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.

adrianmolesmole Mon 11-Oct-21 13:17:51Apart from the hippy aspect this could totally be my mum. I agree on almost every point. My mum seems to think I should have had 100 grand in savings by now because I've worked for so long and that I should be able to get a house easily by now, completely unaware of the cost of housing these days (she lives in a mortgage-free house, all paid for by my Dad), and how life generally is so hard for so many people including me

What jumps out at me here is this :

(she lives in a mortgage-free house, all paid for by my Dad)

Your Dad was only able to work FT, outside of the home, because your Mum was looking after his children and running the home. Or was your Mum in her Jammies all day and your Dad raised you single handedly?

@ILoveJamaica

adrianmolesmole Mon 11-Oct-21 13:17:51Apart from the hippy aspect this could totally be my mum. I agree on almost every point. My mum seems to think I should have had 100 grand in savings by now because I've worked for so long and that I should be able to get a house easily by now, completely unaware of the cost of housing these days (she lives in a mortgage-free house, all paid for by my Dad), and how life generally is so hard for so many people including me

What jumps out at me here is this :

(she lives in a mortgage-free house, all paid for by my Dad)

Your Dad was only able to work FT, outside of the home, because your Mum was looking after his children and running the home. Or was your Mum in her Jammies all day and your Dad raised you single handedly?

But unless children have additional needs, the necessity of ANYONE needing to stay at home to run the home, certainly beyond the primary school years is questionable. According to the OP, there have been multiple decades where her mother has had the privilege of pretty much faffing around and worse, seems to have no clue as to how life is different for her daughter. She seems to in fact judge her for having a harder life!

@CBUK2K

It's good that women have fought so hard to be allowed the freedom to work 40 hours per week rather than being stay at home mums.

Truth. I’d have been a dreadful SAHM. Maternity leave just about did my nut in 😂

@ModerateOven

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.

Yes, once in 2007 my husband's mum my MIL said at 75 y.o. she wanted to stay with our 7 months old son in 2007 for 4-5 hours for us while we went shopping on Saturday afternoon.

We came back in 4 hours and saw an Ambulance. She had a sudden asthma attack (she had asthma anyway, but was fine before we left) from running around him too much unnecessarily. He was quite heavy for his age about 12 kilos then too. She lived for another 9 years.

It was such a shock for us it happened because of our son. She had my FIL next to her too.

It was the 1st and the last time we ever left him with her :).

BUK2K

It's good that women have fought so hard to be allowed the freedom to work 40 hours per week rather than being stay at home mums.

Truth. I’d have been a dreadful SAHM. Maternity leave just about did my nut in 😂

I agree it's great we have this choice and it's up to us what we choose to do.

In comparison to some cultural differences, I personally noticed most grandparents in Eastern Europe like to be more involved with their grandchildren at any age. It could be even like having them the whole occasional weekend while their parents rest and have time to themselves. Parents can often easily go on holidays for 1-2 weeks without their children and grandparents are very happy to have them then.

They are never worried they are too old to do it (unless there is a real health problem) or forget how to do it or avoid doing it.

I visited my grandparents once or twice a month overnight most of my childhood years.

Yes it's great that women can work forty hour weeks. For less money than men. In lower status roles. While doing the vast majority of wife work,child care and generally all the dogs body crap that men wouldn't lower themselves to. All the while being judged by other women. Patriarchy at its finest.

@MrsBerthaRochester

Yes it's great that women can work forty hour weeks. For less money than men. In lower status roles. While doing the vast majority of wife work,child care and generally all the dogs body crap that men wouldn't lower themselves to. All the while being judged by other women. Patriarchy at its finest.

That's why there is an equality & diversity act/law.

We must all watch it doesn't get broken.

I personally plan and would like to be an involved grandparent for our son's children (hopefully he has them when the time comes) if he and his wife need our help with childcare.

Yes it's great that women can work forty hour weeks. For less money than men. In lower status roles. While doing the vast majority of wife work,child care and generally all the dogs body crap that men wouldn't lower themselves to. All the while being judged by other women. Patriarchy at its finest

Quite!

@MrsBerthaRochester

Yes it's great that women can work forty hour weeks. For less money than men. In lower status roles. While doing the vast majority of wife work,child care and generally all the dogs body crap that men wouldn't lower themselves to. All the while being judged by other women. Patriarchy at its finest.

I understand. My grandmother didn't work. She lives very comfortably provided for by my grandfather...they weren't massively wealthy but fairly well off. She had a cleaning lady and au pairs. She lost a lot of family in the Holocaust and had a terrible time during the war...she deserved an easy life when married if you ask me.

*lived not lives

@MrsBerthaRochester

Yes it's great that women can work forty hour weeks. For less money than men. In lower status roles. While doing the vast majority of wife work,child care and generally all the dogs body crap that men wouldn't lower themselves to. All the while being judged by other women. Patriarchy at its finest.

Yup. And all dressed up as emancipation. It’s enough to make you weep.

Love violet creams mmmm.

Comptometer operators were incredible! My audit firm used them in the mid 1980s to add up columns and columns of figures. Instead of keying in the absolute numbers they factorised them in their heads in some magical way and punched in the resulting codes. They were incredibly clever AND fast AND accurate AND working class mums to a woman. I was utterly in awe of them.

I read an interesting post on here ages ago where a poster described how many men nowadays saw their fathers not doing much in the home and their wives running round after them and expected that same treatment but without being prepared to take sole financial responsibility as their fathers had done and I think that's so true.

A single Dad would struggle to earn enough to buy all of that help if there was no woman at home juggling it all. Now the women have to run the household and bring home the bacon.

@ILoveJamaica Can we stop making this statement on Mumsnet about single men having to outsource all their domestic work if they didn't have a wife to do it thereby showing the value of SAHM's? It's so sexist!

I work FT and am a single parent and I do all the domestic stuff myself - just in the evenings and weekends. And so do many other single parents I know including men and widowers etc. No need to pay anybody. It really can be done because zillions of single parents work FT and take on all the domestic chores as well plus do school drop off and pick up.

But for some reason on MN: (a) it's unimaginable to think that men would do domestic chores particularly men with big powerful jobs and (b) all this domestic stuff takes up 24 hours/day, 7 days a week. Just not true and insulting to those who muddle through!

@Comedycook

I read an interesting post on here ages ago where a poster described how many men nowadays saw their fathers not doing much in the home and their wives running round after them and expected that same treatment but without being prepared to take sole financial responsibility as their fathers had done and I think that's so true.

Now many women at least 50% would want careers and their own income contribution even if they had a chance to be a housewife.

They want to develop their careers and not to rely 100% on their husband in case of

1. divorce
2. he dies

and then the wife if often left struggling financially without having received education/built her career.

to survive financially such a wife has to find a new husband asap.

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

Lol - forget what it was like! Twins plus older DS is indelibly printed in our minds! I still enjoy being on my own, after years of all three talking at me all day; and that was over 20 years ago!

When DGD was newborn, I was changing her nappy within hours of her birth, while her parents looked spaced out! We used to walk her round to sleep, just as we had our own - DS and DDIL looked on in amazement, that it only took us five minutes to get her to sleep! I looked after DGD one or two days a week, after DDIL went back to work, and thought what a doddle one is, after three! I looked after DGS, aged 16 months on Friday, and still thought one is a doddle!

GP knows a lot of tricks they are particularly great at putting kids to sleep and playing with them.

However I will say there are modern ideas that they don't know about. How nowadays it is advised to put babies on their backs, start foods at 6months, BF on demand, no water for small babies...... all those guidelines are recent and only new parents are more aware of it. GP need to be flexible to know that some things change and be willing to learn

@Comedycook

I read an interesting post on here ages ago where a poster described how many men nowadays saw their fathers not doing much in the home and their wives running round after them and expected that same treatment but without being prepared to take sole financial responsibility as their fathers had done and I think that's so true.

I don't want to get all not my Nigel but my DH grew up with very traditional parents, his dad worked a high pressure job and his mum was a SAHM and did everything around the house. My DH never expected that from me because he understood that that was an arrangement his parents had agreed and suited them, not something to impose unilaterally on me.

But then I think I have always been a lot more assertive than a lot of women on here - before we moved in together, we agreed a split of chores and we renegotiate that periodically. I would never dream of picking up his socks etc, in fact (to general astonishment on here) I have never done his laundry at all. (And no we don't do half loads, we just wait the while few days till we have a full one)

BF on demand

That is certainly not a recent guideline. I was bf on demand 34 years ago! (I was supported by a La Leche League counsellor, and later worked for another charity, supporting breast feeding)

@grey12 with respect, the only one of those things that wasn’t the advice 30 years ago was not giving water to babies (even then, I didn’t because all my babies wanted was MILK). People my age can learn and take instructions you know.

When I was online dating I met several men in sole charge of their DC, through bereavement and illness rather than divorce admittedly. They struggled but they coped, because that’s what single parents have to do.

Now many women at least 50% would want careers and their own income contribution even if they had a chance to be a housewife

They want to develop their careers and not to rely 100% on their husband in case of

1) divorce
2) he dies

and then the wife if often left struggling financially without having received education/built her career

To survive financially such a wife has to find a new husband asap

Agree entirely but it's not a genuine choice if women are doing it because they're scared of it all going wrong.

I wonder how many would choose to be a housewife if it was risk free? Probably quite a few

@grey12

GP knows a lot of tricks they are particularly great at putting kids to sleep and playing with them.

However I will say there are modern ideas that they don't know about. How nowadays it is advised to put babies on their backs, start foods at 6months, BF on demand, no water for small babies...... all those guidelines are recent and only new parents are more aware of it. GP need to be flexible to know that some things change and be willing to learn

Are grandparents too stupid to find out about current guidelines? Funnily enough, we managed to learn to do it safely and following guidelines ( I breastfed on demand, laid my first baby on her side and subsequent babies on their backs, and started solids at 5 months) Only difference is we spoon fed pureed food and didn't give finger food quite so early. Most of us are very capable of learning the latest advice and would be willing to do so, but if we're treated like morons we probably wont offer any support.