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

[morningpaper]

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?!

Why dinosaur? She has just been promoted and has a very successful career, whereas mine was goiing backwards. We can't afford the childcare for us both to work (we both commute into the City and local salaries are much less). It made sense on many levels for me to stay at home.
Am i robbing my dw of her motherly duties?

wysiwyg - I can only speak for myself but yes, that's probably fair that it gave me the "excuse" to stop a job that was stressful and unfulfilling. Also the last four years has been a big opportunity to reevaluate my life and find new strengths.

In broad brush strokes I was very science orientated at school and my degree, didn't go into science as a career and ended up in customer service & supply chain to pay the bills and now I realise that I'm happier with either more adminy/computery things or writing & creativity - the latter being a million miles away from the "me" that was achieving at school.

I think without the career break I would probably have plugged on regardless on a very unsatisfactory career path. I don't want to get trapped like that again, have come to realise that earning money to get "stuff" isn't as important as enjoying the journey and will consider very seriously any future change of direction.

Now, I know I'm very lucky. Dh loves his chosen career (computer programming). He works in a small company where he gets a lot of say in what goes on and control on how he works. In his spare time he'll also programme (yes, I think he's certifyable ) - if he's not doing a bit of freelance, then he'll help out on open source projects or be writing his own software. He'll just use a different programming language to make it more "fun". So no, as far as I'm aware he doesn't begrudge me any long hours as they are of his own vocation/choosing to a certain extent (although they've got slightly longer than he really would prefer at the moment - but mainly because he wants to do a particular freelance project to help build a relationship for future work). He works from home 3 days a week, so work life balance is there and he sees the boys lots, so even though work is pretty hectic at the moment, he is still there for 3 mealtimes and the early evenings (he'll just do some more work once they've gone to bed if necessary). For us it generally works well at the moment.

Hey, we'll see. We all reserve the right to change our minds if circumstances change, don't we

I think that having children is quite a useful thing for re-evaluating career/ job actually. A lot of people go into something in their twenties thinking it'll be short term and end up building a career in it by accident - I never really meant to go into advertising, it just happened to be what came up, one job led to another and suddenly in my early thirties I found I had built a career. I'd never set out to do that, it just had its own momentum. Being made redundant while pregnant with my second child was a wonderful opportunity to find out what else I could do with all the transferable skills and experience I'd built up. Many people, both men and women, find that redundancy is the catalyst for them making a life-change that they wouldn't otherwise have made; for many women, that catalyst is motherhood. I really don't see what's wrong with that, I think that can be quite a positive thing. Obviously, it's not positive if you're hounded out of a career you love because it's incompatible with the vision of motherhood you want to pursue; but for most people, let's be honest, their career isn't something they absolutely adore and feel sad to leave. Given an unexpected chance to change direction, many people seize it with both hands. And if it happens when they're slightly older, they'll have a much better idea of their strengths and weaknesses and what's out there for them.

I had ds (my 2nd child) so that I could leave my job. I mean, we'd always wanted 2 kids anyway, but I was definately pleased that it enabled me to leave work. But I think that was mainly because I'd found it very difficult to combine my career with being a decent parent to dd. Pre her, I'd actually enjoyed my job, I'd happily work until 10pm or go in at weekends. And if I wasn't working, I'd usually be socialising with people from work, or others in the industry. My work was my life - it helped that dh had a similar attitude to his, and worked in the same industry so we'd be at social events together.

And if I'm honest, I'd quite like that life back -I enjoyed it. I liked being able to give 100% to my job. But I'd have to give up dd and ds, and I couldn't do that. So Ive chosen to move to a different career, which does interest me, but it won't give me the buzz that working in the city used to. I think I've just realised that buzz and kids are not things that go together easily.

You could always turn your attention to the evening, instead, when your H accuses you of being 'dysfunctional'. Makes up for all those coffees and glasses of wine during the day

yeah, yeah, caligula, and if the women i'd met had expressed it as articulately and eloquently as you, it would have been less of a p*sser.

it's just very difficult to stomach getting told off (i'm not joking) for working, by women who, basically, gave up work because they couldn't hack it, not because they were dedicated to being sahms.

not to say that not being able to "hack it" as i put it above, is reprehensible, i can barely hack it myself most days, it's the mealy-mouthiness of the rationalisation, combined with the criticism of those who work, that really gets under my skin... i'm thinking of people i know in RL not MN btw.

ok, i'll get my coat...

God, that was in answer to the original question, btw, not anyone that's posted here.

Prufrock wrote:
"I think I've just realised that buzz and kids are not things that go together easily."

I can't argue with that!

To be honest there is a lot you can do to fill your time with keeping house and the like if you want to and some ladies find its what they choose to do with that time - get the housework done get a bit of me time and then back to get the kids.

I have to say thats not me. I have to do something. I generally work on my art in that time or if I didn't have that I'd have to find some other outlet!

But each to thier own, we're not all the same

Emma x

This is my first time so bear with me... To work or not is not as simple as that. I'm a freelance but have always tried to keep work to part-time, school hours, term time schedule. The downside is that my workload is not easy to control. It's feast or famine, When I'm really busy, I'm so stressed that everything falls apart. So, I've tended to turn work down unless it fits in. Have to say that's not very good for business. Earning less than ever and wondering what's the point. Secretly love it when I've got no work on