I hate the expression full time parent!

[Jbr]

It is always the term given to parents who don't have a job. Well, lets be honest, MOTHERS who don't work. (Men don't get these labels do they? In fact the very idea that a man wouldn't work because he has children rarely seems to crop up anyway!).

But my point is, I saw Carole Smillie on the front on a magazine saying "Why I could never be a full-time mum" which I inferred as "Why I could never give up work" or something similar. I would hope even if she worked on the Moon 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, she would still be a "full time mum". In fact I wish she would go to the Moon and take Carol Vorderman (another woman who wishes she didn't work - believe it or not - and once said she wishes she could stay home and be a "proper" mother!!) with her. You are still someone's mother whever you are. Why do people think being a mother means one thing and being a dad means doing something else?

Sorry I just had to rant!

Sorry, Jbr, but when I'm doing outside work I am not looking after my children, except in a general sense of having made the arrangements to delegate that work to someone else. They are doing the actual work, which is why I have to pay them for it.
Your suggestion that only public, paid work counts is simply not convincing. I grew up on a farm. We sold most of our produce, but also kept and processed some for our own consumption. According to your view of things, only the effort we put towards what we sold was "work". Myself, I found picking a case of apples feels much the same whether you're selling them or keeping them.

I had a similar argument with someone today, who told me I should get paid off the government (ie tax payers) for what I do in my own home eg playing with Jack, doing our washing, washing the dishes I had messed up in the first place. I just stared and then said "why?" They couldn't come up with a single reason that convinced me I should take money for not going to work during the day.

That's not really a similar argument. I'm saying some of these activities are work - I never said all work should be paid for by someone else!

Jbr I would love to stay at home looking after my child for the majority of the week. However, I work because I need the money. Now, I have qualifications coming out of my ears, so you can't accuse me of wanting to stay at home because I'm in allegience with our sexist society!

Jbr women can WANT to stay at home and there's no shame in 'letting the side down' by doing it. Why aren't you happy for those woman that have the choice to work or not. That choice is what feminism is all about isn't it?

Maybe if you had the full time job you're after you would feel more fufilled and more amiable to your fellow mothers!

Those who don't work though are taking the route dictated by the male view though. Why should they feel differently to their partners about working, if they have one? Because we are told we should however subliminaly it sinks in. I saw a website for women who don't work by choice the other day and there were 68 discussions from women who don't have children, so the kids have nothing to do with it. Someone said women who work are talking "women's lib crap" and "everyone knows" men should work and women shouldn't. Can't remember what it was called but I don't want to give them anymore publicity anyway.

Socialising starts at such a young age. I saw a little boy in a shop the other day who wanted to buy his brother a birthday card. He picked on up and his mother made him put it back because - shock horror! - it had a PINK rabbit on it and "boys don't like those colours" according to said mother. Not really in with this discussion but it proves my point.

Actually in Austria they passed a law last year where if you marry your partner, you can get divorced if she/he refuses to split all responsibilites (financial/spare time domestic) 50/50. A bit extreme (!) but I agree with the principal!

And even if you work, you are still "looking after" your children.

Jbr, it is simply not necessarily the case that women choosing not to work are taking a view directed my men. Women and for that matter men who choose not to work are in the main, doing so because that's what they want. There are also a lot of women out there in full time employment because it's what their husbands want despite the fact that they make it plain they would rather stay at home with their children.

I just don't understand why you can't accept the different choices people make. I am intending to give up work in a couple of years time so I can be at home with my children. Anybody who knows me would collapse in laughter that this has anything remotely to do with my husband or for that matter, any other man!!.

Why all this talk about mothers who don't work? As far as I'm concerned, being a mother is the most important job of all - and the most stressful and underpaid I might add!

I too have qualifications and was just on the verge of getting my career together when I fell pregnant. As my husband was earning at the time, I naturally decided that it would be best if I stayed at home. I also wanted to stay at home, I adored this little thing I had given birth to and didn't want to leave her for a minute! I used to get upset when people (mainly women) asked me when I was going back to work, but now I am proud of being a full-time mother, there is no job in the world that is quite like it! I love watching my child do new things and am proud of the strong bond that we have. I feel sorry for my husband who misses all of this, and when she cries she stretches out her arms for me - I know this hurts him.

Regarding what JBR has said, we also need the money. We just get buy on my husband's wages, but we have to without a lot of things, such as holidays and so on, these could all be afforded if I worked. But I have no family near by to look after her if I did work, and I'm sorry, but I just cannot leave her alone to be looked after by strangers, no matter how qualified they are. So we have no money - but that doesn't matter to us, I am happy looking after my child and she is happy to be with me, and of course my husband is happy to have a contented wife and child!

Women should not feel pressurised to return to work, especially by the government, do what feels right for you and your baby. Be proud of who you are - full-time mother or working mother!

Ok, this isn't directed at you Lisa but I do just have one niggle with SAHM's!. As I hope I have previously made clear, I am fully supportive of a parent's right to to give up work in order to look after their child if they want. I do however get irritated when SAHP's go on about how staying home with your child is harder/more stressful/more exhausting or whatever than going out to work. I hear this a lot particularly on programmes like "Women's Hour". Obviously, us full time working mothers know all about how stressful looking after children can be - after all, we do it every evening, every weekend and every holiday.

Obviously by going out to work, we only have a few hours available to us every evening as well as weekends in which to shop, cook, clean, wash and do all the other household chores as well as attempt to have some sort of social life.

Because I have to leave at a set time evey evening to relieve our Nanny,I very rarely take a lunch break and accordingly, aside from my secret Mumsnet addicition, get no time to myself during the day. Obviously, if it's a sunny day we don't have the flexibility to decamp to the park and likewise if we're feeling miserable, we can't choose to snuggle up on the sofa with a video. I know that many SAHP's don't necessarily have the ability to do much of these types of activities but at least they enjoy flexibility as to how their days are managed. Many SAHM's I know have childcare arranged for a few hours a week so they can get some time to themselves. Most of us working mothers can only dream of such a luxury!!.

Please don't get me wrong - I know staying at home with kids can be hard work etc etc but I just don't think it's fair to describe it as "harder" than going out to work. It's just different, that's all.

I can sympathise with that. Our Nanny is sometimes fond of pointing out to me how hard she works. I know she works hard - after all I spend my weekends doing exactly what she does on her work days!

Question, if we all had pots and pots of money, would we all give up work?. This applies to those who work from home as well like moi!

I would do some sort of "work" but it would be something where the focus was on enjoyment, fulfillment and short hours!

Like a shot Tigger. I'd cut down on my son's hours at nursery (but not take him out, he really does love it so much) so we had much more time together to go swimming etc. I'd be able to keep the house a bit tidier and have time to decorate. Once he was at school I'd use those hours to do some voluntary work, have some quality time to myself, keep fit and maybe develop a freelance skill. Equally, I'd encourage my husband to do the same as far as he wanted to (he has always maintained he would never want to give up work entirely).

This thread is called "i hate the expression full time parent" and yet someone said she was a "full time mum"! So if we work, we aren't full time parents?

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Bloss, well said!, but as I ahve said before some women think that they can't operate without a man telling them what to do and say, I don't know where you get your thoughts or ideas from Jbr, but I quite honestly find them a bit pre historic!

Well said Bloss. And vivre la difference.

My gender studies teacher told me "men are unemployed, women are housewives". Too true!!

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Hear Hear Bloss, the irony is I find Jbr's comments that all women should go to work, as insulting as any man's comment that all women should stay at home!

Jbr you insult many of us women by declaring we have no minds of our own. Who is the misogynist around here???

Hang on Jbr, if a man is at home and is responsible for the primary care of his children, has a reasonable household income via his partner and isn't actively looking for work, then just like a woman in the same position, he is most definitely not "unemployed".

Yes, husbands who stay at home and look after the children, what about them? I'll come back to this in a second. To recap, an occupation only gets you off Jbr's unemployment list if it's paid? Yes?

What about students then? Do we term male student parents as unemployed, while female student parents are housewives? And do we discriminate between those on vocational and non-vocational courses? And what about women who choose to go to college rather than go back to their job after their child is born? I know several women who have done this to increase their skills ( or quite frankly, because they like learning!) while also benefitting from excellent, cheap, college creche care for their baby. Are these student mothers 'living off the state' in the same way as that example of the woman who keeps having more children? Jbr, as a student, or ex-student yourself, how do you and your fellow students see this?

As for me, my husband has always been at home for the children more than I have. The result of the cookie crumbling. First a student, he now runs a small business. He has always had more flexibility to his daily life than me. By default not design I ended up with the 9 - 5 ( or longer) 5-day week career. Someone had to have regular money coming in to pay the bills. Luckily I like what I do.

Logic and economics have made me the main breadwinner. Doing what I do enables my husband to do what he does - and he's the first to admit this. Whle he wouldn't stop me getting off the treadmill, it would send shivers of fear straight through him! He loves being a part-time house husband/ flexi worker.

Men want women to stay at home and look after the children? In my case definitely not.

Sorry Jbr, I think you are making some good points, but you are are making far too many generalisations. Stop looking at those extreme anti-women websites and start looking around you.

I think there's far too much labelling going on here. Whether you are classed as unemployed, a housewife, mother (I won't even go into the full or part-time bit), student, whatever (or all 4 as I am) doesn't really matter. The crux of the issue is that women have done a heck of a lot for themselves in the past 20 years. No longer is it automatically assumed that the woman gives up her career when she falls pregnant, in fact, having that choice is something our mothers probably never had. Yet is this necessarily a good thing? I feel pressurised at times to get a job, especially by other working mothers such as JBR, they cannot understand that I am quite happy to stay at home and look after my child. I know it is hard work to juggle both your career and a family, and others do lots more besides. So aren't we in danger of working ourselves to the bone? Men are very hard to change and I'm betting here that when the mothers get home from work, they end up doing more of the housework and childcare than their male counterparts. We might see working mothers as a revolution in equality, but is it really? Who is doing all the hard work here? Men are no longer under pressure to be the sole earners, yet most of them still come home to a clean and tidy house and a hot meal. Of course, there are going to be exceptions, but in this world of equality we must look at who is really winning here.
Question: If your child has a fall at school, who does the school ring at work? And if your child is ill, who takes time off to look after them? And who feels the most guilty about working? I never hear men having these discussions.

Lisa, I think that having a choice is 100% a good thing, but as we all know, economic considerations like paying the mortgage can dictate your final decision. It did for me, anyway. So guilt doesn't come into it, or any anti-feelings towards mothers who do not work outside the home. Each to their own.

Anyway, just to say that it's my husband, not me, who is the first port of call when our children are ill. He takes time off to look after them, too, because it it's easier and cheaper for him to do this - and his medical knowledge far outstrips my own. Plus our sons prefer him to be the one administering plasters and sympathy. He just happens to be better in this particular area it than I am.

Both the school and our childminder know he works in the vicinity. I work far away. They naturally assume he will be the one to take charge here. A practical decision.

Ok we may be an 'exceptional' family - but I don't think that by any means we're alone.

Well, Lisa for every bit of pressure you feel from working mums to get a job, I can guarantee that us "working" mums get an equivalent amount of implicit pressure to stay at home from old fashioned relatives, sexist men and occassionally, SAHM's. You make a fair point about women still shouldering the burden of household chores. However, the answer to this surely lies in men adopting more of an equal role in the home rather than women not having the freedom to choose to work if that's what they want. Personally, I simply can't see any validity to your questioning of whether women having a choice to work or not is necessarily a good thing!

I notice that a couple of questions to Melissa Hill from SAHM's seem to bizarrely suggest that if you work, you somehow abdicate responsibility for the upbringing of your children. One woman comments that dealing with sibling rivalry is "much harder than banking". Well maybe it is but being a full time banker and mother means you have to deal with sibling rivalry AND maintain your job so whether one is "harder" than the other is somehwat irrelevant!.

Shoot! I hope my post wasn't one of the ones that seemed to suggest women who work have abdicated responsibility of their kids. It's bizarre to me that this woman is actually writing about how to stay home full time and deal with the financial and social pressures when she clearly hasn't really had to do it herself. It'd be like someone with a part time job giving advice to parents on how to work full time and manage a family.. not a lot of street cred. At any rate, I think the whole family and work thing should be a team effort, no matter how you divide it up (either with both working or one working and one staying at home). You're both parents, you've got to have money and you need to rear your children. How you get all that done is completely up to you.

I don't work, but my husband is still on-call for emergencies at nursery. They ring me first but have explicit instructions to ring him if I don't pick up the phone for some reason. He also cooks and cleans and is just as comfortable watching our son as I am. At any rate, I'm not subjugated. When we got married, we decided that he would be the one to stay home.. unfortunately for him, financially it was better off for me to do so. If we won the lottery, we'd both be home.