Justifying long term SAHM to DDs?

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I have a few friends who, because their DHs are high (6 figure) earners, are able to be SAHMs, and have no intention of ever returning to work. These women are all at least degree educated and previously had successful careers.

I just wonder, in such a situation, how a long term SAHM encourages her DD to realise her academic/career potential, if the example she sets is that her education is only a short term requirement until she meets a high earning man?

I'm not trying to start a bun fight, I'm genuinely interested. My own mother is university educated, and has always worked in some capacity, successfully managing her own businesses with being the main carer, and encouraged me to be financially independent.

Personally, I feel I have invested too many years, and too much money, in my education and career to give it up forever after only 10-15 years. I like to think I am setting a good example to my DD that career and family are not mutually exclusive.

So how does a long term SAHM reconcile this? Am I thinking too simplistically?

I've never wanted a 'career' really. It's always been my desire to be a SAHM & I found it really difficult that everyone seemed to expect me to be 'more' than that. As if what I wanted to do with my life wasn't good enough. I still went to uni to do a science degree, realised I wouldn't be any good at teaching secondary school, retrained & did a foundation degree in early childhood. I could've done a top up year to get a full degree & gone on to do a PGCE. I'm perfectly intelligent enough to have done that & could have had a decent career in it, if I'd chosen to, & I still have those qualifications should we need the money.

DH earns just under £30k & we have a mortgage & 2 young DC. Money's tight but I have no intention of working any time soon. We're planning to homeschool so, assuming DH's job stays safe, it's going to be many years before I'll even consider the possibility of getting a job. Even once the DC are grown up I doubt I'll want to work. I see it as my role to teach them the joy of learning. Not just so they can get a good job but for the sake of learning itself. The world is a wonderful place with so much to discover. I want them to learn what they love about it & use that to be happy. I fully intend to teach them that a lawyer & a toilet cleaner are equally valid people. The important thing in life is to be happy.

My role model isn't either of my parents but a close friend who doesn't work but has numerous volunteer roles within the community & is always on hand to help anyone wherever possible. If I can be even half as useful to the community as my friend I'll consider my life a success. My friend gave up a very successful scientific career to drive around OAPs & do odd jobs for them. His wife supports their family.

As far as I'm concerned, my being a SAHP isn't because I'm female, it's because I'm me. DH wouldn't want to not work because he's him & loves his job. If we had personality transplants neither of us would bat an eyelid at me working & him staying at home. Personally, I think the whole debate is ridiculous. Some people have to work, some want to work, some want to contribute to the world in non-financial ways and are able to do that. Everyone's different.

But willow you too are complaining about both parents working but focussing on your mother as the culprit!

Also people keep mentioning breast feeding as a reason to sahm. Not in my experience it isn't!

Okay, I have not RTFT, as I need to get ready for work (cards on the table!)

I am a single parent to 2 dc, and work fulltime. I have been the primary resident carer, even when briefly married, for over ten years. Simply put, I am exhausted. I work as flexibly as I can, to get to extra curricular activities and fit in playdates, and my priority is balancing what I need to do professionally with being there for dcs. I have very little external support.

It has always seemed to me, that if you have two parents, it is not a good use of emotional and physical resources to both work full-time. When I was married, I wanted to drop to part-time so that everything was more manageable, but my husband refused to support that. I suggested us both working 0.8fte, again got nowhere.

I don't believe that gender equality is making sure you keep up with the men in the workplace, though the ability to do so is important. It is having a level playing field so that childcare features as much in male-decision making processes as female ones. I don't see why I need to buy into traditional male working practices to be setting a good example to DD or DS for that matter. Finding the way that suits me and allows me to also be the parent I want to be is a far better example for the future.

It was one of the reasons my marriage broke down, that the arguments of feminism were used against me, because I should contribute equally financially and be motivated to do so. Never mind that I was also doing the lion's share of the childcare. The argument has two sides, and I respect a man who supports his family and his wife's choices, however that looks, far more than one, who, in the name of equality, offers a very narrow (and exhausting) pathway - and the same is true of a woman. And it is that point which is far, far more important for my DD and my DS, I think.

By supports his family, I meant broadly, not in solely financial terms, in working out and contributing fully to an arrangement which works, however that looks.

Good point summerflower.

I have two friends whose husbands "use feminism against them", ie they had to work straight after having kids ("we are equal right?") but also ended up doing the lions share of kids stuff and housework. One of them has a burn out at the moment, which is awful.

Whatever your set up, someone has to look after the kids. If not the parents, a grand parent, CM or nanny.

The only people I know who are very happy to work both full time are those with grand patents on stand-by or with sweet competent au-pairs/nannies.

I have a degree, great job, highly paid and senior in awake industry...and am about to quit to be a SAHM. DH earns a lot. If you can choose not to work, why would you work? I'd find it harder explaining choosing not to see .DD as much as poss than choosing to be a SAHM.

I dont think you can as when I was at school a lot of girls said my mum has worked for years whats the point? Only the boys need to worry. That attitude used to make me cringe as a teen as my mums a working mum and always have been so Ive got lots of drive and ambition.

Using arguments about equality "against a woman" is clearly the antithesis of feminism, which is about ending the oppression of women. It is not in any way a feminist argument to push for a woman working full time and shouldering the major domestic load too. Negotiating a fair distribution of labour, all labour, is absolutely the way to go. But that can be done with two working parents of course.

I don't know why it has to be anyone else's business as to what any family set up is. I certainly don't see why anyone has to justify it!

As for explaining to a 14 year old child (regardless of gender) why one parent is at home and the other isn't, well, you explain it according to your own family's reasons. There doesn't have to be a statement suitable for everyone. If you give a crap explanation or a duff reason, you deal with the consequences then. Cricket it isn't rocket science.

I think that it's faintly ridiculous to assume that daughters will take after their mothers in every case.

My mother was a secretary. I did not want to be a secretary. She was a SAHM while I was little, did some voluntary work and then worked part time when I went to school. She must have stopped this again at some point when my sibs were born, I can't remember - but when they went to school she resumed working part time. We needed her financial input - she would probably have preferred to continue with her voluntary work and political input, given a choice.

I have 2 degrees and started work at 15, doing Saturday jobs. When I finished my 1st degree I got a FT job (not as a secretary). I worked until I had DS1 at 40, when I stopped for a few weeks and then carried on working PT from home, in a self-employed capacity, until I emigrated with DH, nearly 5y ago. I haven't had a job since, not really (although I have done some work for my old boss).

DH wants me to start working again when DS2 goes to school - I will be 50 at that point. I'm not entirely sure that anyone would employ me! But I may take up my self-employment trade again.

I have never used my mother's example to decide what I want to do with my life - I have trodden my own path. I suspect the best lesson we could give our children is to have the confidence to do the same.

Did your DH also consider giving up his job coraltoes? How did you decide who got to make that obvious choice, as you are both highly paid?

Why does that matter Fallen? The reason should be insignificant to everyone except those in the family?

thefallenmadonna, I agree it was not a feminist argument, my point was more that the notion that a woman 'should' work FT to be equal can be as damaging as the notion that she should stay at home, if there are not the concomitant shifts in perceptions and actions about who takes on the domestic load.

I don't need to explain to my teenagers why I became a SAHM. They know, in fact they have thanked me.

What I object to is the way people assume it will be the woman who gives up or reduces work.

Since having LO (17 mo) I have lost track of the number of times I have been asked if I'll be going down to 3 days at work. Oddly, not one single person has asked that question of my partner!

It also really annoys me when people say "my husband earns more, so it made financial sense for me to be the one to give up work." Of course he earns more, men will continue to earn more as long as women are expected to put their careers second. I read somewhere that women typically lose 80% of their lifetime earning potential by having a child. 80%!!!!

Coraltoes, is your husband ready to explain why he 'chose to not see as much of his daughter as he possibly could'?

What a ridiculous statement - why are you not choosing to work if you are both highly paid, so that her dad can spend Very Important Quality Time with her whilst you support the family financially?

Coraltoes asked why someone who could choose not work would work. Her DH has presumably made that decision, assuming she could support the family on her earnings. That's why I asked.

But...

I think our choices do have an impact outside our own families, as I said below. Whether we should choose to take that into account is debateable of course.

I think this thread has lost it starting point, which was about mothers of older children, which to me meant teenagers to leaving home.

No one could argue that little ones need lots of looking after & someone has to do it. But what about when they are older? How many of the current SAHM posters would expect/want to be a SAHM/housewife when the children are up? And why?

I think that is quite an interesting question and nothing to do with the 'children in day orphanages' nonsense as we are talking about children that no longer need childcare.

And yes, summerflower. MN is full of women whose partners have inflexible working patterns that are impossible to change, and the women make the accommodation to fit their careers around their families. Or can't.

My career is as important as DH's, and therefore we both make adjustments and compromises to support each other.

"we are talking about children that no longer need childcare."- what age would that be?

When they have a driving licence and a car!

The massive draw back of living here is without an adult to drive them places the DDs are effectively grounded.

It's ok to leave them the odd day, but weeks at a time in the holidays isn't fair.

Helpfully both seem to only have DFs who live near each other in distant villages, so it's always us who goes to them.

I see myself working again once my DC are older. I'm staying at home while they're little because someone needs to look after them and my DH and I feel that job is best done by me.

I won't go back into finance - they wouldn't have me back after such a big gap - but I see myself getting into volunteer work initially and then using that as a stepping stone back into paid work. I don't know what I'll do - I'll see what appeals. Often its a single job or opportunity that feels right, rather than a whole industry. I'm hoping that something will come along if I put myself out there.

I know Nocomet- teenagers are not so independant as some may think. I am in the country too, so kids are dependant on me for lifts.
At 14 and 16 they still need me, it wouldn't be fair to leave them all day.

The school bus is often too sharp and leaves some kids behind at school,so lifts are often required, after school activites and study clubs wich require a lift home at 4.45.

I have my DS off on study leave atm, DD has a day off school on Friday for a ballet exam, not to mention the times they are ill. It would be miserable for them fending for themselves at home ill, while I am out at work all day.

"There are many sp on benefit, do you not agree with this?
Some don't have a choice and don't need to be vilified for this.
For the record, no I wouldn't have to go on benefits if dh left me. I have my own money. Everything is in my name and we owe nothing, neither of us.
My standard of living wouldn't change because there would be no reason for it to"

Mmm given that your husband takes a low enough salary from his SE business for you to qualify for tax credits then of course you would be on benefits if he left or died. You would also be without his salary. On what planet would things not change

I do disagree with any parent on benefits choosing to not work and support the children they chose to have. Everyone knows the future is ny set in stone and no relationship is guaranteed. Spouting they cant afford childcare is just an excuse and should have been thought of before.

When are you finally going to start sounding happy, Happy?

You always sound as if you've been sucking lemons.