Struggling today with being a SAHM. Anyone want to join in a rant?

[MrsTittleMouse]

OK, so I know I'm being unreasonable, because I have a lovely DD who has gone from being a very hungry baby who wanted lots of interaction and never slept, to a 12 month old who sleeps through the night and "reads" to herself . And DH isn't above doing housework and does the washing up and surfaces if I'm having a bad day (which recently is most days).
BUT, I just feel so isolated and bored at the moment. We're living in a new area, and so I don't know any people. I met one Mum through bumping into her and offering my phone number, so that's good. I joined the NCT and have started getting involved, and I take DD to swimming lessons, but it's really hard to make a one-to-one connection with anyone, especially as most people know each other already, and don't seem to have time for a new friendship. I've had to leave behind the friends I met at antenatal and my old pre-baby friends. And I have my family visit often (usually one visit a week), which is really nice that DD sees her GPS, but makes it harder for me to socialise.
I've already had an AIBU rant about DH having Christmas parties and work socialising, but I don't think he realises how lonely it is to not talk to anyone ALL DAY. He's mentioned a work collegue and his wife who sound as though they have stuff in common with us, and I've begged him to invite them round, but he keeps telling me that the time isn't right.
I've told DH that I'm struggling, and he comes home and does housework, but in martyr mode, and if things are a bit tense between us, he just clams up and makes sure that if I'm watching TV, he's on the computer (different room) or vice versa, so I don't even get to talk to him then!
I've tried so hard to be pro-active about meeting people, and striking up conversations etc., but it's taking ages to make any proper friends and I just feel so isolated and lonely. Anyone else dealing with this?

what you describe xenia, sounds great, and your children are all doing really well according to things youve said in the past, so it has clearly worked for your family. Thats great, really, i applaude you. Seriously, im not being sarcastic. SO, i respect your choice, i honestly do - i don't think i could have a nanny, im probably too insecure as a person if im honest, i think it must work out really well if you have a big family as you have.

The point we are all making is that we have all made our choices for our own reasons. Are you telling me that your job is always a bowl of cherries? That you never get bored or stressed out at work? What ever? Blimey, tell me what it is you do that earns you so much and is so wonderful and stress free.

You have a lot to contribute, but sometimes you come over as bitter im afraid. I don't mind admitting that i dont think i could be organised enough to work and get enough time with DD (because i am the most disorganised person in the world)

I respect your choice, all i ask is that you respect mine and others like me.

But why would you want her to respect your choice? I'm afraid I have written her off as an anachronistic irrelevance and her opinion doesn't matter - sorry and all that Xenia

I am not the only influence in my children's lives. Their father has a big influence, and other members of our extended families. They have teachers and playgroup leaders as well as me. However, how can I not believe that I know best about my children at least compared with somebody who is merely paid to look after them and who can forget about them at the end of the day.

I can't imagine wanting to spend only a few minutes a day with my children but prefering to spend hours a day with people who I might not even like let alone want to spend most of my waking hours with.

No, sometimes it's hard, my job. In the last few months at least every fortnight once or twice a week I've had to leave at 5.30am and got back about 8.30pm, not easy days with travelling but overall I am glad I do what I do.

I don't always respect all choices. I don't respect the choice of teh girl brought up in the strict religious or cultural tradition which says she marries at 16 and never works and does what she's told at home, even if she's happy, even if she thinks it's a choice. I'd say it was objectively wrong and girls like that need an education and opportunities so choice isn't always a real choice for some. Also my mother was very unhappy having followed a career for 13 years suddenly to be home. I am sure in part we all work full time because she hated the housewife stuff very very much and went on about how dull it was too. She was far too clever to be happy as a housewife and of course we're all responsible for ourselves and no one stopped her going back to work but that has an impact on what I think too.

Bitter? Hopefully not. I don't think divorce is particularly nice for anyone but it's a huge lot worse for housewives whose husbands disappear and their children then live in poverty because they chose to give up work. Not saying the children won't be happy because money and happiness don't go to together but it's easier if you work - less risky in some ways. I know a good few widowers too and some widows sadly in their 40s.

too clever to be happy as a housewife?
I think I'm pretty clever, but I have to say I don't look for my happiness at work as such. I like to use my brain, sure, but I can still do that as a sahm. Actually it was when I was in my last job that I took up an OU course because I felt the need for something more intellectually stimulating.

you are repeating yourself, ive heard the cultural arguments, and it is not the same. But it IS possible to be happy doing something that makes another person unhappy. I don't consider myself a housewife, that implies that my principal responsibility is to my house. I am a SAHM mum and that is what is right for our family. It was never my intention to be a SAHM, but once my baby was born it was clear to me that i would not be returning to work until she starts school. It actually took me a while to come to terms with that if i'm honest as i have only just got my PhD so i know this is not a good career move. I often find myself having to justify myself, to prove my intelligence. The sad thing is, that i only feel the need to do this with other women!! My friends are all working, in good jobs, mostly academic, some dont have children, some are working mums, some working mums to school age children who work part time to accomodate their kids etc. We all respect each others choices and are genuinely interested in each others lives.

I totally respect working mums, i just think that it would be very easy to get the balance wrong. If you live around here and want to earn a decent wage then you have to commute. So then there is a situation where you may have to drop your child off with childcare as early as 7 and possibly not pick them up until 7 pm. Well then its pretty much time for bed. I cannot see how that is a good thing. I know that i would be terrible as a working mum, i could see myself getting tetchy with DD because i was tired after a days work etc. There are good working mums, bad working mums, there are good sahm and bad sahms. IT would be very easy to expect your child to drag around to various mothers meetings and sit there watching daytime tv, i bet there are those that do that, thankfully i get enough stimulation out of caring for my child not to do that.

Now i suspect i am repeating myself, ive said this all before. I honestly think xenia that you dont actually live in the real world and you should steal yourself sometime to step out of your bubble.

I did take a bus last weekend....I felt like Marie Antoinette, very funny. No one should take themselves too seriously. The real world is the average wage is £20k and many people earn less than that. I hope I always remember those facts. Most men and women work because they have to and many don't like their jobs. When I was 26 I was doing what you described to some extent - leaving 3 under 4s with a day nanny at home, commuting to the City for an hour. I did leave about 8am though as didn't have a very early start and I usually managed to leave about 6 and their father is a teacher and was home by 6.15 (very long private school day). i don't regret those hard under 5s years when I was in my mid 20s because the whole of our future life, prosperity, the house, the horses, the skiing, the private schools, my ability now to spend what I choose on my daughters' 21st birthdays etc etc all that comes out of those few crucial years in your 20s in what I do when you do have to be quite committed to the work and decisions I took later from a work point of view.

In other words you play a long game sometimes and also if you know yourself and know you'd be miserable as sin as a stay at home parent and resent it for the rest of your working life then it's wrong to foist that on your children. What you don't want however is damage to children perhaps caused by too many changes. They want stability and good care and love.

I agree with you about housewife. In 1940 there was a job to be done which involved writing out clothes, mangles, hitting carpets to remove dust, cooking food from scratch, mending clothes that were broken, seweing your own clothes. It was a pretty much full time job. Now it's a none job and this is very interesting. We have the domestic appliance which mean the work is quicker (I just emptied the dishwasher and washer in a few second contrasting with when they were borken a few years ago which took ages).

So the stay at home domestic role to some extent has gone. Therefore the man or woman at home has to make it into some other job. They make it into a childcare job I suppose and give the children a lot of attention when they are under 5. It is very hard work looking after under 5s. Sometimes you hardly have time to dress or eat on some days particularly if you have a lot of children, as all parents know whether they do it 7 days a week or just 2 days a week. It is that job I can't understand a man or woman wanting to do for 10 hours whilst their other half is out. I would just find it boring - the constant clearing up of food and sick the baby did, the redoing all those things you've just sorted out and done. yes, it's great for a few hours a day but most men and a good few women just don't find it interesting enough to do.

SAHMing is relentless and menial - it strikes me as so ironic that many of us on here did A levels, a degree, possibly professional qualifications, worked for a decade or so to ... wipe bottoms, clean and prepare meals. If anyone had shown me my role as a job description 20 years ago, I would have run a mile. BUT I remember a colleague at work who had to cope with the fact that when her daughter fell over, she ran to the nanny even if she, the mother, was in the room. That would finish me off.

Surely, it is while you are wiping a bottom, cleaning up an accident or making another plate of pasta that you are building your bond with your child. For some people with different personalities though, the isolation of being a SAHM is such that this is not when they build their bonds because they are not receiving the external stimulation they need. It's horses for courses.

And of course there are the mothers that are in all honesty doing their children a massive favour by hiring a good, kind and loving nanny and handing over their care so that the children are getting a good dose of nurturing in their lives - I can think of one or two at school.

PS: Does anyone else think that Xenia is actually a bloke working in a pensions department in Reading - getting a kick out of pissing people off on here? She can't be real, surely?

Hmm.. too clever to be a housewife. Its a bit pointless to list qualifications but I have a degree, a masters degree (distinction) plus am a qualified chartered accountant. There are others on this thread who have more qualifications and i dare say plenty of other people who don't have any qualifications but are just as/more clever. If she was that clever she would have been able to find things to interest her I would have thought.

I wonder if Xenia's insecurities come from having had children at a youngish age. I too was doing the career thing at 26 but without children - I felt I had proved myself in that respect by the time I had children so didn't feel a need to be defined in this way.

I have absolutely no issue with women working if they choose to/ have to - I don't think anyone should say which is best as its all an individual issue as to what suits wife, husband, children.

MrsTittleMouse, if you don't wish to go back to work for reasons you say.
Is there something you would like to do just out of interest.

ie a course of some sort?, sometimes it is alot easier to make friends and have a laugh if you are doing something new ogether.

Just reading through this thread it's clear to see that there are so many different takes on being an SAHM - so many different experiences and such very different types of people choosing to stay at home at least for a while with their children - that it astounds me that Xenia can be so narrow-minded and making such sweeping judgements based on little more than stereotype.

Xenia - you also miss a vital point (repeatedly, perhaps deliberately?). Most women do actually go back to work at some stage. There aren't many women who are SAHMs / housewives for the rest of their lives. It's a choice many women make for a little while, in the early years of their children's lives. And I think the 'catch up' many women have to make when they do eventually return to work (in terms of status and salary) is a small sacrifice for the precious years they get at home with their babies and small children. If you don't feel that way, fine. Many women don't see it like that. Women go back to work for multiple reasons, all boiling down to either having to or wanting to or a combination of the two. That's fine, too. There is NO right way. We all muddle along as best we can, don't we? Staying at home for a few years doesn't have to be the soul destroying, mind numbing, ghastly experience you describe, and infact, it isn't for the majority of women who do it (a bad day here and there does not equal a terrible life of oppression!)

My own personal experience was very different to yours, Xenia. I got a good degree from a good university and launched head on into a very successful (and at times, prestigious) career in the media which was my absolute focus until I had my son in my late twenties. I went back to work for a short while afterwards and found that the long, unsociable hours were a killer and that, frankly, I wasn't interested in being at work - all I wanted was to be with my son. I am lucky. I had made good financial decisions (savings, property etc) before I became a mother. I was also at a natural crossroads in my career where I had reached a senior position and the next step would have been either an all-consuming management job (no interest in that ever, as a creative) or to go freelance and find a more flexible way of working, on my own terms (which I can still do, and to some extent already have). My husband is a high earner, so I know I am lucky hat I have the choice (a choice we made together, I might add). So, ok, I might not be typical, but I am not alone. There are plenty of successful, intelligent, educated women who choose to shift the focus of their lives away from the world of work and on to their children when they are small. Why do you find it so hard to accept this? I'm interested to know.

PEDANTS! Pls excuse typos / grammatical errors

I'm with Crayon. Surely noone believes Xenia is a real person - could anyone be that smug? In any case why would someone in such a high-flying job who gets bored spending more than two hours (or ten minutes depending which post you read) with her (super-intelligent) children be spending so much time on MN? I love reading her posts though - go on Xenia come back at me with a magnificent put-down!

omg xenia you have an extremely patronising attitude towards women who choose to look after their children. Why did you actually have children yourself? doesn't sound as though you care whether your kids even know you, aside from the token few hours here or there.

i personally love being at home with dd, not bored at all, feel like i'm on holiday and feel really sorry for dp who has to go out and miss all the amazing things that dd does. and yes i had/have a very interesting career, and chose to do this. i really don't need a 9-5 job to intellectually stimulate myself. i would actually be quite worried if i did, how very sad.

i have nothing against the idea of ft working mums, but some of your comments are unbelievably obtuse. are you just trying to wind people up? please tell me you aren't as stuck in the past as you sound. i agree with some of the other posters, sounds as though you really need to reasess what being a feminist is all about....

zenia, please answer peoples questions, instead of droning on and on and on............ change the god damn record, and try listening, or taking on board others opinions and beliefs, hey you never know you might learn something

Why did i have children? For the reasons your husbands did (and all working mothers do). Because we love them, enjoy spending time with them but we do it in moderation, not 24/7. I still don't understand how any woman can like that role even for 5 years whilst you have 2 or 3 under 5s and then get back to work. That doesn't mean it isn't interesting to others but many, perhaps most women of under 5s do work in the UK because often they do share my view. It's dull. I certainly don't mind whom the children love and 3 at university now you see what matters and what doesn't matter to them now and it certainly hasn't had a negative effect my working on them at all and I didn't want to be home.

What else was I asked that I didn't answer? I am as real as anyone. I'd rather post on line or read the FT than clean a toilet any day or even clean off sick off a child but if you add up the hours I've spent looking after children for 23 years it will be much more than any stay at home mother with an under 5 now. Yes, more than about 2 hours a day and I don't like it. I don't even like it on holiday when the children little unless I get respite. Plenty of men and women feel the same. It's dull and tedious but a bit of time interacting with them is lovely.

Good to see you back posting Xenia,
You haven't been around for a bit, and the place was quiet without you.

Oddly coming to Xenia's defence (a bit) - if you search for posts outside the SAHM etc issue, you do find she's posted a lot of thoughtful and supportive posts on a range of other issues. I do object to the omission, whether intentional or not, of a few "I think" prefixes to phrases like "it's dull and tedious", which I think would smooth ruffled feathers and stop interesting discussions getting too heated.
I am an intelligent and well educated woman. I thought I'd be the type who'd be desperate to get back to work, and was surprised to find being with my daughter fascinating - watching her develop, learn new skills and see the world anew through her eyes has been amazing, and I'm delighted that I've been able to spend so much time with her. I find reading the FT incredibly dull, but put that down to having a different kind of mind to those who enjoy it. I should imagine many many people would find reading some of the stuff I studied for my PhD mind-numbingly dull..

I was interested in whether I really was in the minority in wanting to be a SAHM and according to one piece of research only 4% of women would choose to work full time. 43% would be SAHM and the rest would work part-time or work from home whilst they had small children. 9/10 of working women find it difficult to cope with juggling work, home and children. Another piece of research shows that for those who work more than 16-24 hours a week, women have worse health, higher levels of psychological distress and poorer quality relationships with their partner the more hours they work.

I can't imagine being at the beck and call of bosses full time and having to care for 2 children - it would do my head in so I can understand these statistics.

Xenia - I have been struggling to work out what your attitude reminds me off and it occurs to me that actually you have the same attitude of most grandparents or childless people, play with the children and then hand them back after a couple of hours. Have a little of the fun and none of the inconvenience. That is fine, children can and do have a great relationship with their grandparents but it is not the same as the relationship they should have with their parents where they are the most important people in the parents' lives no matter how naughty, dirty, boring, inconvenient or ill they are.

Also, in the highly likely event that at least one of your daughters will reject your lifestyle choices and either give up work completely or reduce their hours significantly when they have children, how are you going to react? Are you going to let your daughter make her own choices or undermine them by suggesting they are wasting their lives too?

I have very independent daughters in their 20s. They will choose whatever life is right for them. They are in some ways uniquely positioned with having much younger sibilings that to some extent they have parented and I think that makes them know a lot better than most 20 somethings what being at home with tiny babies and toddlers is like. Also they are used to nannies etc around so I would imagine if they and their other halves could afford it even if they were home they'd have help and spend the spare time doing their sports or whatever. We'll see.

The grandparent analogy is interesting. Is is just that my chidlren are older. I can remember the feeling of being with a baby or babies that have been inside you 9 mnoths and they they are attached breastfeeding and it's a very very close attachment. It's as if the 9 months after birth is kind of part of teh 9 months inside, a continuum of contact and very physical attachment and love and yes sometimes it was hard particualrly with the first child to be back at work at 2 weeks, apart from the baby but you're back home by 6, it's latched on those nipples for hours on end, you;ve all that lovely bonding time, just out of office hours. Most fathers and mothers do work and do leave their children and I don't think we can say they are in a grandparent type relationship with the under 3s.

I think I know my limitations. I have always found it better to say - right I need a break - carry on with your fight or whatever the children are doing and I'll come back out in 10 minutes or something. Of course you can't be away from very very young children which is why help with them either with their other parent a sibiling grandparent or whatever is useful as indeed there has always been on hand until we started this ridiculous - mother alone, no relatives near, father out at work 12 hour aa day thing which leads many women nearly to suicide.

Habbi, i had to smile about the PhD dullness - i found my own PhD dull most of the time

I take my hat off to Xenia for her continued ability to remain calm when people ask her why she had children. I can think of nothing more insulting to say to a mother.

I have a PhD. I wish I'd had kids first though. Boy, am I damn efficient and focused after 3 years at home cleaning, cooking everything from scratch and popping out 2 sprogs in 2 years!

The research is certainly suggesting that full-time external child-care is harmful for a child's psychological wellbeing and emotional maturity. Sure, I envy DH going to work, earning pots of cash and receving a ton of intellectual stimulation. BUT, I aint going to use our kids as a pawn in some ill-though battle that involves me returning to work to regain 'equality'. DH has shit associated with his job, I have mine. The kids are very happy, and that's what matters.

I am glad you said that about the childcare Highlander. I have been itching to say it but usually get dumped on from above by all those who say it never did their child any harm.

You are, of course, absolutely right. Under the age of 3 children do better with a dedicated carer, preferably a parent. It isn't possible for everybody and it isn't something that will necessarily be hugely detrimental but, as with all these things, it is about weighing up the risks and the benefits of your choices and deciding what chances you are prepared to take with your children, marriage, career, education and finances. Oh and your own peace of mind and well-being too. There is no right answer.