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.

Today I had lunch with two friends all with mothers in their early eighties. My mum spent her mid seventies nursing my dad when he became terminally ill then became ill herself and passed away last year after several years of ill health. She refused to spend money on herself so she could leave her children a few £‘s which upset me greatly. Second mum spent years looking after a husband with dementia and then became too vulnerable to care for herself so family home has been sold to pay her care home fees, daughter visits every week, a 100 mile round trip. Third mum is frail and friend drives a 250 mile round trip to see her agoraphobic and frail mum almost every weekend. Her mum’s second husband left their home to children of his first marriage so there is no inheritance. I am sure that any of us would have been truly delighted if our mums had got to live the life your mum has had in recent years. I read your post and it says to me that you have no concept of what most people face with their elderly parents and understanding that many people inherit nothing. You are resentful because your mum doesn’t understand your ‘hard life’. How terribly sad you think this way.

@ILoveJamaica

My old Mum used to say, that Women's Lib really didn't do women any favours - that women who previously hadn't been expected to work full time, suddenly were told that they should be working and Oh, how lucky they were, but guess what, you'll still have to raise the children and run the home.

Unsurprisingly, many women are now run ragged trying to keep the spinning plates in the air. How is that progress? It's fine if you can afford child care and cleaners etc, but if you are not a high earner then most of your salary is cancelled out by childcare costs - is it worth the hassle? If the difference is only a few hundred quid a month, why not be a SAHM and have a much calmer lifestyle, and cut back on a few luxuries?

They are real issues but I don't understand why are they always blamed on women getting into workforce? Work life balance and childcare costs depend on government support for working parents. In country of my origin women get paid 80% of their salary for a whole year on maternity leave, then they can take additional parental leave for few years and they can go back to their job when the leave ends. If the child is sick parents get paid time off, nurseries are affordable and working hours family friendly and heavy regulated.

There is nothing wrong with women working full time, the system is wrong for not supporting them.

I also think you are viewing your mum’s life through the lens of women today who have so many choices their mothers and grandmothers never had. Your throwaway remark about your mum ‘remarrying quickly’ to a ‘moderately successful man’ is ver telling. Divorce in those times was almost unheard of with great stigma attached. A woman with no means of supporting her children would likely have had them taken away and put into care. Maybe your mum’s only realistic choice was between that and remarrying quickly. I assume the ‘moderately successful man’ was your step father and you were brought up by him? I assume your mum was a traditional housewife and he was the ‘breadwinner’? Maybe that was the contract she had to make for him to bring you up. Women of that era had very few choices and she did the best she could to give you the best life. I guess she was ‘lucky’ in that she has had a happy and carefree life with a good husband, it could have been so very different.

Goodness me. If anything were to happen to DH early I'd have a fantastic widow's pension. Not because I'd done sweet fa but because I facilitated his very successful career and there were years when he worked 14 hour days that I did everything, even when I was back at full time work. I didn't resent it because my input was 8 hrs paid work and domestic stuff equal to his load. We were therefore equals. And I'll have my own £40k pension to boot.

OP I'm not sure this is a generational thing. The women who are in their 90s in my family had jobs from a young age. They totally get the pressures of juggling home and work. My mother is mid 60s, never worked and doesn't get it. She was sad that I had "a responsible job as an unmarried woman" because if things go wrong I have no husband to basically step in. Now that I'm married, she's sad because I should be looking after my husband and not potentially getting him into trouble with my responsible job!! She expects me to tell my boss that I won't come into working because it's raining, and doesn't see why I can't work and look after children at the same time rather than use nurseries! I think the difference in attitude comes from not having experienced working life.

My similar mum- I'd work 1:3 weekends (Sat or Sun, 8-5 overtime frontline NHS).

My mum used to occasionally remind me that I needed to 'think of the family' instead of working.

What, like thinking about the fucking gas bill, mum?

I can see why that is frustrating and difficult for you….but, regardless of work history, people do change as they get older. My mother had a very successful career but, as a result, I pretty much raised myself. I was absolutely forbidden from calling her at work “unless I’d lost a limb”
She’s long retired, but now I’m busy and successful at work, she will call me at 11am on a random Tuesday to ask why her Sky Box isn’t working or to tell me that her cousins, brothers, aunties budgie has died…..I’ve learned to laugh about it (and pledge that I won’t be the same!)

@2bazookas

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.

The OP has corrected the age - her mum is only 80 - and believe me we who are 75+ did not live in victorian times - we had women's lib, our own bank accounts and could get a mortgage on our own income. I know I did all that - single parent and worked full time in a graduate level job in IT I had a TV, a landline phone, a fridge, a freezer, a twin tub washing machine, central heating, drove a car, and owned my own house. I also could vote, and no-one forced me to quit a job because of my circumstances.
The ignorance of some posters about life in the 60s and 70s is surprising. There was contraception available and the NHS, no-one was forced into the workhouse if they had no income ! We had better music too.

A shockingly harsh judgement on a woman who is in her eighth decade.

Tbh if I'd stayed at home all that time looking after dc the last thing I'd want to do in my 80s is take on the care of my dgc.

I think you need to accept your dm excactly as she is OP. You've had so many more opportunities and should try to be the bigger person. Be grateful she's still here.

@Bunnybugs I clearly remember my dm going to ask the bank manager for a mortgage in the late 70s and her being refused despite a full-time, well paying job because she hadn't got my father's blessing (who had left). It did happen.

But we had a phone, car, tv, freezer and holidays abroad. But we were unusual. I was the only one in my class with these things.

@anotherworkingsunday

I don't think OP is unhappy with her mum, because her mum had it 'easier' (or not), as the last few posters seem to suggest, but for the fact that her mum is criticising OP's life, based on a completely distorted view of modern professional and personal life. She does not understand the structural changes in modern life and professional life, and considers it personal failings on the OP's part, giving unhelpful feedback and criticism, where none is due.

I have this with my dad. He worked in the same field I work in, but three decades earlier, when his salary (for the position I now have) sustained a whole family on a good life standard as sole breadwinner. I am struggling. He is baffled I still don't have a permanent job, don't own a house, etc. He got his job without qualifications (only qualifying after he got promoted), while I am more trained and better performing than he ever was, and don't have a shot in hell for any of his promotions. I also work many, many more hours than he did at this stage in his career.

He used to see this discrepancy as a personal failing on my part. Why don't I just go for (non-existent) promotions, or move to a permanent job, he asked. It was quite frustrating, as it was being laid down as a personal flaw or me being 'negative', instead of rightfully attributed to the (changed) system. And with him 'knowing how things work in sector X', he didn't accept my rebuttals that things have really changed. With more articles recently appearing about how work circumstances have changed in my sector (and no longer requiring him to just take my word for it), he seems to have seen the light a bit more. (Or simply may think it is no longer worth spending energy on.) But it was very frustrating for a while, as I just wanted to feel heard and be truthful about my life and its challenges.

👏👏👏🤝🤝🤝excellent post

@bunnybuggs I suspect you are pretty well off. Magdalene laundries still existed. My mum was unmarried and went through hell keeping me and raising me. Children were taken into care if mums were homeless or too poor. And my mum was legally paid less than men.
If you were well off and in mainstream life was I am sure fine. For those who weren't life was very tough.

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

This gets my goat!

The work was shared. It so happens that the money was paid to the couple. Both earned it. The father couldn't have done that work without his wife running his family. She's earned that pension. I can't believe the ingratitude of children brought up by a devoted mother who stayed at home to raise them, then shifting their avaricious gaze to her pension. They don't deserve a penny. I hope she leaves her money to a charity.

I had a TV, a landline phone, a fridge, a freezer, a twin tub washing machine, central heating, drove a car, and owned my own house.
I also could vote, and no-one forced me to quit a job because of my circumstances.
The ignorance of some posters about life in the 60s and 70s is surprising.

I think your ignorance of how a lot of people lived in those times is surprising. My mum was made to leave her job because she was expecting me (it was 1969) and she worked for a large ethical company who is still in existence today. We didn't have a landline, didn't even have a home at one stage, certainly no central heating until the 1980s and everyone I knew was similar.

Also not sure about a career in IT in the 60s and 70s, I don't think this was the norm for many men or women. I first set eyes on a calculator when I was around age 8, so 1978 and a computer a bit later.
Who looked after your children?

And a man could legally rape his wife. In fact this law didn't change until 1991.

I first saw a calculator when I wS about 12, in 1972.

I went to the building society in 1981 to inquire about a mortgage. Met a patronising git in The Halifax where I had 4.5k. Had a meeting with the mgr at Lloyd's who said no problem so closed my Hali account and transferred the balance. Completed 4 months later

@SusannaOwens
My dad was working in IT from 1972. The computer was the size of a sports hall and was programmed by punch cards that would take him a couple of weeks to write (and would some times be rejected in the form of a pile of shredded paper). So I think the pp understands the profession she worked in better than you.

She just has the luxury of time

Maybe, at 80, she's beginning to feel like she doesn't though.

@Cyw2018

Fair enough and sounds quite exciting to be at the start of that industry. But part of my point is it wasn't a common experience for most women at that time. Out of curiosity were you paid at the same rate as your male colleagues, did you have the same access to pensions etc?

And apologies, I've just realised you said your Dad and not you.

At 80 I'd be happy she is active.

I agree with you it seems unfair she had 40 years of no work and travelling and you ahve to work from day 1 after graduating.

So you need to find a new husband who would be happy for you to go part-time?

My husband doesn't mind me working4 days a week, 25 hours a week in retail on my feet running around and standing too long. Our son 14. Though I also have a degree but sold myself low/cheap. Motherhood financial penalty for a sort of 'family friendly' job.

I am trying to study and find out how I could bring some extra income on day 5 with a sitting down job ONLY, not 1 minute extra on my feet at 42 :)

*you have to work

*Our son is 14.

[quote Cyw2018]@SusannaOwens
My dad was working in IT from 1972. The computer was the size of a sports hall and was programmed by punch cards that would take him a couple of weeks to write (and would some times be rejected in the form of a pile of shredded paper). So I think the pp understands the profession she worked in better than you.[/quote]
thank you for that - it was indeed punch cards or paper tape to input programs / data and I worked for the DVLA in early 1970s when the operating room was huge and peopled by men (only men because of lifting the heavy disc packs and computer tapes).

I was quoting my own experience - because I was a single person the BS accepted my application for a mortgage because I saved with them

I am surprised some of you doubted the facts of my life - why would I lie that I had these experiences. No-one forced me to give up my child, no-one suggested I could not work because I had a child so long as I assured them I paid a child minder for him

I was merely trying to correct the mistaken belief by many on this thread who doubted that women in the 1960s and 1970s were able to work, have bank accounts, own houses, drive cars and use contraceptives

What industry are you in?

What promotion would you like to get?

What jobs would your siblings like to find? What education did they get?

Grandparents who haven't been around young children for a long time can forget what it's like and even what to do!

I think this is true. I'm well old enough to be a grandparent although I'm not one. Being left in charge of the well-being of someone else's child, particularly a baby, is a huge responsibility and you certainly feel it as you get older. There's emotional energy as well as physical required to properly care for a child. I can do it for an hour or two, but any longer can be quite draining. And I was a sahm who often looked after neighbours kids as well as my own. Wrangling toddlers was my speciality. Not so now. I'm genuinely worried that I'm just not quick enough now.