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.

There is a real smugness to the MC older woman who thinks she had it sussed because she never had to work a day. It is wearing for professional women to have to tolerate their complete incomprehension of what the real world is like. I can’t imagine what it would be like, comfort aside, to be so isolated from the real world and public life. I would feel more sorry for her if anything - she will never understand so don’t bother explaining. Just find common ground and stick to that, and bland out the rest.

It wasn’t actually ‘a whole generation’, plenty of women in different circumstances worked.

And: (if your Mum is 88, as you reference 40 years after her kids left home when she was 48)

Women were very much discouraged from paid work in the decades after the war. They wanted men returning to have jobs to go to.

Housework in those days could be very hard work. A rudimentary washing machine (twin tubs! The horror!), a mangle, no convenience foods, dishwashers, freezers, big supermarket shops, etc. Clothes were more expensive and needed mending, rather than replacing etc etc.

If she is 88, what do you want her to DO? Apart from give you money? Why are you causing yourself stress and emotional energy trying to force her to understand? Smile and nod and get on with your life.

I have never expected family to help, although our constant relocations have meant it's never really been an option.

What do people class as help? I'm not English so there is a cultural difference in how I see family. Whilst you wouldn't expect a gp to look after your dc every day it's norm for some help if they are capable. In return you would help them a fair bit too. My parents/family are all very involved in each other's lives & we spend lots of time together, which seems unusual on mns.

I think it's interesting but not all generational. My grandmother b1910 ran the farm throughout the 2nd ww and pretty much continued until she was 70. Her world was about farming, horses and the county. Yet she never earned a salary or paid NI. However, the laundry was sent out, a cleaner came in daily and she had help with cooking. She also cares for her parents who lived with her and a brother who was unwell after being a Japanese pow and remained unwell until he died in 1962 which is why she inherited the farm and other business interests.

My mother b1936 trained as a professional dancer and danced until her late 30s, after which she had a dancing school and then dealt with my stepfather's business interests. When I was a child she had help in the house and childcare. I yearned for a mother who collected me from school, baked cakes and wore sensible skirts and cardigans like the other mums.

I was born in 1960 and started work in 1980 having dropped out of uni, being packed off to finishing school and doing a secretarial course. I made a good financial sector career for myself and worked for the next 16 years. Had 8 years off when the DC were born (and had an au-pair in that time and a cleaner). Then started work again.

However, op, plenty of the dc's friends with parents from my generation were sahms, with help whose lives revolved around the tennis club, house improvements and their children. Some divorced at 50ish as children grew and father's got younger models leaving behind women who were unemployable and with such narrow outlooks unlikely to fund another partner, and living bitterly in smaller houses. Not all of course.

I shall never forget a mother complaining to me in the playground that she was soo stressed and didn't know how she'd fit in arranging christmas. I bit my tongue but question wtf she did between 8.45 and 3.45 every day.

My best parenting moment was when dd, aged about 17, said "you've been a really good role model mum and it's great you understand us better and our troubles than some of the mums at school who don't work.

makes note to plan retirement

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?

You're criticising her for having no understanding of your life ... whilst showing zero appreciation of the stresses and constraints she has had to live with.

That's just not true. I do have a sense of the stresses and constraints but obviously no one has full insight into other's lives. But I don't tell her to increase her productivity in the same way that she expects me to get another promotion next year!

Also there is no point complaining to your mum about your work. She thinks you want her advice because you're bringing a problem to her. You don't want her advice. You want her sympathy.

This is a really, really good point, it resonates with me and my DD quite a bit. She tells me about the bad time she is having at school, I try to offer (unwanted) solutions, when in reality she probably just wants sympathy. But I don't offer sympathy because I feel I need to be positive and constructive, plus I'm more of a problem solver than a hand holder, I like to fix. She is in the habit of offloading on me and actually once she has offloaded, she seems better, but I'm left worrying about the problems she's offloaded!

My elderly Mum offloads on me about my Dad too and I struggle to know how to help, as I would have made different life decisions.

I wonder if the pp is guilty about offloading on her Mum and her Mum struggles to know how to help.

@Waferbiscuit

Someone’s “value” doesn’t only equate to paid, full time employment. That’s a very westernised way of looking at life.

@Bagelsandbrie - I never said her life would have had more value if she had been in paid employment. But she might have been less blinkered.

I'm with OP on this. If you have been spoon fed you are likely not to know the value of things. But if you worked for them yourself you would know and appreciate it more.

The part that got me is that your mother doesn't help you with your DC. Tbh if I was struggling it would annoy me although if she's 80 I don't know how well she would cope with grandkids.

@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, the sahm was often not that through choice per se back in the day. My mum had to leave her civil service secretarial job when she married my dad ( not even when she had children, just when she married ffs) and many other organisations wouldn't employ married women. The whole culture was very different and something we would find very difficult to grasp now. The 'privileged' bubble was I think sometimes more of a gilded cage than something to be actively enjoyed. I know my mother who was an intelligent and funny woman sometimes found being the 'trailing' wife confining although she was happy in her life.

@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?

You've hit the nail on the head. I agree that is exactly today's problem with a lot of working mums.

However £300/£400 is a huge difference so I would say it is worth working. Long term the once the kids get older hopefully it will pay off and not just the money aspect. Honestly I don't think my sanity would of lasted to be a SAHM to DS so there's that too.

This thread is fascinating… I love the insights into other mothers lives, (your DM’s story was so sad @PlanDeRaccordement, thank you for sharing ).

I had an argument with my mum over this sort of thing, it started with something small and we were kind of talking past each other rather than really listening/seeking to understand each other. I apologised things had got heated but I still feel sorry about it. It may be harder to reconcile if your mum was cruel and uncaring, but mine was loving and kind and I have to let go of the things about my life she doesn’t understand or the opinions she has that upset me. I also hope my daughters will be forgiving of the things they perceive I get wrong or that I don’t understand.

I don't try to judge the women from previous generations. They were navigating different circumstances and had a different set of opportunities and challenges to deal with.
I expect in return that they don't judge me - but that isn't always the case. It seems after a certain age there is a tendency to become more judgmental, which makes it worse.
"I won't judge you for not having a career but please don't judge me having a cleaner and not cooking every night."
The thing is if I said that, my mil would be absolutely offended that I had insinuated she didn't have a career but still insist until she was blue in the face that paying for a cleaner is shirking my duties in the home.
So the best thing to play elevator music in your head once the mil or dm comments start coming and give yourself a pat on your own back for your achievements that they don't appreciate.

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.

The problem is, she has linked that to her mum’s “weird, MC SAHM women of a certain generation” and noted how her life differs so much and it’s so unfair, rather than accepting it is simply a generational thing. As you’ve noted your dad is the same, as is mine. Mine actually said the whole thing where men worked and women didn’t back in the day was much better and nobody complained about it, everyone was happy. I suggested he actually asked mum if she was happier raising three kids, practically by herself as he worked abroad for years and she had little support or adult company. She, of course, would never complain because that was her lot in life. But we had many conversations after I had my daughter where she advised me to go back to work, even for a couple of days, even if we could afford not to, because it was important I had something for me as she found it difficult even though she loved being a SAHM.

Maybe one day OP your child will resent your life choices. No parents are perfect. You seem to have forgotten that up until recently women had to give up work when they had children. Your elderly Mother is of a certain time. I can't imagine the hurt she must feel to have a Daughter that resents her so bitterly.

You seem to have forgotten that up until recently women had to give up work when they had children. Your elderly Mother is of a certain time

But @LowlandLucky there were many women who had to work even when they had children back in the day. My mother was a victim of expectation but, at the same time, it was also probably easier for her to go along with it. Not everyone is career minded.

@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.

This. Dont see why put down stay at home mothers and those who did in their time, is that making people feel better about having to work? Op, if your mother is busy doing the dishes, what does it have to do with you, would you rather have her in a chair watching tv all day? Weird. OP post is dripping with resentment that she doesnt have a "easy" life as her mother.

You presume that we can be understood by our mothers- make peace with the fact this may not happen.

My mother has no clue about who I am, but I can live with that.

My happiness is not based on whether my mother "gets" me.
I have plenty people in my life who do understand me and support me for who I am.

As a woman who has worked all of her life and cared for her children with no help from anyone, and who helps with grandchildren now, I do not understand what you want from your mum.

You have been raised differently and have your own life and are who you are partly because of her !

It seems you have no respect for her because you think she is a failure when if you look at this more carefully she is the mother of someone fabulous ! And that is something to be applauded.

OP post is dripping with resentment that she doesnt have a "easy" life as her mother.

Well @ReadtheFT, the title of my post starts with 'Resent my mum...' so I'm not hiding that there is some resentment. I think that's fairly normal in the circumstances.

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

This is worth repeating.

But I don't tell her to increase her productivity in the same way that she expects me to get another promotion next year!

Lol at someone telling an over 80 year old to increase her productivity!!!!

thelegohooverer
‘I suspect the problem isn’t so much that your life circumstances have been different but that your dm lacks empathy and consideration and is doing nothing to meet either your emotional or practical needs.

That’s not about being a sahm, or not having worked. If she had a demanding career, I think it would still be all about her.’

I agree with this. My Mum has always worked FT but I have similar frustrations to the OP as my Mum believes the World evolves around her. She was always too busy to be bothered with our 3 DC when they were younger and needed more attention. We stopped asking for babysitting help with the rare date night after the 3rd ‘I’m not sure what I’ll be doing then, but I’ll be busy (gym/hair, etc).’ Lots of rows over the years. Reluctance to attend DC Birthday parties. Upset that she wasn’t the centre of attention at my Birthday party. She always assumed that DP had paid for my new bag/shoes, etc even though I’ve worked since I was a teenager and earn a good wage. I had to learn to detach a little and I’m now able to let it go over my head most of the time. She’s expressed resentment re. DP’s Mum holidaying with us a few times over the years. Now the kids are older and less labour intensive, she now wants to be a proper Grandma as she’s lonely.

I have an Aunt who worked a few odd low paying PT jobs whilst raising 5 DC. She now resents them for ruining her life. Her relationship broke down as money was tight. She refused to work but kept getting pregnant against the wishes of her then DP. She now has MH issues, is terrible with money, has difficult or non-existent relationships with all of her DC and is upset that none of them will house her or fund her lifestyle.

Yes, my "D"M is 84 and only worked for a very short time in her 20s. My DSis and I have both had busy careers, me in teaching and DSis in the NHS. DM has never had to pay mortgage, council tax, etc and thinks that stuff is for other people. (She continued to live off her parents until she was in her 60s, along with alimony). She genuinely has no idea what our working lives are like and is always complaining that we aren't available when she thinks we should be. E.g., this year there was an event in my town and she said she would like to come to see it with me. I said it sounded good but unfortunately I wouldn't be able to see it. Surprised, she asked why not and I pointed out it was on a weekday and I would be at work! And cannot just abandon children in school to take a day off when I fancy.

I should add that my "D"M is not otherwise like yours as she does have a personality disorder and we've had a whole raft of other issues with her which mean that DSis and I are now very low contact with her compared to the past.

I could have written your post OP. Mum worked for 3 years before having me, then became a SAHM.
Financially very comfortable, just spends her days looking after my dad - no real health needs, just getting him drinks, cooking, a bit of light housework (they have a cleaner). No hobbies outside the home, everything social is through my dad and his interests, a perfect 70s housewife, think Margot!!
She doesn’t get the juggling of a working parent , the childcare emergencies ( they don’t help), the fitting everything in.
Constantly tells me I look tired and to ‘take is easy’🤣
God love her, but she really has no clue, and I do think that’s affected our relationship.

Coming from a family in a different income bracket, I never knew any mothers of that age who didn't have to work at least part time while their DC were young, then upped their hours when they had more childfree time available. And I don't think the lack of what OP sees as a cushy life has made any difference to their understanding of the pressures of being a modern working parent. Those who are by nature empathetic don't ask stupid questions or make daft assumptions, whereas the ones who tend to be more self-centred are inclined to think their adult DDs and DILs are being deliberately awkward in their choices, and huff about how that upsets them as if that was the express intention.