Resent that mum never worked/had a job - causing rifts between us

[Waferbiscuit]

My mother married right out of University and since then has been a SAHM/SAHW. She only ever held one job, over the summer, when she was 20 and and has never had a job since.

She has lived a very comfortable life - children at a young age, divorced but remarried quickly so no change in her financial circumstances, moderately successful husband and kids at home until they left when she was 48. Since then she has spent the last 40+ years travelling, pottering and quite frankly stretching out daily chores into the day. She is part of a weird generation of mc women who expected to be cared for and probably never expected to work.

By contrast I have worked FT since leaving University, now a single parent, still working and juggling everything.

The fact that mum has never worked means she's lived in a real bubble, and has very skewed views about public life and the world of work. This causes huge rifts between us and really affects our relationship.

• She has very little concept of what work is like and the pressures of modern work so when I explain that I am stressed she thinks that it's my fault and I need to manage it.
• She doesn't understand that people need to do work outside of 9-5
• She has no real sense of what it's like to have someone instructing you/telling you what to do; she has literally been 'self guided' her entire life
• She thinks it's easy to get a job and promotion so doesn't understand why they aren't forthcoming for me or my siblings.
• She is deeply unproductive so thinks juggling means trying to do the dishes and laundry in the same morning and considers that 'busy-ness' to be on par with mine
• She is very naive about money and assumes everyone is on a relatively good wage. She doesn't understand why I can't go part-time.
• She dresses in organic frocks and proudly doesn't wear makeup or do her hair but her 'hippyness' is a privilege - she doesn't clock that other people actually have to look and dress professionally for work.
• She doesn't help me in any way - financially or with DCs - because she's always too busy doing nothing at all, but she's 'very busy'.

I know I should be grateful that she's not working in a factory to scrape by, but her naiviety means there's an entire aspects of my life she doesn't understand and over the years it's caused real tensions. I partly resent that she doesn't get it and partly resent that she's had such an easy ride that she takes for granted or really considers her due.

Posting just to see if anyone else has the same problem and how they made peace with it.

If she’s 80plus she will have been a child of rationing and the general austerity of the immediate post war years. Housing shortages and many missing fathers meant that the 50s in the Uk were still pretty tough for many.
Family member the same age had to give up work on marriage, didn’t have a telephone, fridge or washing machine until her 40s, didn’t learn to drive until widowed.
I certainly don’t envy her ‘nice life’. So little freedom and so few choices for so many years

I don’t think it’s so much about the realities of each person’s life, more the lack of what I think of as “emotional imagination”. I do think some people, regardless of age and lifestyle, lack the ability to visualise what life is like for others in different situations and feel their lives would be much better if they’d only make a few simple changes like cooking from scratch more, dropping their hours at work, moving house, etc….you know, things that are very simple to achieve to an unimaginative bystander but may be really difficult or impossible for the person involved.

I do think many people’s ability to really visualise the lives of others declines with age.

Also, people are sensitive to the implications of advantage. My DM gets very pissy if anyone comments on the advantages of baby boomers and is quick to point out how materially deprived her childhood was. That’s true, but her generation has benefited hugely from a less overstretched welfare state (in relation to healthcare) and from manageable, then rising, property prices. Doesn’t mean one generation has it easier or harder, just different advantages to being born at different times.

Although she does admit now that she thinks my DSis and I have it harder, as both of us both want and need to work so are juggling work and small children and having to rely on paid childcare in my case. She was of a generation of women who stopped working when they had children and stayed at home at least until they were in school - and when she did return, she had grandparents to provide wraparound care.

Don't talk to her about work and other stresses. She won't be able to validate you and it will only lead to you being frustrated. Talk to other people about it who actually get it. You can't change her, ultimately.

I can probably offer a more unusual perspective here having been a full time working mother juggling everything on my own and a stay at home mother and otherwise 'kept' woman. I'm nearly 50: my eldest is nearly 30, my youngest are under 10.

If I'm honest I think the people who sold the idea that working AND being a mother was somehow liberating was having a laugh. Now you have two jobs! I will advise my younger daughter to choose.

Being a SAHM doesn't make people naïve but I'd say being a SAHM does allow life to be lived at a more realistic, reflective and enjoyable pace which, in my own experience, is almost impossible as a full time working mother.

From the list of things in your post it seems you resent your mother's experience because of your load. Its unreasonable to think your mother's tasks are somehow less productive or important than yours just because you have chosen to live your life differently from her. My life as a SAHM is very full. I'm sure your mother's was too and continues to be. We organise our lives in relation to the choices we've made and the idea we live in a bubble is ludicrous. We simply have different life experiences.

Different life choices have different opportunity costs. If you do resent her, perhaps it's time to start making small changes and different decisions about how you are living your life. It's not your mother's fault.*

*We should all have that put on a t-shirt.

My DM never worked and we needed her too. Her idea of a busy day was picking up a little food and sitting around or doing the laundry one day a week.

She was never interested in the fact I have a career and used to think I could just give up work. As a single parent.

It sounds like it's hard to find common ground between you and she's not very understanding of how life is for you.
I find the resentment about her not helping with the children odd though. She's 80 years old.
Brewing on it isn't going to change anything, maybe try coming to a place of acceptance with it so that it isn't impacting on the time you have left together.
People have different lives and expectations, and house prices etc were easier to manage on one wage back then. Why shouldn't she potter and travel and live joyfully?

I'll confess that as a sahm to school age dc, I feel really busy if I've done a food shop, popped to the chemist for a prescription, sewed on a button and baked a cake. Difference is I've been a working mum with a toddler in childcare and I do know what it's like! I think staying at home for very long periods can make you obsessed with the minutiae of life and ordinary tasks become mammoth

I Definitely most people on MN who are better off than the norm.

You’re reading a different MN to me.

My mum is a bit like this, but has worked in stressful jobs on and off. What I hate is that she has always had my dad being the big earner to fall back on and doesn’t quite get the stress of being the only person paying the bills.

@Crimeismymiddlename

My mum is a bit like this, but has worked in stressful jobs on and off. What I hate is that she has always had my dad being the big earner to fall back on and doesn’t quite get the stress of being the only person paying the bills.

I don't get that either. I know it is much talked about on MN. I have been the only person paying the bills, or the main earner at times. But I don't find that any more stressful than when I have been the lower earner. But then even when I was the lower earner, we always needed my wages too. My working has never been optional.

I didn't read the OP as annoyed about her mum not providing childcare per se more that it is part of a pattern of not sharing her good fortune with others - i.e. she has had it easy not ever having to earn any of her own money but even when inheriting more, doesn't consider helping anyone else.

Maybe I am projecting but I genuinely would not want my mother's life even though it has been pretty cushy, I do find it irritating that my mother has no idea that she's had it easy.

Different life choices have different opportunity costs. If you do resent her, perhaps it's time to start making small changes and different decisions about how you are living your life. It's not your mother's fault.*

Very wise.

OP, I think you have answered your own question. Your mother doesn’t get it, because her life has been very different from yours (in good ways and bad). She isn’t going to suddenly understand so it’s time to stop banging your head against a brick wall. Worth thinking about why it annoys you so much- I think lots of us still want our mums to approve of us and be proud of us, even as adults, and maybe it’s hard to believe she’s proud of you if she doesn’t understand your life or values different things. But there must be some common ground (for example, you are both mothers). It may fall to you as the younger and perhaps more set-aware person to try to find it.

My mother who is 73 and has had an automatic washing machine my entire life and a dishwasher as long as I can remember. Stopped full time work at 29 when pregnant with my DB and returned to part time 12 years later when I was 9 she then worked part time until retirement.

When I was young single and starting out (low paid) in my career and having bought a house on my own. She would regularly criticise me for not saving more. But worst was her total incomprehension of shift work. For example on a week where I worked 2 days 2 nights (12 hour shifts with late finishes) so a 50 hour week, her perception was that I had loads of free times as I was only in work 2 days a week!

But my mother lacks any kind of empathy or insight towards me across pretty much any issue big or small, and this is the reason I'm now no contact with her.

My 75 year old MIL on the other hand still works 2 night shifts a week as a registered nurse, so that she can go on lots of holidays abroad.

Sounds like my mother. She is lazy and has no work ethic. She believes she should be looked after by my father, he has fully enabled that. I believe that working and earning money is extremely important for my own self respect and fortunately, so did my gran, she was inspirational, so hard working and fiercely independent. I used to look at my friends whose mothers worked in envy. I’m afraid my mother’s attitude has made me lose a lot of respect for her. When I have a child, I will work, I want my child to look up to me the way I never did with my own mother. My child will be brought up with a strong work ethic.

@julieca 1987 wasn't "those days" 1987 was the lived experience for my contemporaries. A dishwasher was quite late at that time. My mother had one in the mid 70s.

@ILoveJamaica

If the OP’s mum is in her 80s and her kids left when she was 48, that means the OP is in her forties herself and her kids are likely (might be a generalisation, right enough) old enough not to need childcare

Not necessarily! My SIL is 52 and has kids aged 7 and 4. My sister is 47 with kids aged 8 & 4. Plenty of women are having children well in to their 40's. It would follow that they won't get much help from elderly parents. My Dad would not be able to babysit my sisters children, as he can't stay awake long enough. My Mum did babysit one day a week before she died, but it wiped her out for a few days afterwards.

Another "Aged" mother, right here. Late 40's with two under tens. DH is in his 50s.

I think that's probably why I decided to be a SAHM with the younger ones. My parents are old. There's no way I would expect them to help. We did ask once to allow us to celebrate a big birthday and one of the DC had to visit the hospital because they found DGP's pills. Grandparents who haven't been around young children for a long time can forget what it's like and even what to do!

There are a lot of benefits to being an older mother, but speed, energy and help from grandparents are not any of those benefits.

@Pumperthepumper

I swear if I make it to 80 and my children whine I don’t do enough of their childcare while sneering at the amount of time I spent doing mine, I will absolutely lose my shit.

@Pumperthepumper I swear this is the best comment in the whole thread, and I agree, wholeheartedly!

This has been such an interesting thread! As I head towards retirement I’m ever conscious of being less and less alive to the realities of life for women in their 20s and 30s, ie my DDs, and I will continue to do my very best to see their perspective and help where I can. Equally, it’s not unreasonable of me to expect them to understand my perspective. Kindness and a willingness to share and learn are vital between generations.

@BoredZelda

One would think she'd be a bit more giving about it, seeing as she didn't really make that money herself, but that's another story.

She didn’t earn the money and doesn’t deserve it, but you (who also didn’t earn the money) do deserve to have it?

Yes! This is funny.

@RantyAunty

Your mum was privileged.

Most women didn't go to university.

You didn't say what your grandparents did but to have allowed her to go to uni instead of taking secretarial training or factory work, and finding a husband says a lot.

She would have had a very different life if she'd have come from a poor family.

Quickly found a husband and worked in a factory job.

Your mum married well twice which made all the difference. Who knows what she put up with to keep the peace or maybe she got lucky and married one who wasn't abusive or had some addiction problem.

It would be nice if she helped you more. Have you simply asked her for financial help? I found it difficult to ask for help plus I always appeared to be holding it together so people didn't think I was struggling. I should have put my pride aside and asked.

You say this, but actually, it's often about the culture you grow up in.

My granny went to university, and came from a very poor family, but the community she came from was big on education, and it was understood she was doing something that was going to increase her earning power. All sorts of family members had taken on extra work to make it possible for her to stay in school after leaving age, it was a big deal.

Obviously coming from a supportive family/community is a form of privilege, but not absolutely everyone who got to university in that generation had financial privilege.

My grandmother was not much older than your mum, was a teacher, and had children suring a time of horrendous pressure and expectation on women and without the modern conveniences we have now. She washed clothes by hand and with a mangle. Baths were filled by hand and done in the front room in front of the fire.

She did all this kind of crap while working a full time job and her husband conformed to the gender roles of the times (slippers and dinner after work; beer on a Friday). And without the conveniences your mum has had of cleaners etc.

She still didn’t appreciate the pressures of working for women. And maintained the deeply ingrained beliefs that were instilled in her from childhood about what women should do and be responsible for (which were often contradictory and were deeply flawed): basically, everything is for the woman to do, and even if you do your best to meet society’s expectations you’ll still be doing it wrong. She suffered from those expectations herself, but still stuck to those things.

Basically, your mother is 80. She is a product of her time, and has had no experiences to open her eyes to anything else. She has clearly been with 2 men who have seen fit to either facilitate, or actively encourage, the clear division of gender roles this way and reinforce the stereotypes from times past. You are expecting too much of her while doing little to consider the context of the life she’s actually lived, and the times within which she’s lived it, or the societal constraints and expectations placed on her at the time.

SAHM to age 48 followed by 40+ years travelling/etc?
So she's around 90, born round about 1930.

I'd say you have a somewhat limited grasp of the opportunities and financial options available to women of her generation, and social pressures on them particularly after they married and had children.

@ILoveJamaica

My late MiL never did a day’s paid work in her life, brought up her children and managed her house with lots of help (paid and family). After FiL died, she lived on a pension of £40kpa, not one penny of which she had paid into

See, I hate this view. How do you think your FIL managed to amass a pension? Who was raising his children, doing the school run, helping with homework, washing his pants, ironing his work shirts, changing the sheets he slept in, doing the grocery shop, cooking his dinner, hoovering the house, cleaning the toilet that he did his shits in?

It was MIL. And she wasn't paid. That is her contribution, and if FIL had been single, he would have had to outsource all of the grunt work that was being done by MIL. Which he would most likely not have been able to afford.

She earned that Pension as much as he did. That is even recognised in law. Had your MIL divorced your FIL, she would have walked away with half of his Pension, and rightly so.

Damn right!

Except that she had a lot of paid help. I’m not saying she didn’t deserve it, my point was that it wasn’t untypical of her class and generation. If you read the rest of my post I say that, and that I’m more surprised that there are women of my own acquaintance, one of whom is childless by choice, who live the same way.

@HaveringWavering Not quite sure that warranted a ‘fuck off’..wondering if I hit a nerve. My own child is at nursery so not being judgemental (doesn’t mean I’m happy about it) but I don’t think it’s the same level of love, attention and security provided as kids get from parents or grandparents. Speaking as someone who was at a childminder full time from 6 weeks old and barely speaks to my mum now I don’t think it did me as much good as having that stability for the first few years.