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?

How old are your children?

You are insulting working parents, you seem to have a big chip on your shoulder.

She's obviously got the time for it 😂😂

No, I’m pretty sure if I was just a housewife and not a SAHM, my house wouldn’t get un-cleaned just as fast as I can clean it, and there would be a lot less work!

I don’t - what Mumsnet does do is point out how vulnerable SAHPs are if the marriage ends. I had no idea until recently how the courts have started to view divorce settlements so differently. What a nasty post about working parents, OP. It’s not a race to the bottom.

You don't sound very content OP ... if you were, you wouldn't be hanging around on MN mid-day posting this sort of stuff. Maybe you need a job out of the house.

Exactly this. Plenty of “vitriol” in your post

The only thing I ever see working parents say about stay at home parents is:

'you are leaving yourself financially vulnerable' (which actually is not always true but can be) or;

'I do everything a sahp does and work' which again might be true but is less likely if you use a lot of childcare.

I actually have a robot hoover and it takes me no time to hoover regardless of my working status!

@JustSoFrustrated
It's nearly 12, don't you have a brunch to attend or some curtains to steam or something?

The only times I've seen vitriol against SAHPs is when they try to argue that looking after the house (with school age children without SEN or ongoing medical issues) is a full time job, or actually more work than a full time job.

I don't think it hurts anyone to have the occasional reality check that there is a world outside your personal experience, and that, just because you like to spend several hours a day cleaning, does not mean that it is necessary.

We see a lot of posts from people insisting (for example) that they couldn't possibly WOH as they have no family help for childcare, entirely ignoring that fact that large swathes of the population do manage it, and perhaps they could to, if they opened their mind to possibilities.

I hate to say it though but alongside your vitriol, you're opening yourself up to being attacked or laughed at by saying ridiculous things like it takes 20 minutes to vacuum every room. Unless you live in Buckingham Palace , that just seems terribly unlikely and inefficient. So it might well be that you have personally taken some heat on threads about SAHPs, but that's because of your specific comments, not about SAHPs as a whole.

Mumsnet has been bad for SAHMs for years OP. You are better off hiding threads about them and going elsewhere. People feel threatened by those who make different choices with their small kids so are nasty. It can be the same with other things like feeding choices etc.
Also turn off tagging etc.

Aren't you talking about the thread where some people with school aged kids were trying to argue that they don't have any free time because they do nothing but clean all day?

Very different to looking after young children all day.

I think the point is that employed parents do all of that AND work. Yes it is a big job running a house, yes it mostly falls to women, but the job is the same whether you are employed or not.
Surely you can see that, OP?

My children have never been in childcare (other than after school clubs), I've never employed a cleaner, so I do all that you do PLUS I've worked full-time from the day that they were all in school.

I work 8.30-4.30 every day and also do the work of running a house. To be honest, I am jealous. I'd love to not have to work, because I would gain 40 hours a week that you have extra to me.

I think the animosity happens when a SAHP of school age children claims that they work as hard as someone in FT employment. Realistically, the housework needs to be done in both cases, just one person has 6h a day extra to do it vs the other one has to do it on top of their job.

Re cooking, don’t you do some of the dishes as you go? Chopping board etc washed while it cooks for ex. Then after dinner everything goes straight in the dishwasher (no rinsing!) and there is only the dishes you used to serve that might need to be hand washed - 5min.

well, @JustSoFrustrated , perhaps you would like to re-read the judgy OP and ask yourself why you get it back when you give it out like that?

Can you link these many threads you’ve seen? I’ve never seen one but I do see almost on a weekly basis a thread like this where SAHM accuse working mums of being judgemental and looking down on SAHMs. Also never seen or experienced it in real life.

It's comments like this people find irritating:

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

People who work still run a household.

I just don’t see how you could cook anything other than pre-prepped or very simple meals and somehow generate only 5 minutes of dishes

One word...dishwasher.

Don't worry about them OP, I don't. I really wish SAHM & housewives wouldn't come on here trying to make working women realise what we do though... they don't give a shit and nor should they. You shouldn't give a shit either.

I just assume anyone that bothered by another person's life choices must be jealous as fuck or miserable with their own circumstances.

How am I insulting them?

I had working parents. They went to their jobs, made sure our house and clothing were clean, cooked us healthy meals, got us to where we needed to be, maintained the garden well, etc., and they worked really hard to manage all that. (And the tasks certainly took longer than certain individuals on mumsnet are describing!) But they shared the work, and we lived in a moderate (but not large) home, and once myself and my brothers were older, we became more independent and were assigned chores.

I assume it’s like that in most households with working parents. I just think the ones being assumptive/dismissive of SAHPs are struggling to envision what it looks like when you change the variables, so to speak. If your home or family are larger, your children are younger and home more to make messes, if you’re not splitting the chores, etc.

My concern is sahp make themselves very vulnerable if they are reliant on another person.

death, divorce, incapacity, redundancy- all it takes any your income is gone and you’re on your own.

most don’t even seem to realise the risk they’re taking either, it’s all “my salary doesn’t cover childcare” with no thought to the long term hits on pension and how they will support themselves in later life.

fwiw I’ve been a sahp and a wohp. Sahp is nice if you can afford it and I found it much less stressful and got things done more easily, but if you work those things are still there and still need doing.

You're dividing this issue along precisely the wrong lines. Consider the last time you heard a set of SAHD vs. WOHD going at it like weasels at each others' jugulars. Remember the last time you heard the phrase 'having it all' used in the context of men? Me, neither.

And before you assume I'm making men out to be superior, or concerned less with frivolous issues than women, don't. Men don't get embroiled in the finer details of each others' home and professional lives because society is set up primarily to benefit their interests. Historically, they haven't had to.

On the other hand, far too many women take gratuitous offence when other women make different decisions to theirs about the division of their domestic and economic labour. It's as though it's somehow a damning indictment of our own decisions, and if we tear down these 'opposing' ones it will somehow validate our own position. It doesn't. Different things work for different people, and in other circumstances we might well have made different choices to the ones we have. Splitting hairs over this, justifying our decisions or expecting their validation from total strangers on the www, achieves precisely nothing.

What does matter is women's economic security, and the actual conditions in a patriarchal society that lead us to make the decisions we do in the first place. Nobody makes individual decisions in a vacuum. They are always influenced by other forces. Those are the issues we should be grappling with, instead of wasting energy on a tedious treadmill to nowhere.

This I think illustrates the OP’s point. I think it’s either jealousy or a sort of ‘cool girl’, modern, capitalist feminism that thinks everything domestic is a prison to be escaped from, not valuable and important work. I have never been a SAHM but I see valuing domestic work and childcare as a feminist issue. This work is often undervalued because it is unpaid and done by women. The reality is that most families would be happier and less stressed if they could afford to have a person whose job it is to look after children and run the home.

How am I insulting them?

It also makes me imagine that their homes are TINY, and that they don’t have much of a garden

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

Unless they’re just popping their dishes and cookware in without rinsing them off at all??

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

because obviously if families with SAHP can live comfortably on one income, then their work must be really inefficient…