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.

Was it actually a sheltered life of leisure though? Have you actually ever talked to her about the physical labour she would have done to keep a house and family going or are you just making assumptions?

I came home from hospital and DH waited on me hand and foot. My DGM came home on the bus with a baby and got stuck back into the daily grind and also looked after her BIL's children. There wasn't any paid paternity leave for my grandfather.

I think TRex makes an excellent point.

My MIL is just the same. She would tell all her friends how everything I did wasn't good enough because the house wasn't clean enough and I didn't meet her exacting standards for housework.
In the end her best friend got sick of this and put her in her place. She just had no concept of what it was like to do my job and run a home. Her bf was also good enough to tell me what she been like. I'm still not quite good enough, and I can't quite forgive her but I put up with it just to keep the peace.
She also treats my DC different to her other grandchildren but that's another story

@SoftSheen I noted earlier up that I got my maths wrong, that she's just 80 now and very fit.

@JustThisLastLittleBit

I think they were massively deprived. Women in the civil service were forced to give up work when they married, in the 50s. Good jobs were reserved for men. Opportunities were almost zero for rewarding work for women. My mum was stuck in a narrow, unsatisfying world and was not even educated properly. Many of that age have no or inadequate state pensions. Nobody’s life on this earth is easy, even if it looks like it from the outside.

Yes, absolutely this. What the OP sees as privilege, I see as deprivation, financial dependence etc.

OP, on a different note, you can’t expect much insight from someone unimaginative whose life has in no way resembled your own — my parents both left school at 12 for unskilled manual jobs. My father stayed at the same company from the age of 13 till he retired at 65. My job requires four degrees, isn’t 9 to 5, but has a great deal of flexibility, and I’ve moved jobs and countries a lot. They have no idea of what I do for a living — they tried to get me to leave school at 15 to train as a hairdresser. Both my parents (who live in a house they inherited from an uncle), having never had a mortgage, are completely horrified by mine, or debt of any kind.

I don’t get het up about it when they are baffled at me working at the weekend, freak out about the mortgage (dad accidentally opened a statement) or the fact that they would have preferred me to have the same kind of life as theirs.

My DM same middle class generation as OP born in 40s. Well educated and worked briefly and then gave up work when she had kids, never had paid employment again. My Dad earned well, the economics of the times meant a single (good) income family was feasible, she got a decent inheritance, she (eventually) did well in their divorce.

Only difference with your OP is that my DM DID help a lot with the kids/ tough times, especially when they were younger. So she has shared her good fortune and privilege through her time on childcare and sometimes helping financially.

I agree my DM would not consider herself privileged, I don't think. I find it baffling that she never had a paying job again. I do think that if she had, she would have felt some quality of life satisfaction somehow.

I HAVE to work or we would be homeless - in fact increasingly I am the higher/more reliable earner.

As for this
She spent two weeks being properly cared for after giving birth, lots of rest, baby brought over for feeds

Surely that's a good thing?? Why would you want anything else?

So odd.

How on earth is that a comment from the Jurassic period (yes, I get the user name pun). Birthing women are treated pretty badly in this day and age, decent maternity care should be a given. I think you may have inherited your Mum's lack of empathy pp.

It’s annoying that she’s a bit thick and doesn’t understand much about the world but I don’t see the point of being angry with her, just accept her limitations. Some people’s parents have very little education - it’s not something to be annoyed about, surely.

Equally I don’t see the point of being resentful about others’ life circumstances. There will always be people around who have more money and an easier life than you, will you resent all of them?

She has no frame of reference but her own so she'll never "get it". I think all you can do is talk about other things and don't expect her to relate or understand; when she inevitably says something ridiculous, let it slide, laugh about it in private and talk to someone else when you need a bit of real life wisdom.

Was it actually a sheltered life of leisure though? Have you actually ever talked to her about the physical labour she would have done to keep a house and family going or are you just making assumptions?

@FlaviaAlbiaWantsLangClegBack - Of course there was work involved in raising a family and there is of course always work in running a house and general life admin. But she had help throughout in the form of cleaners etc, wasn't very involved with her children and prioritized her hobbies. She has had a fairly leisurely life by most people's standards.

I have to admit I did raise my eyebrows slightly when MIL one Christmas told me they hadn’t bought presents as they had been “absolutely manic” in the run up to Xmas.

It turned out they had been on holiday in November AND they had babysat my nephew overnight TWICE in December.

All me and Dh had going on was both of us working, a two year old and a pregnancy that was being problematic and so required a number of hospital appointments. You can see how we had much more time than them and so managed to buy them Xmas presents!

How on earth is that a comment from the Jurassic period

@SusannaOwens - My response wasn't about postnatal care but more about the idea that was implied, that women deserve to live nice lives where they don't have to work in paid employment, which I found a bit odd.

Hmm, well comparison is the thief of joy and it won't change a thing about your DM so I guess the only thing you can do is smile and nod and make peace with your feelings.

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.

Tbf, there are women now that live that lifestyle. Privilege has always existed. If she is 88, then I'm not thar surprised. Good for her. Better than eeking out a state pension.
You just have to put it in a box and keep a lid on it.

What a terrible story, @PlanDeRaccordement. Im so sorry.

@PlanDeRaccordement that is heartbreaking. Sorry to hear about your mom.

Agree, I probably underestimate that limitations put on women - I need to hold my stepfather responsible too as I know he enjoyed having her at home so working was probably less of an option.

I feel your pain, my mum is a bit like this however my aunt does my head in.

Last week she was moaning that downsizing would mean she'd have to spend 1m as she needs 3 beds & she wanted something much cheaper. Says to me I have no idea how you squeeze into your 3 bed 🤔

@PlanDeRaccordement

That's very sad, I'm sorry you had to experience that. Your empathy for your mother shines through but it must have been incredibly tough for you.

Tbf, there are women now that live that lifestyle. Privilege has always existed.

This is true but I think for many on the previous generation the privilege was fairly normal if that makes sense. Nowadays if tit have that lifestyle most people are aware that is very privileged.

DM, in her 80s, has the same attitude. To be fair she realises how hard it was for me as a single parent and did provide childcare one day a week - in line with the expectations of her generation.

I never wanted her lifestyle and that has influenced my path.. Now we both live alone, she sees the advantages of my way of life - but my choices, difficult for me in a changing society, were never available to her.

She is part of a weird generation of mc women who expected to be cared for and probably never expected to work.

She was part of a generation who were not expected to work after they were married, and if they did were often fired when they got pregnant and struggled to enter the workforce once their kids were grown because employers didn’t recognise raising a family and running a home as transferable skills. Nothing weird about it, they didn’t have the same choices as you do, they were raised to think that was their lot in life.

The older generation not understanding the younger generations is not a new thing, nor is it specific to SAHMs.

The issue isn’t what she did or how she lived, it is poor communication between the two of you. You sound envious of her life, which isn’t the best start to getting along with someone.

@TReXX

Um.. parenting is work or did you change your own nappies?

Stop devaluing women

God you're all patting yourselves on the back for being run ragged.

Sounds like OPs mum has it sussed. Why shouldn't she have a nice life?

You sound jealous.

As for this
She spent two weeks being properly cared for after giving birth, lots of rest, baby brought over for feeds

Surely that's a good thing?? Why would you want anything else?

So odd.

This.

Why on earth resent someone who had a nice life? And why demean a stay at home mum? You really do sound bitter that you don’t have the same lifestyle.

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.

@PlanDeRaccordement that is tragic. I definitely agree some women were trapped. My mum would have loved a career in engineering but she left school at 15 & came to England at 20. When she was pregnant with me it was just very much assumed she would never return to work.

My mum is like this but unfortunately she got divorced about 25 years ago and has never been kept by a man since, however neither has she been able to hold down a job. Instead she's deluded herself that she's "self employed" doing some kind of faith healing thing and basically waiting for the universe to provide.

It's very frustrating because she is utterly skint and goes through periods of feeling very depressed about it, but we're not allowed to suggest she gets a job because that is not having faith in the universe and not being true to the real her. Eventually she did decide she wanted to look for part time work and then it was impossible because she hadn't worked in 30 years and nobody wanted to employ her.

It's upsetting because she gets really upset about not being able to buy things for the DC for Christmas etc but doesn't recognise that it's a choice she has made. She is now just waiting for my grandad to die so she can get some inheritance now, I think. Although it looks like he might need long term care so whether there will be any inheritance I don't know.

But there is very much this oh, I don't know how you can possibly manage (something fairly normal) -because she wouldn't manage it.