What's wrong with being a SAHM?

[Roseandlily]

I am not a feminist (I don't think). I currently earn more than my partner but when our baby is born I will be a stay at home mother. I love the idea of striving to be the best mother, home maker, having the tea on the table for when he gets home stuff. I love the idea of it all. But when I talk to people and they ask "oh what's your plan, how long to you plan to take off work?" And we both say I won't be going back and this will be me at home for say the next 10years give or take.

I would like to add that we would like to have 3 children so I will be at home until the last child starts school.

I don't care about amazing holidays we have done that :) or fancy cars, both had what we wanted and now have got sensible cheaper cars. We are married and have a lovely home.

What do feminists think is so wrong with this? And why do people make me feel weird about this?

NoLove, I just want you to know that I love your passion for women!!! I wish I was as dedicated!! Thank you!!❤️❤️

Nolove

Of course they are, I didn't say any different.
I work pt myself now
You just seemed to jump on my answer to a question and made your own mind up.
We all have different priorities to raising children and meeting their needs.
I really believe my dc would have missed out on so much had I been employed, when they needed me. I'm not suggesting that others would be like this or feel like this. Situations vary, obviously.
I'm sure there are parents who if they didn't work couldn't feed their dc, obviously they are putting their kids first.

Thank you LastGirl - I love reading your posts which are always excellent! I have a long way to go and have other women to thank for anything I'm able to do in future!

It's interesting that it's so difficult even to find the right language to talk about this. Yes, I prioritise looking after my children instead of going to work. This was because at the time I made the decision it made more practical and financial sense to do. Had I prioritised going out to work I would have been worse off financially and emotionally (because due to various circumstances I would've ended up being responsible for everything at home anyway).

I suppose that was not a feminist decision, but I'm not sure, given where I was at that point, what a feminist decision would've been. Had Emmeline Pankhurst's ghost been sitting on my shoulder telling me what the feminist decision was at every decision point in my life I may have found myself in a different position at that point - one where it didn't make more practical sense to give up work.

My view is that it's better for someone to be around full-time for the kids at some point in their childhood, that this should be valued by society, and ideally that it can happen without that parent's career trajectory being affected.

That does not mean I'm slagging off parents who have always worked full time. I acknowledge I am not perfect just as others are not. What we need is to work towards a solution that works for people's real-life practical situations and that doesn't put women at a marked disadvantage in their career and financial situations. That's just a hangover from when it was only women's jobs to serve men.

Should we teach girls to aspire to be mothers who stay at home then, not to careers? This may not go down too well seeing as I don't know any girls who aren't already keenly planning future careers, myself included. You enjoy your situation, don't suggest the opportunity to have a great career and being free to pursue one is "detrimental to women's rights".

What do you think I did for the preceding decade after University and before children?

I am suggesting that telling women they MUST have a career AND raise their children at the same time, is actually forcing them to compromise. Raising children is bloody hard work, it's as hard as forging a good career. I've chosen to do one at a time. Being encourage to be great at both, at the same time, would probably break me. I'm suggesting that 'having it all' is actually down playing a woman's role, because it makes it sound as if raising children or having a career alone are not enough.

We should be teaching our children to be whoever they want to be, doing what they enjoy best whether male or female.
Surely distinguishing between the two just upholds the theory that somehow women should be different.

My own dd at 13 has decided she isn't having dc, she said her career is too important to her.
She may change her mind, she might not, I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't though.
Sometimes girls know what they want from a very early age, the problem is getting society to encourage them not tell them what they should want.

'A woman can be oppressed in the workplace, just as she can at home. Tackling that oppression is the feminist choice.'

That sums up the issue for me.

Also, some women don't really want kids or a career. They just want a job that pays enough for them to live an average standard of living and enjoy themselves. That seems like a great choice to me, and a feminist one - being a role model that is totally okay for women to just please themselves and not have to justify their existence by working their arse off for anyone or anything else.

My mother was never at home. She worked all the time! And when she wasn't working she was nagging and cleaning. We have never had a good relationship and I'm terrified of that happening with me and my children.

This paragraph jumped out at me. I'm really not hot good with words so if I sound like I'm being a twat let me know because it really isn't my intention. I've also only read the first 250 posts so it might be irrelevant anyway.

That post has made me think of my two nieces and I'm worried they will feel the same about my sister, they could say the same, that their dad stays at home, that he's the best, that Mam is always at work, and then spends all her time nagging and cleaning.

Bil spends all his time being a child himself, which is great, but his wife and children need more than that from him, he needs to do more than just play with them, he needs to the caring, the cleaning, the learning, the hard parts. My sister comes from working very long hours in a physical mini am wage job and would love nothing more than to sit with the children and play like their Dad has done all day. She can't though as she starts nagging asking for help to clean the kitchen so that she can cook dinner for them, kitchen still has breakfast dishes from when she got the children dressed and fed before taking them to school and going to work. The children want to play with her and sister looks like the cunt for genuinely tting them to pitch in.

I can see how my nieces could end up seeing my sister the same way as you do your Mum, and she does feel like shit for working the hours she does, but she's stuck and is often annoyed at how easy bil claims being sahp is and makes out my sister just shouldn't have struggled when it was other way round, when she did everything in the day despite having two small dc at home, he decides he'd like to switch roles once youngest is in school and he does none if the hard boring stuff. Of course he's finding it easy, be is in house in his own while dds are at school and is he meal planning, shopping, laundry, cleaning and all the other shit that she had to do? Nope. The saddest part is that much of her community think she shouldn't expect him fit housework in, but when roles were reversed she would be called a shit Mum and a shit wife if he had to come home and badger people to help him clean the mess that they had no part in making.. he takes his kids to the park once in a blue moon and he is star for letting his wife work and looking after the dc for her.

I get that you want to be a different Mam than yours was, but perhaps it wasn't the working that made your relationship with her suffer.

Fantastic post, Jen. 💜

I get that you want to be a different Mam than yours was, but perhaps it wasn't the working that made your relationship with her suffer.

Jen, equally I don't think the working full time did much to liberate her, either. She worked a full day at work and then came home to do all the hard work in the evenings too!

What was wrong here was that she was in an unequal relationship. Perhaps unintentionally, as her husband might have been socialised to be a bit clueless regarding what needed to be done. Or perhaps he just ignored signs she was getting frustrated and exhausted. Tackling oppression in the home can be just as important as in the workplace.

This is the thing. Family can be oppressive or liberating. Work can be oppressive or liberating.

But you have a CONTRACT at work...there is HR/unions, legal recourse and the option to CHANGE employer

Not so at home, with your husband

Pain, having a contract does not stop women being exploited at work. Legal disputes at work can be lengthy, costly and emotionally challenging. Marriage is also a legal contract.

And you can get divorced/leave a husband/remarry.

Clarity, that is the POINT. It is not an easy thing to do. Which is why caution is advised.

You don't tend to build a life with your employer, have children with them, be in-love, etc etc

It's relatively easy and not emotionally horrific to leave an employer.

This conversation can't really go anywhere if you equate changing jobs to leaving a partner/husband/marriage

Wanting to be a SAHM doesn't make you not a feminist. If you thought all women should have to be SAHMs, that would make you not a feminist.
There's a lot of confusion about what feminism means but, if this is what you want and it's what you're happy with and you're not doing it because you feel you have to then that's great, I'm sure you'll be a wonderful SAHM and you can still identify as a feminist, so long as you hold the belief that women shouldn't have to do certain things (or not do certain things) just because they're women.
I would like to be a SAHM (I don't have DCs yet) and I still very much feel that I am a feminist.

I do think work can be liberating for many women. I have skills to pay the bills and if I am not happy with my employer I can (and have) gone out onto the open market to get a job that suits better/pays more/just a wee change.

It is utterly incomparable to the dense weft of love, obligation and desire that bind me to my husband through the good times and the bad. I made a lifelong vow to my DH. My employer and I have a notice period.

I do realise not all women have my education and skills, however many do but decide not to use them in favour of supporting their DH's career. That is their choice, but it is made in a profoundly unequal paradigm that disadvantages all women. Feminism challenges that status quo and I get that that can feel scary or threatening. Feminism doesn't judge the compromises that individual women have to make, but it does recognise the larger picture of those individual actions and the long term implications for women's access to the levers of power and opportunity.

Women aren't becomming sahm in order to support their husband's careers as such. That ends up as a side effect. For many it is about wanting to be with their children for more time than if they go out to work, or about childcare costs eating up more than they earn. No one is actively saying that their dh's work is more important. It's just that when your family then has one income, you have to do what you can to protect it, which I suppose is where the priorotising comes in.

I think that if society recognised sah as a valid choice and stopped allowing the financial penalisation of women who do this, then the levers of power and opportunity might be more accessible to women. The problem for me is that what I smd many other women have chosen, is deemed to have no intrinsic value.

Interestingly I once worked out that if dh and I earned his wage between us, as a family we would lose less in tax and be eligible for child benefit. So actually me sah has financially benefitted the state in some respects.

I don't know avoiding it's very common on MN for women to preen about how their DH's career is flying because he never has to clean a toilet or make a meal for his familyl .

I don't see that as preening. They are saying that their own labour has value which has contributed to the income generated by their partner. It's usually said as a counter argument that domestic work isn't important.
It is much easier to build a career if you don't have to do all the domestic stuff too or say no to travel/late meetings because you have to get back for the childminder.
Women's work does enable men's work, but women's work is seen as having no intrinsic worth and when it comes to divorce that work is rarely recognised when the wealth is divided.

I'm sorry but that's too convenient.

Enabling men to take no part in family life and being proud of the fact is not a good thing. Not good for the children, not good for the men themselves.

It is much easier to build a career if you don't have to do all the domestic stuff too or say no to travel/late meetings because you have to get back for the childminder.

Indeed, which is why when women choose the helpmeet role they also indirectly contribute to the disadvantage of women, particularly mothers, in the work place. It is choosing to favour one mans advancement, to your financial advantage, over women as a class being able to progress in the work place. Women's lives are full of these shady compromises that men don't have to concern themselves with. It is testament to our strength that we have managed to achieve all we have.

When people start building their careers they mostly don't have a full time housekeeper.

They look after themselves. They share tasks if they have a partner. They don't live in dirty clothes. They shop. They cook.

Yet suddenly, at some point they cannot do any of that.

Hang on, who said anything about no involvement in family life? Women who allow their partners to get away with that shit are storing up trouble for themselves. In my house, if dh isn't actually at work, he is fully expected to pull his weight at home. And tbf, he does, because he is not a lazy piss taker.
But yes, it is easier for him at work because I csn do all the school pick ups etc.

I do see that other women who are mums in the workplace might feel that their lives are harder but in dual income households the pita logistics are comprnsated for by the fact that they have 2 incomes. And it is up to them to negotiate their own relationships to benefit their own families. Maybe they should be asking their own partners to sah? I certainly don't see it as my responsibility to go to work so other women don't feel hard done by. Just as they don't ferl they have to share the economic benefits of woh with me.