Why do ppl take issue with Stay at Home Mothers?

[Thefirstime]

one child, stay at home parent, child now school age.. choosing not to go back to work right now but look after my family/food/house/clean..look after myself too (which went right out the window)

I had PND and anxiety so am recovering.. still have wobbles..

why do people take issue with SAH parents? I do not earn right now but what has that to do with anyone..

really negative responses from family and old friends on my current living situation it sucks..

I don't have any problem with it unless claiming benefits, although I do think women should consider pension provision for their later years as you never know what could happen.
I think once kids are school age, there's not really any excuse for not doing some kind of part time work.

Absolutely this!!! And as someone in the same position I also understand that 9-3 mon-Fri is the only time you probably get to schedule a little bit of me time in the whole week.. I rush around like a crazy person from 7-9am getting them out for the school run, then it starts again at 3. Teatime, homework, club runs (which is late now my oldest is 13), bath, bedtime. So don’t get “off duty” again til around 9:30pm. I’ll never feel bad for the fact that I can actually do some exercise/pop to the shops/meet a friend for coffee during the week, and also that frees up time in evenings/weekends for family time and for DH to have some self care time too! As a family unit we love this balance!

I don’t judge SAHMs but I do roll my eyes when fed the line as per the OP about how working part time made family life untenable for them (absent medical issues with kids which of course is a different ball game). To me that just means you married a sh1t husband who wants his cake of family life without having to eat it, so he has married an enabler rather than a life partner.

I also personally think there is a high risk factor in marriages where the dh is a high earner / out in the world while the woman is at home. It seems very lopsided to me and creates space in the marriage. But I don’t judge that per se, more that I don’t understand it. I do think working life has changed a lot from this perspective too - when my parents were raising us, my mum always seemed to be at work functions with my dad, she would travel with him on work trips, we would go to events at execs homes to socialise etc - my mother seemed far more hooked in to his professional sphere. I can’t think of more than a handful of times across 25yr+ careers where dh and I have entered each other’s workplace / sphere - and I would think it was quite weird to see a spouse accompanying one of my colleagues on a business trip. I think norms around how we socialise and do business seem to have really changed.

Does your DH not help with the parenting @MrsZargon? That sounds like it’s all falling to you and doesn’t sound very equitable.

Your high risk comment was certainly true for my parents. My Dad had an affair and left my mum for his much younger secretary. Looking at it now through adult eyes I can totally see how him being at work all the time and her being at home created space between them and resulted in this happening (although obviously that’s no excuse for his behaviour!!). However fast forward to me being a SAHP and my husband working a career job, things are so different. My Mum back then and me now have completely different lives. she was a traditional old fashioned mum and I don’t think she ever did anything except keep house and raise the kids. Myself on the other hand and other SAHM I know have very full and engaging lives. Yes we still do the house stuff and raise the kids, but most of us also volunteer, have side hustles, busy social lives, continual upskilling/learning and exercise during the week. I also had my kids later than my mum so had the experience of university and a career job beforehand. All of that means I am still very much on the same wavelength as my DH and when we catch up at the end of the day we both bring interesting conversation to the table (as opposed to having nothing much to talk about except what the kids did and what housework has been done).

Yes absolutely he helps I’ve obviously made him sound terrible and very hands off 🙈. When they were tiny he would always take shifts in the night and take over at the weekend, and now during the week he and I share the juggle of driving the big one around and putting the little one to bed (as we have a big age gap between the 2). I went out for drinks last night and left him to it, today he is plastering a wall in our side return and I’m chilling with the kids. He is a very competent and hands on Dad but he also works quite long hours during the week so I do most of the parenting from Mon-Fri.

Not all school age children attend school.

Mine aren't. They're home educated.

So do you not give a shit what your kids are up to when you are at work?

He certainly does work long hours if you’re the one doing the parenting from 7am to 9.30pm 5 days a week

See I do find it hard to understand this. If I was working 7am - 930pm during the week and came home for the weekend and my husband, who’d been exercising and chilling and catching up with mates 9am-3pm every week day immediately buggered off on out to drinks with friends and then had me plastering walls the next day I think I would be burning with resentment. HOW do you not end up with marital inequality in this situation, with one person free to do as they please 30 hours a week and the other one running pillar to post at work for 14 hours a day and then coming home and doing chores? It just seems unfathomable to me.

Talk about selective reading!!! I quite clearly state my kids are at school 9-3 and that’s my opportunity for downtime. 7-9am plus 3-9:30pm is 8.5hrs, about on par with his day!!

Of course - I knew you weren’t looking after your children when they were at school. I imagine you will be doing long full days during the school holidays though (unless he’s in education).

Wonderful.

But most SAHMs do not home school. So no they’re not actively parenting all of the time.

Yes? But no idea how that’s related to what I said.

Home educate. Home schooling is something very different. The terms are not used interchangeably in the UK.

I think I’m just going to give up on this thread as everyone seems so determined to misunderstand me. The last poster suggested there was no equality with me working 7am-9:30pm 5 days a week and him just an office job, and now you are suggesting I sit in my bum for 30hrs and then as soon as my DH clocks off from work I go out on the piss 🙄 The point is I do not work because life is busy enough with 2 kids one only just in primary, the other a teenager, bringing in a salary to pay for things, running a house and finding time to enjoy life as a family, a couple and on our own hobbies/friends. If you add the whole thing up and divide by two that’s what we do! I do the majority of the parenting/housework, he does the office career job. But that means we both have time for ourselves. I do my exercise in the day when kids are at school around the housework, he does his later in the evening after work whilst I am still parenting, he goes out for beers after work usually once a week when he’s been to the office, and I usually have a coffee with a friend during the week, or like last night go out for drinks. On a Friday night when he finishes work he doesn’t resent me going out occasionally because I’ve worked hard all week too, and because he also values time with the children.
shock horror he sits in front of the footie most Sundays whilst I cook him a roast dinner, and I sometimes have a spa evening with my girlie friends. He goes on a boys camping trip most summer and I went for a couple of nights away for my friends big birthday a few months ago! Oh and sometimes we even leave the kids overnight with a grandparent so we can have some quality time as a couple. We even sneak in the odd lunch date when the kids are at school and he is working from home. If we added another full time job into the mix then a lot of that fun stuff wouldn’t happen, not to mention all the amazing quality time we actually spend with our children because we are not chasing our tails catching up with life stuff all the time! I don’t see the obsession with working and money when it comes at the expense of enjoying life as a family. We love the life balance we have and are lucky to be able to afford for one of us to stay at home!

So if you give a shit about your kids when you are not with them why do you think SAHM's wouldn't?

Ok to be clear, I’m not really talking about your exact circumstances. But I’m sure someone here will validate whatever life choices you’ve made.

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. The two comments weren’t completely related.

On one hand, I don’t believe you can say you actively parent all day as a SAHM if your child is in school.

As a separate comment, when I have seen SAHMs with their younger non-school aged children, they seem to spend most of their time chatting with their friends and drinking coffee while their children run about. And I also wouldn’t call that “actively parenting”. With that said, obviously SAHMs should see friends and have coffee, and it’s good for children to socialise.

But it’s disingenuous to say SAHMs are always actively parenting, where as working mothers are - by implication - part time parents.

They are by people who don’t do it.

Don’t be a dick.

Tbh I am not getting.

I have the career job. Yesterday I travelled from Yorkshire to London, did a presentation and came home. Ds went to a hobby. Dd came home from university. And we ate dinner at 6.30pm. And I was chilling on the sofa with them both by 7.30pm.

I am a single parent.

My day never finishes at 9.30pm, unless I a choosing to work. I don’t have a cleaner.

Even today, I have done some jobs this morning, visited my Dad and we went out for lunch. And I have had a nap. Dd is staying at a friends tonight so me and ds are cooking and watching a movie. Plenty of family time.

It’s fine to not work, be a sahp. But I don’t understand this ‘I am a sahp and don’t stop until 9.30pm at night’ I wasn’t even that busy with the career and the kids when they were younger.

i also don’t get the ‘obsession with working and money at the expense of family life’ comment. You choose not to work. That’s great. It sounds like you are happy, your husband is happy, the kids are happy. But I have never felt like I am giving up family life for work and money.

My brother was a SAHD. And he lives in the US where I suspect this is much more unusual. It made sense for them as his highly-paid, driven wife needed to travel for work. He stayed at home and managed their investments, then they both retired so he never "worked" after my nephew was born. What would you all think of him? He's had a fabulous life ... Lots of golf!

Sorry I did misunderstand. You said you were volunteering / socialising / upskilling during the week and not doing housework like your mum, and your dh worked long hours and spent time juggling parenting after work with you. But actually you ARE running the house / doing all the housework and have the occasional weekday coffee with a friend and your dh has his leisure time after work (so doesn’t work long hours?).

it sounds like it works really well for you as a family.

TBH if I could find a husband like you are a wife I would jump at it. But sadly men aren’t prepared (in the main) to enable women’s careers like you’re describing. It sounds blissful!

@Kwasi that sounds brilliant!! What type of part time work do you do if you don’t mind sharing??x