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?!

PollyFiller - that argument 'But having been educated at the taxpayers' expense, do we not have a duty to put something back into society (over and above being parents)? ' is ludicrous. Isn't it enough to use education to educate our children? Is having a part time job in Tesco utilsing our education fgs?

Have been pondering on this. Assuming all children in school but no "paid" work (as these seem to be the major targets):

9-3, 5 days a week = 30 hours

Walk to and from school = 5 hours

Tidying/laundry/household = 5 hours

Lunch breaks = 5 hours

Coffee breaks = 1.25 hours

MNetting (just like all you WOTH'ers = 2.5 hours

Out of home chores e.g. shopping/dry cleaning etc. = 5 hours

Helping in school or other unpaid work = 4 hours

Total for week = 27.75 hours leaving 2.25 hours a week for being a lazy arse

so Plyyfiller - exactly how many years should I have worked to have put enough back into society?

Was 20 not enough - where should the line be drawn?

so Pollyfiller - exactly how many years should I have worked to have put enough back into society?

Was 20 not enough - where should the line be drawn?

It wasn't you I was quoting, morningpaper, and it wasn't you I was telling to bugger off.

Compo: Where I live (westcountry) it's not a problem. Actually it's pretty hard to find FULL TIME work. I work a few hours a week for a company that employs 20 people, ALL part-time. I know it's hard in some areas like London. I'm also self-employed so obviously I work whatever hours I want. However that's not really what lots of people on this thread WANT.

But if you do WANT to do something else there is always more to be done - voluntary work for example - I can see from this thread that there ARE those who genuinely DON'T want to do anything else apart from "housewife" duties. I didn't really understand that that's actually 'enough' for some women.

What we really do when the kids aren't around - WMs and SAHMs alike...

A Mother's Confession

(Or: What you have always suspected...)

by Jan Dean

As soon as you are asleep in bed
I unlock the secret cupboard
Where I keep all the chocolate
And I eat it and eat it.
I don't share it with anybody
And I don't give half a hoot about my teeth.

As soon as you are tucked up all tidy in your bed
I put my feet on the sofa - shoes still on,
Or if I take them off I don't undo the laces first,
Then I drink fizzy cans and eat crisps,
And practice blowing huge, round, pink bubbles
Out of hubba-bubba gum.

Once you're asleep
I watch those programmes on the telly
(The ones I always say are trash)
And I don't go to bed at a sensible time -
Even though I am really, really tired.
I don't go because I'm a grown-up
And I can do what I like
And you can't stop me.
Ha. Ha. Ha.

nope, haven't been persuaded. Still gonna do the galleries and wine with lunch thing.

flashingnose - you forgot to add in baking cakes and preparing nutritious meals from scratch

mp - being self employed though means you don't need to worry about childcare, after school clubs, negotiating school runs, holidays etc I take it?

Marthamoo, that poem could have been written about me. That's a bit

But us working parents do clean our houses and do the washing etc too as well as working fulltime?
I do it all and I don't feel stressed. I have a cleaner and I do my shopping online and don't pay anything for delivery doing that. I am efficient and full of energy. I wouldn't dream of sitting in front of the telly at all. I am on the go all day. I do have a 30 minutes lunchbreak, but not every day. I sit down after my children are in bed and I make my children do the housework needed with me in the afternoons while we chat. I also share with DH.
I bring up happy, delightful children and I admit to looking at some of my sahm-friends and thinking how come I can do everything you do as well as work fulltime and bring in an income and use my education? I think I am a much better example to my daughter than if I just showed her my work was housework. How would that encourage her to go on to further education if she thought she would end up doing the family's washing anyway? Having said that, I am all for sahms with small children and I am talking up to the age of 3. Then it's time for nurseryand back to work even if parttime I think. I don't see why you wuold stay at home forever. And I suppose I do think that is slightly unmotivated. Of course, many simply don't have a choice in the matter. I have also noticed that although there is some guilt surrounding childcare and working parents, on the whole most of the posts written about depression on this site is by working mums. Similarly, the posts written about unhappy relationship. Can this be because as sahm you live in a parralell universe and your wolrd is imply too diffrerent from your partners worls?

I'm sorry MP, I'm sure you're a lovely person, but "I didn't really understand that that's actually 'enough' for some women." makes you sound really smug!

I'm genuinely surprised by some of the responses.

I am a WOTHM currently. I go round beating myself up because I only go to church one week in every three or four, I don't have time to do mentoring (which I used to do), I'd love to be a school governor but don't feel I have enough time to do it properly...

Do other people genuuinely not feel this sort of guilt? (Other peopole who aren't alreayd doing loads of this stuff, I mean.)

"But the country has paid for them to be trained! And they are just sitting around making a right royal meal of the housework and caring for their kids, having the time to get worked up about trivia."

Puh-lease. I take it that VP is taking the pecking p*ss? I am highly over-educated for SAHMDOM, MumDOM, even WOHMDOM. But who cares? It is my God given right to have pursued knowledge for knowledge's sake and to be the wonderful role model that I am sure I will be in whatever -DOM to my DS.

And I will use all my "free"-time to clean, iron, cook, flop on the sofa, mooch on Mumsnet, read my DS's books, read other peoples' books, be informed and generally make sure that I make a happy, peaceful, calm and highly-informed atmosphere for us all while Melvyn Bragg wafts out of the wireless.

Surely I will then contribute to the greater good of the world by bringing up a DS who can cope with an over-educated woman sitting around the house doing "nothing" all day .... so that his future wife can do the same without him asking ill-informed questions like, "but what do you DO all day?"

That last comment should be SAHMs and now working mums.

I think motherhood brings all sorts of guilt with it but I never feel the kind of guilt you describe PF.

Some of this is really offensive.

Just out of interest, what do we think of parents who work outside the home and who take holiday from work but still send their kids to nursery for the days? Or send them in some days between Christmas and New Year so they can have some time off? I know five or six couples who do this regularly, and they don't spend their days doing housework. Do we have the right to judge them too, and call them lazy and selfish etc etc? Or are they having a well-earned rest?

Or is that different because it's paid leave, and paid work is what's important?

Fairymum, you must be Nicola Horlick.

EXACTLY compo and ambrosia
i'm with you

PHDMum - it's more likely that your DS will aspire to doing that himself!!

PF are you Catholic love? If so it is your job to feel guilty.

but this is moving into a home work v paid work debate. Originally one of MPs points was that she was surprised that those with all children in school full time didn't do anything else, not necessarily paid work but not house/child related.

Couldn't be less Catholic, luv.