akaemmafrosts's SAHM thread. AIBU?

[garlicbaubles]

Here it is. I have had to hide it. I keep blurting un-sisterly remarks at the posts - or, more accurately, at posters' general reluctance to observe what I consider to be blatant facts of life and an unwise sense of entitlement.

I agree with the OP.

AIBU?

Badroly - you never know your luck, the right oportunity might come up. You've got relevant recent experience and a particular role in mind, why not go for it?

I feel dismay when people say - so now I am doing a degree in x which will mean I can get a highly paid job.

In the current climate Russell group graduates are temping for buttons.

This is a long-running issue but is becoming particularly acute at the moment, I think, because the job market is so dire. While it's wrong, I can well imagine that CVs from people who haven't worked for 2 years or more are being binned. So it's making people aware of how precarious their position is/ has become as a SAHP.
The most shocking bit of the other thread for me was how easily men can hide their earnings and assets from the CSA and so on, and how willing they are to do so. A few posters wrote about how their exes had given up jobs, basically cutting off their noses to spite their face, in order to be able to evade the perfectly reasonable expectation that they support their kids and former partners. That continuing sense of entitlement from a lot of men is really worrying.

Rosebud. . . Yes, the joint income versus single income issue for tax credits is hard to get your head around.

I think that in th uk, you can keep working at a loss for 4 years, because after that your kid is in school, and you just have to sort out school pickups. It kind of works out for 2 kids.

In Germany you have 10 years of child care to sort out, and it's much more difficult to resolve 10 years of working at a loss and not enjoying your family life. 4 years is bad enough!

Thank you Second Coming and HolyGhost. Eventually I would look at accountancy proper. I am more than capable - I have an engineering degree and post grad qualifications. But these are now so out of date as to be worthless.

When I became a sahm, I don't think either of us thought we would go on to have 4dc, nevermind that a recession would hit and last as long as it has!

I feel that morally it is wrong to right off people who have become sahp as worthless. But it fits with the youth focused society that values energy and enthusiasm over experience. I am making a huge assumption that CVs from over 50s are also regularly binned?!

I have just recruited for an assistant. And i had a lot of cvs to go through, i didnt bin those from sahms but they were competing with other people who had kept going part time and that was a factor. In the end i am interviewing young uns ( all women) with postgrad qualifications and 3 languages. I would never get a job starting out now. And that is the competition.

By all means take some time out with a job to go back to ie medicine, teaching but stepping out of the business world is a massive risk.

I do understand what you are saying about working at a loss for 4 years and I do admire that mindset. I am not trying o be difficult, but wonder if you were all in rather well-paid careers? I think to people who are less well-paid, the concept of working "at a loss" is impossible. When I was married, our income was used up every month, (and we were a very frugal family, no abroad hols/ new clothes/ nights out etc) so to have then paid out on top of that for childcare would not have made sense. Also, we would probably have had to run 2 cars, extra expenses on things like more expensive food (as no SAHP with time to prepare economic stew etc! It all adds up!!) so to "pay" extra to work more would have been really silly and impossible. I am just saying that, really, the idea of battling through in order to preserve both careers is understandable if both careers are relatively well-paid but I would hazard a guess that for most households it makes more financial sense for one partner to become a SAHP. So do we need to find a wider range of solutions to this problem, such as free childcare, or SAHPs being guaranteed finacial security somehow?

badroly, I think it depends what sector you are in as to whose CV's get binned. I work in financial services, I certainly wouldn't bin an over 50's CV, in fact I employed someone over 50 a few months ago. Crucially though they had relevant bang up to date experience. My sector is fast paced, changes constantly and I wouldn't feel confident that if I took a couple of years off or more that I could get back in and do my job, I couldn't. It's not just a case of keeping knowledge up to date, you can do that relatively easily it's keeping up with how that knowledge is applied that is more of a challenge. There are plenty of people out there wanting jobs with current experience so why would I employ someone who has taken a career break?

I wasnt and am not well paid, when the dc werent in school I was pretty much running on neutral costwise but now they are in school I am earning again, am going back another day and have been promoted. So it counts, putting that time in, though i have been parttime for nearly ten years gulp.

If you can go back a couple of days a week, even if you arent earning anything once childcare has gone out then you eill be much better off when they start school. Oh and space them and dont have two in nursery at once. I couldnt have managed that.

You plan your lifestyle around the income you have - I also know two families in one bed flats, no cars. It sucks but they do have short commutes.

A lot of people move to exurbia when they start a family. Two commutes means childcare often costs more and is harder to manage.

I know what you mean though - if you work on the checkout at tescos, it is probably not worth working at a loss. But at the same time, you can probably get back into that kind of job after a career break and/or fit it around family commitments.

The truth is - and has always been - a lot of men will shaft you, Snazzy, even the ones you can't imagine doing it. They do it because they can and, overall, society doesn't condemn them harshly for it. As an adult, any woman has a responsibility to her own future; if she's got children that responsibility is greatly multiplied. It's really not sensible to invest all those futures in trust of one man.

Women who SAHM take all the risks: their reliance on one person's goodwill for survival; social expectations which make them more responsible than fathers for their children; the combined disadvantages of gender, inexperience and age when it comes to becoming self-supporting. (Plus a worryingly childlike approach to financial security.)

I'm not sure how the comparable situation plays out with SAHDs. They must be fairly few atm. Logic suggests couples who don't want to put their DC in childcare should be seeking to share work & family responsibilities ... But it's still hard to 'split' a well-paid job ... and the better-paid job is still likely to be the man's. Meaning he's still likely to be the mostly-absent parent, with all the financial control, and the least to lose if they split.

Argh.

Roly, I agree you seem to be in a very good place to start hiring yourself out :) Good luck!

But if you carried on at tescos then you would be more likely to be promoted, like any job. You would also be building up more pension and holiday and sick pay.

Sick pay is really important - if a SAHM becomes ill and cannot manage childcare the family is often in difficulty.

And yes to the promotions too.

SAHPs being guaranteed financial security somehow

I think that would be a wise objective, Rosabud. But how to ensure that realistically?

I have a little fantasy, in which every woman demands that her partner take on exactly 50% of the home/family work. No split, no relationship. In my dream, this forces employers to radically alter working practices to accommodate reduced hours - thus also forcing them to employ more women in the male-dominated roles - and everybody will be more balanced & secure :)

Back in the cold, hard, real world ...

Gosh, that's a really good point about sickness and SAHPs, Holey.

fuck off somewhere hot for a few years until things get better - That has been my exact response to previous recessions, TSC Always worked well for me, and am supremely pissed off that circumstances made it impossible this time!

Take me with yoooou ... !

I feel sad for Emma and all the SAHPs like her but I still feel it's fundamentally right to have one parent at home where possible. Life decisions shouldn't have to be made based on fear and mistrust. I realize this may be perceived as ridiculously old-fashioned but there has to also be something said for choosing your partner very carefully indeed and also for setting yourselves up before you have children so that you're not left high-and-dry should the unthinkable happen. Looking after your children and home is a full-time occupation if you're doing it properly and should be recognized as such. It has great value to the family unit and to society. It's just not right that people should feel vulnerable if they choose to have a parent stay at home. Oh, I don't know what the answer is...does anyone?

I'm having a very large glass of wine (had to open a bottle for a recipe ) on an empty stomach and starting to feel a bit fuzzy so will try to post more succinctly later. My children are in the playroom right now pretending to be groundhogs in their tent and they keep popping out and yelling "Alan! Alan! Alan!" .

Rosebud....you talk a lot of sense, it's easier to manage if your job is >min wage. It will be interesting to see how the universal credit works out when it replaces tax credit though. Will there be the child care support for the 'strivers'? Like there has been.

I think the tax credit situation has been that 70% of your child are costs were paid if you had 1 partner working min wage full time, and the other working min wage 16 hpw.

More hours than that and your wages were too muchto get the full 70%.

I am quite lucky that although my wages are shite, I have zero prospects of promotion and I've been on a lengthy pay freeze, I am committed to my job for more than just the wages. And it's possible to do it part time, so I am keeping my skills up to date whilst still being able to Hoover the house and make the economical stew on my day off.

Srircha girl

I wish I had had my head screwed on that well before I had kids!

I am extremely lucky that my dp is salt of the earth. Lucky. I could easily have ended up with someone totally flaky. And I had no idea about child care costs when I had 2 close together, about the importance of keeping myself employable, whilst looking after my family.

I don't think it's fundamentally right for one parent to stay at home . . It's right for both parents to stay home a bit and work a bit. Say both parents do a 20 hour week, or when one gets laid off the other increases their hours to make up for it in the time it takes for another job to be found.

Actually I don't like what I have just written, we shouldn't have to respond to an economic environment where we get laid off like worthless consumables.

Well, nothing is fundamentally right; beyond what is right for you as an individual and you as a family unit.

I think this is the perennial problem. You can't make a pronouncement and expect it to work for everyone. One size doesn't fit all and never, ever will. And nowhere is this more glaringly apparent than in a capitalist, patriarchal society when it comes to raising happy children.

Something needs to be done though, to provide safeguards for SAHPs, and to make the occupation more esteemable in the eyes of society.

I think "the team is as strong as it's weakest member" is the crux of it. If everyone does what they are supposed to be doing for the common good then WOHP/SAHP teams work. It's actually far more efficient for every team member to play to their strengths than for both team members to split every single task equally. Therefore if one person earns £100k and one person earns the minimum wage and wants to be a SAHP, it really doesn't make sense to send the SAHP to work and pay a nanny or for both parents to work part time.

However, as I said, it depends on the team achieving the following

1. Sticking together and not splitting when things get tough
2. Genuinely seeing it as a team effort- pooled finances, equal time off etc
3. Having attributes that complement one another

That's why marriage partners should be assessed on the same criteria as business partners, but sadly, very few are

Just to point out

We bin CVs from anyone who has been out of work for a while, not just SAHPs. Plus recent graduates (must have had 2+ years relevant experience post graduating)

It's still shitty though :(

I don't want to get into the childcare v SAHParenting debate about what is best for children and I don't think either one of those choices is bad for children so if parents want to choose the SAHP method then they should be able to do so without fear of being thought of as "inferior," just as parents with small children who work should not be made to feel any particular way. I agree with the posters who say that partners should be chosen very carefully - oh to have had a Phd in Hindsight.

However, the arguments for parents choosing not to become SAHPs are centred around economics and, as sirrachgirl says, fear and mistrust. So we are allowing parents to lose a choice over how their children are cared for because SAHPs are not valued economically or not looked after economically. We are also advising people not to be SAHPs because the system is flawed and, if divorce occurs, you will be penalised, rather than saying, we need to change things so that SAHPs are not penalised on divorce. Since when did feminism fall into the trap of arguing against something because it doesn't fit into the mould created by the patriarchy? Particularly since, as many have sadly noted here, due to the economic set up of our patriarchal scoiety, the vast majority of families will find SAHPing inevitable.