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?

missing I see what you are saying, but I think that when we step out of the workforce, we must accept that it does have ramifcations on society as a whole.

That doesn't mean we should feel forced into continuing when it isn't right for our families, but I think it behoves to accept some of the consequences.

For example, I quit being a lawyer, just as I was about to be made a judge. I would have been one of the first working class women on the circuit. Instead the position went to a middle class man.

Now that must have conbsequences on society, especially when it happens on a macro level.

To few women in positions of responsibility and power, mean our society will always be scewed, no?

Thus our actions will effect our DDs in the longer term.

I don't know how we square this circle, but I think we need to at least accept that the circle exists, rather than always looking inward to our own lives and families...

That doesn't mean we should feel forced into continuing when it isn't right for our families, but I think it behoves to accept some of the consequences.

Don't mothers have enough guilt foisted them?

Yes wordfactory, but saying that being a high court judge is more important and a better example to young women than just being a SAHM is loaded with assumptions I don't share.

I read on here once a poster saying "I really wanted to help break down the glass ceiling but didn't want to use my own head and that of my children as battering rams".

Staying on in my job (£100k, city lawyer, brutal hours, lots of travel) would have been the right thing to do financially and from a feminist perspective. There were 51 partners in my department. 2 were women, one of those off on gardening leave with stress and was referred to by the men as "mental" . A woman in my NCT group went back to a slightly less regarded firm and is now a partner and I am thrilled that there are women like her that do it - for my DDs sake. But it would have broken me. I couldn't have coped with such little contact with my children. The thought of spending their precious childhood sitting in a glass office pouring over documents late into the night and weekends to enable one Megacorp to buy power companies from another Megacorp makes me feel physically sick.

Am I the only person on here who thinks earning a huge amount in work you love whilst having a large family is actually better for children than if you stay at home and wipe a lot of bottoms as some kind of example of supposed saint hood? Children often do better not worse when mothers work full time. So you can find women staying at home who think it is for the good of the children who actually damage them never mind hurting so very much the position of women in society as well. It is lose lose and no good for anyone.

Its brilliant if you can find a job you love - that is definitely the ideal. Thats the key! And what I will be encouraging my DDs to do. Don't think SAHM are seen as saintly far from it they are seen as the lowest of the low which I think is wrong and sad. For me the smart thing to do is find a career you enjoy so when (if) you have DC you want to continue it with decent childcare or its something you can do on your own flexibly. Thats what I have ended up doing and think now would find it hard going back to conventional employment with fixed hours/holidays.

Am I the only person on here who thinks earning a huge amount in work you love whilst having a large family is actually better for children than if you stay at home and wipe a lot of bottoms as some kind of example of supposed saint hood? Children often do better not worse when mothers work full time.

The mistake you are making Jane is the assumption that we are the same, with the same strengths and weaknesses. I don't think we are.

Personally, I have never found a paid position of employment where I did not feel bought, somehow the pay seemed to turn me into the typical alienated worker. That is me, I like to know I am making choices without renumeration clouding my judgment. Not a particularly great position to be in, I know and a flaw within me because integrity has to win out, to be good at anything. I just don't like the internal conflict, I don't like the feeling of being pressured to not act on my own integrity. Some people are probably better at dealing with this than me. I can do it , when I have to, and I have done it. The motivation to do it, when I don't have to, however just is not there.

I don't see the work I do for free, in the same way somehow. No one is paying me to do it, I am only beholden to those that love me and I them. This, for me, is an easier relationship to have. I don't mind the menial cleaning up tasks too much. It is like liking gardening, you get rid of the rubbish, nurture things and watch them grow.

There will be a lot of women like you Jane and a good job too. We need the ones like you to balance out the ones like me in this world.

Jane Parker,

If I had a job I loved and earned huge amounts I might work full time too!

What do you do? (And can I apply for that job)

is actually better for children than if you stay at home and wipe a lot of bottoms

Please can someone explain to me why the pro-WOHMs have such a scatalogical fixation?!

So you can find women staying at home who think it is for the good of the children who actually damage them

I don't suppose you can cite a single iota of evidence for that Jane?

Children often do better not worse when mothers work full time.

Do you have some reliable non biased evidence to support that claim?

fide I believe that as feminists we have to grapple with difficult issues as well as easy ones.

Sexism is still rife in society, and until that isn't the case, as women, we do have to look carefully at our actions. It's not about others foisting that on us. It's about us taking the resonsibility to at least engage with the idea.

Sweeping it away as too painful, too difficult patronises us. Excusing ourselves from even engaging with the subject, because our business is not society, but our own families, is pretty poor.

As I say, this is not to say, that women must make choices they don't want to make. But we should IMVHO try to support those women who do want to play on a level field with men and accept the consequences of our own decisions.

I think we owe our gender this much.

'owe our gender' , 'owe society', 'owe our families', 'owe ourselves?'

I do my best. I try to balance all the conflicting needs. I tell myself not even to attempt to judge other's decisions. If everybody was called to 'justify' our actions, they would be found lacking somewhere along the way.

Accept consequences? Well they are there aren't they. We've no choice but to accept them. I don't dwell on them though, I prefer to move forwards.

Thewordfactory : feminism should be about accepting womens choices, not making women feel that their choices are limited if they don't want to be contributing to inequality. To suggest that a woman opting to be a SAHM is contributing to the unequal playing field is a backward step for feminism.
We should be respecting women's work related choices regardless of what that choice is.

I agree cap

I'm not suggesting anyone flagelate themselves. But I think it's just lazy and a cop out to not even consider the consequences of our actions as women on other women.

Everyone doing what suits them unthinkingly, in a vaccuum, is never going to help women attain a less sexist society.

But it is much easier emotionally to be self employed and earn the high amounts. You're not tied to the company missing out in the way Kerala describes. It's not the work that's the problem if you can do it at odd hours. It's the absence that's the problem.

So I'm not sure earning loads does break down a barrier. Does a woman have to be sitting at the top seat, CEO / board working long hours to really do it. Everyone says oh yes I support it (fab) but really are saying it's not for me, but hey you go for it. So the cost is high, too high for many.

impatient you might like to try to read what I said. Please don't paraphrase me incorrectly.

Also, it is just too lazy to say feminism is about women doing exactly what they want and everyone simply applauding it.

Feminism is about far more than that.

Choices to not happen in a vacuum.

So the problem is not with a society where a large proportion of families have sahp (because each to their own in every family) but with a society where those sahp are overwhelmingly to the point of total majority, women?

That sahp are so overwhelmingly women means a real lack of working women role models for girls and also means the workplace is deprived of the skillset that women can bring to the board table.

Starting point for looking at this then is probably maternity leave.

People who are vying for a top spot at the table are the people working 18 hour days. Looking at my friends' dhs, this is what they are doing in the city to get ahead. (not huge sample I know). But the top spots at top places yep.

Everything else isn't so hard, even earning lots of £ if you can do it flexibly isn't hard.

But who really wants those hours. Because it's a big ask. Of course the people that do, go for it, they shouldn't be held back.

I think this is definitely an issue pomme

If we want a society where we have decent numbers of women involved in politics, the judiciary, the corporations, the banks, the media, the pension funds, the forreign offcie etc etc then the quid pro quo, may well be that more men choose to be SAHPs.

Or that working in demaning positions becomes more family freindly for both sexes (which will never happen whilst men make all the decisions).

But there is nothing wrong with being a SAHP! It is a valid role (for those who do it wholeheartedly).

...and there is nothing wrong with that SAHP being the mother, if they want to do it.

fide I believe that as feminists we have to grapple with difficult issues as well as easy ones.

TBH Word I just don't see it that way. My own decision to SAHM for the preschool years felt at the time like the most subversive, free-thinking thing I had ever done, given my abilities, qualifications, career-aims, the norms of my peer group but most of all the expectations of me to prioritize career over all else. It didn't feel as weighty as you describe, however, as I was only in my twenties and felt there was plenty of time.

These days, my own view is that Mon-Fri office-based, city-centre, long commute, job roles are the manifestation of gendered work patterns; a template of working life that lingers from a time when men commuted to paid employment and women remained in suburban domesticity performing unpaid caring roles.

We need to be challenging those norms (which are largely unnecessary now) for both men and women. We have all been duped into joining men in the long-hours presenteeism culture and eveyone's quality of life has suffered - male or female, parents or not.

There are ways of pursuing highly-skilled, satisfying careers more flexibly and we should be demanding more of those opportunities. I appreciate the legal profession is not one of the more flexible, though.

Of course feminism is more complex than that, but we should be working towards helping those women who choose to work to succeed and have a level playing field without blaming the lack of progression on those women who choose to stay at home.
I do not believe that my decision to be a SAHM (or other SAHMs) has a consequence for feminism. I do believe that some feminists believe my decision is harmful to society.
I could equally quote studies that have shown mums going out to work is harming our children, but those studies are as flawed as the notion that SAHMs are preventing women from progressing in the workplace and that their decision has much bigger consequences.

I also think that not only for the good of society, but out of pure unadulterated self interest, we need to hear a diverse section of voices in positions of power. That one gender is effectively missing is absurd!

It's just not safe for all those voices to be so similar.

Look at the banking crisis. Everyone in banking, banking regulation and housing were singing from the exact same hymn sheet. There were no diverse voices...

And it didn't end too well.