has never forgotten it

aside from the current topic I think newspapers often just do articles that go with a current trend like lots of ECO Green Living, let's all move to the country and grow organic veg etc.

It is creating a place to belong an audience with which to identify.
SAHM or not is often a personal choice but it does not exist in isolation, it is about the economic / cultural context
spurious divisions only serve to stifle a real debate about values, about how we see family time, bringing up children, the role of men and women within the family

It all gets tiresome and sometimes quite sad

I do think it's often a media divide, I am a very keen WOHM but have lots of very keen SAHM friends and in real life it's just not the divisive issue it is in the media (or on mumsnet). Especially as a lot of people move from one category to the other during their years of parenting.

"I don't know why there aren't a few more mums going without a few things - because what you get back is so much more"

A few things like a pension This sort of thinking is called short-term financial thinking in my books.

I don't mind the term full-time -mum. I think its nicer than stay-at-home-mum which sounds a bit non-active. As a WOHM I don't mind others calling themselves fulltime-mum.

I totally understand and agree with beaniesteve. It's a blunt generalisation, but I was to choose between a)DH earning 100k but working ridiculously long hours, probably in a job that's not very socially useful, not necessarily particularly enjoyable, working long hours so not seeing a huge amount of the kids but earning enough for me to stay home, or b) both of us earning 50k in stimulating jobs where we are using our skills and making a valuable contribution to society, having the time to still both do lovely things with the kids but using for childcare some of the time, I would definitely go for option b).
Why? Because at the end of the day we are BOTH parents. And we are BOTH capable of doing interesting and valued jobs. Why should either of us want to give up the advantages of having quality time with our children, or of enjoying our work lives?
It always makes me give a wry smile when I hear mothers with very high earning but hugely pressurised husbands extolling the virtues of being a SAHM. Do they not see their husbands as an equal parent?
If being a SAHM for me meant my DH working his ass off, being hugely pressurised and seeing less of our children than he'd like, I'd feel I'd failed not only him but our children.

I so agree with you findtheriver.

If 1 parent works for £100K the take home will be £65k, if 2 parents work for £50k the take home will be 70k, but they would have to pay for childcare out of that.

I would assume that both £50k jobs would not be 9 - 5 and so a nanny would be required at a cost of £20 to £25k, making the 2 x 50k parents substatially pooorer than the 1 x £100k family.

Iota - you make a very good point.

When there are two adult earners in a family, their combined hours are generally longer than the hours of a single earner for the same total income.

Hence, the hours in the day in which there is no adult presence in the household have to be compensated for by purchase of childcare, cleaning etc.

Iota, if you read my post you'll see that I see 'it's a blunt generalisation'!! I wasn't meaning literally those specific amounts!! My point is that for some couples, having one parent at home means a huge sacrifice for the other partner in terms of having all the earning pressure, very little time with the children and so on. If you believe that both mum and dad are equally capable of parenting, it can often make sense for the roles to be more equally divided, rather than traditional polarised roles. Of course childcare costs are part of the equation, but as I've said countless times, I don't think the issue is simply about money, it's about how we want to bring our children up, what our aspirations are for them and what kind of role models we want to be. It just seems strange that in this day and age, where women and men are treated as equals in terms of education, and people often partner someone who has similar levels of education/training etc, that people would want to have hugely divergent roles once they become parents. I met my dh at university (like many of my contemporaries). We are both professional. We are both parents. So we both do both.

findtheriver - parents choose for one partner to stay at home because they believe it to be a highly valuable application of education...

what are the calculations when earning £20,000 each?

this is the situation I will be in. an I afford to be a SAHM and live on my OH's £20,000 or will I be better off to keep working and pay for the childcare out of £40,000?

"If you believe that both mum and dad are equally capable of parenting, it can often make sense for the roles to be more equally divided, rather than traditional polarised roles. Of course childcare costs are part of the equation"

I don't get this. If you were sharing the parenting, why would you also need childcare?

I'm an SAHM to 4 dc's and our income without tax credits last year was 13,500 the tax credits and family allowance pay for food shopping and clothes for the kids.If I was to return to work in my previous job, I would earn 30 - 40,000 , but I'd never see my kids as i'd be working long days with few weekends off. I'm intending to go back to uni when dd2 is 18mths-2yrs old and living like we do now will set us up for the prospect of living on a bursary ( actually we could be better off- how weird is that)