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?

Sorry I have been on other threads where you talked about lots of interesting things that you do that you couldn't do if you WOH- maybe you did mean H.ed .
Do you grow your own ? I tend to find that the slugs scoff everything before we can pick it

ack xpost!

Our very own Felicity Kendall

Can I be Margot

MrsCripps.

Yes, probably H.ed. My dd is a musician and travels a lot performing in various places. She wants to be an opera singer and works hard bless her.
We get to see concerts shows and she gets to rehearse perform and audition whereas if she was at school they wouldn't allow so much time off.
If I worked I couldn't always rely on dh to get dd to places as he too is a musician and all over the place.
It isn't the reason why I'm a sahm though, we have 2 much older dc and I was a sahm for their school years too.

Oh how exciting for your DD - good luck to her .
it must take years of dedication.

There is merit in the comment above that those who are very happy with their choice get less upset when others talk about the advantages to children of parents both working or vice versa. It's water off a duck's back to me. I know I'm right. Others on either side of the divide sometimes feel less secure in their choice. It is almost as if some people don't like to hear the advantages to children of mothers working or on the other side the supposed disadvantages to children if women work.

Debate and disagreement are huge fun. Many women thrive on discussion and trying to convince others of their views. It is only by engaging with others with different views that we learn about others.

@ Jane

Oh I misread (a bit), thank goodness. MN would have imploded

Can I be Geraldine the goat?

Going for a lie-down I think - this thread is exhausting

I know I'm right Jane so there you go.

Retro

Me too, but I agree that people in very different circumstances to me are just as happy and just as right.

Simply put, education gives us the greatest privilege of all: choice.

Too simplistic for me FengMa.

I bet there are sahm that feel trapped by finances and wohm also trapped by finances that are well educated. Even with education the system does not work well for having both parents exercise free choice unless they have good income.

Actual lol at Jane - 'heads I win, tails you lose' (I had to read it twice to get the nuance straight!)

capsium, I'm not entirely sure where I fall in the shades of grey now tbh. With both my children there was ever any doubt re my returning to work; I loved my job and have had no regrets - it is only now that I have started to question whether continuing in my job is the right thing to do.

I hate how my job has become now and so I have started to feel more defensive at times about why I chose to keep working when the kids were small. I've realised though that at the time and until very recently I had no regrets at all - my current defensiveness comes from being pissed off at work.
(Hope that ramble made sense!).

Morethan, strangely I have started to crave The Good Life recently, even though I bloody hate gardening in all its forms!

Scarlett yes, I think we always have to consider our own motivations, behind what we say, if I am very honest.

I did want to be a SAHP for a long time, although I was unprepared for how some people at my DC's school would treat me, wanting to use me as an unpaid resource to support my own child, even though was well funded through a Statement. It was horrible because you don't want your child to miss out on anything. Thankfully this issue has been resolved. My DC has progressed and the Statement has ceased due to improvement.

Not strictly a WOHM or SAHM issue but I did wonder, at one point, how on earth I could have held down a job if I had needed to work. So it was difficult if people made digs about being a SAHM.

I do think SNs can create situations where mothers often do end up giving up working. This is a feminist issue, as well as an educational one. Although I didn't have to give up working as I had made the decision to be a SAHP long before my DC was given a Statement of SEN.

I do think SNs can create situations where mothers often do end up giving up working. This is a feminist issue, as well as an educational one.

YYY.

National disgrace, not discussed enough.

I worked before the Dcs and then was a SAHM for 11 years before starting work again once DD4 was in full time school. In that context DDs have seen me more at home than at at work. The eldest desires at this point in time is to become a doctor whilst DD4 wants to be a mum. I have heard myself several time telling her "you know darling, you can be a mum AND something else too." And them I am thinking that there would be no shame for her to just be a mum if that was actually all she wanted to be. I hope with all my heart that both my girls will be happy, whatever the path they choose. I will encourage all my DCs, boys and girls to further their education as much as they can and acquire a skill of some sort but ultimately it will be up to them to decide how to live their adult lives.

Scottishmummy, you misunderstand, or chose to misunderstand me. If men had made some of the same vitriolic comments I would have said the same thing.

It is only since being on mn that I have learned just how under-resourced and under-funded SN help and access is.

It is shocking that I got to nearly 40 and didn't know, that's how much it's not discussed and brushed under the carpet. I honestly never realised how hard people have to fight for the basics, and how little respite there is.

Scarlett yes, that can be the case.

However our problems were more to do with some staff at school staff not wanting to take responsibility for looking after my DC on trips / swimming or utilising the allocated TA, fully funded through my DC's Statement, elsewhere. They always wanted more volunteers, stupidly I was an easy target, as they would use my DC's SEN as an excuse, saying certain activities were too much of a risk for my DC to participate in, without me there. This is with a Statement of SEN, with enough funding to cover 1 to 1.

The one good thing to come out of the new legislation IMO is that schools have to account for how they have allocated resource, through Provision Mapping, before the apply for top up funding. Previously this type of accountability, for how resource was being utilised, just was not there.

IMO some within the teaching profession, just do not seem to think they should have to deal with, even comparatively mild, SEN.

^and it is often the mothers that have to pick up the pieces.

It is really crappy how the school put on you like they did, they do really have you over a barrel due to the worry that your child will miss out if you don't. Are things better now? I hope so.

Another thing I've noticed about volunteering at school stuff - the working parents seem to think not many sahp volunteer, and the sahp believe the opposite. In the main, the type of volunteering each does tends to be different, so one lot rarely sees the other lot iyswim.

As working parents, myself and my husband have been on the school council, contacted companies for freebies for fete prizes, various organisational things and setting up/taking down tents etc for fetes. This sort of thing we can fit around work; there has usually been a distinct lack of sahp involved in those 'out of hours' roles.

What we don't see or notice, is the sahp who helps on the school trips, or walks the kids up to swimming, listens to my children read at school, is actually running the stall that we got the prizes for, who helped facilitate the sports day or play I am watching etc etc.

I'm generalising obviously, but I wonder if it is as simple as that - just not noticing the other stuff getting done, because we don't physically see it getting done.