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.

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

All kudos to you. And I do get your point. But when your Mum was your age, she did not have the mod cons that you have now, and so the grunt work was harder.

And for the record I have never been a SAHM myself. But that was pure choice, because I wanted to carry on with my career (and I am now self employed).

But I was part time when I had children in school. How are you dropping the kids to school (845am?) and collecting them (3pm?) and managing to be in the Office 9-5?

@Waferbiscuit

When you say 'a whole generation', what generation are you referring to?

My mom was born in the 40s, just pre-baby boomer. Her situation is very similar to women who are her white, m/c peers. Similar expectations and life experiences.

Well this is nonsense! My Mum was born in 44 and is NOTHING like this! My Mum worked full time all her life, never even took maternity leave. I remember being with my grandma after school whilst my mum was still at work. She worked right up to a couple of years ago. In fact her job was in online banking (so required a certain amount of savvy) and to this day she walks miles with her dog and is physically fitter than me. I'm disabled and she occasionally comes to do something I can't do! 77yrs old on Thursday! So yeah, not all women from the 1940s are like your Mum op!

@PlanDeRaccordement

I am trying to flag up the 'fallout' that comes from living a sheltered life of leisure.

My DM was similar to yours. Born 1940s. University educated to doctorate level. Married not the “hippie” man she was madly in love with, but my gentle, stable DF as he was a “good provider” on the advice of family. She had wanted a career, even published a book while at university, but was sacked directly after marriage and could find no employment other than part time typing teacher. The view then was that married women have a husband to support them, so employing them was taking a job away from a single woman who had to support herself or a man with himself or family to support.

She had us children pretty quickly, and attempted to get a job, start a career several times as we grew up. But even her scaled down modest aspiration like FT school teacher was denied her once they found out she had young children. She often would go on rants about how having children ruined her life, she’d wanted to be a famous academic not changing nappies and wiping snotty noses.

She became a bitter alcoholic suffering from severe depression and psychotic episodes. My parents divorced when she was 50. She got the house, plenty of money for a lifetime, etc. But one day, she drank a bit then drove off a pier into the ocean and drowned. She was 55. I tell people she was killed by a drunk driver.....which is true in a way.

A sheltered life of leisure can be a gilded prison to many women. I doubt your DM had much of a choice and you shouldn’t be resentful of how she has made the best of her circumstances. That life killed my DM.

Oh my Christ @PlanDeRaccordement I am so, so sorry 😧 How utterly tragic.

@Waferbiscuit

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.

What are you on about @GinnyWren? Divorce was not uncommon in 1974 and social workers weren't rounding up the children of divorced moms and sending them to care. Where are you getting this intel from?

Oh dear OP so you’ve dismissed the lived experience of my family members and the many women on this thread saying otherwise by publishing a graph? So you simply will never understand or empathise with your mum or even consider any other women’s points of view. There are a lot of interesting and informative posts on this thread but it is your decision whether to use the advice to help you with your relationship or to be dismissive of anyone who doesn’t agree entirely with you.

Also OP, to be true to your beliefs I think you should be honest with your mum and tell her you resent her financial situation. You could let her know that you do not believe that anyone should benefit financially from income they haven’t earned themselves or assets they have not paid for themselves. I’m sure if you let her know she will be very happy to let someone else inherit the assets she has and you will have a clear conscience.

@Waferbiscuit - in your original post you say that your mum doesn’t understand why you can’t work part time, doesn’t give you any financial support and doesn’t help with the DGCs, clearly this is not her responsibility it’s for you and your XH to support your DCs. In a later post you say that you work full time and do domestic things evening and weekends so why do you want help to do things you say you can do yourself? You are very vague on details but you must be 50-55ish and so your children must be at least teenagers, I assume you also have an XH to share the responsibility. So why precisely should your elderly mother be helping you out?

So why precisely should your elderly mother be helping you out?

@GinnyWren Just to be clear I have never asked for my mother's help but I was noting in my OP that despite my circumstances she has never been forthcoming with help/assistance. The comment was less about me needing help and more about her mindset, that she can't understand why I may need it. Does that make sense?

Also @GinnyWren I was dismissive of the comment about divorce being uncommon because it wasn't true but mainly I felt the comment about 'babies being taken away from single mothers' wasn't true in 1974/5. Maybe years earlier.

@Waferbiscuit

Also *@GinnyWren* I was dismissive of the comment about divorce being uncommon because it wasn't true but mainly I felt the comment about 'babies being taken away from single mothers' wasn't true in 1974/5. Maybe years earlier.

My aunt was banished to another part of the country to have her baby as it was so shameful. She was coerced into having baby put up for adoption.

She fought tooth and nail to keep that baby. She did in the end but it was incredibly tough on her (She was then pretty much forced to marry the father).

Early 70s.

But I was part time when I had children in school. How are you dropping the kids to school (845am?) and collecting them (3pm?) and managing to be in the Office 9-5?

@ILoveJamaica morning clubs and after school clubs. Drop off at 815, pick up by 6pm. I can't afford to work part-time.

@TReXX I read the original comment as 'children being taken away from their mothers when the mother divorced' which I didn't think was v common in the 1970s. But yes I understand about single mothers being pushed into adopting at that time.

[quote Waferbiscuit]@TReXX I read the original comment as 'children being taken away from their mothers when the mother divorced' which I didn't think was v common in the 1970s. But yes I understand about single mothers being pushed into adopting at that time.[/quote]
Sorry, my mistake!

OP, you have a problem with your mum. I get it. Lots of us do, or did.

But I think you’re barking up the wrong tree to simply put it down to either a generational thing, or a SAHM thing. This is far more deeper and complex, and you’re doing womankind a disservice to simplify these complex issues into such simple boxes.

Once again I would remind Op to watch Call The Midwife, to remind her what things were like when her mum was in her 20s.

I was born in the 60s in a poor working class area.
Very few women with children worked.
Child care - nursery or childminding was outwith the reach of unskilled women financially.
If a mother did work it was often a cleaning job in the evenings.
Women couldn't afford to work.

@LavenderYellow nobody said anything about GP being stupid I said not as aware, not usually reading/researching as much on the subject

Right all, best era to be a twenty/ twenty five year old? Late 80s I reckon!!!

@Waferbiscuit

Also *@GinnyWren* I was dismissive of the comment about divorce being uncommon because it wasn't true but mainly I felt the comment about 'babies being taken away from single mothers' wasn't true in 1974/5. Maybe years earlier.

OP your quoted graph shows a huge change in the divorce rate from end of 1960s to start of 1980s and no insight at all about the stigma of divorce and the very real risk that a divorced or single mother without means of support could have her children taken away. Two of my friends from school (late 1970s) had babies, one was sent away and had her child put up for adoption, one was forced into marrying her boyfriend who then abandoned her and she was only saved from losing her child by relatives in another town taking her in (and saying she was a widow). We had a school reunion a few years ago and it was so terribly sad to think how much they both suffered. It seems that in the upper middle class circles you were seemingly brought up in women were part of the tiny numbers able to go to university to divorce without stigma and be protected from having children removed. However these things happened to women with less resources and less privilege. So before you dismiss the tales of these and other real women reporting what happened to them why not educate yourself about how things really were for an awful lot of women in that era. I suspect your mum did you a massive favour by remarrying while you were small to a man who was willing to bring you up. You should be happy and relieved that there was a good outcome for her, it could so easily have been different.

@Waferbiscuit

So why precisely should your elderly mother be helping you out?

@GinnyWren Just to be clear I have never asked for my mother's help but I was noting in my OP that despite my circumstances she has never been forthcoming with help/assistance. The comment was less about me needing help and more about her mindset, that she can't understand why I may need it. Does that make sense?

@Waferbiscuit - I’m not completely unsympathetic, it’s sad that your mother has never helped you out or understood why you need it but saying she’s ‘deeply unproductive’ or ‘busy doing nothing’ is extremely judgemental of you. If say your children are mid teens then she was already 65ish when you had them? Maybe doing the dishes and laundry in one day is as much as she wants to do or has the energy for. Maybe your step father expects her to run round after him all day? An imperator part of my (bless her) mum’s role was keeping dad company when he was at home, making cups of tea and snacks. This sounds ridiculous to a modern woman but it was part of her job description. Anyway you need to really work on your resentment if you want to make the most of your relationship with your mum in the few years she is likely to have left.

PlanDeRaccordement

I get it op. The grass is always greener though. I work because i need the money. I find workplace politics very hard and struggle to remsin employed. I am very well educated and have just got a 1st but i struggle despite working hard.
Id love your mum's life tbh.

but mainly I felt the comment about 'babies being taken away from single mothers' wasn't true in 1974/5. Maybe years earlier

I made that comment. Based on having recently watched a feature on TV about a woman who had given birth as a single teen mum and had her baby taken away against her will. In the 1970s. I had been shocked.

@PlanDeRaccordement your mother's story is horrendous but doesn't match the experiences of MIL. MIL was born in 1936 and went to teacher training college (wanted to go to uni but her parents couldn't afford it). She married FIL in 1960, had to give up teaching before she showed with DH b1961. DH youngest sister was born in 1967 and MIL was working P/T as a teacher by 1972, full-time by 1976 and was a Deputy Head by 1980, retiring in 1996.

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

The PP's point, as they clarified, was not that people didn't work in IT at this time but very few did and the simply fact that you were an owner occupier at this time puts you in the better off classes.

I'm a 60s baby. Growing up I knew nobody with their own washing machine, many without a bathroom (just a scullery with a loo), very few with a TV and those who had them were renting, telephones were rare. We had a phone (and a rare private line with it) but only because DF's work paid for it as he was on call. He couldn't use it for private calls either.

Mothers worked but it was around the husband's hours and women depended on each other for childcare. My mother had to leave school at 14 despite the head wanting her to stay - the money wasn't there to do anything else. The career she did manage to build was stymied when she married (she found other work but at a lower level) and then again when she was sacked for being pregnant.

Contraception was theoretically available but largely only to married women and plenty of GPs refused to prescribe it even to married women or would require the DH's permission to prescribe.

Two things jump out from this thread for me.

• as @JumperandJacket says the staggering internalised misogyny which classifies unpaid domestic work as "not work" and labels SAHMs as glorified parasites
• the lack of understanding of how the other half live in terms of economic class, particularly the larger number of people who didn't live in the better off enclaves

@ILoveJamaica morning clubs and after school clubs. Drop off at 815, pick up by 6pm. I can't afford to work part-time

Ah, I see.