Could we have a talk about perceptions of SAHP?

[ISaySteadyOn]

I am a SAHM and I am growing a little tired of what I perceive to be a large amount of negativity towards SAHP in general. Now, I learned from this board that SAHMing and feminism are not mutually exclusive which is why I am posting here. Ironically, given this board's reputation, I feel less likely to be flamed if I post here.

It seems, and please tell me I am wrong, that SAHP especially SAHM are often perceived to be braindead dependent freeloaders. The oft repeated quote' Oh, I could never be a SAHP, I have to use my brain' really hurts my feelings. This is because it suggests that the things a SAHM does don't require brain power and maybe for some it doesn't.

I am someone who is struggling with learning basic housekeeping as my parents thought that sort of thing was beneath them and juggling 3 small children as well. Maybe this sort of learning uses my brain differently than my failed attempts at academia did (and that really hurt as that is what counted in my family growing up), but does that mean it has inherently less value?

I suppose I'm wondering whether SAHPing has a negative reputation because women do it or is it primarily women who do it because it has a negative reputation?

Anyway, those are my thoughts, would love to hear some others.

Sleepybean I was lucky to go back part time. I love my job and my team and could not contemplate not going back... I think it is important to remember that children are babies for a short time. But it is also important to remember that life gets a bit complicated when they go to school. And then it is also important to remember that at some point they can be trusted with the house key ...

That's mean newlife: "with respect" is never a good opener. It means the direct opposite. What has a poster's marital status got to do with anything?

why do you regard staying married or "having someone" as a key indicator of success and the value of someone's opinions?

Nowt wrong with being single.

letgo your resentment about women on maternity leave was misplaced: his employers COULD have found other ways to cover than your H working harder/longer hours, it was easier and cheaper for them for him to cover it and he was willing to do so. If they really couldn't afford compliance with an employment right in their countrynof operation then their business possibly wasn't all that sound.

That said it's good that parental leave is now coming in so that employers are less likely to discriminate.

I have had this argument with a friend whose husband works for a huge multinational. She was angry that the only woman in the team had gone part time when the men worked full time +++ because in her and her H's view they "had to work harder" as a direct result. I argued that if the team's work was worthwhile (it was a team generating a lot of money) then the company could well afford to resource the team properly.

Yes duck, that grinds my gears too. Whenever there's any debate about working parents (for which read working mothers, even if it's not explicit) there will inevitably be complaints about parents working less hard than non-parents, always being first out of the door leaving colleagues to pick up the slack etc. To which I always reply: so the employing entity is very badly managed and/or inadequately resourced, probably the former.

I think people complain about any colleague who does not pull their weight if they are earning the same as everyone else. The company could be the best resourced ever, but if someone has cleared their desk and heads off at 5 on the dot when there is a deadline, it's galling. Ime men are just as likely to clock watch as women. If you really need a job with strict hours, then apply for a public sector position, don't take a job which requires flexibility and then spring it on the boss that you can never work one second beyond 5 (bitter experience of bloke who insisted on making his ds's bathtime every evening and kept leaving urgent work undone without saying anything).

I've never really been a SAHM, I had two short maternity leaves and a period when I couldn't work due to visa restrictions but otherwise I've always worked since we had children. My dh on the other hand has had two quite long periods of being a SAHD. Those times were quite interesting. The first coincided with us separating when we had a pretty strict 50:50 set up. It was also the time I had the greatest career progression. I suspect being single for half the time helped, although the other half I was a single mother so that was challenging. I was lucky to have an employer who was happy for me to flex my time across my days, but that was partly because I was in a very specialist role.

In fact in general I'd recommend women find specialist roles where they really are depended on and hard to recruit. It can be a lot less flexible when you are looking for work (fewer opportunities) but once you are established you can make much greater demands, confident knowing that you really aren't easily replaced.

Second time dh was a SAHD was after we emigrated and after he had had a really difficult work experience. So it was a nice combination for us, he didn't want to work and our children needed more support. It did give me an interesting taste of being a traditional father. Yes it was lovely to have everything done for me at home. Coming home to a relaxed dh, clean house, food on the table was great. Being able to go on work trips without worry was great too (emigrating got rid of our long commute so that wasn't a factor). However the stress of being the sole earner was shit. After a while I really resented dh his easy relaxed life and I was desperate for him to go back to work. Plus it's not great to know that if things go wrong between you your spouse will likely get to have the children live with them most of the time because he has been the primary carer when that really wasn't your choice.

So yes sharing childcare responsibilities can be great, and yes we should be encouraging men to take time off too, but we should also acknowledge that there are some potential costs to that.

Rhoda, that's exactly the point. Did your bathtime-conscious colleague ever get pulled up on his work (or lack thereof) by his manager?

duck, without going into too many 'outing' details, there really wasn't a way to cover it. To adequately train someone new would have taken a long time and would have been expensive. The new person wouldn't have been capable of working at the original worker's level until long after the original worker had returned. You can't easily replace experience and relationships with clients which have built up over years.
A year long mat leave may not affect a business where lots of replacement staff are easily available but it does have a huge impact on smaller ones, where each worker has been trained for that specific role.
Now of course a woman has her legal right to take a year out but I honestly think this is holding back women because we are seen as risky. From the employers pov they have hired someone to do a job - they had no say in that individual choosing to have a baby but have to suck up all the difficulties of them being away fro a year. Is it so unreasonable to want your employees to be available to do the job you hired them for?

I know someone who had 2 babies in close succession, took a year out for each and then complained that she didn't get a pay rise. Why would she - she hadn't been at work for nearly 2 years. That's not going to be far from her employer's mind when he is interviewing other young women, so we will continue to be up against silent discrimination we have no way of fighting.

Obviously having dc is essential for humanity and I don't think women should be penalised just because we are the ones who physically have children. So I think we need to force fathers to share the time off and the state should pay both parents their proper wage so they can do so.

The bloke got a warning, actually. Not for going off for bathtime (!) but for just leaving and not saying he hadn't completed something urgent which caused considerable trouble for the company.

I'm a SAHM not through choice. We have a disabled child and I his carer. He is 6 and has DB aged 8 and DS 4.
DS Morning is 2am so I'm awake from then. All 3 kids have hypermobilty syndrome so we have lots of hospital appointments and therapies. DS has gene mutation so severely disabled and had only spent 1 full week in school this term.
I spend the weeks arranging therapies, fighting for assistance.
We do get £50 carers allowance weekly .... But that doesn't come close to my previous wage of £25,000.
Now it school holidays and I've got a poorly DS with chest infection And the other two are having to entertain themselves while I am being used as an armchair and comfort blanket for my 6 year old baby.
It's a full time job, I don't get holiday or Christmas party !!!! The pay is shit but the cuddles are AMAZING !!!

Rhoda, from your post I'm not sure if you disapprove of the chap legging it for bathtime per se, or whether you disapprove of him leaving important work unfinished. Because if the latter, then sounds like the employer took the right course of action? If the former, then surely it's reinforcing sexism, because it makes out that any dad wanting to be hands on is a slacker. I have worked with many men who leave very promptly at the end of the working day to spend time with their families (kids or otherwise) - but they've logged back on later in the evening to catch up with work. Presumably in that scenario, unless employer needs weren't being met (meetings, hard deadlines etc), it's a win-win?

The debate over how much modern workplaces rely on huge amounts of unpaid overtime is one for another day, I think!

If someone is so vital that they can't take a year's maternity leave, then your business has a problem - tomorrow they could quit, or be hit by a bus.

You should be training up their reserve in tandem with them working - I realise lots of businesses don't, but that is a risk they are taking, and it's their fault if something happens and they lose that functionality - not the person performing it who has a baby/finds a better job/has an illness or accident.

Nooka has it on the nose - I too have very niche skills, and despite having a few years off (largely speaking - I did some little bits of freelancing during that time, and kept my hand in with conferences and stuff online), I'm now lucky enough to have snagged an even better role than when I first left the workforce to have my first baby.

UK productivity is a whole big debate!

It could be an explicit political objective for a similar proportion of fathers and mothers to be PT or SAH!

It's true that businesses take a risk if they don't have back up but sometimes it is not straightforward to recruit the right person, esp of all you can offer them is temporary employment. It's expensive to train and employ someone you don't need most of the time, as a 'just in case' option. It's also a factor that staff costs often come out of a departmental budget which impacts on profit and therefore bonuses.

Important to remember that the workers having to cover the additional workload are not always the owners of a business and the one's making the profit. What they might be is middle managers, with targets to meet, who need to keep a company afloat for their own job security.

Politics - I discovered MAHM a few months ago and found it very interesting. I find it virtually impossible to talk about IRL, or even on MN because while personally I do believe in attachment parenting for under 3s, I find it really difficult to say that that's my main reason for considering leaving work because people I worry that people will take my opinion as an attack on their choices, or (as more frequently happens) dismiss my opinion as 'wrong'. I find I can only talk about my choices in terms of 'oh I can't afford to go back to work'...people don't mind that.

What frustrates me is the complete disconnect between how people seem to think about SAHMs vs people who choose childcare as a paid job. No one would ever say to a professional nanny 'I couldn't bear not to use my brain'. No one would think they should work for free. Yet if I went back to work - even in a minimum wage job where my tax contribution minus the cost of free childcare I received was so low that I was a net cost to the state (I raise this because the argument in favour of this is always the wider economic benefit of getting women into work) - I'd get that free childcare. But if I provided that childcare myself, I'd have to do it for free.

And at the other end of the scale...people who could easily easily afford the fees, people on many multiples of our income are also eligible also benefit from free childcare. Yes, they're making an economic contribution to society but that just begs the question of why raising a child is not seen as a contribution. It's not like it can't easily be economically quantified - just look at the going rate for a nanny, or a nursery place. The people who are left utterly on their own are modestly off SAHMs. I wouldn't necessarily mind per se, but in comparison with the way other choices are 'rewarded', it's not right.

I read on MN so much that it's a 'luxury' to stay at home with kids. Why? How is a luxury to scrimp and save and go without and be entirely self reliant as a family unit financially rather than benefit from state-funded perks that people on many times your income get, and that your hard earned tax contributes to. Doesn't seem very luxurious to me, in comparison. People say 'It's a luxury to have the choice'...which completely ignores all the people who actually couldn't afford to go back to work, or (like me) would only just break even.

Likewise it frustrates me that my DH and I will receive no child benefit, but a two-income couple with a combined income 50% higher than his would. I'm all for supporting women to go back to work, but the exact same level support HAS to be there for the other choice as well. That, IMO is a feminist issue.

Dh is a hrt payer and I was very annoyed to lose cb, which was the only income in my name, when if we earned his salary between us we would have kept it and paid less tax. It makes no sense.

Oh yes....transferable tax allowance. I'd implement that as well!

Yes, we now have the choice to go back to work. It's a looooong way from having to quit work as soon as you began to show. That's fantastic. But it feels like we're taking steps backwards at the same time. There's so little acknowledgment or understanding - let alone provision for - the unique choices and situations that women end up in. Everything is seen and discussed through this tiny prism of a man-centric and capitalist (economic value is the only value) viewpoint. It's such a tired cliche but how are we STILL here, with the women's work still exclusively women's work and still totally unrewarded? As if the only 'solution' is for women to emulate men as much as possible - be economically active as much as possible and have other people look after the children to make this happen. Great for some people, not for others.

As so many people on here have said - what if men became more like women? Took 6 months parental leave, worked part time / flexibly for quite a few years after that.

Exactly, why is 'women's work' so devalued? I completely disagree that 'anyone with arms and legs' can be a decent healthcare assistant/carer/childcare worker...why are the traits of emphathy, patience, creativity etc. seen as being worth less than more 'academic' skills - not everyone who is a surgeon could be a good nursery nurse (as an example) imo.

I'm pregnant with DC1 at the moment and I'm leaning towards becoming a SAHM and I have my feminist arguments all lined up for anyone who says won't you miss using your brain

Because those skills are intangible Stella, and not measurable?

I have read the whole thread after contributing near the beginning. I find these threads always turn into how you can have a career and balance home life, spare time and keeping fit and healthy. Something that I obviously failed at because I am now a SAHM brought on by ill health caused by trying to fit everything into one day. No relatives or family to help and not enough money or space to afford an au pair or nanny. And yes my DH was also doing the same too. My health packed in and I suffered and I am now a SAHM.

Sure I was resentful, sure I believed from the first day I started my career, nothing not even children would stop me. But what I am willing to admit now is that when I was a teenager, I had a longing to be a mother and to look after my children. I am now doing that and it's not a silly childhood fantasy. I have had a massive change of heart. Our quality of life has drastically improved. There has been discussion that my parents-in-law move to be near us so I can help them remain independent for longer and allow our children to have a relationship with them. That would not happen if I worked. So there you have it, by me not working 3 children and 3 adults directly benefit from me not working.

I volunteer as do so many SAHP, retired and out of work folk be it through ill health, disability or little employment prospects. We give up our time for others, we see no financial reward and after having a city job I can tell you it is not mind-numbingly boring, it opens your eyes to the problems in society and gives you a chance to directly get involved. If we all worked who would do these things? How many children's groups, OAP groups, drop-in clinics for this, that and the other would shut down if we had to start paying people to work there?

SAHP don't just benefit their partners or immediate family, they benefit relatives, neighbours, society in general, because by and large we are fitter and more healthy than other groups of unemployed adults. This government made a big thing of society looking after themselves and not the state. I don't think they meant the 40 hour per week workers, they meant the likes of me who work for free for my family and for society. Yet we are seen IMO as lazy slackers by George Osbourne, child benefit went for us, and yes a transferable tax allowance would be fantastic, it would show that we are appreciated. Maybe even some kind of volunteers benefit a token amount to show we are appreciated.

I also think that it is SAHP families or at least ones where one parent works minimal hours are more likely to have more than 2 children. So many dual working families have only one or two and I don't actually think that is an economically good idea, just like at China and Germany. Am I right in thinking the most families in the UK only have one child? That is a huge burden for that one child when they become older.

Before that last paragraph sparks a comment about an over populated world I believe that the emancipation of women the world over would help sort that problem out. Once women have control over their own bodies and fertility I think the global birth rate would drop.

Great post Captain.

That really is a great post captain, i think for me my arguments for SAHMing are tied up with lefty/greeny/socialisty ideals. I want to have time for my parents when they get older, I want to fix things when they break rather than get new ones because I'm tired/have no time.

But on the other hand it's tricky because just because I like and genuinely want to do very '1950s housewife' type things like volunteer at church or darn my clothes I also don't want my future DCs to think that 'mummies stay at home and daddies go to work on the train'...I'm hoping that just pointing out 'Yes but X's mummy is a doctor and Y's daddy stays at home' will be enough.

Captain, do you think that SAHP are the only ones volunteering? In any thread like this, there are always many people who either themselves work and volunteer in the community, or know many others that do.

I also call BS - and failing that, irrelevance - on your claim that SAHP are 'fitter and healthier'...

You're a SAHP because it suits you, and your family, for whatever reasons - great. I don't see what's gained by insinuating you're doing society a favour by being 'fitter and healthier' or contributing more than what you would have been had you been a WAHP.

I also disagree that sahp are fitter and healthier - some are, some aren't. I also think the world is split into those who like to volunteer and be involved and those who prefer to just do their own thing. Again I dont think it has anything to do with woh or sah.

Personally, I am a sahp now and I help out at my dd's school because she gains from it, not because I feel I owe it to society. Of the volunteers I know, they do it for their own personal reasons, again not because they feel they owe it to anyone else.
I dont consider that sahp should have to justify their existence by using their time in a way others consider to be 'productive', be that volunteering or anything else. I do it simply because it suits my family. I dont want reward for it but neither do I want to hear shit like 'I couldn't do that. I need to use my brain' from people who woh.