Is six children too many ?

[mozhe]

Someone,( a colleague..but I do not know them well ), just stopped me in the corridor at work...noticing I was pregnant they asked me if it was my first, when I told them ,' no, it's my 6th '...they said,' six is too many ', and strod off....Is six too many ?

Olliebird - can I ask what accountancy exams you will be doing?

mog - acca

Thanks Olliebird. I've started AAT but I think I've lined up a job and am thinking of jumping to ACCA. I've already got a degree but not in accounting. Do you find it a bit going in at the deep end?
Sorry for highjack folks.

mog - yes i have a degree as well - in art history!! I have done years of bookkepping and basic accounts and the accountants I have dealt with have always been really complimentary and current one said if I ever wanted work he would give it to me. I reakon there is no point wasting time doing bookkeeping because the accounting is more interested, less data imputing. I'm going to do the acca and see how I get on with the exams, they say they are hard but most people doing them are also doing full time work so if you make sure you're only doing part-time and get lots of help with kids, surely you stand a chance. With acca you can also resit as many times as you want and take up to 10 years. So best to go straight into acca with the option of only becoming part-qualified if its too much. Why earn less when you can earn more. So i'd say definitely try the acca. I know my accountants really not that bright so if he can get through why can't you or I? I have registered and will try to start study in september, the first exams can be done on line when you are ready (no fixed date so can do one at a time). If you are also going down this line, perhaps we can keep in touch to keep motivated.
good luck

Olliebird - thanks for that. I think you're right but I'm new to accounts so it's a bit scary. The job I'm after is part-time but would give me a wide range of experience. It would be good to keep in touch. I'm not on the CAT thing. Do you have an email I can contact you on?

Mozhe and Xenia on a thread about whether a certain number of children is too many.

And oh the weary inevitability of it turning into a SAHM/ WOHM row.

Most people have always hardly had enough money to get by and that will always be so and therefore women have always worked. Some middle class women at some periods have chosen not to work (and indeed men) and some rich men and women don't have to work at all. They don't all therefore choose to spend the time looking after children and scrubbing floors however. They want leisure, not childcare. So they have help and don't work.

If more working class women have to work than middle class ultimately that will benefit their children and the mothers so we get people moving up and down etc which is great. Work can give huge purpose and pleasure to life. Even those forced into it (i.e. perhaps most adults who would rather watch DVDs all day) get good from it.

Xenia, how many times do I have to repeat that many are forced to work and derive NO pleasure from it at all?

I've written it once and I'll write it again:

Work is the most over-rated crock going.

Yesterday I went to a baptism in Paris. Very chic church, very posh priest, lots of fashionably dressed parisiens, lots and lots of the most well-dressed and badly behaved children I have ever seen. The tea party that followed the ceremony seemed to consist of free-for-all of children kicking, screaming and fighting. I know that none of those children have been/are being brought up by a SAHM - all of them either have a nanny or are in day care.

The previous weekend we were with two other families in Amsterdam - my sister's family and another Franco-Dutch family that lives in the Dutch provinces. All the children were kind, polite, fun - they would all have been at a total loss/horrified at yesterday's event. But all of them have been brought up primarily by their mothers.

So - how many children is too many? More than you wish to bring up yourself, perhaps.

I completely disagree Anna and in the London churches we've been in the French children seem in general to behave better than the English. They seem on the whole to have stricter parents and teachers. It's just coincidence what you saw.

Gosh Anna thats really "evidence based " -ridiculous anecdotal myth like stories - my god my child has been in full time nursery from tiny then friends after school and now me half the week she is well behaved brigh well spoken and good as gold - THEREFORE by your roles ALL children in nursery must bethe same absurd stupid argument !

What about all those women who can't afford to be SAHMs?

Guess in the World According to Anna, their progency are 100% Destined to Fail. In every way.

bout time too Anna - please spend more time mumsnetting
This type of thread NEEDS you

Yes, we need to know how bad it is for women to work full-time - since of course ALL of them who do so do it out of choice.

It's all black and white for some.

no its not at all expat but we all have to hear day in day out how Xenia is our hero and how refreshing it is to hear that sahms are fat thick bitches who pay their husbands for their keep with sex

Need the alternative EXTREME veiw to balance the status quo and stop me smashing something

Yes, but then we have Anna, who is nothing but Xenia's foil without the wit.

i love your line about work !!!

Ah, but O if sex is their principal service they don't get kept long if they get fat I suppose. Quite hard work being a trophy wife. You can't even eat chocolates.

The idleness thing is interesting - assuming some people have staff/a private income/ no consumerist needs so would be happy reading The Idler magazine. Is it morally wrong to be idle? And this of course can be applied to those who work but sit around not doing very much during the day, stay at home mothers with help, those who sell their businesses and sit back after and do nothing, early retirees, kept women/mistresses, stay at home mothers iwthout help but of the idle kind (not most but some do sit around and don't even fulfil their wifely duties during the day).

There's always been this conflict in the UK between the Protestant work ethic work for work's sake and those who don't agree with that.

i am wayyy to right to be a trophy wife - too cutting to be on someones arm - i would be off arguing with his counterparts

i am not even married to the bloke ffs

plus he does all the cooking and washing

i control all finances

he got me pregnant at university and i have barely worked outside the home since!

what does that make me

whoops 'wayyy to bright '

I know I am a lazy slacker.

This doesn't bother me one jot and I accept what goes with it - renting all my life, going without many consumer goods some people feel they can't live without, etc.

The immortal Rhett Butler said it best, 'Only hypocrites become offended when called by their rightful names.'

"I think some mothers wonder below how some mothers can leave a baby by choice (but they don't ask that of fathers which is puzzling)"
xenia I agree wit you on this. I remember DH's boss advising him to take only the first week off after DD was born and save the second one for later as 'they are boring at that age"!!!! I was shocked and not because I didn't agree, I did but did not understand why it was implied it would not be boring for me and he could get away with it! I was fuming!!!!
needless to say DH did take the week off when I said it!

It is boring and nothing wrong with women saying that and going back to work if they choose. The 2 weeks off I had with that first baby was fine, just the right time to recover a bit, realise how boring babies are and go back like any new parent (usually the male one) without any criticism or problem. It's a perfectly acceptable sexually neutral choice and the baby isn't upset because it's only 2 weeks and already knows its nanny anyway.

Anyway worked well for us. May be she bonded too well though... she's 22 and still around a lot. I need some unboding gel. I must have breastfed too much.