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?

That's not to say we always need a feminist justification for everything that we do of course. Another perspective may be more important. An economic reason for example. But I'm not sure about making it feminist just because it involves a choice, without examining the societal pressures that influence that choice.

There is actually no need for an absolute choice.

One of the frustrating things about these periodic attacks on SAHMing is that they always seem to assume;

Office jobs
Of a corporate or professional nature
Partners of the same age
And roughly equal earnings
Which are distinctly above average earnings
Robust DC who settle in FT childcare
Who don't have SEN or health issues.

It really is an incredibly fucking narrow, corporate, middle class view of the world.

I am a freelancer now (I built it up while SAHMing for my preschoolers), I know many SE parents, many other freelance professionals, many people who have combined SAH with postgraduate study or business launches, medical couples who each work 3, 12 hr shifts weekly and thus still manage to give their toddlers complete home/parental care. Many creatives who juggle.

Where is this country full of Mon-Fri, 9-5ers with rigid, straight-line career paths that cannot be paused?

the suggestion that £30k is a low salary

Says it all. Some people lead very insular lives.

I live in the ?E, not the choice of everyone but I started off in the one bed flat and many yrs later live a comfortable life. However it hasn't all happened by accident and I haven't just been lucky. Didn't go to uni, went to a bog standard sec modern which on reflection was complete rubbish.

I could chose to live where the average salary is 12k but I moved around and wouldn't allow 12k to be the only salary on offer. We have choices in life, not all the time but I am a great believer that your life is in YOUR hands.

My DS is a "latch key kid", but we eat together, and DH or I cook when we get in, full time work notwithstanding...

But of course we are influenced by our own experiences. My mum and dad both always worked, but my mum was unsatisfied in her job, and regretted her poor and incomplete education. So for me, educating myself to a more fulfilling career choice was of great importance. Not a feminist perspective exactly, although my mum's education was probably influenced by sexist expectations, so not completely unrelated.

I should say that I took 5 years as a SAHM myself. In no way at all a feminist choice, and I would never justify it as such. I was lucky enough to take advantage of my career choice where an extended maternity/paternity break is not career suicide. But as I continue in that career, my perspective is shifting again, and certainly when I talk to my female students and I watch their interactions with male students, I am all too aware of the pressures on the girls...

I think it's you who are assuming. I don't tick all those boxes and I suspect that others in the thread also don't meet your neat profile.

My DM was a SAHM - in fact never returned to work even when we left home. She is educated to masters level and had a 'high powered' job before DCs.

She always encouraged a strong work ethic - no days off school unless you had lost a limb, stressed importance of trying hard in everything you do, and encouraged us to fly the nest to find new opportunities and challenges. Her experience, being first in family to go to University and live 100s of miles from family, was key in her encouraging us to strive for great things. The fact that she became as SAHM was neither here nor there.

I am university educated and have a senior management role. I am well known in work/life for having a strong work ethic, to be driven and hardworking.

My DSis is similar.

Which leads me to believe, based on my own experience, that your theory is incorrect.

Yes, we have choices, handcream and I have made the choice to be a SAHP.

We are comfortable too. I went to a large comp too and then to university, and have lived in various places around the country. Go figure...

I have a flexible job, clung onto it for dear life. It's not leaving home at 0700 and getting home at 1900 these days.

You'll see from my last post that I actually agree with you Fideline...

I was simply reflecting on the language of the thread re choice.

Mind you, there is a recurring theme on MN of men with immutable work practices and women who make all the accommodation.

DH and I have renegotiated our working and domestic arrangements a number of times on the last 12 years. DH has changed his job a couple of times to minimise travel and increase flexibility, as I went back to my career which has zero flexibility, but other advantages (long holidays!) from which the family benefits.

Assertions that a SAHM would struggle to find work in the event of a split does rather assume some of those things really Herc as do the constant assertions that a five year break is career suicide.

And how sneery is it to refer to SAHMs as 'unemployed' or dismiss £30k pa as derisory pay or suggest that SAHPs denigrate their own role and efforts to their children?

You'll see from my last post that I actually agree with you Fideline...

Yes sorry I was branching off from your point rather than disagreeing with it.

Your observation that economic concerns will often override feminist ones anyway was spot on.

Actually, assertions that a SAHM might find it difficult to find work in a hurry if she had to make no assumptions about the age of her ex partner, the parity or not of their previous incomes, or SEN issues (although, for people with kids with some SEN issues it might be difficult to find work that fitted in with a liveable routine). They make assumptions, based on evidence, about the current state of the economy. With particular reference to the move towards zero hour contracts etc. It may be easier to find work for a SAHM who is professionally qualified, or skilled in some way - but in many parts of the country the job market is still pretty rancid all round.

If you are starting your own business then clearly it doesn't always matter that you haven't worked for 8 yrs. However you are naive if you think it also doesn't matter in the corporate world.

I ocasionally do some interviews for my company (Large corporate) and it DOES matter. I cannot stress how much it does matter that you can give some work related examples of situations you have been in. Not something you did when you were working 8 yrs ago.

Let's not fight. We're all women making choices under patriarchy. Don't fight each other. That's what the Daily Mail wants.

Having had no career break. I remember 5-6 yrs ago as the golden yrs. it is much much tougher now. A non working parent trying to get back to a decent paid role will really really struggle

I haven't noticed anyone referring to SAHMs as unemployed (I wouldn't regard anyone who earns money working from inside her home, whether as a freelancer or employed, as a SAHM either. Because otherwise, I'd be one quite a bit of the time). I haven't dismissed £30k as derisory pay. I haven't suggested that SAHMs denigrate their roles. The only denigration there has been in this thread is of WOHMs. I have expressed the hope that they don't pretend they are taking the moral high ground and that in particular they ensure that their sons get the benefit of some positive female role models so that they don't grow up thinking that proper mothers (as opposed to pseudo mothers) stay at home.

The only people who have been slagged off in this thread are WOHM.

Fideline

To me 30k isn't a low income, but I can see how to some it is.
They are very much real and can't see how people like me and dh live.
Its a different lifestyle where your money doesn't go as far.
I suppose in the south with a big mortgage it is a low wage.

Everything else, I totally agree with you.

However you are naive if you think it also doesn't matter in the corporate world.

Most people do not work in the corporate world.

Career breaks are largely irrelevant to creative careers or entrepreneurs. If you are a trained professional in education or medicine, there are jobs about and procedures/courses for returners (who are welcomed with open arms usually).

What I do depends on a blend of skill, experience, specialist quals and contacts. It's pretty niche, I was fine.

All manner of people have a trade or profession that lends itself to SE.

But still we get blanket statements about career ladders and the danger of breaks etc.

sabrina lots of people aren't making a choice. They have to stay home because of the income gap. They might choose differently - perhaps to work PT - if the economics worked out. And pretending this isn't true perpetuates the attitudes in society that allow the income gap to remain.

The DM wants all women to stay at home and to pretend they are moral champions.

To me 30k isn't a low income, but I can see how to some it is.

Absolutely, but why could the poster not acknowledge that to some it's a joint income?

Who here has even mentioned career ladders? That's a whole different ball game.

Here, I can fight my corner tbh. It actually isn't always about money. It's about keeping your independence. And relying on someone else to support you when the divorce rate is 50 percent and higher when couples live together is something to think very carefully about.

You only have to look at the relationship board to see staying together isn't that easy.

And some posters saying you can always go on benefits if you split is even more worrying

They're making the best choice for them, in their current situation (I think, I hope).

If we want to talk about how mothers are disadvantaged in the workplace, how the lion's share of the parental duties falls to women, how the pay gap affects women - then we should talk about that.

Rather than berating women for either: Using childcare, or being a sahm. I hate these discussions that just become women beating other women for their choices. Nobody asks men the same questions.

I haven't noticed anyone referring to SAHMs as unemployed

Someone did.

I wouldn't regard anyone who earns money working from inside her home, whether as a freelancer or employed, as a SAHM either

I meant it more as an example of a flexible career that could withstand a break or as a way of returning to work after a period of SAHMing

I haven't suggested that SAHMs denigrate their roles.

Yes you did.

in particular they ensure that their sons get the benefit of some positive female role models

So a SAHM isn't a positive female role model?! Really?

I a not sure that a SAHM to a daughter of say 14 is a positive role model. Sorry, but I don't.