The vitriol for SAHPs on this site is insane

[JustSoFrustrated]

So many insisting it “isn’t work” and that we’re lazy, calling us “leeches” on our spouses, saying that “housework doesn’t take that long” and assuming we’re either “faffing about” or filling our time with made-up work or leisure activities…

Honestly, I wish they could all take a turn doing what I do each day and see if they still think it isn’t work or that it only takes “two hours max” daily to keep the house running—Someone told me that it only takes 20 minutes to hoover the entire house! I was like, I could do maybe one room in 20 minutes. Are they not picking things up off the floor first or moving furniture?? It also makes me imagine that their homes are TINY, and that they don’t have much of a garden, or at least not one that’s their responsibility to maintain. They also all have older, more independent children and seem to have forgotten how much supervision and assistance young children need, and how much of a mess they make constantly.

Someone else was like, “It takes five minutes per meal to do the dishes,” and I thought, what the hell are they feeding their kids? Maybe if you microwave cans of soup, or pop a tray of chicken nuggets in the oven on a single sheet pan, or boil pasta in one pot and then dump a jar of sauce over it… And that’s fine to do every once in a while, but not for every meal. If you’re actually cooking cooking— you know, chopping fruits and veggies, working with meat, cooking different components to a meal in the way they taste best, serving them on real dishes, with real cutlery to eat with… Dishes are gonna take you more than 5 minutes per meal, even with a dishwasher (Unless they’re just popping their dishes and cookware in without rinsing them off at all?? In which case I’m assuming their dishwashers are rank inside!)

And when you explain to them, this is how much work I have to do, and how much time it takes me, they either start concluding you’re “plodding around”/doing it inefficiently/incorrectly, or they’ll start suggesting that you downsize your life so that you’re less busy… presumably so you can get “a real job.” But that’s totally not the point; why would I make it so my family has a less enjoyable or less luxurious life, and see my DC less, just so I can go to work to make money that we don’t really need?

I’m tempted to just start insisting to WOHP that their houses must be disgustingly dirty and that they’re obviously cleaning wrong if it takes them so little time… or that they’re “faffing around” at work all day, because obviously if families with SAHP can live comfortably on one income, then their work must be really inefficient…

But that wouldn’t be reasonable, would it?

I would have liked to be a stay at home parent, however saw my much older sister struggling when she was left with 2 kids and vowed to never put myself in a position where I couldn't support myself and kids. Yep also ended up a single parent.
My house has never been the tidyest or cleanest. My life has sometime been chaos meeting myself coming back, commuting four kids four different offs in a morning but I am through the other side.
I love my workplace and job but staying at home would have been nice, what I envy about those that have/do is how much they trust their partners to provide, that's not my lived experience 🙃

This is your second thread on this topic, which once again isn’t going the way you want it to. Why do you need MN approval? We don’t pay your bills or live with you or eat your food. Our opinions are irrelevant. If this is an issue that you have with your husband though, then this is something you should discuss with HIM and find a way forward that works for both of you (and his colour coded hangers).

Just going to reiterate, because clearly some MNs are missing the point:

I don’t think all WOHP are vitriolic/judgemental/assumptive about SAHP. There are a noticeable number of ones who are, however.

I don’t look down upon people with smaller homes or different lifestyles. I’m assuming most people, whether SAHP or WOHP do a good job of raising their children and managing their households.

Not every WOHP is insisting that it takes .0002 seconds to complete all of their housework. However, the ones that are must either a) have drastically different circumstances than I do, such that they simply don’t have anywhere near the amount of housework that I do, b) are drastically underestimating the amount of time it takes to do an at least adequate job with the housework, or c) not doing an adequate job with the housework. [Case in point: that poster who wrote out what s/he made for dinner for a week, and only annotated the cutting boards as dishes generated, leaving out every other piece of cook ware, utensils, and dishes to eat on, in order to maintain that dishes take 5 minutes per meal even if you’re cooking cooking.]

I am assuming that people’s circumstances are different. I am irked that some individuals are continuing to gaslight SAHP like myself about how little work they actually have to do, how they’re doing it inefficiently, how they must have OCD if they’re doing that much cleaning, how WOHP are fitting “everything” they’re doing in around working (even though if you compare their self-reported lifestyles/routines, they are literally not), what have you, instead of assuming that SAHP’s circumstances may be different.

It’s all ridiculously illogical.

That’s the last I’m gonna say of it.

OP, based on this thread and your last thread I don't think anyone has the amount of housework you seem to have created for yourself. Please find some time to actually enjoy life and not fret over spraying your Moss

Honestly, why do you care enough about what strangers might think about you that you needed to start 2 threads about it?

All that matters is that you and DH are happy with your lifestyle choices.

So you respond with vitriol?

Realise I’m missing the point here, but I never knew you weren’t meant to rinse dishes before putting in the dish washer. Mind blown. How could this have passed me by?!

I think Ideally (if we we were rich, e.g., no mortgage, large savings, amazing pension) I would like to work 2 days a week. With the option to take as much annual leave as I wanted.

Work FT (and more most weeks), bloody knackered and house a tip, don’t get to see friends often, or family and never enough time to help my child with SEN.

it would be great if everyone had a true choice to be either working or stay at home.

Housework isn’t that important to fret over. As long as things are kept reasonably clean and tidy who cares.

You’re so deep in your own (privileged) world that you can’t see that you are luxuriating in your own housework. Maybe not by doing it slowly but by creating more for yourself.

Yes you might ‘have’ 1000 tasks to do but you don’t actually have to do all of them. You’re choosing to cook elaborate complicated meals, and prune and yes, create busywork for yourself. Despite all the judgment in your first post it’s perfectly capable to make healthy balanced meals in 1-2 pans/trays, one chopping board and one knife (and yes, plates and cutlery too). It’s perfectly possibly to maintain a neat tidy garden without spending hours pruning and spraying moss (there’s a reason gardening is a hobby for many, you can create more to do)

Being exhausted because of extra things you choose to put on your plate and high standard you set for yourself simply isn’t the same as being busy because there’s things you actually have to do. That’s why people role their eyes at someone who moans they’re just as exhausted from going to the gym and lifting weights as someone who has a manual labour job and lifts heavy things all day - they simply aren’t the same. Whatever way you frame it (prioritising health, looking after yourself etc) one is simply something you have to do to survive (your job) and one some people ‘have’ to do (I.e. to feel good about themselves) but no one will die and the mortgage will still get paid if you don’t.

Very few people actually care that you’re a SAHM. The reason they start caring is when you spout ridiculous nonsense about having just as much to do as them. You have an extra 40-50 hours a week compared to most other parents. How you choose to fill those hours is entirely up to you, infact good for you that you’ve found something productive to do with the time that you enjoy. But to pretend that, even with that extra time, you’re just as busy as people who don’t have that time is preposterous and will get peoples backs up.

And your initial post is dripping in hate and vitriol. You can barely hide your contempt for people who manage to run a perfectly good household without it taking over their life. The faux naivety about it’s only possible to cook quickly with oven food and ‘dumping’ sauce over pasta or that anyone who takes less than 20 mins to hoover a room but have a TINY house. It’s blatantly obvious you think you’re better than these people and that superiority will inevitably result in people reacting negatively to you.

Most people don't have crop gardens to mow, potholes on gravel driveways to fill or any of the other bollocks that apparently are part of being a SAHM in your world, regardless of whether they are WOHP or SAHP.

All this thread has said to me is that you are woefully deluded about the lives of virtually everyone else.

Yeah MN isn't nasty to SAHMs at all!
Every day working parents are on here saying how much better they are then SAHM, claiming they do everything SAHMs do (which isn't true).
Am I resentful about not working? Yes I am 100% but unfortunately when you have a child with complex SEN you don't have a choice.

I don’t have to cook elaborate meals for my family, no. But it makes their lives better, and I can, so I do. That’s not laziness or idleness; it’s work. I’m sure many WOHP could get by making a bit below the poverty line, but most of them want a better life for their family, and are willing to work harder or less-than-enjoyable jobs to make that happen. It’s no different.

I could live in a dirty, disorganized pigsty (though I’d probably end up divorced), or I could do all the cleaning required to maintain a live-able, functional environment, which takes up a lot of time. That’s not “creating busywork;” that’s “being busy.” If it takes someone else less time to do that in their household, it’s not necessarily because they’re more efficient or less lazy, it’s because they have less to do as a result of their individual circumstances. And that’s perfectly fine.

And yes, I do have to do the “pruning.” You don’t get to have a nice property with so many plants without doing the gardening regularly, unless you’re okay with it being an overgrown, useless, tick-filled jungle.

The whole point of the dishes conversation is that even if you only use one chopping board and one or two pans, serving utensils, and dine with dishes, drink ware, and cutlery, you still make more than 5 minutes of dishes per meal. People are giving these ridiculous numbers for how little time they’re spending on specific tasks, and like I said, they’re either doing it poorly, if they’re accurate numbers, or they’re drastically underestimating the amount of time and labour it takes to do these things.

There’s also the consideration of division of labour: maybe some of these people positing these numbers are only doing a couple hours of housework a week. But how many hours are their partners doing? How many are their children doing? Maybe you have five bedrooms in your home, but your children are responsible for keeping four of them clean. Maybe they’re old enough to clean up after themselves, assist with other chores in shared spaces, and prepare some of their own meals. (My own mum stopped fixing me breakfast and packing my lunches as soon as I was able to do it myself.) Maybe their partners cook and wash dishes in between tasks, and their kids scrape and rinse their own dishes when they leave them in the sink, and all they have to do is place them in the dishwasher and turn it on, and later on someone in the household will unload it. But all of that collectively adds up to more work than they’re acknowledging. When it’s one person doing everything, it’s a whole job. The refusal to acknowledge it, and the insistence on being illogical and assuming that’s all anyone else has to do as well, so that if they’re not also WOH, then they’re lazy, idle, or “making up busywork” to keep them occupied…that’s what drives me batty.

Why do you need acknowledgement from strangers? If your set up works for you and your family then great.

I don’t want acknowledgement. I want people to make sense and to look beyond their own noses

Again why does it matter to you. You've started multiple threads on here about how you couldn't possibly get more done - if you and your family are happy why does it matter if other people can't imagine your lifestyle.

I’m currently a sahp to 2 under 3. I would go back to work ANYDAY over this. It’s mentally draining. I’ve realised I do not have the patience and could never work in a nursery 😆 love my babies but my god it’s relentless. Then there’s the housework on top trying to do that with babies hanging off your legs !!!

"I could live in a dirty, disorganized pigsty (though I’d probably end up divorced)"

Gosh, you're saying your husband would divorce you if the house was untidy? Is that why it's so pressurised for you? I'd be asking him to pick his plates up, and provide more resource for staff, if the estate management is too much work. As it sounds like a lot of space to manage singlehandedly, and not at all a standard SAHM set up where most of the work is actual mothering.

Why wouldn’t your DH clean if you worked?

Wow your husband would divorce you if you didn’t do all the cleaning? Doesn’t sound like a balanced marriage to me.

Yet you really don’t see the irony here. You have deliberately orchestrated a lifestyle that requires a significant amount of work. You have chosen to make your life as complicated as possible forcing yourself to have to do more housework more chores, more organisation than the average person can possibly empathise with. You then suggest that the only way other people could possibly be managing to work and keep house is to live like pigs and feed their children rubbish. Lots of people have made suggestions of how you could simplify your life, reduce your chores, enable yourself to have more free time and you’ve rebutted all of them.

Yes we can all see that you're struggling, and many of us think it's disproportionare to the living arrangements you have described. Only one child who is also in childcare 2 days per week, so there should be ample time for housework, you're not running after 3 under 5.
You have posted a detailled description of your day on another thread, and nothing there sounds so unusual and arduous that an average person should be struggling to handle it all, especially if you have a gardner and even someone to pick up dog shit.
If the housework and gardening is still so overwhelming, you should look what you can simplify. Declutter if you constantly have floors covered with things that take a long time to pick up each time you want to hoover. If you have to take hours to handwash and polish your silver cutlery after every meal, keep it for dinner parties and use dishwasher safe things. If you spend days pruning plants that need to be constantly pruned, replace with easier ones. I'm sure there are some opportunities and just because you don't scrub all skirting boards every single day does not mean you immediately end up living in pigsty.

Unfortunately this OP just thinks she is superior to everyone else. She’d hate to accept that I live in a perfectly beautiful clean and large house , have children and animals and a really successful career. She wouldn’t like to accept that she’s be totally screwed should her husband decide he wanted a divorce. I think she feels vulnerable and this thread is about her insecurities and need for validation. I feel sorry that she feels so pressured in her housewife role I hope she finds some other focus to enrich her life rather than needing strangers to make her feel ok about her life choices.

Reading this, it just sounds like you probably get your self worth from making yourself a martyr to everyone else's needs.

I strongly suggest that you get some counselling to help you understand that these are all choices that you are making; that, actually, your family will be just fine without you martyring yourself; and that you don't really need validation from strangers on the Internet to make you feel like what you're doing is valid or worthwhile.

You might, as a result of that counselling, decide to do some things differently, or you might decide to carry on with exactly what you're doing now but with a renewed understanding of the fact that this is the lifestyle that you're choosing for yourself. Either way, I think you've got some issues that you clearly need to work through.

What don’t you get about 5 minutes for the dishes? I have clearly explained I previous posts how I do this in 5 minutes……and it is only me as my kids only very occasionally load or unload the dishwasher. It is absolutely 5 minutes and the dishwasher does the hard work. I literally load and unload. I put it on at night and unload while the kettle boils for my morning coffee. I’m not sure how the dishwasher can clean the contents poorly?

I think there's sometimes (not always) a tendency to stretch or contract a task depending on the time available. It happens at work as well as at home, I know I'm guilty of it occasionally in both areas.
If you've only got a finite amount of time you can clean/cook/clear up etc in that time , maybe cutting some corners or doing less thoroughly but not necessarily always.i know I felt busy when I was a SAHM but actually my home is just as clean and my kids just as well fed now I'm working.
I know sAHMs who talk about how busy they are because they've got to take the cat to the vet or be around to let workmen in, which are a) not every day tasks and b) still need to be done if you work, or sAHMs making hard work of packing/preparing to go on a hotel holiday. Again that is generally something you can fairly easily fit around working hours