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Original poster

What do you think about "not doing anything" when children are at school/nursery?

661 replies

morningpaper · 19/05/2005 12:04

My daughter's peers are starting nurseries ... and I'm finding myself really SHOCKED at the fact that my mummy-friends aren't doing anything with their time while their children are out of the home. I asked a friend last week what she did and she said "Oh I just get home, tidy up a bit, have a coffee - and then I have to pick him up again!"

As I work from home there is ALWAYS some work I can do. I also do voluntary work and could always do with more time to get stuff done.

I also don't understand why their partners are happy with them just taking 'mornings off' to themselves - aren't they a bit miffed?

I'm probably just jealous but I can't help but think that they are just plain lazy! What do other people feel about this?!

OP posts:
Gobbledigook · 19/05/2005 19:32

OMG - I could quite happily smack FM right in the face - what a really obnoxious individual. Bleurgh.

Gobbledigook · 19/05/2005 19:33

Do you think she has any friends?

WigWamBam · 19/05/2005 19:38

I don't think she'll be making many new ones on MN ...

NomDePlume · 19/05/2005 19:40

This thread is v funny ! Intentionally so, or not.

FWIW, I wouldn't feel particularly justified in staying at home once my youngest child is in f/t education, in fact I start a degree in September to enable me to build a career once she does go to school. That said, I don't think it is any of my business what any other parent chooses to do with their time when their kids are at school and so I won't say that i think it is terrible etc etc that some women are opting to stay at home for whatever reason.

It isn't our place to judge, IMO.

And FairyMum - HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHA. A most amusing pov you hold.

Gobbledigook · 19/05/2005 19:40

Sorry, I'm not violent but the more misguided assumptions she makes about SAHM the more the rage builds!!! I don't know why - she isn't the sort of person whose opinion I'd worry about in RL!!

NomDePlume · 19/05/2005 19:41

FWIW, FairyMum has been on MN a while, I don't think she's a bridge dweller, IYSWIM.

WideWebWitch · 19/05/2005 19:41

What breathtakingly arrogant and offensive posts FairyMum. I agree with Caligula and Senora. Er, so if you're at home bringing up children you're setting a bad example to your children? So the only work that's valuable is paid outside the home work is it? And we should all send our children to nursery from 3 onwards? Fgs! GeorginaA, I totally agree about being defined by paid jobs, what a load of toss. So if only paid work is valuable, is more highly paid work more valuable? So midwives aren't terribly important but brain surgeons are vital? God, remember the govt idea that if you want to attract men to a poorly paid, low status profession like childcare, what you need to do is raise the salaries and status and hey presto, you'd have MEN applying. And more men doing (insert any job here) would raise the value of xyz profession.

PollyFiller, women's lib was about women being able to make choices: to be paid the same as men for work of equal value, to be able to compete for traditionally male jobs, to live in a fairer country, one where it wasn't automatically assumed that a woman belonged to her husband and therefore it was ok to rape her as long as they were married. It was about a lot of things but I don't remember the bit where it said women shouldn't want to or be able to stay at home and bring up their children if they want to, I really don't.

Lazy journalists, dontcha just hate em!!!!!!!!!!!!! Working people into a frenzy, mean, innit??!!!!!!!Salt of the earth, what would we do without them?!!!!!!!!! And some of 'em work from home, working around children AND doing paid work, brilliant!!!!!!!!!! That's really having it all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Caligula · 19/05/2005 19:41

Compo, totally agree, what really pisses me off is the idea that my time in a high-status job was more intellectually stimulating than the time I spend with Radio 4. Have any of you people actually worked with account directors? Do you have any idea just how thoroughly vacuous high-flying executives can be? I can't remember a single intelligent conversation from my days in the media (although on the law of averages, I must have had some). I spent much of my life being bored out of my mind by my high-status, high paid job. Whereas now, my life is full of intellectual stimulation, not all of it provided by Mumsnet! I won't say what dull people you must be if you haven't got the intellectual resources to entertain yourself at home without having to go out to work to do so, because then I'd sound like FairyMum's evil doppelganger, but please, spare me the old crap about work being the only route to intellectual stimulation and home being a prison of dullness. Don?t you people have a radio? Don?t you have books?

Gobbledigook · 19/05/2005 19:44

I notice we never get threads saying 'I'm not being judgemental BUT how do you put your children in nursery while you go out to work, don't you feel incredibly guilty, don't you think you should be at home with your baby...'

No, there'd be a bloody outrage.

Caligula · 19/05/2005 19:45

Oh, I'm sure we must have had a few of those...

ambrosia · 19/05/2005 19:46

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Original poster
morningpaper · 19/05/2005 19:52

sunchowder: do you want me to come back? I just lit the touchpaper and ran off (to hoover up the 12 inches of glitter now covering my house). (I'd assumed from your retraction that you wouldn't want me to respond?)

OP posts:
Original poster
morningpaper · 19/05/2005 19:59

Compo wrote: What drives me nuts about threads like these are assumptions such as the following: "For me being a SAHM is unfulfilling because it's based around housework and lack of adult company"

Don't you think that's what just about every post in the thread about fulfillment and SAHM's concluded? And it's not an assumption, it's my experience.

OP posts:
curtains · 19/05/2005 20:04

NDP, you said Fairymum had been on MN for a while. That doesn't mean she isn't a troll. I just don't think she sounds at all real....

NomDePlume · 19/05/2005 20:05

I know that, curtains, but it does make her less likely to be

Original poster
morningpaper · 19/05/2005 20:05

Lordy, 440 posts - see I'd have never got that if I'd just asked you nicely what you did all day.

OP posts:
sunchowder · 19/05/2005 20:07

MP: Did my post strike a cord with you? I just wanted to know if it made sense to you and gave you a different perspective, that's all.

Caligula · 19/05/2005 20:07

Yes MP, it's YOUR experience - ie, not necessarily everyone's!

Catterick · 19/05/2005 20:12

I walk around in fluffy mules with a feather duster making new leiderhosen out of my spare curtains. On a particularly exciting day, if the soaplines are slightly tedious i make my own jams and paper snowflakes. I stopped talking to other adults quite a few years ago, i tried at first but i found i could only relate in the form of nursery rhymes which alienated others ( especially working mothers, they were busy busy busy talking about books without pictures, bizzare)

Original poster
morningpaper · 19/05/2005 20:14

sunchowder: I think you are obviously a very amazing and giving person to live the life you are living. Your experience was not the sort I was referring to. In another post a SAHM-with-kids-at-school said she spent her time at the gym, drinking cofee and having lunches with friends. A lot of other SAHMs answers imply that they do housework for rather a lot of the day. Personally I would find that DEEPLY unfulfilling and boring. I need a lot of stimulation to keep me happy and to stop me from stagnating - so I enjoy working, paid and voluntary, and studying. If I have no projects on the go then I am bored senseless. I don't watch telly (ok I confess I watched that Monastry programme recently...) but I do gardening and DIY for me-time to relax as well as meditation and stuff of that ilk.

Does that answer your post (if you have not dropped off with how dull I sound)?

OP posts:
NomDePlume · 19/05/2005 20:14

PMSL Catterick !!!

sunchowder · 19/05/2005 20:14

Catterick

bobbybob · 19/05/2005 20:15

I'm not jealous of people that do this - it's just not for me - I would much rather be doing something sporty, work related or social.

I've just found out that it's actually cheaper to send ds to nursery for one whole day at the moment because of how the subsidies work here, but I work from home and so the extra time has gone into building my business still more.

But then ds goes to bed at 6.45 and I have the whole evening to "tidy up a bit and have a coffee".

As for dps and dh's minding. Mothers probably only get an hour to themselves, maybe 1.5 if they live near the nursery. There dh's get that too - it's called a lunchbreak! (and they are not expected to tidy up a bit).

I do think it's funny that we send our kids to nursery to socialise and then we go home to our little boxes and sit on our own.

curtains · 19/05/2005 20:16

NDP, she/he still sounds like troll to me!

What have her other posts been like, I haven't read any? Does she come across as more, ... emmm, balanced?

Mind you totally diverting from original topic!

NomDePlume · 19/05/2005 20:17

Some of them are a bit 'odd' but have never struck me as Troll-ish, just different to mine in most cases