SAHMs...would you encourage your daughters to SAHM or WOHM ?

[mozhe]

I ask out of genuine interest....people have often said to me that I became a committed WOHM because I had such a strong model in my own mother....and I would certainly be very disappointed if one of my own daughters chose to be a SAHM.
SAHMs what do you think ? And why ?

The, 'She must do what she wants and what suits her,' attitude is extremely worrying. I wonder that so many parents take this attitude to their daughters becoming SAHMs but not to so many of the other choices their kids do or do not make. What bothers me is the suggestion that it is only an individual choice and affects no one else but the woman and her family. So many women take the decision to become long-term SAHMs (I'm not talking about those who go part-time or who take an extended maternity leave) only to be totally unprepared and devastated when one of the.
following happens to them:

1.) Their partner divorces them, contracts a serious illness or dies. (This is far more common than you might imagine. I read statistics somewhere maybe 50%?). The mother then finds herself without a job unable to support the whole family.

2.) Their partner has to work longer hours to support the family and compensate for the mother's loss of earnings thus the kids and the mother lose out on quality time with the father. Perhaps he resents this, perhaps the whole family resents this.

3.) No provision or inadequate provision is made for pensions for the mother who is not in a position to contribute to her own pension fund.

4.) The mother eventually decides to return to paid work and finds it incredibly difficult to do this. Her skills and knowledge are out of date. She is competing with younger, more skilled and more energetic people for the same job.

5.) The mother feels that her work is not really valued. She begins to feel unsatisfied and depressed. This starts to affect family life.

I'm not saying that one of the above happens to every SAHM but you might be surprised by just how many it DOES happen to. And in these circumstances that woman becomes a burden to the state so her decision to be a SAHM has not only negatively affected herself, her family but the whole of society. My point is being a SAHM is not a decision to take lightly just because it feels right at the time. Any woman who becomes a SAHM must think of the long-term consequences of this decision

It's probably off our radar but my daughters have their own views on all kinds of subjects and they'll make their own decisions. I know they've spoken disparagingly of one boy friend whose home life consisted of 3 sons and father who sit around whilst the stay at home mother waits on all 4 men hand and foot. I don't think my daughter had ever seen that before and wasn't very impressed.

Most UK parents want their daughters to be able to support themselves because many people actually never have a live in partner to support them any way and many don't or can't have children, some choose to have children alone and others are left high and dry as b&w says.

I was reading a book review about some interviews with Japanese women (which is supposed to show the stereotypes are wrong). What was interesting was that in a class of 8 year old girls asked what they wanted to be when they grew up 100% wanted to be housewives. I am not sure we probably want that in the UK for our girls.

Are you suggesting MI that I couldn't do the big-hat-big-event-awfully-gracious thing?! Actually it would be hell. So I'll amend that to 'I'm encouraging the girls to elope with a very very rich wo/man'

I'm a SAHM at the moment (having been a WOHM for a few years).

I would love both children to be able to get a job they are passionate about - dh has a job like this and I can see how much more he gets from it than I got from mine (not that I'm putting down accounting ).

I wouldn't encourage my children to be SAHPs. What I would do though, is point out to them the benefit of having a job that is and can be flexible. I only WISH I had had some good career advice before I fell pregnant because I was in the most child unfriendly job possible (loads of overseas travel etc. etc.) and I found it very hard to go back to once I'd had the kids which did contribute (though there were loads of other factors) to me chucking it in and now I have to start all over again looking for another one.

I think what I wish for my DD is to:

a) be financially secure

b) spend her time doing things she enjoys

c) raise happy children, if she wishes to have them

d) have a full range of choices available to her to choose her own path in life

How she achieves this is down to her really, and indeed she may not share these 'must haves' at all!

it wouldn't bother me if my dd worked or stayed at home. Maybe she'll do the same as me and work part time, just because, as you say, i am her main role model. PErhaps if she worked iwould get quality time with grandchildren (many many years away)
btw, if your dd(s) chose to be SAHM, would you interpret it as them subconsciously not being happy that you are a comitted WOHM?

So long as DD is happy and secure, and doing what she wants and what makes her and her family happy, then that is enough for me. How she achieves this is up to her.

i am a sahm to 2 boys so probably wont have this problem but if i had girls, i would tell them to do whatever suited their family and what they were happy with.

Yes, dogs, but my point is that a and d on your list would be less possible if your daughters were long-term SAHMS and possibly also b and c.

I suppose we all start off by saying, 'We just want our daughters to be happy and healthy,' but if they came to us and said they'd by happy if they could just drop out of school at 15 and spend their time shopping with our money we might take a rather different stance!

? I would encourage her to do whatever makes her happy and suits her personal circumstances best. Can't imagine being disappointed if my daughter were fulfilled either way - its a bit like saying would you be disappointed if your daughter became a tattoo artist/nurse/construction worker/doctor - its up to her. My brain just doesn't think that way.

d) wouldn't (?)

and with (a) all they'd have to do is marry someone vaaary wealthy or make their fortune before they had kids!

I'm rather with HonoriaGlossop on this one. I have difficulty categorising myself as a SAHM, although that's what I undoubtedly am ATM, because it does sound rather like a career choice. I don't see it that way at all. I have spent time studying, investigating the possibility of retraining, thinking a lot about my next career move. For me this is one stage of my career. As I suspect it is for many of us.

And my mum, who like me has done a bit of the SAHM and the WOHM thing, and who has worked full time for decades since we were small, is equally supportive of me and my WOHM sister. When we do nothing that is intellectually stimulating - that's when she gets on our case. And I suspect I will be the same way with dd.

my mum was a SAHM, I am a SAHM, my sister works, psychoanalyse as much as you like but we are two different people who do what we do. my mum is happy for both of us because we are both happy.

And I think the same about my DS too, should he decide to be a SAHD

Oh, such blissful naivete! At the moment my girls would probably be perfectly happy messing about with snails in the garden, eating ice-cream and chocolate biscuits and watching CBeebies. Sometimes I think this is exactly what I'd be happy to do too. But it ain't going to happen. What makes somebody happy isn't necessarily the best way to spend your time and isn't necessariyl going to make you happy if you actually could do it. Dp would probably be delighted if he was told he could spend the rest of his life playing golf and driving nice cars all day but I suspect that actually he'd be bored out of his brain and dying to get back to work within a week. And as I said what makes 1 woman happy isn't necessariyl going to make her family happy, pay the bills, pay for her retirement and keep her secure should something awful happen to her husband. Come back to the real world ladies.

sorry, I meant I was querying why (d) wouldn't

anyway, goodness knows why I posted on here . I'm one of those people that tends not to think about this at all! (well my kids are only in primary school so a long way to go still).

One think that I think is interesting is how much things have changed for women within the last generation. According to my TES a couple of weeks ago for the 1st time ever parents are now more ambitious for their daughters than their sons in terms of getting them to university and which university. Girls are now outperforming boys at every level academically and there are even more women than men entering medical school. So thinking ahead another 20+ years to when my dds might be considering children things will be even more different in that women are perhaps more likely to be the main breadwinners and better qualified than their male partners. Just thinking about the consequences to society as a whole if they all decided to become SAHMS having taken up all tax payers money to become highly qualified doctors, lawyers etc...

Ofcourse there are consequences to taking time off work to have children - there would also be consequences if my children decided to become poets, devote themselves to charity work in the third world, decide that they would like to be pop stars. It is possible to choose to take some time out from salaried work to care for your children and have your eyes open to the consequences of doing so.

I am in the real world. When I was deciding what to do after dd was born (dh had already done his SAHD bit by then) he asked he asked me if I really saw myself teaching at 65. And TBH I didn't. So taking a few years out to broaden my options seemed a good plan. I still think it is.

Agreed MP, but my point is that so very many don't. Think about the consequences I mean. I've read about them, met them and heard their testimonies on this site as well.

SAHMs forever, or for a few years?

What an interesting op. Although I don't work, I think I would want my children to work. That's mainly because I want them to have good jobs that would be a) worth carrying on with and b) bringing in enough money to pay for childcare and leave them well off. Neither of those apply to me, which is why I stay at home.

Should clarify that I'm not getting at SAHMS or saying it's all doom. Actually most of the SAHMS on this site have carefully considered their choices and they do have choices (most of them having deliberately taken time out from successful careers which they're in a position to go back to) but they are also not representative of the majority of SAHMS.