being a sah is not considered a legitimate pursuit anymore...

[AliGrylls]

I am fed up of people thinking that being a SAHP is the easy option - I am a firm believer it is not an easy option. Most SAHM I know have what I would describe as quite a rough time of it. Hubbie leaving the house at 6/7 am; not getting home until 7/8 and woman is expected to do all the jobs she was expected to do 40/50 years ago, ie, washing, ironing etc - except for the fact that DH wants the children to be kept up so he can play with them and say what a good father he is.

The whole notion that being a working parent is so much harder is not true because while you are out working there is someone else looking after your children for you. You are not trying to do them both simultaneously. What is hard is trying to fit a job around your children, which is what most women want so they can enjoy their lives and their children (I think!)

A woman who chooses to SAH after children start school is not lazy, she is merely trying to redress the fact that she has spent the first few years of her children's life knee deep in nappies and sleep deprived having worked the 17 hour day that was expected of her. When her children start school she will probably be back to working 8-10 hour days that most people work.

Lastly, there is actually no shame in being a SAHP and it can be fulfilling and stimulating. It is just a question of whether one wants to treat is a proper job or a millstone around the neck. Is a job really that much more intellectually stimulating? Surely, after a few years any job loses its ability to stimulate due to the fact it becomes a process? Unless of course you are in academia or a creative job. Except for financial reasons the main reason to go back to work is to have a break from the children / have a career. Neither of which are bad reasons just please admit that this is the reason and not use the fact that you obviously believe you have the intellectual high ground over someone who chooses to SAH.

I strongly believe the above is a feminist issue and I think that being a SAH deserves the same level of respect that being a working parent gets, but it doesn't. Feminists please back up the fact that a woman has a right to choose and she should not be guilted into the modern day notion that working is all and being a full-time mother is not a legitimate pursuit.

" so many family models are:

daddy - earning all the money and away from home 10hrs a day. Rotting his soul doing a job he doesn't much care for and missing his kids
mummy - at home all day earning nothing but doing a sterling job looking after the kids and home but chewing her nails to the quick with frustration."

Indeed. DP has aged considerably in the last six year and I know feels a terrible amount of anxiety being self employed and the sole breadwinner. It means he cannot take much time off which in turn leaves me looking after the children all the time.

I desperately want/need a job to even things out a bit.

I'm not sure minipie. The kibbutz example would seem to suggest that conditioning doesn't have all that much to do with it really. In that situation, despite a lack of condition, 70-80 percent of women voluntarily chose "female" roles.

Sorry, don't know much about kibbutzes. But how are they free from conditioning? Surely, if nothing else, they see the women a few years ahead of them choosing those roles, and the men not. That is conditioning enough...

As I explained in my earlier post, kibbutzim were strictly gender-neutral, and the first people who started them were very determined to stay away from gender-specific conditioning. So the first girls and boys born there were born into a world that was about as close to being free of traditional conditioning as you could get in today's world. Yet in spite of that they drifted closer and closer to traditional roles as the years went on until the structure of most of them resembled the outside world very closely (mainly women in people-oriented jobs or looking after children, mainly men in manufacturing and maths-based jobs).

"if you did not have to work at your job for any financial reason, would you still do it? Or would you choose to do something else with your time?"

I can honestly say that of all the people i know well a vast majority of them would choose to do something else. Male or female. But...sadly the 'something else; wouldn't neccesarily be staying at home to look after their children.

I would honestly, very very honestly say that the baby years can be the most soul destroying time of being a SAHM - and oddly the ones where there is the least support for women - especially if there is more than one child involved.

They are the longest hours, the most time-consuming, frustrating and yet, to the outside world, a joyful happy time which 'we should enjoy'.

There is a HUGE emphasis on enjoying them.
And I agree, there are moments where I think, by golly, this is great! Seeing my two boys grow and develop is one of the greatest privileges of my life. But there are days when I am clawing the walls, broken by lonliness and devoured by the fear that this is all there is.
And when my children are grown and looking back on their lives, will they see that I have done my best? Will it be appreciated? I like to think so. But admittedly, there's a teeny tiny part which screams with fear that they will look back on this weak shell of a former woman and make fun of what I did. That I was the stupid weak woman who pandered to her children until teendom. And that then I will have nothing because I gave it all to them.
I know I won't be. I know that this has made me stronger in ways I never knew possible. It's taught me endurance and strengthened my form. I feel fierce now.

I suppose these are the complexities which make us human.

The baby years are a real slog. I have worked plenty of long hard jobs in the service industry. I used to work 3 jobs in one day - from 9 in the morning as a waitress in a cafe, breaking at 5 for an hour to start at 6 in a bar and then crossing over to the nightclub at 12 until 4a.m.
I am no stranger to hard work.

But most days I feel as though I can work all day and it's all undone as I go. I can't remember the last time I started a task and completed it in it's entirety without interruption.
THAT is soul-destroying. The simplest things often seem out of reach.
I started a foundation course at OU this year and struggle to write the essays. I used to edit Honours Dissertations.
SAHM: Toughest job of my life.

It is hard. And there is nothing wrong with saying that it's hard. And it should garner a hell of a lot more respect.

Very interesting thread .One point that I must make : The study was based mainly on American Society
Writerofdreams Personally I think that explains alot - American maternity leave / annual leave is way below that which we have in the UK-there are very few partime or flexible jobs available.
The choice is often stark -SAHM or fulltime WOHM -very little flexibility in between.
I took my full years annual leave with each DC -by the time my DD was 4 I had 2 full years mat leave and still maintained my contract and pension - I have had no break in service despite working very parttime. My SAHM friends all gave up their jobs because they felt they had no choice several DC = massive childcare bills .Incidentally my DP works in a "traditionally female " job.He has also maintained his career and spent time with his DC-he cared for them while I worked.
I now work fulltime and so does he -we share the household chores 50/50
I wouldnt change a thing .Personally I think those in the typical man working /wife SAH are both missing out .

Full years maternity leave

Sorry Sarah here - namechanged for the Harry Potter thread[blush}

I think overall the way working life is structured disadvantages everyone, men and women alike. People are expected to dedicate themselves to their careers and give up an awful lot for them, and people are willing to do that because they need the money, or crave the prestige or just feel it's the "right" thing to do. For the most part a lot of people are happy to do it as it gives tangible results - better pay, more opportunities, more respect.

But the problem is, because people wait until they're older to have children they're already well established in their careers by the time children come along. They're used to working in a child-free situation and I don't think many people realise how that can change when children come along, how much having children can make you reassess your priorities. I think this happens much more so for women than for men. As others have said, if it could be the case that both partners work "full time" but full time means a week of 30 hours or so then it would be possible for them both to have a successful career and time with the children. But because we live in a society where you have to constantly prove yourself there will always be pressure to do more hours, go on more trips, and unfortunately it's usually women who find that they can't keep doing that while they have younger children. Luckily some jobs have the option of working part time but in that case the cost of childcare problem comes up and again it's usually the woman, and often I would say out of choice that ends up staying at home.

Threelittleducks, your posts concern me a little bit. You mentioned PND - have you suffered from it? Are you suffering from it at the moment? I do agree that looking after young children is bloody tough and that it should garner more respect but if you get to the point where you find it soul destroying then you have to be careful that it's not going to pull you down completely. Feel free to ignore my prying, but if you want to talk about it, please do.

3littleducks - that is the dichotomy of motherhood - we want to love it, it is a short-lived and precious time - but it's bloody hard work and soul-destroying!

I have thought a lot about why this is. Why do we have such expectations of fulfillment from looking after our babies? I can clearly remember when DS2 was tiny and I was on mat leave, I'd take DS1 to school and walk back home with dd and ds2 and there would be a moment of such joy looking forward to the day ahead - which lasted about 10 mins once we actually got home . I kept thinking that tomorrow, round the next corner, if I could just manage to do X or Y, I'd get that feeling back - some sort of Nirvana that I had lost. I came to the conclusion that our expectations came from our memories of being small ourselves - we expect to feel the same sort of things, the security, the excitement of discovery and learning, but as adults we are the ones who have to provide the security and the opportunities for discovery. We get glimpses of that joy but it's second-hand and the rest is slog.

'"in return for men being put under pressure to contribute more to family life, women should be pressured to contribute more financially"'

I disagree. My DH works 39 hrs a week and has plenty of time with the kids including on his own while i am studying or at tutorials etc (I am a SAHM). Why would pressure on me to work help? I gave up my job so that DH could do his (he worked away for first year and shifts are unpredictable). It works for us one doing childcare, one being home. He loves his job, I love SAH and we don't need childcare at all. There are lots of people like us.

I read a study by Katherine Hakim which said that in general most women want to work part time (around kids) with 20% wanting to be 'career minded' or 'home minded'. I kind of think she has a good point. It's not a popular view on here but I do think there is a difference on the whole to what mothers/fathers want to do. DH was quite happy to leave DC when they were little babies but I hated leaving them for example. I didn't min d going back to work when DD1 was 10 months but that was when DH or my mother had her, when i had to use childcare it was so different.