" have the opinion that if you have kids then you have a duty to care for them"
and poppets post about why have children if you don't want them:
okay firstly its not just me who had this child - as I've said before several times its me and DH. So why should the debate /blame be all directed at me wanting to work?
Yes there are some things that DS prefers me to do cos i'm his mum. Just like my friends DS prefers his dad (SAHD) to do things cos he's his dad!
But there is no way i believe that in order for DS to grow up with any chance of happiness he has to have his mum (not his dad, uncle, granny, grandad, nanny, childminder, best friends mum,
adopted auntie) with him 24/7.
why have kids if you don't take 2 years off to be with them?
To answer for myself, i had no idea what the relaity of having a child would be like, all the books and sites like this were full of the 'its the most wonderful thing ever' type of comments that i believed them! I believed people who told me that babies slept through after 6 month,s I believed people who said it was great fun and relaly rewarding, I believed people who offered to help out.
Before havign Ds it also never occured to me that there woudl be this much hatred directed at me for chosing to work at least p/t after he was born. I grew up with a mum who worked and a dad who worked p/t so he was around for us alot. I grew up thinking that it was normal for dads as well as mums to pick up kids from shcool and cook tea. I led my adult life amongst people who belived that if a couple had a child it was equally usual for both parents to want to continue some level of paid employment as well as having childtime.I guess I was very lucky because i also grew up with and then had in my own life the types of jobs which i would say on my deathbed that
"I DO wish i'd spent more time in the office"
For me being a parent hasn't been rewarding, fulfilling or wonderful. If I had known this i wouldn't have got pregnant, but I'm not a seer, i didn't know how I would feel, i didn't know DS would suffer a bad Gastric attack and need night feeding til he was 15 months, I didn't know how much bitchyness i'd encounter amongst other women, I didn't know that people who I used to work with would stop talking to me or involving me because they htought I had nothing interesting to say any more. I didn't know i'd be severly depressed.
I didn't know that the work I did in communities and with teenagers would be so differnet to being a parent of a child under 5.
I do my best for DS right now cos after redundancy it makes financially more sense for me to finish retraining and be a SAHP but I miss work and I would go back again if the right job came up.
I choose at times to have DS looked after by other people because quite honestly other people can do as good if not better job than me of it! I'm not a good 'carer' type person and I don't enjoy it, other people do enjoy it and thats brilliant for him and me.
DH and me would love it to be more equal in terms of who stays at home right now but he earns more than me. But does anyone question his commitment to having children or suggest he shouldn't have had a child because he only sees him for 2 hrs a day plus weekend?
Xenia, i get your point about why women marry men who earn more. I think alot of people aren't prepared to admit that financial security is important to them when they are thinking about a family. I am! I doubt I would have married someone who wasn't reasoanbly financially secure, I made an effort to be secure myself, i owned my own house and was putting myself through uni p/t.
I actually earn the same as DH did when he was my age - there's a big age gap so I don't see it as a gender issue more a seniority issue!
(my reasons for choosing an older man are an entirely different post!)