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?

"So why does the husband earn more? Is he brighter? Are boys pushed into better earning careers? Do women marry up to a man who they regard as better than they are? Do their sexist families say - girl low earning job, boy go into high earning one? Why do so many couples end up with woman giving up work as her husband earns so much more and how can we change that to make life better for women?"

Don't girls fare better at schools than boys? I don't think it has anything to do with brightness but commitment. There are senior women in firms that earn just as much as men but not as many. It's hardly surprising if you take years out of the workplace or reduce your hours that you don't get paid as much or rise up the ladder to the extent of those that don't.

There was a thread on here a few months ago that astounded me. The amount of women who admitted they had chosen their partner for his earning potential was awful. That's just a small snap shot highlighting how many women don't want to work or want to work little as they believe their man should provide for them. Without breaking that mindset, it will simply continue through generations. Boys believe that they have no choice but to earn as their wife will demand it and girls think that opting out of working is what girls do.

Schools try very hard to instil in both sexes that a good education can get you the job you want but it's parental input and the persons own ideas that over ride that.

Yup, the truly radical thing would be for men to give up their economic independence to raise their kids.

That isn't how most SAHMing actually works, though, ithaka.

I've always said, if being SAHM was so great, men would do it.

More and more do.

Anyhow, this thread started asking about women who stay at home when their children are old enough not to need them.

Such a tiny minority, they hardly seem worth discussing and as it turns out, nobody on the thread has really been able to stick to discussing them. Probably because the idea pf 'justifying' our choices was more interesting and broadly applicable.

HappyMummyOf One Perhaps the question you should be asking is why some professional fields are remunerated more than others, why some occupations are seen as having more inherent value and why these occupations are often male dominated ones.

My husband's profession has been more lucrative. The working practices have also been more demanding, required more commitment. However we both have degrees, although he has some additional professional qualifications.

However in this debate I don't see anything inherently wrong with being a SAHP. Children do need to be cared for. Not all childcare is suitable either, especially when you add SNs into the mix. In fact the societal demand that children are cared for within childcare / nursery / preschool settings earlier, could be creating more labels of SN. This is because some who are not ready for childcare earlier are deemed as having 'developmental delays', even though they also might be more advanced in some areas and these 'delays' need have no impact on a child's life when they are older and their development evens out.

ithaka

I've always said, if being SAHM was so great, men would do it.

Why is what men want to do, the measure of being great?

Why is what men want to do, the measure of being great?

^^ This.

Did you pick the lower earning career though capsicum because you were a woman and had at the back of your head that ultimately what you eran would not matter as you could find a man to do the earning? Did you family say ah yes sons become surgeons and daughters? Girls mess around pretending to be artists or go into PR and men are fund managers and actuaries?

I want men and women to have choices. We only get that women women do not marry men who earn more whether consciously or unconsciously and when men as much as women could say to their wife they wanted the wife to earn the money whilst they stay at home. We are not even close to that equality yet although we are getting there.

What many women want to do is earn a lot of money and have a balanced career where they lead and succeed. It is sexist to suggest that is a male value. It is a human value for many of us male or female and a lot of men and women instead are happy to trug along just getting by of course.

JaneParker

Did you pick the lower earning career though capsicum because you were a woman and had at the back of your head that ultimately what you eran would not matter as you could find a man to do the earning?

No. I chose the subjects I enjoyed and that I was good enough at, to study further. My family did not really give a lot of careers advice, they encouraged us to follow our own interests, save they were pleased that I went to university. My DB did not, but has done later in life, and has Post Grad qualifications now too.

I was never particularly interested in earning lots of money, if I was asked as a teen I wanted to be 'comfortable', finance wise, which is what I have ended up being.

The reason I was never particularly interested in earning lots of money is that even then I realised it comes at a cost. I have never really being particularly 'driven'. I did the work to get by and then spent the rest of the time enjoying myself at during A Levels and Uni. Sometimes I think I was incredibly fortunate to come out with any qualifications at all. It is only later on in life that I have found that 'drive' / 'purpose' in looking after my DC (which is good because managing the SEN, I faced with my DC, has required it, at times.)

Its just very sad that anyone womans choice has to be justified.

My Dh was different in that he had already worked before Uni. He told me he didn't like to think of himself in a similar job, living in the same place, for the rest of his working life. He was more dedicated to his studies than me, I used to 'wing it', especially exam wise, a lot. Thankfully I seemed to be able to do that and get good enough results, but I felt like I was living on 'borrowed time'.

Doris I agree. However other people have no automatic right to judge, really. When I do explain my reasons for making decisions I have, it is in the hope people will see that there is reasons for them, that they will not have necessarily thought of, and hopefully they will not judge others prematurely.

capsium - I would say your speculations on childcare are quite judgemental though and are very likely to inspire defensiveness in wohm who use childcare facilities. I think there is something inherently wrong in being a sahm and feeling morally superior. Just as it is wrong to be a wohm and feel morally superior.

I think that if women spent less time bitching at each and feeling the need to disparage peoples choices there would be more time to work out where women get trapped into choices they don't want to make (sahm or wohm) and working out how to solve that.

I think companies have something to answer for sure but also it is up to women to demonstrate that flexible working really can work. It is also up to women to think about their career path, contacts, commutes and options at all time during their working life. Men are encouraged to network,promote themselves internally and request what they want from day one.

Pomme I never said I was morally superior.

Re. childcare I speak from my own experience of it and having a child who was Statemented with SEN.

My DC was certainly not 'ready' for childcare earlier than pre-school age and was Statemented, with some 'Developmental Delays', funding for a dedicated 1 to 1 TA, had part -time schooling all the way through reception. However now you would be hard pushed to notice much if anything at all, that requires additional support and the Statement has ceased, and is ahead of his peer in a few areas. Had schooling being later, my DC might not have required quite as much additional resource.

I think that if women spent less time bitching at each and feeling the need to disparage peoples choices there would be more time to work out where women get trapped into choices they don't want to make (sahm or wohm) and working out how to solve that

I agree with you here, although the only choice I felt trapped into was being 'required' to volunteer at my DC's school in order to support them looking after my child and having to educate my child partially at home during the period of part time schooling.

The interesting question is it just chance or base sexism which means so many women on mumsnet are not interested in doing well in their jobs and yet marry men who are? It is rarely the other way round. I would say it is because of a sexist upbringing and girls knowing they can usually find a man to keep them so it doesn't much matter what they earn.

If a boyfriend were as likely as a girl friend to say when you first go out oh by the way when we have children I intend to stay home for 10 years is that okay I suspect many of these women would run a mile.

JaneParker The men have a choice too...some men do choose to SAHP.

All this talk of choice appears to miss the point that women are still discriminated against in the work place.

The OP's question was about women who did well in their creers until they had children. Why would they bother if their intention was just to marry rich and "give up"? I think it's much more down to the differential in effort required for women with children compared to men with children. Not simply because of their own expectations or ther husbands, but because of everybody elses as well, including employers. Shelley Correll has done a lot of research in the USA that shows that mothers are discriminated against by employers, offered less than women without children and less than men, and that fathers appear to gain an advantage over mothers and men without children (though much more variation in this advantage). Employers are more likely to offer fathers jobs and pay them significantly more.

When men with children are consistently offered a little bit more and women with children offered a little bit less, it soon becomes a dichotmy in which binary choices fall, for completely rational if narrow reasons, in one direction far more than the other.

The number/proportion of SAHDs is TINY!